 English translation of a talk I delivered for a 'Prayers for Peace' meeting in Germany this week: Martin Luther King is famous for having ‘a dream’ – a vision from God of a bright new reality that he was willing to live and die for. For him, peace was far more than the absence of conflict. After all, people, communities and even nations can co-exist alongside one-another for a time, even if there are tensions, grievances or injustices in and between them.* We see an example in history of ‘Pax Romana’ – a peace of sorts that the Roman Empire established and maintained by the overwhelming force of the military, rather than through building positive relationships between neighbouring peoples and societies. It was a way of holding an empire together by active coercion and brutal suppression of all dissent. The Roman historian, Tacitus, commented that, ‘They (the Romans) make a desert and call it peace.’ This was the world into which Jesus Christ was born. It helps us understand the dilemma for Pilate when some Jewish leaders said Jesus claimed to be King of the Jews. If the accusation were true, it could be a threat to ‘Pax Romana’. Pilate was forced to act. Martin Luther King calls this ‘negative peace’. It’s often better than open violence or war, yet because the underlying issues are not addressed or resolved, it’s likely to be a fragile state that could collapse at any time. Martin Luther King advocated for a ‘positive peace’, characterised by an active reaching towards the ‘other’ with love, forgiveness and hope. This is the peace we see modelled by Jesus Christ who reaches out actively towards us. He doesn’t ignore the problems and challenges but takes positive initiative to resolve them. This is what he calls us to do too. It’s a peace that reflects the Hebrew idea of ‘Shalom’ (שָׁלוֹם) – a holistic peace that includes restoration, safety, wholeness, harmony and wellbeing. As we look across the world today and see increasing tensions, conflicts and wars, let’s pray for a positive peace that is so much more than an absence of violence. Let’s pray especially for those who are so blinded by hate, hurt or self-interest that they can’t even imagine a different way or future. Let’s pray – with God’s help – for love, forgiveness and hope. *(e.g. Treaty of Versailles (1919); Treaty of Trianon (1920); Korean Armistice Agreement (1953); Israel-Lebanon May 17 Agreement (1983); Dayton Accord – Bosnia and Herzegovina (1995); Northern Ireland 'Peace without Reconciliation' (1998-present); Post-Civil War Libya (2011–present); India-Pakistan Ceasefire Agreement (2003/2021); Gaza Peace Plan (2025))
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 English translation of a short talk I delivered at a Prayers for Peace meeting in Germany this evening: As many of you will know, Martin Luther King was a Baptist minister, civil rights leader and peace activist in the USA. He believed passionately that Jesus Christ provides us with an ethical vision for human relationships characterised by love, justice and peace. He also believed that Mahatma Gandhi in India provided us with a blueprint for how to outwork this in practice at national and international levels. At the heart of Martin Luther King’s approach, like that of Gandhi before him, was the principle of nonviolence. This was very different to passivity, acceptance or inaction. It called for active and determined resistance against oppression, injustice and war. At the same time, it sought to win over the other side and not to defeat them. This means that we should only use peaceful methods and should never retaliate. We can see how this idea is rooted deeply in Biblical teaching. For instance (as we looked at recently), Jesus tells us to love our enemies. Paul tells us that if our enemies are hungry, to feed them and if they are thirsty, to give them something to drink. He tells us to overcome evil with good and that, by treating our enemies in the same way that God treats us – with love, compassion and forgiveness – it may evoke a change of heart. It’s a stark contrast to so much of what we see in the world today. For instance, social media often polarises opinions and very quickly divides the world into ‘us’ – those who are like us and agree with us – and ‘them’ – those who aren’t and don’t. We may believe we are good and right, and those on the other side are bad and wrong. Once we begin to see the world in this way, it’s only a short step until we start to regard others as the ‘enemy’. We see the same happening on the world stage too. Nations and geopolitical power blocs are asserting themselves against others, and the ‘others’ are rapidly strengthening their stances in response. This is leading to increasingly aggressive posturing, self-interested trade wars and the most expensive and terrifying arms race we have seen since the height of the cold war. It’s the absolute opposite of what Jesus calls us to do. When mutual grievances, resentments and pain become entrenched over time – such as those between Israel and Palestine, USA and Iran or Russia and Ukraine – it gets harder and harder for each side to imagine the other side’s experience and point of view – and harder still to feel any sense of empathy for them. Each blames the other for their own suffering and sees the other as the enemy that must pay the price, or be destroyed. Martin Luther King saw this in his own personal struggle as a black person. At first, he viewed white people as the enemy but began to realise that to see and treat someone in this way diminishes our own humanity as well as theirs. So, he chose nonviolence instead, believing that white people needed to be released from the dehumanising effects of oppression as well as black people. He prayed for ‘strength to love’. As we pray this evening for people caught up in conflict and war, I hope we can pray with compassion for people on all sides – that they will be released from all hate, hurt and revenge. It’s not easy…yet I believe God can do far more than we can ask or imagine. Let us pray for ourselves too, to find the strength to forgive anyone who has caused us stress, anxiety or pain – even when reconciliation feels impossible. As Martin Luther King so insightfully observed, ‘Our own liberation is bound up with theirs.’  ‘Democracies have no obligation to facilitate their own demise. Fascists can only succeed in conditions of excessive democratic tolerance.’ (Karl Loewenstein) As a teenage anti-Nazi activist in the UK, I can remember arguing vociferously that hard right parties like the British National Party and National Front should be banned. A wise older person disagreed with me, suggesting that banning parties simply drives them underground, out of view, and that makes them even more dangerous. He had a point. It’s a tough dilemma for democratic societies – one we face again now when UK society, like others throughout the West, is increasingly polarised between hard right nationalists, hard left progressives and ethnic sectarianism. The centre ground is losing ground and grasping weakly at paper straws to survive. The UK government has tried various tactics to address this, at times mimicking the hard right to appeal to voters on that front, then swinging towards the hard left in an attempt to appease voters heading in that direction. It looks chaotic, often driven more by pragmatic expediency than vision and values and, paradoxically, adds to the attraction of the extremes who appear far clearer, more principled and more decisive. The government also tried silencing free speech via police Non-Crime Hate Incident recording then, after widespread public backlash, repackaged elements in a counterproductive ‘Anti-Muslim Hostility’ definition that even Muslim leaders opposed. This level of instability and uncertainty, with its associated anxieties and risks, is driving some of those balancing precariously on the residual centre ground to argue that urgent and muscular action is needed to defend democracy itself (see, for instance, Paul Mason: Britain Needs Militant Democracy). I see profound resonances here in Germany (where I’m writing at the moment) with its dark history of fascism, where the Nazi party seized power by manipulating the liberal-democratic process to its own advantage – then subsequently dismantled it. German democrats are wringing their hands helplessly as they watch the rise of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The hard left here argues that, if Germans had been more forceful (using violence, if necessary) to crush the Nazi party before it got into power, Germany and the wider world would have been spared the unspeakable horrors of the Third Reich. It’s a compelling argument until we question, along with Mahatma Gandhi, whether using violent means to achieve a non-violent end is ethically defensible and effective practically. Martin Luther King cautions that ‘The ends cannot be used to justify the means because the ends are pre-existent in the means’. I pray for wisdom and courage in the face of such challenges. Democracy itself hangs in the balance.  ‘I have always felt that ultimately along the way of life an individual must stand up and be counted and be willing to face the consequences, whatever they are. If we are filled with fear, we cannot do it. And my great prayer is always that God will save me from the paralysis of crippling fear, because I think when a person lives with the fear of the consequences for their personal life, they can never do anything in terms of lifting the whole of humanity.’ (Martin Luther King) I know that fear. I have sometimes experienced it as a vague, background yet seemingly ever-present existential angst. At other times, it has been a response to a specific perceived threat, whether real or imagined, that triggers an anxious feeling. At such times I have learned…and I’m still learning…to pause, breathe, pray and try not to panic. Fight-flight-freeze is an instinctive rather than reflective response that can leave us feeling stressed, powerless and stranded. A real challenge is how to avoid feeding that fear. We may play out all kinds of catastrophic scenarios in the imagination, an endless list of what-if scenarios, amplifying our worst anxieties. We may avoid people, situations or relationships, a kind of flight response, to avoid the risk of our fears actually materialising. Our world may become smaller as we shrink back, self-protect, attempt to keep ourselves safe from harm. (And sometimes that’s a price worth paying.) In his astonishing autobiography, however, Martin Luther King recounts the way he found to face the dangers (which included relentless physical threats, bombing of his home and, ultimately, assassination) – inherent to his calling to address deep-rooted social injustice – and yet still to persevere. It was to face directly his fear of death before God and, by faith, to let go of that fear. That released him to be the remarkable and courageous role model we still admire today.  ‘Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation.’ (Angela Carter) In her challenging and ground-reclaiming polemic, Drop the Disorder, psychotherapist Jo Watson comments that, “The counselling profession (and in that I include psychotherapy) is helping to endorse a medical understanding of emotional distress that is based on ‘What is wrong with you?’ and not ‘What has happened to you?’” I heard a similar-but-different reframing of the issue from Paul Kelly at a Leading & Influencing Trauma-Informed Change workshop today, advocating a shift from “What’s the matter with you?” to “What matters to you?” The striking feature of both these examples is the profound impact of language on reflecting and reinforcing the ways in which people and situations are construed and responded to. In Jo Watson’s case, the first framing regards an issue as some form of dysfunction in an individual. The alternative looks beyond the individual to explore wider potential influencing factors. As radical social reformer Martin Luther King noticed, what appears at first glance as dysfunctional behaviour is sometimes a normal response to dysfunctional circumstances. In Paul Kelly’s case, similarly, the first framing locates a problem within an individual. It’s a form of pathologizing, implying that a person’s behaviour is a consequence of some internal defect. The alternative invites an exploration of the person’s underlying values and motivations. Behaviour that appears dysfunctional could be a natural response to healthy, unmet hopes and needs in a dysfunctional environment. Kenneth Gergen offers a stark warning here, pointing to risks of a medical model applied uncritically: ‘a diseasing of the population.’ |
Nick WrightI'm a psychological coach, trainer and OD consultant. Curious to discover how can I help you? Get in touch! 
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