May it be God’s will that his presence lives in the work of your hands. –Moses
Good morning Gentle Reader.
Consider this: Religion is Not the cause of conflict in our world.
Imagine that Religion is a fault-line and we take sides on either side of this line – a border if you will; at times it is more like a no-man’s land that both separates the ‘sides’ and is a place of great danger – and opportunity – for those who might enter it. The formation of this fault-line is serious stuff. However, this line-boundary becomes absolutized when conflict – especially political conflict – is religionized.
When we choose to do this then what are virtues – compromise, the search for understanding, the willingness to listen and learn and to embrace one another as fully human beings created in God’s image – become, in Religion, vices.
Religion is adulterated. Religion is no longer a pathway to conflict-resolution. Religion becomes conflict-intensification. This transformation is not new; we humans have been engaging in it for thousands of years – we are, as you know, at our best imperfect beings. What is new for us, the post-modern human beings, is that technology enables us to up the ante on all fronts – all is intensified; and we are good at intensifying stuff.
As a consequence, we are living in what I have come to call a religious fundamentalism of hate. What we need is a counter religious fundamentalism of love [think: love, care, compassion, understanding, empathy, reconciliation and healing – all religious traditions and many humanist and philosophic traditions continue to call us to love one another as we have been loved].
Aristotle reminds us that we become our thoughts. Gandhi counsels us to become the change we want to see in our world. God reminds us to love one another as I have loved you.
Why do we continue to build walls and create no-man’s lands? Why do we continue to choose to embrace the darker angels of our nature? Why do we continue to choose to see the splinter in the other’s eye and ignore the log in our own? What helps us engage, guilt-free, in life-depleting actions and ignore life-nourishing actions that we could take?
Ironically, we do all of this – and more – because we have become rooted in fear. We have become our fear. We are fear and we are fear-full. Fear has become our identity and who wants to give up his/her/their identity. It seems all faith-traditions see themselves as victims AND (remember, Gentle Reader, there is always an ‘AND’) ironically, all faith-traditions are perpetrators and persecutors.
What fears enable us to build and sustain the walls, the boundaries and that help us create the no-man’s lands? We fear the other, the stranger, the immigrant, the refugee, the one ‘not like us’ (think: tribalism). This is another irony for all faith traditions tell us that every one of these folks is our ‘neighbor’.
Some faith traditions teach that each human being is created in God’s image. Those same traditions think and act as if the other is a manifestation of the devil (perhaps IS a devil incarnate).
The final irony for today: In all faith traditions the most repeated phrase is: Be not afraid!
Now, Gentle Reader, I have another concern about ‘Religion’. . .
Learn to do good. Seek justice. Aid the oppressed. Uphold the rights of the orphan. Defend the cause of the widow. –Isaiah 1:17
