Religion and Violence

One of the issues that the terror attacks in France urge us to reflect on is the ever present threat of hatred and violence. We can align hatred and violence to any number of religious or political ideologies, but the banality of hatred and cold murder comes from the human heart for any number of reasons. It happens in homes and between friends as well as between strangers and supposed enemies. Certitude - moral, political or religious gives power. It enables one to live under the delusion that our supposed version of truth gives us the right to hate and at the worst to take away life. Such certitude gives confidence as it feeds hatred and violence. Of course religious outrage - defending God - gives the greatest veneer of righteous anger that anyone could manufacture. The argument goes: You have offended my highest beliefs, literally my God, so I have the right to hurt you. It is a perversion of religious truth and the exact opposite of the real aims of any religion – love God and your neighbour. And who is your neighbour? A lawyer (who loved to be right) asked Jesus that question long ago and he told him in no uncertain terms that it is the person who is different from you (ethnically, politically and religiously, i.e. the Samaritan) whom you should and must show compassion to.

Jesus came and absorbed the violence and hatred in the world in order to transform it. As Christians in a multi-faith and secular society, our only message and purpose is to continue to express Jesus’ way of peace and love, in which those whom we thought we were meant to condemn become those whom we are compelled to show compassionate love to. Jesus shows us that the only way to overcome violence is through love and that is a costly road to walk; but the alternative which is an escalation in conflict, fear, violence and death is costlier by far.

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