“The wolf shall live with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion will feed together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:6-9)
This well-known passage from Isaiah, ancient Israel’s champion of peace, consumed Edward Hicks (1780-1849) a 19th century Quakers painter turned preacher. It flooded his imagination, and Hicks wanted it to fill the imagination of his viewers, too, and translate into peaceable communities. So, he painted over a hundred renditions of The Peaceable Kingdom during the last thirty years of his life. Isaiah’s confidence that God will, one day, usher in a peaceable kingdom moved Hicks to make his life more resolutely a testimony to non-violence as a way of life. The promise animated his life. In no way did he see that promise as a basis for passive waiting or laziness. Through his paintings he sought to shape souls and lives, including his own, and shape the world as it was in his time and place
Over the course of two-thousand years, Christians have brought their best thinking to the ugly persistence of war as a feature of our existence. The use of force seems necessary at times to restrain forces of evil, and legitimate to protect the innocent as an extension of the second great commandment. Against this, we have the non-violent teachings and example of Jesus, and arguments for pacificism as axiomatic for Christians. Coming to a completely satisfactory solution among Christians has been elusive.
And yet, we can ask, and often answer, a set of very practical questions: How can we quickly bring this or that conflict to a speedy and lasting end? How can we prevent conflicts in the first place? How can relieve some of the suffering and heal some of the collateral damage? We can, that is, create an action list that will save us from cynical resignation and paralyzed irresponsibility. Our efforts to give humanitarian aid to those suffering in Gaza is one example of following the lead of Isaiah and Edward Hicks. And we can surely think of other actions, too.