"So I hope you're not alarmed about the bombing," our host said to us within two minutes of arriving at her home in Belfast.

There was a long pause. "What bombing?," I asked. We had been flying to Ireland and traveling up from Dublin the last two days.

"Oh, two days ago a prison officer's car was blown up when he was coming home from work. The 'New IRA' is taking credit."

Everyone looked around the room a little nervously, but our host was nonchalant. "So if you see a few armored cars in the street, don't be worried. It's just because of that."

This began our time in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where a group from our worshiping community for college students traveled to study the theology of reconciliation, "The Troubles" between Catholic Republicans and Protestant Loyalists, and to see what the Church is like in the most devotedly Protestant region in the world. Needless to say, while The Troubles officially ended with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants is not complete. Sometimes less than a mile divides new gleaming commercial and shopping centers from barbed-wire "peace walls" that physically and visibly separate adherents of the two Christian traditions. There are monuments of iconic Northern Irish culture blocks away from two-story murals of men in ski masks poised with AK-47s. It was clear that reconciliation was not a one-time event that brought peace, much less closure, to everyone.

Just as strange was the realization that Christians, at least those identifying as Christians, were perpetrators of not just one side, but of both sides of the the violence. The late neo-atheist Christopher Hitches used The Troubles as damning evidence of his thesis that “religion poisons everything.” And Hitchens may well still be right about that. Religion, perhaps best described as “any system of human-made rules, doctrines, or institutions to reach, please, or become God,” does seem to prey on our insecurities and puff up our pride. Religion, if not the sole culprit, certainly contributed to poisoning Belfast.

Walking through "no-mans land" at the largest peace wall in Belfast.

Yet, if people who identified with following a rabbi who taught non-violent resistance under an imperial occupation failed to see the inconsistency in their behavior then, today those like Hitchens often do their best to ignore the implications of the reconciliation that went on in Belfast. There were also people from the beginning of The Troubles, far more interested in following Jesus Christ than a backing a religious denomination, who would risk their lives for over 30 years for peace. Our group visited a major gathering place for these kind of people, a Christian peace center on the northern coast called Corrymeela. This mustard seed community of Catholics and Protestants spent years housing political refugees, holding secret meetings between paramilitaries, and helping victims and perpetrators of terrorism heal from the trauma.

As a result of this difficult, gracious, and beautiful work, their members were regularly threatened. Some were assassinated. Why did they put themselves through that? Not so much because of religion. Very much because of Jesus. Ultimately, the work of the Corrymeela community was instrumental in political peace in Northern Ireland.

Today, a number of the local campus ministries and churches in Belfast are being intentional about pursuing Christian unity. I expected the most devoutly Protestant city in the world to fuel the nastier side-effects of religion, but I was surprised to find just how little sense of competition there was between Christian denominations. The emphasis, by and large, was on Jesus.

Since coming back, people have kept asking what we learned while we were there. The amount of information we took in, combined with how many different types of people we met, makes it impossible to distill our experience to a singular lesson. However, what has stood out to me is how the gospel – this “good news” about a God-man that lives a life we should have lived, dies a death we deserved to die, and defeats death itself so that anyone can experience new life with God – provides the world with the greatest and most complete example of reconciliation.* This explains also how Christians could kill Christians in the name of Christianity. In Northern Ireland, the Christians who practiced religion were prone to create conflict. The Christians who practiced the gospel were prone to create peace. So while eventually there came about a secular reconciliation process by politicians, it was one fraught with practical and less-than-ideal tradeoffs. It stopped most of the violence, but it didn't mend hearts. The peace walls are not yet relics of a bygone era.

Yet the reconciliation provided in the death of resurrection of Jesus Christ was the most perfect form of it in human history. To understand how God is reconciling the world to God's self through Christ provides a paradigm of reconciliation that many irreligious and religious people simply aren't aware of. Religion can indeed be poisonous. If we’re honest, human nature can be poisonous. But the way of Jesus can be the life-saving antidote. We, even students, can bring that understanding to a world that settles for incomplete peace deals and barbed-wire peace walls. We can be, even our own communities, the ambassadors of reconciliation.

*For a great and relevant scripture to meditate on, look up 2 Corinthians 5:11-21. I won’t give it to you. You can do it.