Principles- War and Peace (2) 11/7/2015

   The French poet François Fénelon said “All wars are civil wars as all people are brethrens”, though his words rouse an argument between his readers, it’s one way or another holds the idea of the one family that humanity springs from and when we tackle the issue of war and peace, we ask ourselves one question “Why wars were waged?”

   There are several reasons of wars but most of them are due to the gap that was built through time due to differences or conflict of interests as losing the thread that ties all humans lead to violence and fierce wars. If we want to restore piece we should realize that we are brethrens. We may hold different beliefs or dogmas; however we are all members of humanity and will be questioned about fulfilling our role toward preserving it. As it was said in the Bible that God asked Cain about his brother Abel and He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground.”This is how the earth was cursed.

   Another reason for wars and destruction is the mental image we form about people without considering their humanity. Adunis says ” You don’t hate me, you hate the image you created about me, and this image is YOU not ME”. The image you created about a person will be the frame in which you will put all his behaviors and consider it his reality and through time deal with that person accordingly and this is the core of the problem. Hatred you bear in your heart toward a person and bring in your mind the desire to get rid of him is to a great deal due to the mental image you created in your mind about that person. In most cases, that image is not real. So a peace seeker should watch out for his judgment of people lest he form in his mind unreal image of them.

   You need to think positively if you want to be a real hero. There are many chances you can take to serve humanity and eliminate its suffering. Peace is the result of seeking goodness and spreading it out. Hence, wars will stop; as people will find no time to spread hatred but rather to gain the fruits of goodness. Abraham Lincoln has said, “There’s no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.” And someone also said “The world has enough money to wage wars, however it has no money to feed the hungry.”

   Back to Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”, he mentioned that war waged by a country corrupts people in one year more than millions of crimes of murder and robbery that people commit in million years. How horribly the war affects men, countries and people. It takes away their life and grows thorns in the rest .Principles are ruined in wars. People miss the road and found nothing but destruction everywhere and a pain in their hearts caused by their brethrens in humanity.

General Bishop
Head of the Coptic Orthodox Cultural Center