War and Religion

St Paul is a man who experienced a seismic shift in his understanding of how God relates to His people and to him as an individual. That shift in thinking is dramatised in the road to Damascus episode, which as a story has become synonymous with the experience of dramatic conversion.Paul provides us with a paradigmatic example of the effects of conversion on an individual. His passion for and evangelical zeal for his new found understanding is second to none. Yet with the advantage of hindsight we know that the division between Judaism and Christianity has led to some pretty awful consequences. Paul’s continuing comparison between what he used to believe and what he now believes necessarily casts the Jewish comprehension in an unfavourable light. So much of Christian history has been about casting the Jewish faith as one that has been superseded by the superior Christian one. What can we do about this? We can’t read Paul’s words innocently after the holocaust and we can’t speak uncritically about Scripture as we learn to interpret and live out Paul’s experience of and understanding of Jesus Christ.

These questions are worth raising as we watch with horror as the crisis in Gaza continues to unfold before our eyes, and the implications of national and religious identities make competing claims; claims and counter claims that come directly from certain ways of reading Scripture. Is it worth being for anything anymore? Or should we throw up our hands in disbelief and declare ourselves atheists or humanists? If belief only divides us, what is the point in maintaining it? Has Paul’s definite crafting of a new religion from the old that he so dearly loved caused some of the worst atrocities in the history of the world? Has the birth of a new religion (Christianity from Judaism) just caused needless division and at times hatred?

We have to ask these difficult questions of ourselves, because if religion attempts to construct versions of human community that claim to be better, we need some proof that indeed they are.

I have had a pretty seismic shift in my thinking as I’ve taken on more civic duties here in Rugby – and that is about the necessity of finding a language that is good news for everybody. We need to avoid creating theological communities that talk in a cult-like way that exclude and create barriers for joining. One of the seismic idea shifts that I’m sure St Paul experienced was the revelatory idea that God is the universal creator of all people, therefore One God who loves and redeems all people, creating a world wide family, brothers and sisters together beloved and sustained by One God: ‘For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all, and is generous to all who call on him’.  When we consider that at least the three Abrahamic faiths profess one God, we seem to get into some mighty strange tribal battles about how we understand our experience of that God and how he orders us to behave. Perhaps St Paul didn’t help, because as Christians laboured their difference in relation to how they experienced God in Jesus Christ, they forgot the similarities between the old and the new; similarities that we would do well to remember.

Now, I’m not saying that we aren’t emphasising different things in our various religions, nor am I saying that they are unimportant, but sometimes religious zeal borne of the experience of radical conversion of heart and mind, can lead us to jump ahead into the importance of the difference at exclusion of the similarity. Those of us who study and read the Old Testament know that we can talk both about continuity and discontinuity between it and the New Testament. Similarly we know there is continuity and discontinuity between Christianity and Islam.

Faith is common to all these religions and it’s important to ask how faith affects who we are and how we relate to others. For us as Christians, it’s fundamental I believe that we learn to be people of peace, who speak of God’s love and concern for all – the Father of all creation, who unites us, who yes may ask us to give our lives for what we believe, but not in violent attack, always in peaceful resistance. Jesus was led to his death, a life he willingly sacrificed to declare the Father’s love for the whole world, and unite people in his concern for our redemption.

Faith means that we believe in our brothers and sisters, that we always keep believing that they are made in the image of God, that they therefore are sacred and holy, and that we should honour them, as God honours us. Only that sort of faith can maintain peace worldwide and can put an end to the violent destruction of one another that comes from the idea that the others persons gain is my loss, rather than seeing that human flourishing comes when we recognise that the good of the other, is my good too. This sort of faith takes courage, the courage needed to walk on water and not look down and doubt! (cf. Matthew 14:22-33)

Religion is about conversion, a change of heart, a change in understanding and these conversions can be dramatic as well as slow. What is important to reflect on is how we communicate that conversion to others; it has to be done with integrity if it is to be in harmony with the God we profess. Conversions that powerfully demand cult like commitment to alternative communities set apart from others, to me are ones to be avoided and resisted. Christians are the salt of the world, living among everyone, at one with everyone - critical friends often, yes, but divine lovers always first. We are called to be with God’s people whoever they are, and to love them as they are, as Jesus first loved us, coming among us.

Scripture References: 

Romans 10:5-15

Matthew 14:22-33