From Elder Neal A. Maxwell. . .
If . . . a person samples the Ten Commandments, he will forced to conclude that we can scarcely expect genuine and widespread peace to prevail if people engage in stealing whether land or goods. How much security can there be if people tell lies and bear false witness against each other? If people are guilty of covetousness or engage in murder, there can be no real peace.
Today, those aggrieved can act out their vengeance in many ways and on an awesome scale. The urge for revenge, for instance, is as real as ever, only now what was once an adjoining village is all mankind!
Can there, in fact, be peace in the world, if there is not peace in our homes and in our hearts? Can we, in fact, really expect to have peace in the world if the civil wars raging inside so many individuals do not subside? Or, if there is rampant and desensitizing sexual immorality, adultery, and all things “like unto it” tearing the fabric of individual souls and families? Or, just when we especially need mortal minds a their best in order to deal with complexity, if enslaving and desensitizing drugs are more and more pervasive?
. . . .But some will quickly say that the requirements of generalized righteousness are too exacting and too unmanageable for mankind and, therefore, if we rely upon this ultimate solution, then nuclear war is inevitable. Something else, they say, must be done, even if the solution is secular. It is hoped for by many that treaties, for instance, may be negotiated which will rest upon shared fear: treaties which are verifiable, even if nations do not care for or trust each other.
Christians are often chided, sometimes rightly, because some of us do not do as we have been told to do: “renounce war and proclaim peace” (Doctrine and covenants 98:16). We would do well to look to our own posture with regard to peace and our responsibilities to be peacemakers.
At the same time, perhaps we cannot be fully blamed if we are not reflexively enthusiastic about the approach to peace that many would use, when it is so bereft of accompanying general spiritual content. Yes there was repentant Nineveh. Yes, there have been intervals of peace in human history. But time and space have collapsed, and man’s interdependence has never been as pronounced as now.
(A series of posts with this theme starts with “Distress of Nations, With Perplexity”
