Nevertheless, Peace
The Second Week of Advent
It isn’t hard to doubt peace.
As I write, nations are firing missiles at their neighbors. Starvation, disease, and poverty continue unabated. Children are torn away from their parents. Division and vitriol flourish in public and private. None of this is new. And after centuries of violence and discord, I suspect it will remain the state of things for some time yet. Perhaps the best we can hope for is to treat its symptoms and wait for Jesus to come and fix all our problems.
At Christmastime, I find myself strangely pulled toward the writings of theologian Karl Barth—an excellent thinker whose historical materials are ill-suited to a cheery Christmas hearth. Writing in the wreckage of two world wars, Barth bore witness to a continent in a state of profound depravity, but responded to it over and over again in his writings with “nevertheless.” Humanity is in enmity with God, he observed. Man is hopelessly lost; nevertheless, God saves him.
Certainly, for the bulk of Barth’s career, man was lost. Cities destroyed. Churches, homes, children bombed and broken. Forty million bodies littered across the Eastern Front. A mushroom cloud hung over Japan. The stench of the Holocaust permeated the continent.
Nevertheless.
For me, peace is often an experience of Barth’s theologically-inflected “nevertheless.” Yes, the trajectory of humanity seems often to sink downwards into darkness; nevertheless, the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods. Yes, there is hate and destruction and envy and division; nevertheless, there is actually, really, unadulterated kindness and joy and hope and generosity, too. Peace is a response to a world that seeks to persuade us of its indifference and malice: Yes, I have seen your cruelty; but nevertheless.
So insisted Harold Good, a Methodist minister during the most violent period of The Troubles: Bombs and bullets rage in the street. Nevertheless, the lights at our church will stay on, and our doors will be open.1
So said Albie Sachs after a car bomb planted by the apartheid regime took his right arm and left eye: Yes, there is war and injustice and hate; nevertheless, the soft vengeance of equality and justice is rising in the belly of his country.2
So affirms the author of Hebrews: Generations have lived and died without seeing the actualization of promises made in stone and fire. Nevertheless, God will still “provide some better thing” (see Hebrews 11:39–40).
So writes Mormon at the end of the world: The day of grace is past (see Mormon 2:15). Nevertheless, charity has not failed yet.
So promised Jesus the evening before the cross: The dark night is coming. Nevertheless, so is peace.
Violence is not the end of this world or its story. We are not destined for destruction in fire or ice. To a time and a place still very full of inhumanity and discrimination, pain and loss, we say, “Nevertheless, ‘unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace’” (see Isaiah 9:6).
In the northern hemisphere, Christmas falls during the darkest time of the year. Nevertheless, despite plunging temperatures and shorter days, at Christmas we are more likely than any other season of the year to sing together, to visit one another, to donate, to write, to build community, to connect with friends and relatives with whom we bitterly disagree. Christmastime is a halting of hate; it is a time for practicing peace, and actually believing in its possibility.
Because this peace is not only possible, it is inevitable. And we needn’t wait for Jesus to come and institute it through supernatural forces, because he has already come. Christmas has happened. The work has begun. We are fellow laborers with Christ, here and now on this earth, this millennium, this year, this day, this minute. We are ringing God’s peace into the earth like Christmas bells.
Pharaoh has fallen. Herod has failed. Out of Bethlehem and Egypt and Nazareth, a new light shines in the darkness. Yes, injustice and suffering are still with us. Perhaps they always will be. But nevertheless, so is he. God with us. Immanuel. The Prince of Peace, reflected again and again in the face of every caroler, every gift-giver, every bell-ringer, every well-wisher, every child or mother or father or grandparent or estranged uncle standing with hands stretched in benediction o’er the earth proclaiming, “World, you have wounded me. Nevertheless, peace I give unto you.”
Sarah Perkins and her husband Josh Sabey are writers and filmmakers. Together they are the authors of The Book of Mormon Storybook, a children’s adaptation of The Book of Mormon. See more of their work on Instagram at @forlittlesaints.
Art by Paul Nash (1889–1946).
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“On earth peace, good will toward men,” sang angels hovering over a land heaving with political and racial tension, ruled by a degenerate despot, choked by Roman oppression, crowded in on all sides by competing foreign powers—a land, which in just one generation would collapse under revolt, its temple razed to t…
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Harold Good, interview by author, February 2025.
Albie Sachs, interview by author, February 2025.
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This is really beautiful Sarah. A great reminder of finding peace even amidst darkness and sorrow.