Violence exists at various levels, personal, communal or national. By reducing or stopping violence, one can show succinctly that violence is unacceptable. The reason that violence is widespread in society is the belief that violence (at least the domestic one, or capital punishment) is acceptable. Religion should play an active role in stemming all forms of violence, including wars.

Beyond direct violence is structural violence which creates and upholds the structure that promotes or justifies exploitation systematically and leads to poverty, sickness, and human rights violation. Structural violence is ingrained in the current economic, political and judiciary systems that massively inflict suffering on people. Religion should play a role in stemming structural violence.

To achieve that, these values are indispensable, namely, compassion toward those in suffering, courage to face all difficulties, wisdom to understand profound causes, and self-awareness to overcome conceit, attachment to ideas, and craving. All these moral forces can strongly inspire believers to take on difficult task as shown in history. On the contrary, however, religion has recently been used to propel killings among believers. The time is ripe for religion to drive the believers to sacrifice themselves to protect lives of others and bring peace to the world through compassion, courage, wisdom, and self-awareness stemming from their deep personal transformation. There is no other way for culture of peace to prevail the world.