‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God’ – Matthew 5:9
‘Isn’t peace wonderful?’ – Fred Rogers
This past week, the United States and Iran journeyed to the brink of war. Thankfully, it seems that cooler heads have, at least for the time being, prevailed. While I decry the appalling lack of foresight and impulsivity that led to the crisis, I am thankful to leaders on both sides for their willingness to find an off ramp to what might otherwise have been the start of WWIII.
The crisis of the past week has made me think of how nations and individuals need to look for such off ramps in the face of impending violence. Which of course leads me to think of Mr. Rogers.
You would have to be living under a rock right now not to know who Mr. Rogers is. Even if you didn’t grow up watching his show, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, he is all over the cultural landscape. Tom Hanks’s biopic, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is a big hit, as was the 2018 documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Fred Rogers exemplified decency and kindness and generosity, things in short supply these days, and so it isn’t surprising that America is taking a nostalgic look back to the life of a man who taught a whole generation how to be decent, kind and generous.
What many don’t know about Mr. Rogers, (although the movies are making people aware) is that Mr. Rogers was subversive. Quietly so, but subversive all the same. His show’s first week on the air coincided with the Tet offensive in Viet Nam. While America debated the wisdom of the conflict, Mr. Rogers made no bones about where he stood, opening his children’s series with a weeklong ode to peace.
The plotline for that first week of programming focused on a kingdom in crisis. The Land of Make Believe had become a warzone. King Friday, fearful of changes in his kingdom wrought by Lady Elaine Fairchild, has become convinced that foreign devils are at work. His response bears an eerie similarity to today’s headlines. To prevent further change, he increases security at the border, commences military exercises, and otherwise prepares for war. What was once a peaceful kingdom turns into a dominion of fear.
As terror descends upon the land, many of the King’s subjects, chiefly Lady Aberlin and Daniel Striped Tiger, become increasingly concerned. Lamenting the situation, Daniel has a wild idea (what other kind would you expect from a tiger?). Turning to Lady Aberlin, he suggests they float ‘peace balloons’ over King Friday’s castle to let him know that his subjects want peace. It seems silly, but the dissenters get to work, filling balloons with helium and writing messages on them: ‘love,’ ‘peaceful coexistence,’ ‘tenderness,’ and most obviously, ‘peace.’ They then send the balloons Friday’s way.
The balloons land inside the castle grounds. At first, the paranoid Friday thinks they are enemy paratroopers. But as he reads the messages, he comes to his senses. ‘Stop all the fighting!’ he shouts. Repenting of his foolishness, he calls off all preparations for war, and restores peace to The Land of Make Believe.
Now, this is where the cynic rolls his or her eyes and says, ‘That’s a nice story. But for crying out loud, it’s a children’s TV show, and it takes place in The Land of Make Believe! It doesn’t work that way in the real world, bub. In the real world, those who turn their swords into plowshares wind up plowing the fields of those who didn’t. Better to be ready. To do it to them before they do it to us.’
But the cynic is wrong.
G.K. Chesterton famously quipped, ‘Christianity has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.’ For the most part, we can apply this to the quest for peace. War seduces us by promising results. It’s an effective way, so the argument goes, to deal with your enemies. Never mind the carnage it leaves behind. It’s the price you pay to protect yourself. But there is another option, the option of nonviolence. And oddly enough, when it is tried, nonviolence works.
Consider Gandhi’s nonviolent revolution in India (built upon the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount), a revolution that took on an empire and won without firing of a shot. Or look to the Civil Rights Movement in America in the 1960’s, when the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King and many others armed themselves with nothing but love and determination and brought about positive change. Go further back in time to Saint Patrick’s missionary work in Ireland, when he helped change a savage land into the pacific outpost that saved civilization (see Thomas Cahill’s masterful book, How The Irish Saved Civilization). Read the stories of how the Iron Curtain and Communism fell in Eastern Europe before candles and prayers. Or the story of the five martyred missionaries in Ecuador whose nonviolence became the catalyst for the transformation of a culture that was perhaps the most violent on earth into a community of peace (you can watch the movies, The End of the Spear or Beyond the Gates of Splendor to learn about that amazing story).
The truth is that when people creatively seek peaceful resolutions to conflict, incredible things happen. Yes, it is often at a cost. But a far lower one than the cost of war. Nonviolence and peace may seem silly and difficult, as ridiculous even as floating balloons over a castle to prevent a war. But history shows that when people seek creative and ridiculous solutions, they often wind up changing the world.
Anyway, that’s what Mr. Rogers thought.
And guess what? It’s what God thinks too. For when God established his plan to save the world, he did something as nonviolent and ridiculous – perhaps more so – as floating balloons over a castle. He sent a baby into the heart of the Roman Empire, a baby who grew to face the world with no weapons but prayer, unlimited love, and the guidance of his heavenly Abba, a baby who grew to be a man who would courageously embrace death upon a cross as the way to crush evil.
Yeah, God is pretty crazy. As crazy, if not more so, than Daniel Tiger. But he is also pretty darn creative in his response to a sinful and violent world.
Which is why, when danger lurks in our world, when change threatens to undermine our ‘kingdoms,’ we can’t respond as king Friday originally did. We need to be more like Daniel Tiger. We need to be ridiculously creative and try crazy things in order to achieve peace. Because believe it or not, doing crazy things is God’s way of doing things. And believe it or not, it works.
Maybe it’s time we all started floating some balloons of our own.
Under Christ’s Mercy,
Brent
Note: Story from Mr. Rogers’ first week of programming is adapted from Michael Long’s Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers.