Christmas is the time when we celebrate the Prince of Peace. But few people in this world live in real peace. What are we to do about it?
Canada has a considerable military force in Afghanistan trying to help bring about some peace and stability in that country. Yet, according to the polls, most Canadians oppose the Afghan mission.
Blame successive federal governments for failing to explain what Canada is doing. As a result, many of us think we simply bowed to pressure from the United States. Translated, that means we think we are helping the Bush administration not the Afghan people.
But this is a deflection from the central question of whether we ought to be in Afghanistan and whether we are accomplishing any good there. The evidence suggests we are helping and is clearer that it would be far worse if we weren't there.
Here's the thing: Jesus wasn't born into a nice upper middle-class family in a leafy suburb of Rome. He was born in the fractious, foreign-occupied Middle East. Today he might well have been born in Darfur. He certainly wouldn't be packing his bags to take the trans-Canada travel package, safe and stunning though it may be.
It is too easy to come up with lame excuses why Canadians should not enter into this or that fray when the bottom line is that in order to help achieve some semblance of peace and stability, we who live in a peaceful prosperous country have to be willing to sacrifice in order to help others.
Recall Rwanda. When Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire pleaded for more military support for his UN mission to prevent civil war, he was shamefully ignored, as we see clearly now.
And what did the world do for Darfur? Nothing. We looked on yet again as a government urged one faction to terrorize and massacre innocent civilians in their own country.
No, Canada did not, does not, have the resources to intervene directly everywhere, but we have a voice at the international table to call other countries to account and to rally support for those who have no voice, no place at the table.
Besides our military, our diplomats in Foreign Affairs are widely respected internationally for their low-key but important work in many troubled regions of the world. Yet the current government is hampering their work by imposing ideologically driven political restraints.
This is particularly the case in the Middle East where Canada has worked quietly to help prepare Palestinians to govern themselves. Political interference is now undermining their work towards establishing regional peace.
Canadians used to be proud of our country's international peacekeeper role. But situations change and the ground rules change. We are not powerful enough to thwart these, but that does not mean we can hide our heads in the snow and abandon our international responsibilities.
Recent discussions about our national identity often draw attention to our Judeo-Christian heritage. Surely trying to create possibilities for peace is chief among those virtues.
The world is messy: it always has been. Yet God chose not only to be incarnated into that messiness but to confront it directly, ultimately being killed by a ruthless imperial power at the instigation of a local faction.
Canadians ought to properly debate (which we haven't) where and how we will try to deploy our resources to help those who are unable to help themselves at any given time. Do we believe women and children should be educated in Afghanistan? Then we must help create that possibility.
Andrew Faiz's article on Afghanistan in our October issue outlined some of the church-sponsored aid work there that Presbyterians rightly value. We should equally value then those who try to make it possible for that work to be done safely.
The season of peace calls us to reflect on how we can make this a better world for all its inhabitants. Your prayers and support for the church's mission and development work are crucial. So are your prayers for our armed forces and their families.
Peace is a messy business in this world. God knows it.
