Looking deeper

Sometimes when reading really disparate books at the same time, I nonetheless find a common theme in what I’m reading. I had this experience recently reading A Persistent Peace by Father John Dear and Economics for Everyone by Jim Stanford.

A Persistent Peace: One Man’s Struggle for a Nonviolent World is the autobiography of a Jesuit priest and long-time peace activist. John Dear shares his life journey, his nonviolent theology and activism, and encourages others to take up the same struggle for peace and justice.

Economics for Everyone: A Short Guide to the Economics of Capitalism by Jim Stanford, an economist with the Canadian Auto Workers Union, is like a textbook for non-economics students. It presents the bigger picture of how our economic system is constructed, while breaking down the component parts in an accessible, easy-to-understand way.

On the surface it may seem like these two books have little in common. But when I was reading them at the same time, I was struck by the way each book and its subject encourages us to go deeper.

Dear argues strongly that peace begins within. You cannot create outer peace without having inner peace. But that means looking within to root out the conflict and enmity within our own hearts. This is the part that I find challenging. It’s so easy to assume that my thoughts and emotions are natural, and that I have little control over them. It’s nice to believe that my responsibility begins with how I act on my thoughts and feelings. But John Dear encourages us to look deeper: to identify that within us which is not Christ-like and rid ourselves of it. To become people whose inner selves – thoughts and desires included – radiate God’s love, peace and justice.

Similarly, it is easy to make the same assumptions about the economic structures around us, to believe that they are natural and inevitable and not to question our participation in them. But Jim Stanford reminds us of the values implicit in our economic system: the accumulation of capital in the hands of a few, while most people are dependent solely on the value of their labour for income, unless we have government policy that fills in the gaps. Our economic system is therefore structured to create inequality.

Furthermore, the importance of capital to our economic system gives those who hold the capital greater influence in our political system. When these values are taken for granted and never questioned, the result can be devastating for people’s lives. Once again we need to look deeper, and question how our participation in or support for our economic system might not always be a good thing.

Both books remind us that we can’t take things – within or without – at face value. We need to go deeper within ourselves, to become people of peace and justice, and we need to look deeper at the structures and systems that surround us, our economic system, our social structures, and our political system. To borrow the words of my Reformed heritage, we must always be discerning and always transforming!