I probably should not even write this blog post… I mean who am I?
I am torn… well, here it goes…
I am having a hard time with this… the religious and political fed violence that plagues our world. We saw it this week with the unrest and attacks on American interests in Egypt and Libya. Let me toss a couple of numbers around:
America lost nearly 3000 people on September 11th, 2001
Conflicting numbers put the Iraqi deaths at over 100,000 during the Gulf War
In the crusades that fell between 1095 and 1291 A.D. there are accounts of 1-1.5 million dead between Muslims and Christians – some accounts peg a number over 5 million when you take into account the innocent and collateral damage associated with such a war.
That is fucked up….
I have written that religion causes more problems that it creates. Still, I believe everyone has the right to find their spiritual center (and pursuit of happiness) and organized religion was clearly invented to attempt to achieve just that – some sort of authentic and spiritual connect with the Universe. Hey I get it; American foreign policy is not always morally sound and contributes to acts of incomprehensible violence like 9/11. Such violence still is not justified. This weeks violence is not justified over a stupid movie. It is deeper than just American influence in the Middle East. As the crusades show us, this hatred goes back thousands of years. How is this evolution? It isn’t.
It’s the violence that bewilders me. I was fortunate and experienced an awakening years ago that allowed me to write the Responsive Universe. Do I have all the answers? Absolutely not! But I know deep down in my heart that killing people in the name of a religion is wrong. No one is going to heaven or getting truck loads of virgins by fighting over oil interests, ramming planes into buildings, making hateful movies and scaling consulate walls to kill those inside that represent a different god and culture. It is just fundamentally wrong to the core of our being as conscious beings. I don’t care what one book says and what a cleric holding another book says. When you kill innocent people in the name of God, you are killing the love, wisdom and energy that is human. If you think killing is justified by god – YOU ARE WRONG!
Love, wisdom and energy is the bond of humanity and yet we desecrate the only true connection we have globally.
I don’t have the answers… I just have the frustration and sorrow for the people needlessly lost in the name of God… Is this God? Are we so ignorant and misguided that we would pick up arms and indiscriminately kill in the name of God…yes we are.. Yes they are…
I am not an anti-war activist. I believe in defending our borders and interests abroad with the best moral intentions. Is America doing that? Everyone has a different opinion, but until we come together as a world and not the fracture mess we are today – well, humans will never evolve into anything worth celebrating.
John C. Bader
If I were a betting man, and I am, I would argue that organized religion is a positive force in our world. I have no evidence for this, but for little pieces of kind acts that I see daily in our lives. They don’t appear in the headlines, but rather on the back page. Religion has much to say about how one treats another; trouble is, it has basic fundamentals that followers are willing to die for (along with me and you and other innocent bystanders). When you have fundamentals, you have fundamentalists.
How to limit the killing? The popular answer is to pick up a rifle to defend basic principles. Maybe the real answer is to pick up pen and ink as you have done.
Thanks for your thoughts and opinions, John.
great comment – thanks!
Please keep in mind, I am a Pagan / Heathen, commenting on what these days seems a largely Abrahamic issue (but is in reality a very human issue).
The gods go through the trouble to create a world, and life to populate it. Some humans go through the trouble to ‘sacrifice’ the gods’ creations, or kill in the name of some various god: the gods created what we are destroying for a reason, but we shove these creations back in the gods’ faces with sometimes not even a ceremonious ‘Here-ya-go!’, have the audacity to perform this insult to the gods in the gods’ own names (or rather, the names we have given them); and later speculate about what rewards await us in whatever heaven we aspire to go to.
I think Jesus said it best in Matt. 7:22-23: “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”
If one truly believes their god(s) to be omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent, how can one truly believe him or herself capable of: 1. understanding their god’s will; 2. determining the necessity of carrying out an act that said god(s) could not easily carry out on their own; 3. forcing their way into their aspired heaven by a heinous act of destruction?
I believe these kinds of attacks have less to do with religion, and more to do with fear and blood lust. I believe the perpetrators are, in claiming religious motivation, trying to shift the blame onto the shoulders of an unassailable god and are thus not religious people, but religious predators.
i agree with you fallingleaf. I think the religion is an excuse to play out plain ole simple hatred. It begins with self-hatred and ends up manifesting in the death of what is perceived to be another. People kill because they do not know themselves, therefore they have no clue about anyone else. When we finally understand that there is no “other” and what we do to anyone else we are doing to ourselves, maybe we will quit killing each other. But then I tend to be optimistic.
I think the oft-cited adage about guns applies here: Religion doesn’t kill people, but it’s what the people do with their interpretation of their religion.
I question the wisdom of our government to be continually financing countries that do not respect us and demonstrate no intent to maintain a sensible co-existence with mutual benefits. Cut the money, strengthen our own defenses, and then talk about relations. The talk is pretty ineffective when the enemy has their pockets lined with our cash–and yes, I said “enemy”.
Only the unconscious, ruled by fearful ego, are capable of these acts and the many other acts of cruelty inflicted by humans on other humans and other species. As we awaken to our true essence, such things are inconceivable. This why the awakening of humanity is so important. We can’t choose or create awakening for others, but the more we focus on our own awakening, the more our awakened consciousness touches others and the world around us.
It can be challenging at times not to get into judgment and resistance because our own ego gets activated by what we see. It thrives on creating separation with judgments of right and wrong and on making itself superior. The fearful ego pulls us right back into unconsciousness, and out of the powerful presence of our true essence. We can shift back by blessing, rather than cursing, that which has upset us. Blessing supports transformation into a true expression of consciousness. Cursing, judging, and resisting supports the dysfunction.