The e utopia Book Catalog
2025
Urstoff Love
b
About this Catalog
The e utopia Book is everything listed in this catalog. Each individual title combined makes up The e utopia Book . It isn’t finished yet. When friends ask me, “When will it be finished?” I always say, “It will be finished when I’m dead.” Who do I think I am, Walt Whitman? Hopefully it won’t be finished when I’m dead - or even before then. I’m just trying to start a small chatroom (curious, convivial) adjacent to what Mortimer Adler called The Great Conversation. I’ve listened in on some of The Great Conversation. I’m not really on their team. Most of us aren’t. But we have our own Conversations. I looked for a conversation like this to join but couldn’t find one, so I started this one. So far a few curious and convivial friends have joined. Maybe the conversation will continue after us. Each title listed is available in print as a separate book. Each title’s listing includes its cover, Index, and some representative pages from its book. This catalog is currently available only in FlippingBook because FlippingBook preserves the page layout. Because it doesn’t configure text to fit multiple screens the way most of the Inernet does, there is a downside: it can be difficult to read on small screens. The upside: it preserves the page layout. The author (me!) feels much of the content is communicated via the layout. Messing with the layout is messing with the message. At least that’s how the author feels. The first title, Overview, gives . . . an overview of the material, the message of the whole e utopia Book. So nearly the entire contents of this slim volume are shown in the Catalog. The rest of the titles don’t show nearly as much. Perhaps enough to give you a taste for that part of the conversation. These books seem to work best as the basis for group conversations. Start reading from them out loud with a group of curious, convivial friends and see what happens.
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The e utopia Book Catalog Index
About this Catalog . . . 1 Overview . . . 5 Introduction . . . 25
Purpose & Place
Introduction Eden: Inside & Out The Kingdom of Heaven Violence or Peace Economy Community Focus Areas
Means of Grace
The Purpose of Life Means of Grace and the Pace of Blessing Gospel Disciple Building Up Good Places and the Non-Profit Dilemma Finding Value
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The Eutopia Book Catalog
Becoming Fully Human
More Heart of Love
Scripture Books
Genesis Job Psalms Matthew Psalms Mark Philippians A Month of Prayer and Meditation
e utopia Stories
Blue Beach Cap Cab Ride Eden Unburied e utopia Stories
Other Salms and Meditations
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e utopia Book Overview
This title is kind of backwards. I tend to think inductively. I like to explore ideas inductively with others. And yet here we begin with conclusions. If we were following an inductive path they should appear at the end. But it’s such a long way from here to the end! It would be easy to lose track of the points being made along the way. So here they are, up front! Maybe that helps.
See if you can find them as you go. See what else you can find, too.
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the e utopia Book the e utopia School
Overview
November 2024
Urstoff Love
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the e utopia Book the e utopia School Overview
Contents
Q & A 1
The Setting The Way The Aim 7
Two Overview Statements 15
Section Overviews 19
Book Outlines Class List 27
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Q. What is Everything? A. Everybody wants to live in a Good Place. God wants everybody to live in a Good Place.
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Q. What is the purpose of life? A. The purpose of life is to seek and allow God’s continuing creation
in our hearts and through our lives in the world.
God’s continuing creation we call “grace.”
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Q. What is the relationship between these two questions?
A.
One is about
where
it happens.
The Setting
The other is about
how
it happens.
The Way
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The Setting The Way The aim
13
a
place
for
grace
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The Setting
Where
Purpose & Place Everybody wants to live in a Good Place God wants everyone to live in a Good Place
The Story of God and Us The story arc of the Bible shows God at work providing a Good Place for us. The story arc of human history shows our various efforts to establish Good Places to live - from nations to neighborhoods to living rooms.
A Good Place: 1. where we experience and receive grace;
2. where we allow God’s grace to flow through us to others for the benefit of all.
God’s Purpose: us living in a Good Place.
God creates Good Places - from the motivation of love - through actions designed and directed by love - while in love with us - for the purpose of filling the world with love .
From love by love in love for love
God creates the world.
Love is the urstoff - that by which we understand the world.
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grace
i n
a
place
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The Way
How
Means of Grace and the Pace of Blessing Living in a Good Place
We are created to receive grace
and to allow grace to flow through us to others.
Grace: when God does something for us and/or through us that we could not do on our own.
God fills the world with
tools for/means of
grace.
The world is the place for the grace God has for us.
We choose to seek God to use these means of grace in our lives.
We choose to allow God’s grace to work in and through us.
Grace builds up hearts of love and lives of shalom.
By grace we realize the potential God intends for us.
The resurrected Christ is the full realization of our potential.
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the
purpose
for
grace
in this
place
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The Aim
Why
Becoming Fully Human
We are created at a level where we can participate with God in continuing creation - both in ourselves and in our world.
God creates us with desire for the eternal, the infinite.
God’s continuing creation in us builds up hearts of love.
God’s continuing creation through our living-in-the-world builds up Shalom in the places where we live.
Our living-in-the-world provisionally satisfies our desire for the infinite and the eternal. Living in God’s presence ultimately satisfies our deire for the eternal and the infinite.
Our model, our pattern for becoming fully human is the resurrected Christ.
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Two Overview Statements
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We are created with a continual desire for more that will not be satisfied by the world or apart from God. Our purpose is to seek and allow God’s continuing creation in us and, through our lives, in the world.
God’s continuing creation in us builds up a heart of love.
God’s continuing creation through our lives builds up shalom.
God’s continuing creation we call grace.
Our experience of grace we call blessing. God fills the world with tools (means of grace) that God uses to build up hearts of love and lives of shalom. The appropriate application of our effort is to seek out these tools (means of grace) and allow God to use them in our hearts and, through our lives, in the world. God’s presence is the highest, the greatest blessing.
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The Bible tells the story of God and us. 1. That story shows God working to make a
Good Place for us to live, where we have good relationships with the place where we live, with God, and with the people with whom we live. 2. That story also shows that we are not self-contained, self- sufficient units. Just as we require connections, interactions, and inputs from our physical place (water, food, shelter, etc.), we also need connections, interactions, and inputs from God and each other. Good that comes to us from beyond ourselves we call grace; grace being when God does something for us, in us, or through us that we could not do for ourselves or for others by ourselves. Grace is the core concept in life to understand and flow with. God’s grace is the cause and the ground of our existence. Understanding grace, living in grace, living by grace brings every good thing to us and to those around us.
3. That story also shows that
love is the reason for our place, the motivating power behind grace, where grace comes from and where grace goes. From love, by love, in love, for love God creates the world.
God makes
Good Places
by grace
where we live
in love
every good thing .
and receive
This is the story of God and us in the Bible.
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the e
utopia Book
0 Introduction
October 2024
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26
0 Introductions
1 Communities
2 Individuals
3 Organizations
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0 Introduction
Everybody wants to live in a Good Place 1
What’s in a Name? 2
Categories 3
How do we build a Good Place? 4
Conditions 5
What is Everything? Parts 1 & 2 7 The Theater 11 e utopia Principles 13
Second Things First 81
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Everybody wants to live in a Good Place . Pretty much everyone can agree about this. It is a big order, though, so we break it down into three areas: Communities, Individuals, and Organizations . In our Communities , we can work to have a shared vision of the Good Place that we want to live and work in, and then engage everybody to build it. As Individuals , we always want more . If we aren’t aligned to find more in God, we tend to live selfish and destructive lives. God wants to continue creating love in our hearts and peace, balance, wholeness, and health through our living in the world. Our purpose is to seek this work of God in our hearts and through our lives. We can work in Organizations that 1) support our living in the world, 2) develop our potential and build up who we are as individuals, and 3) help us make our world a better place. We can do all three of these through our work.
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Everybody wants to live in a Good Place
God intends for us to live in a Good Place. Not everybody lives in a Good Place. Even when we live in a pretty good place, we still want better. One characteristic of life in a Good Place: helping others make their places better. We can look at our efforts to build up Good Places in three areas: acting in Communities , acting as Individuals . acting in Organizations , In our Communities we can develop an explicit, comprehen- sive vision of our Good Place then work together intentionally to build it up. As Individuals we can seek and allow God’s continuing creation in us and, through us, in the world. God’s continuing creation in our hearts produces love for God, others, and ourselves. God’s continuing creation through our lives in the world produces justice, peace, and health (Shalom). The God of all love, beauty, wisdom, and power offers to continue creating in and through us. The world is filled with tools that God uses for this continuing creation. We can seek out these tools in the world and allow God to use them in and through our lives to continue creating hearts of love in us and justice, peace, and health in the world. We can combine three types of activities in each of our Organizations : - an Economic activity that supports our living in the world as well as the other activities of the organization, - Development for members of the organization, with training for the economic activity usually coming first, followed by education then by other development activities, and - Community Engagement, how our work benefits others - both the work by which we earn our living as well as any other efforts that benefit others, whether we get paid for it or not.
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What is in a Name?
In 1516 Sir Thomas More published a story describing his vision of an ideal society. Believing it could not exist he named his imaginary society “Utopia.” In Greek“U”represents the prefix for “not” or “no” and “topia” represents the Greek root for “place.” Therefore Utopia literally means “No-place.” It does not, and probably could not, exist. Since then we have come to call other visions of ideal living conditions “utopias,” often forgetting that the name refers to an impossible place. We will never be able to compile a comprehensive, complete description of a perfect place that everyone everywhere would agree with at all times. So we won’t try. While we can’t make our place “perfect,” we can work to make our place “good.” In Greek, “Eu” is the prefix for “good.” So we combine “Eu” for good with “topia” for place to produce another word - Eutopia: A good place. It is better to have a pretty good, fairly comprehensive description of a good place that many of us work toward than to have no overall vision. Our description of a good place will change over time as our understanding and environment change.
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How Do We Build a Good Place?
People who can’t agree together about very many things quite often find they can
agree about a place
that it should be safe for children, people should be able to work to support themselves, etc.
and
work together to make it
a Good Place.
Working together to build a Good Place is a process more than an act.
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What Is Everything? Part 1
What questions do you ask yourself? Do you have any questions that you have tried to answer for most of your life? I have always tried to find the answer to the question,“What is everything?” It is hard to maintain focus on that question, though. It is easy to get diverted to other, smaller questions, such as, what is the nature of a rock? Or of a star? Or a starfish? These smaller questions often yield much more interesting, abundant, and more practical results. They are attractive. They so easily attract attention away from a larger, more frustrating question such as, “What is everything?” But that is the question I try to answer. As I began taking philosophy classes in school, I stumbled onto the early Ionian philosophers - usually identified as “the Pre-Socratic” philosophers for their location on the timeline. I had to stumble onto them because beginning philosophy classes usually do not begin at the beginning of philosophy. They start elsewhere and find their ways around after entering somewhere in the middle. By the time I stumbled onto the Ionians, I had already read from and struggled with the works of many other philosophers before finding Thales’ (the first of the Ionians) single pronouncement: “All is water.” All is water. That sounds kooky, of course. I had to read the commentaries for some insight into why he is considered to be an important figure. They credit Thales with giving the first, non-animated observation of how the world works. (An animated observation would give as an explanation for the sun’s rising and setting that someone drives a chariot carrying the sun across the sky every day. In Thales’ time, that was in fact the commonly accepted explanation for the daily movement of the sun across the sky.) Thales proposed a single, non-animated principle that could explain all observable phenomena, that could account for all our experiences in the world: the three states of water. In our ordinary experience of water it is a liquid. When very cold it becomes a solid, when very hot, a gas. The three states of
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matter, summed up, illustrated, epitomized in: water. The one principle that explains (to some degree, anyway) everything. Everything Thales observed was either a solid, a liquid, or a gas. Therefore water was the key element that explained all else. Brilliant! His explanation covers a great deal of our experience with the world. Matter generally does sort itself out into one of those three states. However, most of us do not feel satisfied with an explanation of everything that addresses only the three states of matter. Ultimately, Thales failed. Over the centuries since his time we have been failing valiantly as well, looking to find the one explanation for all. That is the history of philosophy. That is our history. We fail repeatedly, but never give up. This, then, is my effort at a valiant failure, my attempt to explain: What is everything? What is good? And how can we live?
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Q. What is everything? A. Everybody wants to live in a Good Place. Part 2
What is Everything?
We all have to answer this question one way or another - about how we understand the world we live in, how we seek to order our lives, how we seek to engage some part of the world. Prior to World War I, addressing the question “What is Everything” was the main point of education. Our inability to restrain our destructive nature revealed in World War I - and in so much of our history since - has brought many to believe that addressing this larger question is meaningless. Whatever visions we dream up about how beautiful life could be, we will never achieve. So don’t waste time even thinking about it. Since then education has tended towards what the Greeks called technon - acquiring skills. Each of us has a desire to answer this broad question, though. And we give our answers every day by our lives. How well do we think through these answers? I propose that a good way to answer the question, “What is everything?” is by saying, “Everybody wants to live in a Good Place.” One thing I like about this response: it doesn’t really seem like a direct answer. Hopefully that makes us go back and re- evaluate our understanding of the question. Another thing I like: it provides a path by which to discover the answer more fully. What is Everything? Thales said water. I want to explore this answer: we all want to live in a Good Place. Will you join me on this journey?
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Communities
80 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Conditions, 2 . . . . . . . 35 Process/Event . . . . . . 37 Every Every Else . . . . . 38
News About
a Good Place . . . . . . 41 Heart, Head, Hand . . . . 42 Work in Organizations . 43 Questions . . . . . . . . . . 44
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80 Eighty percent of us agree on eighty percent of what makes a Good Place.* We all pretty much agree that a Good Place is safe for children, that kids should have opportunity and encouragement to get good educations. We want good housing to be available, not just for ourselves but for our neighbors. We want good jobs to be available, not just for ourselves but for our neighbors as well. It doesn’t help if your are the only one in your neighborhood who is having a good time while everyone else’s life is miserable. That is not a Good Place. It needs to be a Good Place for everybody. We want low crime, beauty versus trash and so on. Party politics focuses and magnifies the twenty percent * about which we disagree. The people who often come to mind first as the stewards of our places, our elected officials, tend not to focus on the 80 percent we all agree about. In order to get us to vote for them versus their rivals they need to differentiate themselves from each other. So the people we largely entrust with the care of our community - elected officials - as they are being elected, they want to focus on the things people disagree about. Politicians have created a whole industry around making subtle distinctions between themselves and other candidates. They focus on and magnify tiny elements from the 20% we don’t agree about as if THESE were the key factors that will make a Good Place or not. They make these smaller differences seem like they are the whole world. The whole world will either march on to triumph if you choose one candidate, or else we will plummet into disaster if we choose the other candidate. So it seems if we listen to opposing candidates. Our elected officials, generally, skip over the 80% that we all agree about and focus on a few, divisive issues to rally personal support. Once elected they need to follow through on their promises and continue to focus on these issues, to the detriment if not exclusion of the 80% that the rest of us all agree we need to have in order to make our places Good Places.
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We will be better served by spending 80% of our attention and effort on the 80% of what we all agree on and make that happen. This will be the most efficient and most effective application of our attention and effort. We can hold our politicians accountable to that as well. Sometimes it feels like we spend 80% of our attention and effort on the 20% or less of things that we don’t agree about. We can have better! Having said all that about elected officials, I don’t want to give the impression that they are responsible for most of the work to build up Good Places or that most of our duty is discharged by voting for the right people. Not at all! Elected and appointed government officials have their roles, but “we the people” bear a much greater responsibility for our places. Of course we do! There are so many more of us than there are of them. We the people employ our government officials to do some of the work for us, but the vast majority of the work to be done must be done by people not employed by the government. We will do well to focus first on the 80% (or s0) on which we agree.
*People ask where I got this statistic. I totally made it up! Well, not totally. I base it on experience and observation.
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Conditions, 2
The conditions that we either create or allow to exist in our communities determine to a great extent what kind of place we live in. Each of us has individual moral responsibility and free will. We can each try to be good people as individuals, but if we let our community fall apart it can’t be a Good Place. Some conditions encourage one type of behavior while discouraging others. If the place where we live continues to produce destructive behavior, then we need to investigate the conditions of our place and work to make it a better place. Over time, our chosen behaviors create the kinds of places we live in. Under any given set of circumstances any group of us will tend to act within a range of “normal” behavior for that particular set of circumstances. If you put a bunch of people out on a baseball field, outfit them in the uniforms of two different teams, give them bats, balls and gloves, put a crowd in the bleachers, sell hot dogs and then sing the national anthem, chances are pretty good that they will start playing baseball. Everybody pretty much knows the rules. They’ve seen people play baseball before. Even if people didn’t agree ahead of time to play, given these conditions, most likely a baseball game will start up. If we set up our communities so that kids don’t get any reinforcement at home for keeping up at school, adults aren’t around to direct their time after school, they don’t have anything to do all summer, but throughout the neighborhood different gangs offer something to belong to and offer kids something to do helping them to sell drugs, with pay, what do you think will happen? Is every kid going to recognize this as wrong and choose to exercise his or her free will to resist temptation? We know the answer.
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If the places where we live continue to produce destructive behavior, then we need to investigate the conditions of our places and work to make them better places. In order to build up a Good Place we need to address the conditions people live in.
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Discussion 2 Community
1. How and how much are our perceptions of our community shaped in any way by people who benefit (financially or politically) from highlighting areas of disagreement? p. 33
2. Who is known for attracting attention to areas of broad agreement and motivating collective action that accomplishes shared goals?
3. Discuss the proposition that conditions influence people’s choices. p. 35 How much, if any, effort should we spend to improve the conditions people live in?
4. Discuss the relationship between events and processes as they relate to lasting change in a community. p. 37
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Individuals
More . . . . . . . . . . 49 Eden . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Purpose . . . . . . . . . 51 Tools . . . . . . . . . . 52 Infin ite . . . . . . . . . 53
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Eden
If we look closely at the creation story in the book of Genesis we see that we have been created at a level where we can participate in continuing creation - both in the world and within ourselves. In Genesis God gives people work to do, work that changes both the world (the Garden) and ourselves. The Garden contained a tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The fruit of that tree, from the Garden which they tended, changed them. There was another tree named in that Garden, the Tree of Life. Eating from that tree would have also changed them. What else would have been in that Garden which they were tending? What would they have become, tending a Garden that changed them in these ways, if they had never taken the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Ultimately, I think what they would have become was re-established through Christ. Christ re-established what we would have become in Eden. Now we become that differently. We become that through the finished work of Christ on the cross. In Eden we were created to participate in continuing creation. This implies that we have a purpose to our lives.
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Purpose
One way to state our purpose for living is this: Our purpose in life is to seek and allow God’s continuing creation in our hearts and through our lives in the world. God’s continuing creation in our hearts builds up hearts of love. God’s continuing creation through our lives in the world builds up shalom - a Hebrew word for which there is no direct, English equivalent. It contains the concepts of peace, justice, harmony, balance, health, rightness. God wants to create love in our hearts and shalom in the world. Through God’s sovereign will he has chosen, in many ways, to limit himself to what we will allow him to create in our hearts and in the world through our lives. It is our purpose, therefore, to seek God’s continuing creation and to allow God to work in our hearts and through our lives in the world.
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Organizations
Why do we work
in Organizations? . . . . . . . 61 Why do we work at all? . . . . . . . . . . 63 The Non-Profit Dilemma . . . . . . . . . 64 Finding Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Stewarding Organizations . . . . . . . 71
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Why do we work at all?
The Genesis story of creation gives some reasons for work, one being that we must work by the sweat of our brow for the food that sustains us. We tend not to stop working after we have secured food, clothing and shelter, though. We keep working for more than that. Essentially we are never really satisfied, looking to get from the world and from each other what we can get only from God. Working to get the “most” from the world and from each other leads to damaging relationships both to the world and to each other. If we don’t have some ideal condition in mind for ourselves and the world, what do we work for? If everybody aims for increasing efficiency and profit at work rather than trying to establish some specific condition in our lives and in our world through our work - so that our work serves that ideal condition; if we turn one of the methods of work into the purpose of work, and everything else serves our efficiency, and our efficiency is measured by the profit we make - then we will have damaging relationships with each other and the world. A modestly proposed observation: we are kind of living this way now. Most companies are designed to maximize efficiency and profits
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Finding Value
The good news is that we have managed to become so efficient at physical production and distribution of food, clothing, housing and other of life’s necessities that we have time available in our busy lives to focus on building up Good Places. We don’t live life the way people prior to about 1850 did - working sixty to eighty hours per week in order to have one or two sets of clothing, maybe one pair of shoes, very basic food, poor health care, and so on. A relatively poor person living in a developed, 21st Century society has much more physical amenities than even a fairly wealthy person did two or three hundred years ago. Because our work today can be so efficient, we can have organizations where we spend a lot of our time in an economic activity to pay our bills. We can also spend time building up who we are as individuals, so that we are not just spending all our time just to be the absolute most efficient we can at work. And we can spend some of our time building up the community and the world we live in. In our organizations we can spend our time and effort in three areas: 1) an economic activity to support our living in the world and the rest of the activities of the organization; 2) building up who we are as individuals - first off training, so that we know what our jobs are, but then also education and development for who we are as people; 3) some kind of service that people don’t pay us for but that makes the world a better place by the work that we do. Whatever we do at work we get pretty good at. The most likely area of service for an organization is in some way to provide what they are good at to people who can’t afford it. This might not necessarily be your main service. It could perhaps be some of your internal support services that would benefit some kind of Good Place effort outside your own organization. A well balanced organization is active in these three areas: an economic activity, building up the members of the organization through training, education and development, and service to the community outside the organization. All organizations must be economically viable (meaning that they bring in more money than they spend, among other financial considerations). But the true value at any organization is the people, not the money. This includes people outside of the organization.
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In order to build up Good Places we must be careful never to choose an economic activity that supports our own living but that doesn’t also in some way make a contribution to the other members of the organization, to the world and to the community outside the organization.
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Summary & Restatement
Everybody wants to live in a Good Place. Pretty much everyone can agree about this. It is a big order, so we look at it in three areas: Communities, Individuals and Organizations. For Communities , we can work to have a vision of the Good Place where we want to live and work, and then work together to it up. As Individuals , we always want More. If we aren’t aligned to find More in God we tend to live destructive lives. God wants to continue creating love in our hearts and peace, balance, wholeness, andv health through us in the world. Our purpose in life is to seek this work of God in our lives. We can work in Organizations that are economically viable and support our living in the world, that build up who we are as individuals, that help us live out our various callings and develop our potential as individuals, and that help us to make our world a better place. We can do all three of those at work.
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Eden Inside & Out
March 2025
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Eden Inside & Out
0. Before
p. 1 p. 2 p. 7
Before
The Eternal Present
p. 10
Right Before
1. Creation
p. 15
p. 17 p. 25 p. 27 p. 31 p. 33 p. 39 p. 43 p. 49 p. 53 p. 59 p. 67
Different
Environment
Distance
Presence Here
“Let there be.”
Very good
History of the
Generations
In our image
Continuing Creation
Delegated Responsibility
Adam became a living soul
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2. In
p. 71 p. 73 p. 80 p. 82 p. 85 p. 93 p. 105 p. 109 p. 115 p. 118 p. 121
Out of the Ground
Glory
Living in the World Brings us Glory
Tend and Cultivate
Any Tree
Not Alone
The Serpent, More Subtle
Evil in the World
Innocence, Ignorance
Internalized Evil
3. Out
p. 127
Continuing Creation Outside Eden
4. Return Arrival
p. 141
5. Then Now Here
p. 149
6. Section Summaries
p. 161
7. Summary
p. 171
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7.
Summary
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An eternal present moment moves through every moment in time as a weld moves down a seam. God’s eternal purpose for us moves through every moment in our lives - intentions to prosper us, to give us hope and a future from which God carried us into exile that we be heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ when we see Christ to be like him for us to be conformed to the image of Christ. that we seek and find God to bring us back to the place God creates us at a level where we can participate with God in God’s eternally continuing creation - both in us as we become more and more like Christ, and in the world as God creates more and more shalom. Grace is when God does something for us or gives something to us that we cannot achieve on our own. God’s continuing creation is a work of grace. The evil we internalized in Eden separates us from much of God’s grace. Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is a work of grace that provides opportunity for us to receive other grace from which our internalized evil separates us, including the highest grace,the greatest good: our life in God’s life, God’s life in our life.
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This world, this planet is a living place intended, designed, created
to be a tool, a means of grace to contain unnumbered, unnamed means of grace which God uses in us to accomplish God’s eternal purpose for us here in this place as we seek and allow grace in our lives. Much grace comes to us unsought. We are not meant to be nor should we seek to become
disembodied spirit. We are meant to be bodies-with spirit, spirit-in-bodies living here on earth renewed later God’s life in our life images of our Creator images of the resurrected Christ. Our life here is our life with God, eternal.
our life in God’s life,
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Violence
Or
Peace
by Scott Myers
Good Place Publishing
2013
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Contents
Once We Need Force It Can’t Keep Us Safe . . 1 Violence Leads to More Violence . . 2 We Get What We Prepare For . . 4 Technical Advances Intensify Violence . . 5 Violence is a Natural Response. . 6 The Myth of Superior Violence . . 7 Training for Peace . . 10 Violence is Really Stupid . . 11 The Scale of Our Effort to Build Peace . . 12 Jesus’ Example . . 13 The Bible’s Vison . . 14 Two Kingdoms . . 15 Instead . . 17 “What you Do in Practice . . . ” . . 18 Don’t Wait for Trouble . . 14 Reliable Violence . . 20 How Much Effort Must We Commit to Peace? . . 21 What Do We Do Instead of Preparing to Respond to Violence with Violence? . . 22 A Life of Shalom . . 23 Peace is not the Absence of Violence . . 27
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Categories and Scale “A Man Jumped on His Horse . . . ” . . 28 Scale . . 33 Categories . . 36
One Solution . . 37
Opposition
Two Kingdoms . . 45 War on Two Fronts . . 47 Two Directions of Opposition . . 48 Opposition Faced by David, King of Israel . . 50 Discernment . . 33 Giving Ground . . 58 Living out the Victory . . 66 The Method of our Warfare . . 77 Lessons from the Crucifixion and from Hebrews 11 . . 79
The Church . . 88 Apocalypse . . 92
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Once we need force, it cannot keep us safe
Force can help us stay safe only when violence occurs only at the periphery of our community
- the physical periphery - the social periphery.
As violence moves closer to the core of the community, as violence begins to develop within the core of the community, - the physical core - the social core, then force can no longer keep us safe. In an environment of increasing violence, responding with increasing force feeds a cycle of ever-increasing violence. Beyond a certain low threshold, responding to violence with force only perpetuates and increases cycles of violence. Force does not and cannot establish peace.
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Violence Leads to More Violence
We have been responding to violence with violence for so long that we are well on our way towards being overwhelmed by violence. The violence that we experience today is overwhelming, but with each new violent response to the previous violence, the violence in the world increases - and will continue to increase even more. In the moment when we experience violence from another or from others, a violent response in turn seems to be the only reasonable action. “We can’t let them think they can get away with this. Take that!” And every time we respond in this way to violence done to us, the other side has the same response. “We can’t let them think they can get away with this. Take that!” Neither side ever thinks they started the violence. What do both children always say when the teacher separates them from a fight? “He started it!” Each side thinks that their next act of violence should settle the matter. However, each violent response prompts the next violent response.
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Even though we have thousands of years of evidence to the contrary, we still believe that our next act of violence will be the one which finally puts an end to violence. “The War to end all Wars.” There is, of course, no such thing. For all our efforts to use violence to reduce the level of violence, the level of violence keeps rising.
Hmmm. Why is that?
Maybe it is because violence leads to more violence. Each act of violence intended to reduce violence, by its very nature, increases violence because it is itself . . . violent. And because it will prompt a violent response from others. Our act of violence intended to stop violence comes in response to a previous act of violence, itself intended as an act of violence to end some sort of violence previously experienced. In addition, our act of violence intended to stop violence prompts the same sort of response that prompted our act of violence to stop violence: “We can’t let them think they can get away with this. Take that!” The “that” which comes in response to our act of violence, is, no doubt, intended to reduce or end violence on our part. We, however, are more likely to think, “We can’t let them think they can get away with this. Take that!” Our response, no doubt, will be intended to reduce or end violence on their part.
What do you think will happen next?
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The Scale of Our Efforts to Build Peace
If we want peace then we need to train for peace and commit ourselves just as fully to building peace in our hearts and lives and in our world as all the war colleges ROTC programs weapons designers basic training special forces training taxation systems officer corps around the world commit themselves. Does that seem overwhelming? Like spitting into the wind or shoveling against the tide? If we try to overcome the culture of violence and death just by human efforts we will be assured a lifetime of frustration and failure. That is not what we are looking for. We seek to make our hearts and lives open and available to God’s Holy Spirit so that we will to will God’s will, and let God’s creation continue in our hearts (building up hearts of love) and through our lives in the world (building up shalom - peace, justice, balance, health, rightness).
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Jesus’ Example Our leader - our Lord, our Saviour - is Jesus, the Prince of Peace. He was not a violent person. He committed no acts of violence against anyone. (One time he did drive the moneychangers out of the temple with a rope in his hand, but no one was recorded as being injured let alone killed.) When he was arrested to be crucified he told his disciples to bring the two swords they had - but he never told them to use their swords. I believe Jesus had the disciples bring the swords to show that he knew he was going to be arrested, that he could have chosen violent resistance, but that he was actively choosing not to respond with violence. When Peter - always the first to act - did use one of the swords, Jesus told him to put it away, then proceeded to heal the person whom Peter hit with his sword.
“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus told him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen this way?” Matthew 26:52-54
The next day Jesus told Pilate,
My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another plac e. John 18: 36
As it is, Jesus’ disciples do not fight that way.
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Opposition
Two Kingdoms
When I first began talking about two kingdoms, I found out that Martin Luther had a doctrine of two kingdoms. For him, the two kingdoms were the Church and civil government - each with its own sphere and methods; when each acts as it should, neither should ever have any conflict with the other. I am talking about two other kingdoms. When these kingdoms act according to their natures, they necessarily will be in conflict with each other. One is easy to name: God’s kingdom. In God’s kingdom, God’s will is done “on earth as it is in heaven.” God’s will is only good all the time. The other one is not so easy to name without offending people. I call it our fallen hearts in this fallen world. Language from another generation would call it “the world, the flesh and the Devil.” Our hearts are fallen because our first parents in the Garden of Eden chose a lie over the creator of the universe and the lover of our souls. The Apostle Paul tells us that their sin has been passed down to each and every one of us. Our world is fallen because, in the same act mentioned above, our first parents handed their right of dominion over this world, to the one they allowed to deceive them. He now has a dominion over the world that should be our dominion. Adam and Eve handed it over to him. We continue to hand it over to him every time we don’t choose God’s will to be done in
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our lives and in our world. His name is Apollyon - the destroy- er; Satan - the accuser. In what C.S. Lewis calls “the deep magic from before time” God did not entirely leave dominion of the world in our hands. God retains ultimate rights of dominion. Our sin did (and does) give dominion to the enemy of our souls. Christ’s completed work on the cross assures that the devil’s hijacked dominion will completely come to an end one day. In the mean time, two opposing kingdoms exist in our world - God’s kingdom (only good all the time) and another one that is defined by its opposition to God’s kingdom. God’s kingdom is only good all the time. The other one destroys things and accuses people.
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80
War on Two Fronts
Our own hearts oppose the good that God wants for us and our world. As we overcome this opposition to good in our own hearts and choose to live for the good, we find that the (fallen) world does not welcome our decision. Instead the world becomes the second front where we experience opposition to good. The (fallen) world tends to reach inside us and rekindle our own internal opposition to good which we thought we had laid to rest. And so we live fighting this war on two fronts: inside our own hearts and out in the world.
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Purpose & Place
Economy
August 2025
Urstoff Love
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Economy
Contents
Eden Economy 1
Slave Economy 3
Journey Economy 9
Promised Land Economy 13
Kingdom of Heaven Economy 19
New Jerusalem Economy 25
Continuity 27
Compensation 35
Lottery Mind and the Dream of Independence 53
Interdependence 61
Community Garden 63
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Eden Economy
God introduces work in Eden. In Eden our work is to tend the trees that give us life. God makes the Garden. God makes the trees, makes us, makes the trees to bear fruit, makes the fruit to cause life in us. Our work: join God in tending these trees that feed us, that bring life to us. We tend the trees God makes. We eat the fruit from the trees we tend, and it gives us life. This is the economy of Eden. Our work is a means of grace* that brings life to us and to others. Life has so many dimensions, so much depth. We benefit from understanding this. We experience loss when we lose sight that our work is a means of grace whose purpose is to bring live - full life, abundant life - to us and to others. We experience loss when our work is not performed or managed for its true purpose. God provides the ground, framework, conditions, materials, principles, intelligence, energy, motivation, creativity for our work. God creates work. God assigns work to us, affording us the beyond-imagining- privilege of participating with God in the ongoing care of creation God’s continuing creation in the world God’s continuing creation of us. We work with what God creates. It does not start with us. * Grace: when God does something for us, in us, or through us that we could not do on our own. Means: an instrument, a tool Means of grace: something God uses to continue creating in us or through our living.
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Our work starts
continues achieves its purpose
by God’s life involved in our lives by our living involved in God’s life by each of our lives involved with other’s lives by grace. By God’s grace This provides ample ground for humility. It is worthy of our meditation. We can seek the grace of humility as we meditate on this. Our work changes us is a means of grace by which God with our willing participation continues creating us
it starts, continues, and achieves its purpose.
making us fully human
,
continues creating through
our work
in God’s world. in God’s world
continues creating
through our work. A beyond-imagining-privilege. Who could imagine this? Who could be bold enough to ask for this privilege? It is offered to us if we will accept it. We benefit from it before we become aware of it. We benefit from it before we think to ask for it. Imagine aligning our wills with God’s will and saying with our heart and our actions, “Yes! Please!” We want God’s continuing creation in us and through our lives. Everything God does is good good good. Continuing creation causes new existences. Existence is good. Continuing creation redeems diminished existences. Good comes back by this. Our work: join God in tending these trees that feed us. We tend the trees God makes. We eat the fruit from the trees we tend, and it gives us life. This is the economy in Eden. Eden is with us.
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Promised Land Economy
God gave Israel
us
an economy
which
as in Eden Unburied
nobody really wants to live in even though it is perfect for
us.
It is perfect for
us.
The deception: Something else is better for
me.
The truth:
what is best for us
is
best for me.
Our fallen hearts, though, adopt a “me first” mentality. Some thought systems
lift up as
valuable, sacred, Edenic the “me first” motivation. Some people think that “me first” should be the defining value of the economy that “me first” thinking alone will bring good to us. “Me first.” “My family first.” “My country first.” “Me first” in any form is not a virtue. As my father used to say, “It is a lie of the devil straight from the pit of hell.”
“Me first” in no way is part of the economy God offers us.
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The Kingdom of Heaven Economy
Because God so fully expressed - in Eden, through Egypt, on the Journey, in the Promised Land - the economy God has for us when Jesus arrives he doesn’t need to repeat the 10 commandments all of the prophets’ messages the description of the economy God has for us. Don’t think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I didn’t come to destroy, but to fulfill. For most certainly, I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not even one smallest letter or one tiny pen stroke shall in any way pass away from the law, until all things are accomplished. Therefore, whoever shall break one of these least commandments and teach others to do so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whoever shall do and teach them shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. Matthew 5: 17-19 John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Jesus, did say this, drawn from and in support of that economy: He said therefore to the multitudes who went out to be baptized by him, “You offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore produce fruits worthy of repentance, and don’t begin to say among yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father;’ for I tell you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones! Even now the ax also lies at the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that doesn’t produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” The multitudes asked him, “What then must we do?” He answered them, “He who has two coats, let him give to him who has none. He who has food, let him do likewise.” Tax collectors also came to be baptized, and they said to him, “Teacher, what must we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than that which is appointed to you.”
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Mary, visiting Elizabeth - her cousin and mother of John the Baptist - declared My soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior, for he has looked at the humble state of his servant. For behold, from now on, all generations will call me blessed. For he who is mighty has done great things for me. Holy is his name. His mercy is for generations and generations on those who fear him. He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down princes from their thrones, and has exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things. He has sent the rich away empty. Soldiers also asked him, saying, “What about us? What must we do?” He said to them, “Extort from no one by violence, neither accuse anyone wrongfully. Be content with your wages.” Luke 3: 7-14
He has given help to Israel, his servant, that he might remember mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his offspring forever.
Luke 1: 46-55
Drawn from and in support of that economy Jesus say these things: Now there was a certain rich man, and he was clothed in purple and fine linen, living in luxury every day. A certain beggar, named Lazarus, was taken to his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. Yes, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The
beggar died, and he was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried.
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