Why People of Faith Reject the Claim That Violence Governs the Real World

There is a popular claim repeated whenever governments justify aggression: that the world is ultimately controlled by strength, coercion, and dominance. According to this view, power is measured by weapons, armies, and the ability to impose one’s will. People of faith recognize a different reality — one shaped not by force, but by relationships, responsibility, and moral choice.

This conviction does not arise from fantasy or denial. It emerges from centuries of lived experience, spiritual teaching, and historical memory that show how violence may seize control temporarily, but never creates stability, dignity, or peace.

Militarism as a Choice, Not a Law

Human history is undeniably marked by war, conquest, and oppression. Nations have repeatedly organized themselves around fear and domination, embedding militarism into political systems, economies, and cultural identities. Yet none of this is inevitable. Violence persists not because it is natural law, but because it is continually chosen.

In the United States, military power has long been treated as the primary response to complex global challenges. Entire regions have been destabilized through interventions justified as necessary, decisive, or unavoidable. Each time, the same promise is made: order will follow force. Each time, the outcome is prolonged suffering and unresolved conflict.

When governments act as if military action itself is policy, they abandon accountability. They mistake motion for progress and destruction for control.

The Cost of Creating a World by Force

Efforts to impose outcomes through coercion do not stop at borders. When violence is normalized abroad, it reshapes domestic life as well. Militarized thinking migrates inward, reframing neighbors as threats and turning law enforcement into instruments of fear rather than safety.

The killing of civilians during enforcement operations reveals this transformation. Ordinary people — parents, observers, bystanders — become targets within a system that treats suspicion as justification and power as protection. Such actions are defended with language that erases human complexity and moral responsibility.

This is the logical extension of a worldview that treats force as the final authority.

History’s Rebuttal to the Myth of Power

The claim that violence governs reality collapses under historical scrutiny. From Southeast Asia to the Middle East, from Latin America to Africa, militarized interventions have produced cycles of trauma that extend across generations. Short-term dominance has repeatedly given way to instability, resentment, and resistance.

These outcomes are not anomalies. They are patterns. Force may suppress opposition temporarily, but it cannot generate legitimacy. It cannot manufacture trust. It cannot repair the damage it creates.

People of faith understand this because their traditions are shaped by communities that survived empires, exile, persecution, and occupation — not by overpowering their enemies, but by sustaining meaning, care, and solidarity when power failed them.

A Different Definition of the Real World

The “real world” is not defined by the loudest weapons or the strongest armies. It is defined by how people actually live. Most people, most of the time, are engaged in acts of care: raising children, tending to elders, helping neighbors, building trust across difference.

This is the world faith communities see clearly. Security is not achieved through domination, but through mutual responsibility. Safety does not come from fear, but from belonging. Justice is not enforced by violence, but sustained through accountability and compassion.

When injustice spreads unchecked, it endangers everyone. When dignity is denied to some, it weakens the moral fabric of all.

Choosing Peace as an Act of Responsibility

Rejecting violence as the organizing principle of society is not passive. It requires courage. It demands participation, resistance, and persistent engagement with institutions of power. It calls citizens to hold leaders accountable, to insist on lawful governance, and to refuse narratives that glorify destruction as strength.

People of faith are not naïve about the world’s dangers. They are realistic about something deeper: that war does not solve what injustice creates, and that peace is not a miracle — it is a decision.

The real world is not ruled by iron laws of violence. It is shaped, every day, by the choices people make about how they treat one another. Where force seeks control, faith insists on care. Where power demands obedience, conscience demands justice.

And in that real world — the one people actually inhabit — peace remains possible, if it is chosen.