SEEKING SHALOM: MOVING FROM ENTROPY TO EQUITY
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The pile of dishes in my sink dismayed me. I could have sworn I’d just had the kitchen tidied, and in the time it took to turn around it felt like every surface was covered. Crumbs clung to my bare feet yet again, so I reached for the broom to begin wrangling the mess that had happened so quickly. The word entropy came to mind as I swept the bits of things dropped on the floor into a small pile to be brushed into the trash. When left to its own devices, all systems will proceed towards disorder.
I looked out my window at the changed landscape of the woods in which my house is situated. There were once big pine trees, I believe ones not native to this area, but twenty or thirty years grown at least, framing the left side of my house. Every few years a little less remains, and the view is altered. One fell years ago after storm damage left it leaning. One we had to cut down as it was leaning towards the house. The other has been falling in pieces. But trees that fall into the forest nurture the forest. The community of trees overall is enriched by the cycle of life, provided there aren’t outside influences such as invasive species that are encroaching or damaging the community. It makes me wonder if entropy truly exists in a forest when it is left more to its own devices. If nothing is wasted, not even the fallen tree, can it be said to be in disorder?
Human systems, I think, have always tended towards entropy with the opportunistic among us grabbing control whenever possible and trying to bend systems to work only for themselves. The opportunistic also tend to be those with more power and sway, and so many more of us find ourselves complicit because of fear or even plain old apathy, all of which contributes to this sliding into disorder. Yet we who call ourselves followers of Christ are called to resist the entropy and decay of these systems that would turn people into widgets, subjecting the many in various ways in order to fuel the insatiable desires of the few.
In the midst of all of the sometimes incomprehensible and seemingly irrelevant laws in the Old Testament we find several precepts extremely relevant to this struggle. Every fiftieth year was to be a year of Jubilee where debts are forgiven, inheritance restored, and the enslaved are set free. In this we see not a validation of debt, poverty, or slavery, but a resetting (1) of societal entropy continuously pulling Israel away from God’s standard of shalom. This word, which is translated as mere “peace” in English, goes far beyond our typically sanitized notion of what peace entails.
From the same root as the word “shalem,” (2) which means “whole” or “complete,” the “peace” that shalom describes is a state of complete well-being. Shalom was and sometimes still is used as a greeting in everyday speech among Hebrew speakers. Going beyond “how are you?” Shalom asks after one’s total well-being and invokes shalom on the person being greeted: “Shalom be upon you.” (3) Think about that for a moment. If you are asking after another person’s shalom, you are asking them where they are on the spectrum of thriving. Putting this as a greeting and farewell keeps the concept of inquiring after the shalom of others part of a daily ritual.
It’s become almost a trope that people don’t really answer the question, “how are you?” I’ve developed a habit in recent years of trying to be honest as much as I’m comfortable with depending on the person asking. But typically we throw out, “how are you?” expecting nothing more than, “I’m fine, and you?” and often we don’t go any deeper except with our closest friends.
Perhaps not everyone wants to actually answer the question, but what would change if as we talked to folks, we actually wondered and inquired after their shalom? In the catechism in the Book of Common Prayer, we find the question, “What do we mean by everlasting life?” To which the prayer book has us respond, “By everlasting life we mean a new existence, in which we are united with all the people of God, in the joy of fully knowing and loving God and each other.” (4) Part of our hope as people who follow God is entering a state of fully knowing God and each other.
If we are to take seriously the Lord’s Prayer that we in several liturgical traditions pray weekly, we must realize that praying “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” isn’t a fanciful wish we’re making to a genie in the sky, but something we are to work for in our daily lives now. Part of claiming to follow Christ is committing to live into and work for a shalom reality.
Activists and civil rights leaders have long been criticized and persecuted for causing disruption. No matter how “peaceful” the protest, it causes a description to the flow of life of those around it. From sports players kneeling at the anthem in silent protests, to large marches blocking roads, it seems there’s no acceptable way to protest for equitable rights. I see this in many countries, but am most familiar with this happening in my native United States.
But what peace do these protests disrupt? If the protests are disrupting things, it is by declaring that all is not well. The disruption shows us that the peace that those in power claim exists is a false peace that doesn’t benefit everyone. If we only define peace as an absence of conflict, we sentence people to silence who would call society to move towards shalom. Sometimes, to be for shalom is to be against what passes for peace. Often those in power offer us a 'peace' that is really just the absence of conflict because the voices of the oppressed have been stifled. Calling for shalom doesn't feel comfortable, since our society constantly pulls toward disorder and false peace.
In the Very Good Gospel, Lisa Sharon Harper defines a shalom reality for us:
“God’s intent for the world is that all aspects of creation would live in forcefully good relationships with one another. This is what ‘very goodness’ looks like: all humanity living into its call and capacity to exercise dominion. It looks like governance that honors and stewards the image of God in every corner of the earth and stewards the rest of creation with care and protection. This is God’s intent. This is what the Kingdom of God–the rule of God and governance of God–looks like.” (5)
I love this concept of “forcefully good.” It banishes the idea of peace as an absence of conflict, for just as peace is not true peace if anyone is left out, good relationships aren’t good if they are passive. Forcefully good shalom banishes the idea that just not causing intentional harm is somehow enough to live our lives on.
The truth is far more complex anyway. We live in a broken world full of broken systems that are actively causing harm and thereby implicating each of us in that harm. Shalom calls each of us to look to the total well-being of others as if it were our own. And while total shalom is not achievable in our lifetime, like the great trees of the forest, we must do our work in our part of the cycle and do it so that even our death provides life to the community to continue the work towards what will one day be God’s shalom kingdom.
As Abraham Joshua Heschel pointed out, “Does not our work always remain incomplete?” (6) He is speaking of the Sabbath as a day of total rest even in the incompleteness of our lives. I find that comforting both on a daily scale, and a lifetime scale. We do what we can. And even if shalom is incomplete, that doesn’t mean it’s absent. After all, rest itself is a shalom gift, not earned, just there, as part of practicing shalom in our daily life.
See Lisa Sharon Harper, The Very Good Gospel (Colorado Springs: Waterbrook, 2016), 166-175.
Dr. Joel M. Hoffman, “The Glamour of the Grammar: Shalom Aleichem,” The Jerusalem Post, October 18, 2007, Accessed 2/9/2022, https://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Glamour-of-Grammar-Shalom-aleichem
Ibid.
The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 862.
Lisa Sharon Harper, The Very Good Gospel (Colorado Springs: Waterbrook, 2016), 37.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Status, and Giroux, 1975), 32.
