How do you get a race that has only ever known war—one that God wiped out once before because it “was corrupt in God’s sight” and “filled with violence” (Gen 6:11)—to finally stop fighting and live peaceably with one another? How do you finally succeed in the impossible ideal of world peace? How do you finally stop the nations and politicians from tearing each other to shreds? The answer, in one word, is Christmas.

What first comes to mind when you hear the word “Christmas”? For many of us, we imagine music, decorations, and traditions. Others think more subjectively about feelings of warmth and joy. Of course, for multitudes, Christmas brings the sad reminder of loss. For the church, Christmas should cause reflection on the meaning of the baby born of a virgin, lying in a manger, and wrapped in swaddling cloths. It’s a season of gathering to remember God’s promises fulfilled and the joy of hope eternal.

If the thought of Christmas brings “war” to mind, then it’s probably the culture war. Sadly for many, the “War on Christmas” means responding grumpily when the cashier says, “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” We’ve got important battles to win.

But Christmas has everything to do with real war, like the violent and bloody one being fought between Russia and Ukraine right now. War occurs because human beings are enslaved to our passions. It is the expression of unfulfilled human desire. We want something and other people stand in our way, so we eliminate them (Jam 4:1-2). We kill in the name of getting what we want—whether land, money, power, or glory. We would rather shed innocent blood than withhold something we want from ourselves. While it is impossible to know for sure, some estimate that as many as one billion people have been killed in war in human history. Human desire is a powerful killer.

No generation has ever experienced life without war. Sure, some eras are relatively peaceful for some people in some nations. However, wars and threats of war are a constant feature of the human experience. Calls for “world peace” manifest utopian illusions. To be human is to know war.

Reflecting on the ubiquity of war in human history helps us respond appropriately to Isaiah’s radical vision in Isaiah 2:1-4. The word God gives the prophet ought to astound us.

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