Si vis pacem, para bellum.

 

We men who desire "mere easy peace," as Theodore Roosevelt put it, often forget this fact: Si vis pacem, para bellum.

In an evil, broken, fallen, dark, and crumbling world, there is only one thing to do if you want peace.

Prepare for war.

This truth penetrates so many facets of reality on earth.

You might imagine that the weightlessness of space would be wonderfully freeing for the human body. No longer pushing forever upward against gravity's pull, the body will blissfully float about, experiencing a euphoric state of existence. The astronaut will gleefully bounce from place to place with perfect tranquility and otherworldly vigor and strength.

Not so. The body, in fact, is designed to be in warfare against gravity. In the absence of this downward force, muscles atrophy, fluids cause congestion in the head, and overall health deteriorates. A sound body does not result from removing gravitational strain, but rather from fighting constantly against this strain. The experience of physical peace and well-being comes only from regular experiences of strain and struggle. On the contrary, when physical peace and idleness are directly pursued, they result in a weak, sick, and broken body.

If you want peace, prepare for war. Leisure is not, in fact, the pathway to peace. Rather, war is the pathway to peace. Be it war against gravity or spiritual war against the sinful flesh, the body thrives in the presence of war and atrophies in its absence. 

I believe there was a time when this saying was false, and our basic desire for peace could be met effortlessly. In Eden, if a man wanted peace, it was his - no struggle, no pain, not a tear to be shed in its pursuit. Peace was the way of the world, and our flesh was not naturally bound against it.

But in the valley of the shadow of death, that is not the case. We all want peace. Peace will come, at the last trumpet. But the valley is first a place of war, out of which comes peace. On both a small and a large scale, in both a physical and a spiritual sense, si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war.