in pursuit of...

Every year in the United States of America, there is 18.8 million people that suffer from some kind of depressive illness each year – that is a staggering amount of people for the approximant three hundred million people living there. In the book, Peace Shall Destroy Many, Thom Wiens is searching for peace in his life – contrasting with the movie, the Pursuit of Happyness, where Christopher Gardner is searching for happiness in his life. Today we are all searching for something to fill a void in our life – just like Christopher and Thom.
Thom found peace in not questioning the roots of Wapiti because whenever he did, it brought him trouble and his anger raged. The community of Wapiti thought that peace was found in keeping the traditions of their past and not changing the future because if you change the traditions you will end up with people questioning the faith and the roots of what they believed. “He was at that point again: he had been told the truth. The church—the Deacon—they know. Believe; questions were often simplest if not answered” (18). The church did not want the people of Wapiti to question the faith, in anyway. So instead, they tried to cover it up by keeping a strict and secluded life. Thom did not think as the community did and he began to think about the traditions of the church and why the church had them in place. The example of Low German being spoken in the churches was so that no one else could attend like the Métis, or was it just a simple tradition that could be changed? Thom and Pastor Lepp have a conversation about the principles of their beliefs. Thom states, “The first step is obedience to the fundamental teachings of Christ. The second, putting these teaching into practice…Then how, for example, are we acting particularly as Christ’s disciples by using only German in our services” (87). At the end of the book, Thom simply stopped questing and just did, making his life easier.
Christopher found happiness from the little things in life, the things that we often take for granted, he had the mentality that if you want something you had to go get it and no matter how hard you tried in the end you will get what you want if you wanted it bad enough. To his son he said, “You got a dream, you gotta protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they wanna tell you that you can’t do it. You want something? Go get it Period.” Christopher lived his life this way always, he wanted a job, to provide for his family and make his son feel like he had everything in the world. But Christopher’s son needed to trust him in order for him to find his place of happiness. ”Christopher: You gotta trust me, all right? Christopher Jr.: I trust you. Christopher: ‘cause I’m getting a better job”. This is where Christopher found his happiness – through his son and through his job, and living his dreams, so that he could properly provide for his son because part of him having happiness was making sure that his son was also happy. Christopher did not care what other people thought of him – he was too focused on pursuing something that he needed to get through life. Intern; “hey, you’re missing a shoe!” Christopher: “Oh, hey, thanks.” Christopher did not care that he was missing a shoe because his shoe was not going to stop him from getting the job that would make him happy.
Both Thom and Christopher found their peace and happiness from not making the same mistakes they did in the past and living for the future. In Thom’s case, it was his anger – wherever his anger came up in the book, he was not at peace. A good example of this would be near the beginning of the book where they are playing at the baseball game and many thoughts go through Thom’s head. “It burst in Thom like an explosion: he made no futile gesture for first. All he knew was his flaming mind and his yelling “interference! Interference! He hit my bat with his glove, the—“. Thom kept his anger inside of him most of the time, but it is something that he would struggle with for the rest of his life and almost keep him from his place of peace. Christopher’s struggle was to not make the same mistake that his father did – he, unlike his father, wanted to be there for his son every step of the way and be the best thing a father could ask for. “I met my father for the first time when I was 28 years old. I made up my mind that when I had children, my children where going to know who their father was.” They found that one thing that was their weakness and made it stronger; so no mistakes to ruin their pursuit. Christopher and Thom had two very different lives but when it comes down to it all, the basis of their lives are the same. They were both in pursuit of something that may just be a state of being and something that may not actually exist as a thing. In the Bible, Job states, “Remember, O God, that my life is but a breath; my eyes will never see happiness again” (7:7). Job knows that in order to life live, a person has to have happiness, he has lost everything but still has trust in God, that is were he finds his place of happiness.
What are we looking for? Where is our place where we find peace and happiness? In today’s society, everyone has a “void in their life” – many people fill it with drugs, sex, or alcohol – but in the end that just brings you now where and you are still left with some hole in your heart. As Christians, we know that we find happiness and peace through Christ Jesus and knowing that he will be there for us, in times of sorrow, grief, and pain. “To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God.” (Ecclesiastes 2:26) Because we have hope through Jesus, we do not have to have a void – we know that there is something beyond this sinful earth – and that is our hope for living.
“It was right then that I stated thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that?” (Christopher Gardner, The Pursuit of Happyness). There are stages of our lives where we do not have happiness where we are in pursuit of it, but once we find it, we got it – then we are in the happiness stage. The part of Christopher’s life was the pursuit part and at the end of the movie he had found everything he needed –complete and udder happiness.
In Peace Shall Destroy Many, it is against the Mennonite religion to fight in wars because they want to bring peace by isolation. “According to Christ’s teachings, peace is not a circumstance but a state of being. The Christ follower has the peace of reconciliation with God and therefore the peace of conscious fellowship with God through God in Christ” Thom’s brother who was in the war, found peace over in Europe fighting, stating just a Christopher did that peace/happiness was not a circumstance but yet still a state of being. How we supposed to find these things just as Christopher and Thom’s brother did? It seems as if people with nothing, seem to find happiness and peace in the things they do have – its like they have everything they need and need no more – because they are the people who have found their place of hope, happiness, and of peace. In the western world, we need to find happiness from somewhere else because we take for granted everything that places like those that would not take our everyday things for granted. Therefore, we go searching for love, happiness, hope, and peace in all the wrong places. There is one true hope, one true love, one true happiness, one true peace, and there is only one God –Jesus Christ.