Cod Peace
What’s right and what “brings you peace” are often not the same. In fact the rightest things I’ve ever done came with instability and trouble. They involved swimming up and against the current in the water around me.
It’s bad advice to tell people “Oh don’t you worry your pretty little head” all the time, as if people as a rule are insignificant, with unimportant lives, and with no stakes hinging on their decisions. As if they were “codfish,” as Peter Pan calls the ultimately cowardly Captain Hook — dull-eyed creatures whose lot is only to ride the current and stay in school.
If people matter, then their comfort or peace can’t be your first concern. But if you do make “don’t worry your pretty little head” your main message to troubled people, it tells me you don’t think they matter much.
Also: you’re getting in the way.
Some are trying to be true friends to people and want to see them transformed and reaching for their potential. It’s harder to do that when the “ministry” and “social work” worlds are awash with empty, impersonal “peace.”
Proof
What “brings you peace” in a few common scenarios:
Employee who discovers a boss pressuring subordinates into sexual favors: keep your head down and say nothing.
Parishioner who sees a youth minister secretly holding hands with one of the boys in his group: pretend you didn’t notice.
Person in an abusive relationship: slavishly placate the abuser.
Alcoholic: obviously, have another drink.
Now doing the RIGHT thing in any of these scenarios can arguably bring true peace in the long run. But in the immediate future, nothing could be less peaceful.
And you can expect plenty of people to make that fact abundantly clear: they’ll accuse you of being a troublemaker.
Even our alcoholic will see his share of manipulative shaming for showing his own helplessness and for “abandoning” his drinking buddies.
Doing the right thing, in my experience, often comes with people accusing you of being a disturber of the peace. And for my part, I say don’t waste time debating the point. They’re right. You value a lot of things more than you value peace.
And so you should.
