Peacemakers, Not Just Peacekeepers.
One early morning, I was jolted awake by the cries of my baby. Once I put him back to sleep after he drank milk, I was too antsy to fall back a sleep. It was probably 4am or so. I felt like maybe Heavenly Father had a message for me, so I decided to go into my scriptures.
I opened up to Matthew 5:9: “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.”
And I sat staring at the verse a long time.
And slowly, as my gears started moving, I wanted to start searching things up.
My bachelor’s degree is in rhetoric. It gets complicated to explain what all the rhetoric department at Cal does—but it is much more than just English studies. One of the nerdy skills I’ve acquired from my degree though, is wanting to know official definitions, etymology, and functions.
My first thought, almost always, when I'm reading the Bible is: What did this word originally mean?
Which immediately sent me down a linguistic rabbit hole.
Matthew was written in Greek, where the word translated as “peacemakers” is eirēnopoioi—literally, people who make peace.
But Jesus Himself likely taught primarily in Aramaic, and He was teaching within a Jewish world. That made me curious about shalom, the Hebrew concept we translate as “peace.”
So I did what we all do when we want to learn something in 2026, and I Googled it.
In “Shalom: Peace in Hebrew,” Dr. Aviezer Ravitzky writes:
“The Hebrew word for peace is shalom (שָׁלוֹם), which fundamentally means wholeness, completeness, and soundness. In the Bible, the word shalom is most commonly used to refer to a state of affairs, one of well-being, tranquility, prosperity, and security, circumstances unblemished by any sort of defect. Shalom is a blessing, a manifestation of divine grace.”
So often in church settings, we mistake peacemaking for peacekeeping. The fact that the Hebrew word for peace means wholeness, completeness, and soundness immediately rang bells for me.
Christ was a peacemaker, 1000% true.
Christ, however, was not a peacekeeper.
And suddenly the word maker started to matter to me.
Peacekeeping and peacemaking aren't necessarily the same thing.
Peacekeeping can be concerned with maintaining the absence of conflict.
But if peace is something that is made—and if the peace we're pursuing is something more substantial than everyone simply getting along—then sometimes making peace might actually require disrupting the appearance of it.
Peacekeeping is concerned with keeping things calm. Peacemaking is concerned with making things whole.
Those are not always the same thing.
Sometimes, making peace will create discomfort before it creates peace.
Sometimes it requires telling the truth.
Sometimes it requires having the conversation you've been avoiding.
Sometimes it requires repentance.
Sometimes it requires forgiveness.
Sometimes it requires a boundary.
Sometimes it requires admitting that something is not, in fact, okay—even when everyone involved would really prefer to keep pretending that it is.
And suddenly I started thinking about the life of Christ differently.
Jesus was absolutely a peacemaker. But He was not walking around making sure everyone was comfortable with Him.
He confronted hypocrisy. He challenged established ways of thinking. He disappointed people. He said things that caused people to leave. He had compassion for people without always giving them what they wanted from Him.
There were moments in Christ's ministry that were profoundly uncomfortable.
And yet, His entire mission was one of reconciliation.
That matters to me because I think a lot of us—especially women, and perhaps especially Christian women—have learned to associate goodness with our ability to keep everybody okay.
Don't upset anyone.
Don't make it awkward.
Be the bigger person.
Let it go.
Be understanding.
Forgive.
Keep the family together.
Don't be confrontational.
And individually, some of those things can be wise and deeply Christlike.
But they can also become an excuse to avoid truth.
There is a difference between being a peaceful person and being a person who is terrified of conflict.
There is a difference between forgiveness and pretending you weren't hurt.
There is a difference between patience and having no boundaries.
There is a difference between being slow to anger and being unwilling to acknowledge anger at all.
There is a difference between considering someone else's feelings and making their feelings the authority over your choices.
And there is a very big difference between reconciliation and keeping everyone comfortable.
Sometimes what looks like peace on the outside is only being maintained because somebody has agreed to disappear on the inside.
That isn't wholeness.
And if shalom points us toward wholeness, completeness, and soundness, then I think we have to ask a harder question than, How do I keep the peace?
We have to ask:
What would it look like to make peace here?
“If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.”
I love the qualification there.
If it be possible.
As much as lieth in you.
In other words, there is a part of peace that belongs to me. And apparently, there is also a part that doesn't.
So what actually does lie within me?
I can be honest.
I can be humble.
I can apologize when I've done something wrong.
I can repent.
I can forgive.
I can listen.
I can examine my own motives.
I can choose not to retaliate.
I can communicate clearly.
I can repair what is mine to repair.
I can extend compassion toward someone even when I disagree with them.
I can do my best to approach another person with love.
But I cannot make someone understand me.
I cannot make someone agree with me.
I cannot make someone forgive me.
I cannot make someone apologize.
I cannot make someone change.
And perhaps hardest of all for some of us:
I cannot make someone be okay with a decision I am allowed to make.
That last one has been a particularly difficult lesson for me.
Because if I have learned to measure whether I've made a “good” decision by whether everyone around me is happy with it, then someone else's disappointment doesn't just feel uncomfortable.
It feels like evidence.
Maybe I did something wrong.
Maybe I was selfish.
Maybe I should explain myself better.
Maybe I need to fix this.
Maybe I need to change my mind.
And suddenly, I am no longer simply considering another person's feelings. I am using their feelings as the measuring stick for my righteousness.
I don't think that's what peacemaking asks of us.
Because there are moments when doing everything that “lieth in you” still does not produce agreement.
There are moments when you can be kind and somebody will still be hurt.
There are moments when you can apologize sincerely and somebody will not forgive you.
There are moments when you can tell the truth lovingly and somebody will prefer that you hadn't said it.
There are moments when you can set a reasonable boundary and somebody will think the boundary itself is unloving.
There are moments when reconciliation requires two willing people—and you only have stewardship over one of them.
Peacemaking asks me to take responsibility for my part. Peacekeeping tempts me to take responsibility for yours, too.
And those are very different burdens.
Which raises another question I've been sitting with:
Why are so many of us—particularly women—so quick to pick up the second one?
Why does another person's disappointment feel like something we need to resolve?
Why can saying “no” produce hours of guilt?
Why do we sometimes call it Christlike to tolerate something that is quietly making us disappear?
Why can it feel more virtuous to betray ourselves than to disappoint somebody else?
I don't think the answer is simply that women are people-pleasers.
I think many of us have been taught—sometimes explicitly, sometimes subtly—that being good means being agreeable, accommodating, self-sacrificing, forgiving, patient, pleasant, and easy to be around.
And again: those qualities aren't the problem.
Service isn't the problem.
Sacrifice isn't the problem.
Forgiveness isn't the problem.
Considering other people isn't the problem.
Christ Himself embodied all of those things.
The problem comes when we begin confusing Christlike love with self-erasure.
Because Jesus served people.
He sacrificed for people.
He forgave people.
He loved people perfectly.
And He still allowed people to be disappointed in Him.
Christlike love is not the same as being liked.
Let’s take a look at the rich young ruler in Mark.
“Then Jesus beholding him loved him…” Christ then tells him what he lacks, and the man “went away grieved: for he had great possessions.” The point for your article: Jesus Christ loved him and allowed him to leave disappointed. (Mark 10:21-22)
Love did not require managing his reaction.
In John 6:60, 66-67, after a difficult teaching, some disciples say, “This is an hard saying; who can hear it?” Then: “From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.” Jesus doesn't scramble after them and soften the teaching so they'll stay. Instead He asks the Twelve, “Will ye also go away?”
In Matthew 23:27–28, Jesus tells the scribes and Pharisees they are “like unto whited sepulchres”—beautiful outwardly while inwardly corrupt. The Peace-Bringer Himself tells uncomfortable truths. He wasn’t creating random conflict for conflict’s sake but He surely isn’t preserving superficial harmony at the expense of truth.
In Luke 5, Crowds gather to hear and be healed, but “he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed.” The needs of the people did not mean that Jesus Christ remained continually available to them at all costs.
“Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life…”
Even Heavenly Father honors agency.
he Book of Mormon says it plainly: “whosoever will come may come … and whosoever will not come the same is not compelled to come” (Alma 42:27).
Think about that for a second.
God Himself does not accomplish reconciliation by controlling our response to His invitation.
He invites.
He teaches.
He loves.
He corrects.
He forgives.
He makes reconciliation possible.
And He still allows us to choose.
So why have I sometimes believed that loving another person means I am responsible for making sure they choose peace too?
Maybe that is part of what I had misunderstood about being a peacemaker.
A peacemaker is not someone who successfully keeps everyone happy.
A peacemaker is not someone who prevents every conflict, absorbs every discomfort, or makes herself small enough that nobody has a reason to be upset with her.
Peacemaking asks something of me, certainly.
It asks me to be honest about my own behavior. To repent when I am wrong. To forgive. To speak truth with love. To seek understanding. To repair what I have broken. To extend grace. To choose charity when resentment would be easier.
But it does not ask me to do another person's part.
I cannot repent for someone else.
I cannot forgive on someone else's behalf.
I cannot make someone understand.
I cannot force reconciliation.
I cannot control whether someone approves of my choices.
And I cannot create wholeness by sacrificing my own.
“If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.”
As much as lieth in you.
Do your part.
And then allow other people the dignity—and sometimes the discomfort—of doing theirs.
I think back to myself sitting there at four in the morning, tired, probably still half-awake, staring at one little word in Matthew:
Peacemakers.
I had always thought being a peaceful person meant being someone who didn't create conflict.
Now I wonder if peacemaking requires something much braver than that.
Sometimes peace is gentle.
Sometimes peace looks like forgiveness.
Sometimes it looks like an apology.
And sometimes peace looks like finally telling the truth, setting the boundary, having the uncomfortable conversation, or allowing someone to be disappointed in you without immediately deciding you have done something wrong.
Maybe the question isn't simply:
How do I keep the peace?
Maybe it's:
What is mine to do in the making of peace—and what was never mine to carry?
