When we begin enacting the new world, the nations will follow. Nations will not lead us to peace; it is people who will lead the nation to peace as they begin to humanize the nations.

Violence is for those who have lost their imagination. Has your country lost its imagination?

We really do see the pattern Jesus warns us about: "Pick up the sword and you will die by the sword." Not only do innocent children suffer as collateral damage, but the one who picks up the sword also suffers. We've learned that lesson all too well. We are not made to kill. So when we do, it kills a part of us.

We need a new approach to reducing gun violence. Rather than demonizing gun owners, perhaps we should focus on cutting funds from the gun profiteers. Instead of concentrating on the issue of rights, maybe we should approach it as an issue of conscience.

Limiting violence was a good place to start. Abolishing it is a good place to end.

Second-century Bible scholar Origen of Alexandria wrote, "We do not arm ourselves against any nation; we do not learn the art of war; because, through Jesus Christ, we have become the children of peace.

us assemble ourselves before you today through our acts of peace and reconciliation with neighbors near and far. Help us to teach the children in our communities what it means to be children of a God who loves us like a mother. Amen.

Violence is for those who have lost their imagination. Has

This is prophetic work, and Christians are called to be the prophets of a new and better world, not just the chaplains of empire and defenders of the status quo.

I find it particularly troubling when the cross is used as a weapon to justify violence, bloodshed, and vengeance—the very stuff I'm convinced Jesus came to heal the world of.

Many of us have learned history by studying wars and violence; we organize it by the reigns of kings and presidents. But in Jesus, we reorder history. We date it from his visit to earth and examine it through a new lens — identifying with the tortured, the displaced, the refugee, and remembering the nonviolent revolutions on the margins of empires.

As French theologian Jacques Ellul once said, "Christians should be troublemakers, creators of uncertainty, agents of a dimension incompatible with society.