Shalom Theology

Shalom, Peace, the way it was meant to be, the way it was, and the way it will be. All of the bible seems organized around this idea of shalom or wholeness, as though it is actually the core of God’s desire for us, not pre or post fall but his eternal purpose for us. And not just us but them, the whole world, the other.

I recently heard about this idea of Shalom Theology, and it rang in my heart like beautiful truth. As a hermeneutical tool Shalom is very helpful, in the past few years love has become my personal hermeneutic but this new core idea of a theology built in and through Shalom is shifting my very core. Peace and wholeness make sense of how I understand God and his story, our faith is informed by a narrative of Shalom. If this is true then we as Christians have been living far outside of God’s narrative. Loving war and hating the other (mostly for moralistic reasons) does not fit into the gospel, Christians have made the good news good for us and bad for everyone else. What if the good news was truly good news for everyone, good because of the shalom it created in our world and in all of our lives.

So I am by no means an expert in Greek, but I was studying the Greek of Hebrews 12:14 which most translations translate as something like “make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; for without holiness no one will see God”. Again I know that people who translated this are much smarter than I, but the Greek does not have a semi colon in the verse at all. And in fact where it talks about seeing God it seems to me that it is referring to both living at peace and being holy. I am not sure looking at the Greek why we only translate the holiness as what it takes to see God. The word holiness is only found once in the Greek text, but it seems to me like the translators have over emphasized the personal piety and separated it from the active peace making, or Shalom, that the verse has tied up with the idea of holiness and seeing God.

What if the author of Hebrews is making a declaration about how we should live that is outside the mainstream dichotomy of his day and ours. In His day the Greek idea of Body vs. Spirit ruled, in our day as Christians I see a deep split between trying to be holy personally (generally defined in moralistic and spiritualistic terms) and actively living out the Kingdom of God in our world. We are called to be Shalom makers, to see His Kingdom come. Anything less than living for peace, healing, and justice keeps us from seeing God. Holiness is then tied up not with doctrine, or morality, or any other religious standard we have set up, but it is bound up with living in peace with all people and all of creation. No matter their religion, their political affiliation, their ethnicity, their gender, or any other measure; they are our brothers and sisters. We are called, if we believe God’s story and have committed to live within in it and be a part of it, to live in the wholeness and reconciliation of a God who is actively setting things right. What if we actually did this? What if when people were converted they were not converted to heaven or avoiding hell but were converted to a new way of being. This new way would call and compel them to seek God’s Shalom in their world and to radically follow Jesus which is the only way to be Holy; to walk with God eternally.

At Envision I heard Shane Claiborne say something that is like a Glacier moving through my soul and undoing me altogether. He challenged us to think of the story when John the Baptist disciples came and asked Jesus if he was really the “one”. Jesus then healed and taught and loved. After all this, he turned to the disciples and told them to go and tell John what they saw. No list of doctrine, to statement of faith, no apologetic, no defense or explanation; just a life living out the Shalom of God. What if when we were asked about our faith, our God, or the story we are living out; what if we were able to say look at my life and tell me what you see. Maybe that is why Hebrews tells us that to see God we must be bringing this shalom to the world and seeking to follow Jesus; because in this we can then point and say look this is what being a “Christian” looks like.

Hebrews 10:20 talks about the new life giving way that Jesus invites us into. Maybe its time to actually work on living out that new way rather than defending it, maybe its even time to enter fully into the narrative of God, which is a story of Shalom. And maybe this life giving way is not about us but about giving life to others, and maybe this story of Shalom is not about comfortable easy lives for us but about peace, healing, and justice for all those outside ourselves.
I am being undone, I only pray that this disturbance in my soul never subsides and never gets quietly buried in the corner by justifying comfort and ease.

May the world experience Peace.