Peacemaking in an Age of Polycrisis . Part Two: The People We Are Becoming

At the end of Part One, I suggested that the deepest crisis facing us may not be political, economic or ecological.

It may be moral and spiritual.

We are confronting profound challenges at precisely the moment when we seem least able to agree on what kind of people we ought to be.

That raises an obvious question: how should Christians respond?

The temptation is either panic or retreat.

Panic fills our attention with headlines, outrage and endless speculation about what might happen next. Retreat withdraws into a private spirituality detached from economics, politics, neighbourhoods and the realities of ordinary life.

Neither response feels faithful to me.

When Jerusalem was moving towards catastrophe, the early church did not spend its days endlessly predicting the future. Nor did it disappear into a religious bubble. Instead, it became more deeply itself. It prayed, worshipped, shared possessions, cared for the poor, practised hospitality and announced the good news of Jesus. It learned how to live together as a people shaped by a different kingdom.

That remains the challenge before us.

The temptation for much contemporary Christianity is not unbelief so much as distraction. We can spend years consuming Christian content without being deeply formed by Christ. We can listen to sermons, podcasts and worship music, attend conferences and read books, yet remain remarkably untouched by the way of Jesus.

We can become highly informed Christians without becoming deeply transformed Christians.

Sometimes our faith functions as a kind of religious comfort blanket. It helps us feel better but asks little of us. It offers reassurance without transformation. It encourages us to look away from reality rather than face it.

Yet Christianity begins not with escape but with incarnation.

God enters the world as it is.

Not as we wish it to be.

The Word became flesh: a body, a neighbourhood, an occupied land, a people living under political domination and economic pressure.

The Christian faith is irreducibly earthly because Jesus entered the real world. To follow him is not to escape reality but to inhabit it differently.

This is where peacemaking matters.

Peacemaking is often misunderstood. It is not conflict avoidance. It is not being nice. It is not pretending everything is okay.

Peacemaking is the difficult work of remaining human when others are being pulled towards dehumanisation. It is refusing contempt when contempt is becoming fashionable. It is learning to disagree without hatred. It is building tables when others are building barricades. It is repairing trust in a culture of suspicion.

At its heart, peacemaking is the refusal to allow fear and hostility to have the final word.

Yet peacemaking is only one part of a larger challenge.

The phrase I have increasingly found helpful is cruciform adaptation.

Adaptation has become one of the defining words of our age. We are told that societies must adapt to climate change, communities must adapt to economic disruption, institutions must adapt to technological change and nations must adapt to political instability.

That seems right enough.

But Christians are called to more than adaptation.

We are called to cruciform adaptation.

In one sense there is nothing new here. The New Testament calls it discipleship. The Christian tradition has spoken of holiness, sanctification and conformity to Christ. What I am trying to describe is an ancient calling in contemporary language.

By cruciform adaptation I mean the formation of Christlike individuals and communities amid disruption, uncertainty and change.

It is not simply adapting in order to survive. It is becoming more like Jesus in the midst of upheaval.

More loving when fear would be easier.

More truthful when propaganda is everywhere.

More generous when scarcity encourages hoarding.

More courageous when anxiety tempts us towards retreat.

More hopeful when despair seems reasonable.

Cruciform adaptation asks not simply how we survive upheaval. It asks how we become more like Jesus within it.

The question is not simply what happens next.

The deeper question is who we become.

This is not a new idea. It runs through the New Testament. Paul tells the Romans that God’s purpose is that we be “conformed to the image of his Son”. Writing to the Corinthians, he speaks of believers “being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another”. To the Galatians he writes of labouring until “Christ is formed in you”. Elsewhere he describes Christians as putting on “the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its Creator”.

The goal of Christian discipleship is not merely believing certain things about Jesus.

It is becoming like Jesus.

The question is not whether we will be formed.

The question is what will form us.

Every age has its own way of shaping people. Consumer culture trains us to want more. The culture wars train us to see opponents everywhere. Social media rewards outrage. The attention economy fragments our concentration and shortens our horizons. Fear narrows our vision. Anxiety tempts us to retreat into ourselves.

The church cannot avoid being shaped by these forces. The question is whether we are shaped by them more than we are shaped by Christ.

That is why discipleship matters.

The church’s task is not to baptise one political tribe against another. Prophetic witness is not choosing between rival idols. It is exposing them.

The left has its idols and the right has its idols. The market has its idols. Nations have their idols. Technology has its idols.

Christians have their idols too.

We can make idols of certainty, influence, nostalgia, church growth, comfort or spiritual experiences detached from costly discipleship.

The question is not whether we worship.

The question is what we worship.

These questions are not abstract.

I think of people I have met over the years through Lighthouse and other communities. Men and women in recovery. People carrying trauma. People living with poverty. People who have buried loved ones. People who have experienced homelessness. People whose lives have been marked by addiction, prison, violence or loss.

Many have every reason to become bitter.

Yet sometimes suffering deepens them rather than hardens them.

Sometimes they become gentler, more compassionate, more patient and more generous. Not because life has become easier but because grace has met them in the midst of it.

I have seen people who lost almost everything become astonishingly generous. I have seen people carrying deep wounds become sources of healing for others. I have seen people who once lived chaotically become anchors of stability within their communities.

That too is cruciform adaptation.

It is not escaping reality.

It is being transformed within it.

The future may be more turbulent than many of us would like to imagine. Climate pressures may increase. Political divisions may deepen. Economic instability may become more acute. We cannot know exactly what lies ahead.

The first Christians could not know what would become of Jerusalem either. They could not control Rome. They could not predict the future. Yet what they lacked in certainty they made up for in discipleship. They devoted themselves to prayer, worship, hospitality and mutual care. They learned how to live together. They shared what they had. They welcomed strangers. They cared for widows and the poor. They sought, however imperfectly, to embody the teaching of Jesus in the midst of a changing world.

Perhaps that is our calling too.

Not because the challenges facing us are identical to theirs. They are not. But because the deeper task remains the same. The church is called to become a people whose lives are increasingly shaped by Christ rather than by fear, outrage, tribalism or despair.

That is what I mean by cruciform adaptation.

It is not withdrawing from the world, nor is it placing our hope in politics, technology or economic growth. It is learning how to remain faithful within the world we actually inhabit. It is allowing the pressures of our age to drive us deeper into prayer, deeper into community, deeper into truthfulness, deeper into love of neighbour and even love of enemy.

The task of the church is not to predict every storm that may lie ahead. The task is to become the kind of people who can remain faithful within it. The question is not simply what happens next. The deeper question is who we become as it does.

When Jesus looked across Jerusalem, he wept because the city did not know the things that made for peace.

That question remains before every generation.

Do we know the things that make for peace?

And are we willing to practise them now, before we need them even more than we do today?

-Rev’d Jon Swales