The Life You Were Made For - More Than Peace

What are you for?

It's a harder question than it sounds. In a world that has grown remarkably fluent in opposition — that knows precisely what it's against, who it's against, and why — most of us have spent considerably less time thinking about what we're actually for. Not at the level of issues. Not at the level of positions and platforms. At a deeper level: what kind of life, what kind of world, what kind of human being are you committed to becoming?

We have become so practiced at opposition that it has started to feel like identity. I know who I am because I know what I'm against. But this is a fragile foundation. Issues shift. Coalitions fracture. The enemy changes shape. And the exhaustion is real — the endless conflict, the tribal sorting, the sense that the culture war has no finish line because opposition was never designed to produce anything except more opposition.

Most of us sense that something is missing. Not just politically. At a deeper level. We want a life that has meaning, purpose, and weight. We want to matter. We want the world to be more than an arena for competing grievances. We want something worth giving our lives to.

So let me ask the question again: what are you for?

Not which side. Not which issue. What are you actually for, at the level of your deepest commitments — your core convictions about what human beings are and what the world is meant to be?

That question is where this series begins.

The historian Karen Armstrong points out that the word credo — from which we get "creed" — does not originally mean "I believe" in the sense of intellectual assent. Credo comes from an ancient root meaning: I give my heart. I commit myself. It was never primarily about agreeing to a list of propositions. It was about a fundamental orientation of the whole self toward a vision of what is real and what matters.

That distinction matters enormously right now. Because what most people are hungry for is not a better argument. It's a more compelling vision. Something worth giving their heart to. Something to be for.

The ancient Hebrew tradition has a word for it.

Shalom.

Most of us translate it as "peace." But that translation does it almost no justice at all. Peace, in English, tends to mean the absence of conflict — a ceasefire, things calmed down, the argument finally over. A cemetery is peaceful. That is not shalom.

Shalom means wholeness. Completeness. Everything in right relationship. Harmony. Flourishing. The condition that exists when all the pieces of life fit together as they were meant to. The Hebrew root carries the image of a stone wall with no missing stones — integral, complete, nothing lacking, nothing out of place.

The theologian Cornelius Plantinga captures it beautifully: "the webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight."

That is shalom. And the ancient biblical vision holds that this is what we were made for.

Shalom moves in four directions at once. It is peace with God — not religious performance but genuine communion, trust rather than alienation, the experience of being held rather than judged. It is peace within ourselves — an inner coherence, the end of the divided life, becoming the same person all the way through. It is peace with one another — and the biblical tradition is always quick to connect this to justice, because there is no shalom built upon exploitation. The prophets are relentless: shalom requires that the vulnerable are protected, that relationships are honest, that communities are organized around the flourishing of all, not just the powerful. And it is peace with creation — a harmony between human life and the whole web of life that sustains us.

All four are inseparable. You cannot have shalom in one direction while fracturing it in the others.

This is what Jesus called the Dream of God — the kingdom, the reign, the reality he proclaimed as already "come near." Not a future destination to be earned through correct belief. A present reality to be seen, entered, and embodied.

And this, I want to suggest, is what we are actually for.

Not a political position. Not an issue coalition. Something far more fundamental: the wholeness of every human being, the flourishing of every community, the healing of the whole web of life. A vision rooted in the conviction that every person carries the image of the divine — and that the world, at its deepest level, is moving toward wholeness rather than away from it.

That is a vision worth committing to. Worth giving your heart to. Worth believing.

Over the coming months we are going to explore what it means to live from that vision. What it means to be for shalom in a world organized around opposition. What the ancient traditions teach us about wholeness, contentment, trust, and joy. And what it might look like to inhabit a different level of existence altogether — not defined by what we're against but rooted in what we were made for.

We'll start where the vision starts: with the word itself.

Shalom. More than peace. The life you were made for.