Peace is not a mood. It is not a hashtag, a worship set vibe, or a warm feeling you manufacture while the world burns in the background.
Written by a Protestant layperson, not a platformed pastor, Peace in the World, Peace in Ourselves is a blunt, deeply hopeful field manual for Christians who refuse to choose between global realism and honest faith.
Across thirty chapters that move from war zones to living rooms, Dustin Gross confronts the hard questions: What does Scripture actually mean by peace? Why does violence pay so well? How do we tell the truth about Ukraine, Gaza, failed states, nationalism, corruption, and information warfare without either baptizing our tribe or drowning in despair? And what does any of that have to do with anxiety, burnout, spiritual numbness, and the quiet wars inside our own heads?
This is not a memoir. Not a sentimentality project. Not a think-piece padded for people who like the sound of their own outrage.
Instead, you get:
- A clear, Bible-rooted vision of shalom as wholeness, justice, and public repair, not polite silence. - A ruthless breakdown of how modern violence actually works-money, arms, propaganda, fatigue-and why Christians are not allowed to look away. - Region-by-region snapshots that keep an international lens without slipping into voyeurism or propaganda. - A second-half deep dive into interior peace: attention, conscience, limits, lament, forgiveness, Sabbath, and sustainable resistance to despair. - Concrete practices, reflection questions, and a full study guide designed for churches, small groups, and stubborn individuals who want to build something better than vibes.
Gross writes as a fellow struggler in the pews: plain language, dry humor, zero patience for clichés, and a fierce belief that peacemaking is the ordinary expectation of people who claim to follow Jesus.
If you are exhausted by shallow optimism and bored with spiritualized doom, this book hands you something harder and better: a way to live as a peacemaker whose faith can survive both the news and the mirror.
Blessed are the peacemakers. Time to act like it.
