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

by Erwin Raphael McManus

it is not God who created humanity to live in violence, but rather it is humanity that chooses violence. That is our history. That is our present, both as a species and as individuals. We would have a history of even more wars if God did not exist. Our past is one of conflict, of division, of greed and power—a constant battle where nation rises up against nation, and brother rises up against brother.

The language of God as a warrior came to exist because he intervened for the defenseless. He heard the cries of a people battling slavery and came to set them free. So yes, it was a declaration of war against injustice, oppression, and inhumanity.

We are people of war because we are a people at war. All the violence we see in the world is but a small glimpse of the violence that churns in us. This war that rages within us eventually boils over and sets the world on fire.

Our only hope for societal peace is inner peace, and inner peace will not come without a battle. The struggle is real. The battle lines have been drawn, and it is a battle for our souls. I chose the language of The Way of the Warrior not because I desire to romanticize war but because I hope to help us find a pathway to peace. This war must be won one person at a time, one heart at a time, one life at a time. This, by the way, is the way of Jesus. This is how he came to bring peace on earth.

He had absolute confidence that his revolution would prevail. He knew the way to peace. He understood the source of all wars. He knew it all began in the human heart.

Inner peace does not come by accident, nor by desire. Inner peace is a journey toward self-mastery. The way of the warrior is a discipline of the soul. It is a journey toward enlightenment. And ultimately it is the outcome of a relationship with the Creator of the universe. The world in which Jesus lived never knew peace, yet no matter how hard the powerful tried, they could never steal his peace. It should not surprise us that it was an act of violence that became for us our way to peace. The cross points the way, but we must choose the path. The Bible speaks of darkness and light, reminding us there is a war that rages within us all.

You cannot give up on yourself when God considers you worth the fight. The cross upon which Jesus died will never be known as a symbol of defeat or a declaration of surrender. The cross will be forever remembered, long after time ceases to exist, not just as a declaration of the one who stands victorious but as a promise that in the end war will surrender to peace. It is the way of Jesus that is the ancient path to inner peace. His life is the way of the warrior.

all the wars that have ever been waged from the beginning of time were first born in a person’s heart.

We have a history of war because our souls are at war. We have conflicts because our hearts are conflicted. Every war, every conflict, every act of violence exists because our souls rage. Our only hope for peace is to win the battle within. Every war against another is a war that never should have been fought. It should have been won long before. It should have been won from within. This is our first battle. The war to end all wars is the battle for the human heart. This is the war we must win. To know peace is the way of the warrior. It is impossible to ignore that God is often associated with wars. Certainly the people of Israel have a history of war as well as one of faith. We might conclude that the God of Scripture is a God of war, yet the opposite is true. God is a God of peace. We are the ones who brought war to the human story. And since then, God has been fighting for us to find our way back to peace.

the story of humanity can be marked by the weapons we have forged.

An outside observer might say that we are creatures of violence for whom peace is simply the language of poets and philosophers. Yet the way of the warrior is not about refining our skills for war; it is about choosing the path of peace.

human story is marked by envy, jealousy, greed, violence, and bloodshed. There will never be peace on earth until there is peace in us. This is why the way of the warrior must begin here. To find your strength you must find your peace, for the path to inner strength is inner peace.

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.

Worry is an act of faith. It is a deep-seated belief in worst-case scenarios. Worry is not rooted in reality but does affect our reality.

I’ve also found irony in these words of Paul: “Be anxious for nothing.”6 I know that what he means is that we should not allow anything to make us anxious, but the truth is that it is usually nothing that is making us anxious. Our anxiety, our distress, our worry—when stripped to its very essence—is rooted in nothing, or at least in nothing we can control. Paul’s solution, of course, is to be anxious in nothing, but in all things, through prayer, we should bring our thanksgiving to God.7 It seems he’s telling us that anxiety comes when we try to control things that are out of our control. We become anxious because we haven’t learned to trust.

This is an important contrast. First he says to us, “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” but then he says to us, “In this world you will have trouble.” We have no control over the reality that in this world we will have trouble, but we have control over whether we decide to allow our hearts to be troubled. He makes the promise that though there will be trouble in this world, we can take heart, for he has overcome the world.

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

The path of peace comes only when we’re willing to walk into our own darkness and face our own shadows. We must face the very things that steal our peace from us whether they are born out of our fear or our doubts.

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.

The path of peace comes not from the outside in but from the inside out. Here’s how Isaiah described the path toward peace: “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.”12 This is the path to mindfulness. This is the way to peace of mind. Not a journey to nothingness, but a journey to fullness. It is God who gives us perfect peace. More specifically, it is Jesus who has come to bring us this peace that our souls long for.