The Way of the Warrior: An Ancient Path to Inner Peace

by Erwin Raphael McManus

Peace can come only when it is fought for. This is true for any and every kind of peace, whether it’s peace on earth, interpersonal peace, or inner peace. It never comes to the passive. In fact, if you choose the way of peace, you will find yourself in a constant struggle and endless battle. The peace we seek must come from within, and this, you will discover, is the greatest of all battles. It was Job who uttered, “What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil.”

You might find it peculiar that I would describe Jesus as a warrior. After all, he is most commonly known as a man of peace. Yet you cannot properly understand Jesus if you do not grasp that his entire life’s purpose was to win the greatest battle of the greatest war that has ever been fought. God stepped into human history to fight for us. He did not hope for peace; he fought for peace. Sometimes the true mission of Jesus is misunderstood because he never carried a physical weapon in his hands. Yet if you want to see the true marks of a warrior, you need to look at the scars on his hands. In his death and resurrection, Jesus took upon himself all the violence of the world so he could bring all the world his peace. That is why he is most profoundly and uniquely the warrior of peace. That is why we’re pursuing his path.

Jesus tells us, “Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”5 With simplicity and wisdom, he cuts between the two things that steal our peace, for the greatest enemies of the peace within are worry and fear.

Peace does not come because you finally have control over your life; peace comes when you no longer need control.

As much evidence as there is around us that we desperately need to find our peace, there is even deeper proof within us of how peace has eluded us. When our hearts have not found peace, we become filled with the darkest expressions of ourselves. We’re filled with not only fear and doubt but also greed and envy, anger and bitterness, loneliness and disconnection, despair and hopelessness. Each of these are external forces that war against our inner worlds. We struggle with envy because we want the life that isn’t ours. We struggle with greed because we want to possess what is not ours to have. We struggle with feelings of insignificance because we have made our worth dependent on the opinions of others. We struggle with identity because we don’t know who we are outside of what we do. We struggle with loneliness because we are searching for love rather than giving it. We will never know peace as long as we are slaves to external forces of the world and create our identities from the outside in. We will never know peace if we lose the present because we are trapped in the past and paralyzed by the future. This is in no small part why we live in a culture crippled by depression and anxiety.

Depression is rooted in your past; anxiety is rooted in your imagined future. Depression is how your soul processes regret; anxiety is how your soul processes fear. Depression traps you in your worst and most painful memories; anxiety imagines your worst and most painful future.

Choose service over obligation, servanthood over slavery. If they force you to work, then confound them with a greater wisdom. Never forget that you are always free to do more.

The warrior knows that peace does not come from control but from relinquishing control. Everything in life that you try to control that is outside your control will steal from you your peace. You must choose to take hold of what you can control and let go of what you cannot.

You cannot control your circumstances, but you can control your character. You cannot control the actions of others, but you can control the choices you make. You cannot control the outcome, but you can control the process.

The warrior has peace of mind because they know that there is always a way to find light, even in the midst of the greatest darkness. They know that there is always hope to be found, even in despair. Peace can exist in the midst of turmoil only if you believe in the beauty of the future. Peace sees the beauty everywhere. When you walk in peace, you are overwhelmed by the wonder of the universe and the beauty of life.

So many of us see pain as the boundary of our limitations. When we experience pain, that’s when we choose to stop. We have confused knowing peace with becoming prisoners. The way of peace is not without pain. The way of peace comes only by walking through the pain.

The peace that your soul longs for is the very peace the world needs. I cannot speak of peace and not speak of Jesus, for it is Jesus alone who leads us to the way of peace. The way of Jesus is the way of the warrior. It is Jesus who is the warrior of peace. There are not different kinds of peace, just different contexts where peace can be realized. When you have won the battle for inner peace, you now carry within you what the world desperately needs. It is only when you have inner peace that you can bring peace to a world at war with itself. The warrior fights for peace.

In each of those situations, the environment was already unstable, and violence was the norm. It would have been easy to rationalize that I needed to protect myself and carry a weapon too, yet the only reason I am alive and writing these words right now is that all my weapons were unseen. Even in the most volatile circumstances, I was convinced that wisdom could bring peace, even if just for a moment. In a much less dramatic environment, I found this principle to be true as a husband and father. To stay married for thirty-five years takes more than love; it takes wisdom. No matter how much you love someone, you will inevitably have conflict and disagreements. Wisdom understands that it is less important to win a fight or a point than it is to win the person. Wisdom knows that you should never fight against people; you should fight for them. What’s the point of winning a fight if you lose the person? When you love someone, the real fight is to keep winning that person.

As Solomon looked more carefully at the aftereffect of the poor man’s life, he realized that not only was the man forgotten but that after he secured his city’s freedom, the people despised his wisdom and no longer wished to hear what he had to say. Solomon saw from this moment that wisdom is better than the weapons of war, though it was equally clear to him that wisdom brings no promise of fame, recognition, or even respect. The most dangerous thing in the world is to put weapons in the hands of fools, and the most powerful force in the world is the wisdom that makes us drop our weapons.

Though the way of the warrior is a way of peace, you will have many battles to fight. Each battle will require different skills and weaponry. The one weapon you must always take with you is wisdom. It is the one resource that is endless and without limit. If you take wisdom with you, you will always have everything you need. In that sense the wise are never impoverished. One of the perplexing things about wealth is that if you take on a big enough challenge, you will be overwhelmed by your sense of poverty. When you pursue a great mission, you will inevitably feel that you don’t have enough resources for the task.

The scope of our dreams was not limited to the size of our income. In the same way, that lack of resources must not limit the battles you fight. You must not allow yourself to be paralyzed by what seem to be overwhelming circumstances. It’s absurd for one poor man to think he could set an entire city free. What in the world was he thinking? Couldn’t he see that those who were better prepared than he was, more skilled than he was, more talented than he was, more powerful than he was, had already failed in pursuit of the same outcome? Yet somehow he seemed undaunted in his determination to do what everyone else would certainly know was impossible.

The enemy that we tend to expect is like the powerful king who came and seized the city. The enemies we rarely speak of are the ones within us—those that would cause us to live in fear and so paralyze us that we would rather live a life of oppression than pay the price for freedom. We would expect an enemy king and his soldiers to fight against our revolt. The stories that are rarely told are the ones of the very people we are trying to set free, people turned against us because we are endangering the status quo. I have come to know the painful truth in life: most people would rather live in the predictability of captivity than risk the uncertainty that comes in a fight for freedom.

It may seem completely counterintuitive, but in my experience, depressed people are the least likely to be willing to change any of their life patterns. In other words, people who hate their lives are the least likely to change them. When you love your life, you are more open to change. When you somehow find yourself in a life you never wanted, it has a paralyzing effect. It becomes a subtle version of Stockholm syndrome, where you develop an unhealthy relationship to your captor and disdain for anyone trying to set you free.

I’ve learned this lesson the hard way over the past forty years. I have tried one too many times to help people move out of lives they hate to lives they could love. The problem is that the change could not come without risk. I have seen this time and again. People will stay in jobs they hate for an unimaginable number of years. They will stay in destructive relationships because the fear of being alone feels overwhelming to them. If you are not living the life you long for and have the power to choose a different life, then what is keeping you from your ...

My grandfather could walk in and out of a room without being heard. The poor man walked in and out of history without being remembered. The greatest warrior cannot be heard when they strike, cannot be seen when they move. When all is said and done, the warrior is not known for their weapons but for their wisdom. And while the poor man was quickly forgotten, what he did was never forgotten. Solomon could not find his name, but his fingerprints were everywhere. The warrior lives their life to leave a legacy and live their legend.

There is a reason I love the story of the poor man who set his city free. The central figure of this story overcomes the very obstacles that all of us will face. Although his was an epic battle against a great empire, ours may be the ordinary battles of everyday life. Like this poor man, all of us will face our own struggle against a sense of insignificance. We must embrace the power of one person with God. At some point or another, we will feel as if we are underresourced for the challenges ahead. We must lean into the unlimited resources of the God who calls us. If not all of us, certainly most of us will wonder if we have the necessary position or power to accomplish our greatest challenges. It is then we must embrace the power of influence. In the end, most of us will wonder if what we’ve given ourselves to has been worth the fight, especially if no one remembers our names.

And that’s why we must never forget that what is done for ourselves will one day be forgotten but that what we have done for others will be remembered for eternity.

The fool just keeps striking and striking without paying attention to the quality of the edge. The wise know that if the edge is unsharpened, more strength is needed. The warrior understands that behind one strike of their sword are ten thousand hours in which they have wielded their sword without an enemy present. It is no different in life, that we are not pulling back bows or swinging swords or carrying the weapons of conventional battle. Every life is a series of battles, of conflicts, and of wars, and of course the war we speak of is the one that rages within. You cannot win the battle for your soul if you choose to live the life of a fool, neglecting the health of your soul and not taking time to refine who you are.

The battle may look different for each of us, but the battle line is the same: it is at the intersection of our passions and desires. Solomon tells us to love wisdom. He knows that in the end we become what we love. We do not become fools because we lack the right information; we become fools because we love the wrong things. The only way you can care for your soul is to nurture your love for what is good and beautiful and true.

Solomon also tells us that “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.”23 Why is the fear of God the starting point on the path toward wisdom? To begin with, what you fear has mastery over your life. If you fear only God, then he becomes your only master. What you fear also establishe...

In summary, if you want to stop being a fool, stop loving the wrong things. (Have you ever noticed that fools always fall in love with the wrong people?) Second, realize that you were designed for God and that the health of your soul can come only by embracing his love for you. Third, recognize that the health of your soul is also an outgrowth of your love for God. Fourth, fuel the passion of your heart for all that is good and beautiful and true. And, finally, take the time necessary to nurture your desires and passions so that they reflect the heart of God himself.

There is nothing more debilitating than giving your strength to the wrong thing. When you live your life without intention, you make your edge dull. When you live a life of obligation, it steals from you your strength. Wisdom allows you to harness your strength. When you live your life with intention, you find your strength, and every time you strike the ax, you unexpectedly get stronger.

A good follow-up question to ask yourself is, Am I prepared to do this? You may have the natural talent, but you haven’t paid the price to develop the skills necessary to succeed. You may have the natural talent to be a neurosurgeon, but I don’t want you in my head unless you’ve taken on the discipline of becoming a highly skilled medical professional. This may mean that it’s the right tree but the wrong timing. There are battles you will fight later in life, but right now it’s boot camp, and you’re still in training. Another marker to help you know if you are spending your strength in the right place is your passion and energy. If you are passionate about the process and not just the outcome, that’s a marker that you are on the right track. If you are energized by the hard work and not simply its promise of success, that’s a great marker that you are chopping at the right tree. An external marker can be the impact that your actions have on others. You may get sick every time you are invited to be a public speaker, but the influence you have on the audience is undeniable. Oftentimes I have seen highly talented people who are terrified by the callings that are on their lives, and the only thing that keeps them swinging the ax is a sense of responsibility for the good that is being accomplished in the lives of others. This for me is one of the most altruistic and noble reasons to be motivated to create wealth. For some, their responsibility is not simply to have a job but to...

Wisdom knows that the way of the warrior cannot be walked alone. And while you may find yourself at some point to be a solitary source of hope needed to bring an entire city freedom, the wise know that wisdom was never gained alone. They also know that we were never meant to do life alone. Solomon reminds us, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”27 It’s somewhat ironic that these words from Solomon are almost exclusively quoted at weddings, when the actual context for saying these words has nothing to do with marriage. The context is actually about a man who has gained immeasurable wealth but finds himself without either a son or brother. He comes to the end of his life and realizes that his wealth is of no value because he has lived his life alone, disconnected from others. Life, Solomon reminds us, is filled with unexpected twists and turns. And with all we do not know about the future, what we can be certain of is that there will be struggles, challenges, and battles ahead. Life is a great quest, but even the hero knows it should not be faced alone.

While the warrior is invisible, they know that in the eyes of those that matter, they are fully seen. Fame’s great illusion is that you are known by the masses. Fame’s great danger is to be known by no one. The warrior does not need a crowd; they need a tribe. Though the warrior seeks to be invisible, they know that in the eyes of those that matter, they are fully seen. The warrior knows that wisdom gives them the power of invisibility.

The warrior lives in the paradox between service and greatness. The warrior is always first a servant. Contrary to popular perception, a life of service does not diminish the pursuit of greatness. The warrior must learn to walk with both humility and ambition. The warrior does not serve because they cannot lead; they know that a person cannot lead if they do not serve. Every day for the warrior is a pursuit of excellence. In the warrior there can be no hint of apathy or complacency. The warrior has too much honor to give anything less than their very best to their master. Every day is a competition against who they were yesterday.

The warrior is indifferent to fame while at the same time is relentlessly pursuing greatness. They see fame as what you do for yourself and greatness as what you do for others. Greatness is not the absence of humility; it is the absence of apathy. Just as you can be famous and not be great, you can be great and not famous. Although the warrior may gain great fame, it is never their ambition. Let fame be the food of lesser men.

It is not wrong to aspire to greatness. The warning here is to be careful to never confuse fame with greatness. Otherwise, you may be aspiring to what is not really greatness at all. Fame is what you do for yourself; greatness is what you do for others. Jesus has unveiled to us how greatness is achieved in his kingdom. To be great, you must serve. So don’t give up on your ambition to be great; instead, change your definition of what it means to be great and how greatness is achieved.

The warrior understands that ambition is a virtue equal to compassion or kindness or even humility. We are to do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but without ambition, we will find ourselves doing nothing and calling it humility. What we must do is bring the two universes of ambition and humility together since they were never intended to exist separately. We have a universe of thought around the concept of servanthood. When we think of servanthood, we attach words such as humility, compassion, sacrifice, and selflessness. These are the qualities by which we most readily understand Jesus to be defined.

So how will this play out in your own life? What is your field of play? Where have you been called to serve and aspire to greatness?

Just think how your life would look if you decided greatness was your standard of your life as a parent, as a spouse, or as an employer or employee. For too long we have allowed apathy to masquerade itself as humility. There is nothing humble about living apathetic lives. In the same way, we cannot live lives of passion without unlocking our greatness. Passion is the fuel of greatness, and love is the fuel of passion. When we love someone or something, we give them all of us. This is the elegant interconnection between servanthood and greatness. It is love that drives us to serve and love that drives us to greatness. This is why the two cannot be mutually exclusive. In the end, the one who serves is the one who is great, as they are the one who loves most profoundly.

The warrior cannot know their enemy if they do not know themselves. For the thousands of battles a warrior will face, their greatest battle comes when they truly see themselves. There is no territory more critical or difficult for you to take than that of your inner world. Your mind is also your minefield. To find the freedom to win your ultimate battle, you must fight to free your mind. Every battle that you will ever face in the outside world must first be won in your inner world. This is why the warrior understands that they must know themselves, that they must know their mind. Though you may never live in a world defined by peace and beauty, the warrior has already come to know this world. You will never find a world that you cannot see. You cannot create a world that you do not know. You can bring to the world only what you have already fought for.

If you find yourself living in a world where there is only cynicism, negativity, and distrust, you need to realize that it’s a world of your own making. There is a more beautiful world out there to be known, but you have to be able to see it. You have to want it. You must be willing to risk, to step outside of what you know, to live in a more extraordinary unknown.

We all know the old adage about why an elephant with all its power can be held in place by a small rope and peg. This is because elephants remember when they were babies and did not have the strength to pull the peg out of the ground. In short, elephants remain captive because their memories lie to them. They tell them that their past is their future—that what they experienced before will always be the reality that is before them.

Remember, your brain is inherently lazy. It will retreat to whatever previously set boundaries and patterns you have established from your past behavior. This is why it is so important to always try something new. People who travel have significantly higher IQs than people who do not. People who read authors with different perspectives become more open minded and empathetic. You can start with small things: try new foods, meet new people, learn a new language, consider a new idea, try a new approach. In other words, break out of the routine you have established for yourself and force your mind to engage the new. This will begin to unlock opportunities and possibilities. This will open your mind to the beauty and wonder...

So I said to the theologian, “Scripture tells us that we are to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. This seems to be an impossibility. There are just too many thoughts to take captive.” If you are having one thought every second, all you would do every second of your life is try to take that thought captive to the obedience of Christ. I asked him in that moment, “Is it possible that the only way to take thoughts captive is by the shaping of a mind-set or the creation of a worldview—that once you’ve shaped your worldview, then it guides your thoughts? That once you have established a mind-set, that mind-set filters your thoughts?”

I must have asked the question wrong, because I’ll never forget his response. He said, “Be careful. It sounds like you’re talking about mind control.” It sounds like you’re talking about mind control. I’ve come to the conviction that he was more right than he could have ever known. Your mind-set controls your mind, and this can be both good and bad. If your construction of reality has been shaped subconsciously by the influence of others and the experiences of your own life, you may be under the control of others far more than you realize.

In the most practical sense, what matters most is how you see life. Your internal mind-set designs your external world. If you believe the world is full of possibilities, it is. If you believe the world is filled with fascinating people, you will find them. If you believe the future is waiting to be created, you will create the future that is waiting for you. If you believe in love, you will find love. If you believe in hope, you will find hope. And the reason you will find them is because you will bring them with you. We don’t simply find the world we are looking for; we create it. This is why the warrior must know their mind. Your mind is where your future is formed. If your mind-set is formed by fear and anger or by greed and envy, that’s the only kind of world you will ever find. You will never fully understand that you found that world because you created it and compelled it to come. The warrior trains their mind to know the good and beautiful and true. This is the war they fight within themselves, and this is the world they fight to create. We have a warm word for living in the past: tradition. In the theological world, it’s known as orthodoxy, and in the world of science, it’s simply called truth.

You cannot take every thought captive one thought at a time. This would lead to madness. You can capture your thoughts only by proactively creating the filter through which those thoughts are processed. To begin to take every thought captive, you must ask yourself, Where did those thoughts come from, and how did they get into my head? The process of taking every thought captive begins by identifying the source of your thoughts and the filter through which those thoughts are sent out or allowed in.

We already know through our cognitive processes, such as selected sensory perception, that we are not aware of everything we see—that our brains filter out, without asking us permission, everything they assume is irrelevant for our survival. We see only what we need to see—except when we don’t. There are those moments in which critical information has been filtered out because it was wrongly perceived as irrelevant. The same holds true with the thoughts that rise out of our subconscious into our conscious minds. Your mind-set filters out information that disagrees with your view of reality. And if it doesn’t filter it out, it distorts it to conform to your view of reality. The thoughts that your mind-set allows to move quickly through to your conscious mind are the ones that reaffirm already held beliefs and convictions.

The same researchers who assess that we have up to sixty thousand thoughts a day also assess that up to 80 percent of those thoughts can be negative and repetitive.53 That would mean that forty-eight thousand negative thoughts come crashing into your brain every single day of your life. You may be aware of only half a dozen of them. Maybe that would be a great exercise in self-awareness. Take a moment and write down every negative thought that comes to mind. Then write down every positive thought that holds your attention. Which seem to most naturally come to the surface for you?

When the apostle Paul was writing to the Romans, he instructed them, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will”54 This may be one of the most commonly referred to passages in the Bible, yet we rarely know how to apply it. What does it mean to “conform to the pattern of this world”? Far too often this was denigrated to moralizing over a person’s actions, but that’s not at all that Paul was talking about. When the apostle speaks of not conforming to the pattern of this world, he’s actually confronting our mind-sets. There is a pattern of thinking that is formed inside a person who does not believe in God. It is interesting that Paul sees the process of breaking free from conforming patterns as the transformation of the renewing of our minds. The warrior must see the world from a new perspective. The warrior sees life from a different vantage point. The way of the warrior is the path to a new mind-set. The warrior has a new mind.

It is no small thing that Paul says that only with this new mind can you become a new you. So often the will of God is described as something to be received rather than something that must be perceived. Paul tells us that when our minds are renewed, it is then and only then that we are able to test and approve what the will of God is. When we see the world from this new mind, we will see that God’s intention for us is good and pleasing and perfect.

Imagine having an infinite number of futures right in front of you and each one of them is as easily accessible as the others. All you have to do is choose one. The challenge is that all of them are invisible to you and are perceivable only by the material that you bring into the moment. Historically, we have been taught to think of the will of God from a linear perspective. His will becomes more of a tightrope that we either walk on or fall off of. It’s this kind of limited view of the future that causes us to speak in terms of God’s perfect will and God’s permissive will. Once you have fallen off the tightrope of his perfect will, all you are left with is a merciful version of a divine plan B. The future is more beautifully complex than that. It makes perfect sense that an infinite God would have an infinite number of beautiful futures awaiting us. In fact, one of the most reassuring promises in Scripture is that God can create the most beautiful future out of our imperfection and brokenness. When Paul says that we will be able to test and approve God’s good, perfect will for our lives, we think of one path, one line, one road. What if the future is far more complex and beauti...

Your mind-set is the filter through which you see your potential futures. If you enter into life with optimism and hope, you will see an endless number of futures filled with optimism and hope. You will see possibilities and opportunities all around you. You will see wonder and beauty. You won’t see just one choice that could lead to a more beautiful future. The only thing that may overwhelm you or make you feel paralyzed is that you have so many good choices from which to choose. Wouldn’t it be an amazing life if you had to keep saying no to extraordinary choices—to an alternative and beautiful future? So often we act as if there are only two choices for the future: a good one and a destructive one, the one that God chooses for us and the one we choose for ourselves. I think the future is much more like the garden, where humanity’s story began. We tend to focus on the two trees, but the garden was full of trees. One of the first commands of the Bible was for Adam and Eve to eat freely. They were allowed to eat from the fruit of any tree in the garden except for one. Most of the time, we act as if there is only one good choice and an endless number of choices that will destroy our lives. This is not how the story of the world began, and this is not how the story continues.