Peace Quote of the Day - overcoming evil with evil is not making peace

"When we try to overcome evil with evil, we are not working for peace. If you say, ‘Saddam Hussein is evil. We have to prevent him from continuing to be evil,’ and if you then use the same means he has been using, you are exactly like him. Trying to overcome evil with evil is not the way to make peace."

Johann Arnold, Seeking Peace

Peace Quote of the Day - turning enemies into friends

“As long as we do not pray for our enemies, we continue to see only our own point of view – our own righteousness – and to ignore their perspective. Prayer breaks down the distinctions between us and them. To do violence to others, you must make them enemies. Prayer, on the other hand, makes enemies into friends. When we have brought our enemies into our hearts in prayer, it becomes difficult to maintain the hostility necessary for violence.”

Jim Wallis, quoted in Johann Arnold, Seeking Peace

Peace Quote of the Day - our inability to be silent

"One of the greatest hindrances to peace is our inability to be silent."

"Mother Teresa points out that what we have to say is never as essential as what God says to us and through us: 'All our words are useless if they do not come from within. Words that do not carry the light of Christ only increase the darkness'."

Johann Arnold, Seeking Peace

Peace Quote of the Day - the dividing line between good and evil

"One of the greatest risks in taking up arms against evil is to mistake the battle for something that must be fought on a human level, between opposing camps of ‘good’ people and ‘evil’ ones. We may speak of God and the church in contrast to Satan and the world, but the reality is that the dividing line between good and evil runs through every human heart. And who are we to judge anyone but ourselves?"

Johann Christoph Arnold, Seeking Peace

Peace Quote of the Day - Gandhi's advice

"Gandhi once advised, 'If you hate injustice, tyranny, lust, and greed, hate these things in yourself first'."

Johann Christoph Arnold, Seeking Peace

Peace Quote of the Day - excerpts from the Bruderhof Covenant

“As light cannot share space with darkness, so good and evil cannot coexist, and we must, therefore, decide which side we will take.”

Bruderhof Communities Covenant (excerpts):

We declare war against

all irreverence toward the childlike spirit of Jesus.

We declare war against

all emotional or physical cruelty toward children.

We declare war against

the search for power over the souls of others.

We declare war against

all human greatness and all forms of vanity.

We declare war against

all false pride, including collective pride.

We declare war against

the spirit of unforgiveness, envy, and hatred.

We declare war against

all cruelty to anyone, even if he or she has sinned.

 in Johann Christoph Arnold, Seeking Peace: Notes and Conversations Along the Way

One of the things I like about Arnold's emphasis (which seems to be the emphasis of the Bruderhof Community), is that the focus on peace is comprehensive - they are not narrow, and are not superficial. They try to identify everything in life that is the absence of or contrary to peace (comprehensively defined), and then to work against all of that.

Peace Quote of the Day

“We cannot sit and wait for heaven, for God’s reign of peace, to fall into our laps. We must go after it zealously.”

Johann Christoph Arnold, Seeking Peace: Notes and Conversations Along the Way