Blessed are the Pacifiers?

If you're readying this, then by now you should have outgrown pacifiers.  Everybody knows it's bad for your teeth, and I cringe every time I see a full-fledged child (not a baby) with a pacifier in their mouth.  And, did you know that you can buy adult-sized pacifiers on Amazon?  What is this world coming to?

When Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers," he didn't mean pacifiers.  Yes, it's true that both of these words stem from the Latin word pax, meaning "peace."  But there's a vast difference between the two.  When he said this, he knew that his listeners lived under the Pax Romana (Peace of Rome), a system of oppression that brought about peace through domination and oppression.  So he had to make sure his hearers understood the difference beween people who make peace, and people who are pacified, or who pacify other folks.

A pacifier is something you give a baby, in order to keep them from crying.  You're "peacifying" them for your own good, so you don't have to hear them scream.  In this sense, it's not really peace at all--but simply the absence of noise.  A pacifier is something you give a hurting or hungry baby--to shut them up.  My Scottish foster sister used to call a pacifier a "dummy-tit," which is a nipple for dummies who don't know the difference between a piece of plastic and the real thing.

Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers," and that's a different thing altogether.  Peacemakers are NOT pacifiers.  They don't throw out platitudes to keep people happy.  Instead of saying, "Can't we all just get along?" real peacemakers do the hard work of actually listening to the cries of their hurting neighbors.  Instead of saying, "You're hurting?  I'm hurting too--let me tell you about my pain..." (a tactic designed to shut the other person up), real peacemakers simply sit and listen.  Whether they agree with the story that the other person tells or not, they make sure that the really hear their neighbor, and make sure that their neighbor knows they're heard.

I've gotta admit--pacifiers are easy.  When I was raising babies, I gave them all pacifiers.  But pacifiers are something we should outgrow.  Once a kid is old enough to talk, the pacifier should come out of their mouth.  Kids need to quit using them--and adults need to quit trying to give them to young people who are fully capable of conversation.  Because real dialogue is better than a pacifier.

Are you having trouble in your marriage, and this message is hitting home because you realize you've been a pacifier instead of a peacemaker?  Have you been troubled by racial injustice, but you've been unable to really deal with the seismic weight of actually dealing with it--so you've been saying "all lives matter" rather than sitting down to listen to stories of black pain?  Have you been changing the topic every time a friend brings up a difficult conversation, because you just don't want to deal with it?  Jesus blessed the peacemakers because their courage to have a conversation leads to the kingdom of God manifesting in the lives of hurting and hungry people.  I hope you'll have the guts to be a peacemaker, rather than a pacifier--that you'll take the time to listen.