Violence and religion
Violence and religion are—if not always partners in a loveless marriage staying together for the kids—at the least, kissing cousins. Perhaps that’s why we’re warned to stay away from politics and religion as subjects for casual conversation. After all, Machiavellian advice to the Medici wannabe suggests that diplomacy and warfare were (and still are) pretty much one-in-the-same. In our own time, we’ve used both the carrot (economic concessions) and the stick (carpet bombing innocent women and children).
And when religion is used to justify political beliefs, you can bet violence won’t be too far behind.
Considering the current political climate, CNN’s now aging three-part documentary [“God’s Warriors”] by journalist Christiane Amanpour is still timely—and controversial.
Could anything with that title not be?
We live in a culture that likes to think of itself as more evolved, more socially conscious. But aren’t we still burying our heads in the sand? When violence threatens our nice quiet neighborhoods, we demand that the police root it out, beat it with sticks (if the cameras aren’t around), and throw it in jail so we don’t have to look at it. But it’s much like pulling a tick off a dog, and leaving the head behind to fester. You can build all the jails you want—until you get to the root, the weeds will grow back. Until the head is gone, the infection of our new bugbear (terrorism) remains. And when those scary, weed-choked neighborhoods are nations, diplomacy and war are the citation book and the sidearm.
Amanpour’s six-hour report may not fit every angle, but it does give us a look at problems through many different eyes. From the perspective of three of the world’s leading religions—Christianity, Judaism and Islam—it deserves praise for linking the three religions together, and not just through intolerance and violence. The real message Amanpour seems to suggest may be a little too close for comfort. It’s not so much an attack on the religions themselves as an attack on those among us who use dogma to excuse pretty much anything. And it’s an old, old story that doesn’t change much in the retelling.
When religion is used to justify political ambition, or to make war on cultural values simply because they aren’t our own, the fallout can be poisonous.
Just as man has often blamed his sins on a snake (“The devil made me do it”), man might use God as the inarguable justification for violence. Religion may provide a need to win a cultural war against “toxic pop culture.” It may promise an afterlife of bliss for a suicide bomber. And it may broker Holy Land real estate using the word of God as the ultimate in eminent domain.
Religion will always be used to excuse violence. And violence will always be used to back up politics. Our role is to find our own way.
Thou shalt not kill seems pretty easy to understand. There aren’t any footnotes or exceptions.
SOMEWHAT TRUE LIES 