When Edward Hicks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Hicks represented the Peaceable Kingdom (Isaiah 11:6-8) by painting wolves lounging with lambs and leopards with goats, he reinforced the idea that a peaceful world is an impossible world. And of course: because wolves do not lay with lambs nor leopards with goats. Simple facts of life demonstrate that leopards would rather eat goats. Ostensibly, we cannot escape this fact, one of life's simplicities. By equating peace with an unreachable transcendence such as Hicks' Peaceable Kingdom we condemn ourselves before even beginning.
Isaiah 11:6-8 (New International Version, ©2011)
6 The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
No, child! Do not put your hand in the nest of a snake. Snakes are beautiful, venerable creatures. They can also kill you, and thus they call for respect rather than demystification. The tension here emerges between what is, on the one hand, the idea that lasting peace isn't actually possible--it is something that will emerge in heaven or when Jesus returns. And what is on the other hand: the idea that peace is possible, and we are not waiting for Jesus to return; he is already here in our hearts waiting to be actualized. Jesus needn't always be thought of as flesh and blood for his message still to permeate, for his radical love still to bring the salvation for which he seems to have died. But Jesus preached a message we did not want to hear--that salvation doesn't come from military might, but from love, compassion and companionship. We killed him because we didn't like what he was saying--then we made his story into exactly what he did not mean it to become. We concocted an explanation that in its essence made it impossible for us to understand that robust peace is a possibility for right now.
While Isaiah 11:6-8 might be homely, nice and tranquil, it is not realistic. It leaves us with the earlier impression. If we are defining the criteria for the emergence of peace as a time when little kids can stick their hands in viper nests and not get poisoned, then we should give up now. If we are defining peace, rather, in terms of pragmatic techniques, changes in cultural frameworks, changes in linguistic categories, and changes in the manner in which we manage conflict, then peace is not so out-of-reach.
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