Friday, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana

 

CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour is in the midst of a detailed report on three of the world’s most controversial religions: Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The title of the three episode report is provocatively “God’s Holy Warriors.”

She has been exploring the current global tensions caused by the extremists in each religion. It is a sobering account that exposes the curious, even bizarre practices and traditions that characterize each tradition. And these practices and beliefs, held with rigid fervor by the adherents, serve to separate and isolate the followers from the rest of us who follow other traditions.

You are either with us, or your are the enemy of our God! We have been ordained to carry out our God’s will to eradicate the earth of the non-believers. We will do this through rejection. We will delclare that you are are unclean. We will confidently assure you that you are eternally condemned, because you do not confess what we believe. And we will do it with murder if necessary.

All, of course in the name of God who has spoken exclusively to us - not you!

It is this intolerance for the non-believers that is the scourge of modern life. Ascribing to the unseen creator a set of beliefs and behaviors to be followed under pain of exclusion and death is a human plague on the world. Whatever the formulation, whatever the creed’s name - and none are immune from the psychotic renderings of their own members - to rationalize rejection, violence and even the slaughter of innocence in the name of God is worth fighting.


The older I get the more repulsed I am by how religion is being practiced in the modern world.

How is your spiritual & faith lived out among those around you?
What does your conscience tell you to do about those who believe differently?

If it doesn’t inspire you to love and forgiveness above all, it isn’t good religion!