I was asked, during  an AB process on  course recently :- ‘If you cou ld ask God for one thing, what would you ask for?’.  We all sat in our groups and discussed the thing we would ask for and then we shared our thoughts. As I would have expected, almost everyone asked for ‘World peace’, ‘An end to Hunger’, ‘Freedom’ etc etc etc. In other words, the usual answers you would expect from a group of people trying to better themselves and the world around them. The sentiment of these responses is commendable and as I know most of the people in the group I know that they truly mean it. I could also understand that having these desires was a good place to start.  But I struggled with this one. It just seemed too easy. The answer that we were supposed to give was what our passion needed to be – ie where should we focus our energy. This was all very well, but still this did not work for me. The world seems to be in so much trouble (and indeed seems to have been in so much trouble since man learned to bang two rocks together). Asking God for one thing seemed to miss the mark somehow. It occurred to me that if we simply asked God to wave a Magic Wand and, ‘Puff’, world peace exists, that this would not really solve the issues of the world. Who’s world peace? Everyone’s?  Is everybody’s ‘World Peace’ the same as everyone else’s? I think not. If we all had the same idea of world peace then surly we would have no war. Would ‘World peace’ then also mean changing everyone’s perception of what world peace is?

The other problem is the ‘World Peace’ does not cover thinks like poverty, pollution depression etc . We can be in peace but still suffer. It does not cover the continued rape of our planet. It does not cover health, (mental or Physical). Has anyone ever really sat down and tried to work out what ‘World Peace’ actually is. Again, I think not. The point of all this is that the answers given are the simple answers, the easy answers, the ‘hand the responsibility on to someone else’ (in this case God) answer.

What if God did wave his (or Her) wand? Would we know how to deal with it – would it last? Would God keep check on us and enforce peace? And would the enforcement be a type of oppression. Or would we all be changed into something so completely different that we would not be human any more. I find it really hard to look at the population of today (or the past 100,000 years or so, for that matter) and see a society that is really capable of true peace. I am not convinced that we even really know and understand what true peace really is. 

Of cause, if we were to ‘get God to do this’ why has it not happened when millions of people pray for world peace, end of poverty etc each and every day? It would appear that millions of mass prayer goes unheard all the time. If God was ‘all powerful’ and a God that loves his children, then surely he would have waved his wand a long time ago – or perhaps it would never have needed waving in the first place. This, apparently, was the case until Eve ate the apple (original sin), but still, even then, wouldn’t an all powerful God be able to fix that? It seems to me that there must be a reason why God does not wave his wand. Either he is not as powerful as we would like to think he is or there is another plan in progress or we simply have the wrong idea about God. Im not sure that I can just keep blind faith that all is going as God intends.

So, when asked what I would ask of God, I replied ‘Blue Roses’,  with the hope that this might cause a shift in thinking. Actually, I’m not that fussy if it’s Blue Roses or Green skies or whatever. The point is that it needs to be something that makes the world as a whole stop and take a step back. Something to break our current thinking pattern. We need to be pushed into the thought process of ‘Perhaps there is something about the universe we don’t understand!’. It would also be of upmost importance that this ‘Miracle’ could not be attributed to one religion or group of people, in case they use it as ‘proof’ that their god/religion is the correct and powerful one. The last thing we need is a ‘See – we are right and you are wrong’ situation. No, we need some peaceful (ironic?) way to stop the world and make us think differently or at least to stop assuming that we know anything. My hope would be that this would get people  to think that the world as they see it is not actually the world that is. That what they thought they knew is not even close to what really is. Hopefully this would lead to more soul searching, less arrogance, more understanding, patience and the will to truly change ......

I think that, only in admitting that we have no clue what so ever, can we begin to design a new world where peace can truly exist – and I don’t think we would recognise it if we did.