Peace, Baby!

Virtual Sixties Tour
Join Gamma Ray and Satellite as they take you on a tour of the sixties.

Can't We all just get along?

Us hippies were really into the peace scene in the sixties. We figured if we could just get the whole world together in a giant esperanto conversation club, everything would be cool.

"Come on people, now, smile on your brother. Everybody get together and love one another right now."

Just a little love and understanding and everything would be all right. Why couldn't the military-industrial establishment just get that through their thick skulls, man?!

We thought there could be peace if the U.S. would just leave southeast Asia alone, and let them work things out on their own. Well, after he got tired of listening to us, Nixon pulled the plug on the war in Vietnam and left southeast Asia to work things out on their own. They worked it out by killing each other...Vietnam fighting Cambodia, Cambodians slaughtering each other in record numbers. Vietnam and China had a brief, but bloody, war. The Thais didn't actually get into a war, but they had a hand in what was happening in Cambodia, because they were nervous about the Vietnamese getting too close.

There was a slight problem with our simplistic hippie approach. Suppose there's a piece of land over there. You want it. I want it. We both want it bad, man. So we fight. War arises from the greed in men's (and women's) hearts. We didn't have an answer for how to get rid of that.

In Christian theology this is called the sinful nature. You can read about the results in the first couple chapters of Romans. Romans 3:23 says, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." If you read the first nine or so chapters of Genesis in the Bible, you see right from the beginning people fighting over inheritances, chicks, and land. It's a bad scene, and it's been that way for a long time.

What's worse is that our sin separates us from God, our Creator. He does not dig sin at all, man. In fact, He can't even hang out with people who are sinners because He is perfectly holy. That's just the way He is. So, we're not only at war with each other, we're at war with God. God made all of us to be His children. He wants us to submit to Him and worship Him in everything. But our sin makes us want to do our own thing and forget about God. So we've got the whole war scene again. God wants my life. I want my life. We both want it bad, and we go to war over it.

Peace, baby. That's right. Peace is a baby. Remember at Christmas time in all those plays and TV specials, decorations and greeting cards? They always say, "Peace on earth, and good will toward men," right? That's what the angel said when Jesus was born. What, man? What does Jesus have to do with, like, peace?

The Bible says that Jesus is the Prince of Peace. It also says in Ephesians 2:14, "For he [Jesus] himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier..." By dying on the cross, Jesus paid the penalty for our sin. Somebody had to die for it, and Jesus took our place there on the cross. His blood paid for our sins. When we accept that fact and put our trust in him, God sees us as holy, like Jesus. Then we can have peace with God. His Holy Spirit then can make us into a new dude when we submit to Him. When he kills off the "I want it!" attitude we have peace with God and with each other.