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.

Comments

Radical Story-telling?

Public Domain The Flight into Egypt File: Adam Elsheimer - Die Flucht nach Ägypten (Alte Pinakothek) 2.jpg Created: 31 December 1608 Which of the Gospel writers include an account of the birth of Jesus? When were they writing, for what audience? Mark’s Gospel is almost universally considered to be the earliest Gospel and it’s understood that both Matthew and Luke used it as a source text. But Mark has no account of the birth of Jesus, he begins with John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism. Only Matthew and Luke have birth narratives and they are different whilst sharing some common features: Mary and Joseph are to be married and there’s a miraculous virgin birth in Bethlehem. But that’s about it. Jesus is born in a house in Matthew’s account whilst he is placed in a manger in Luke’s because there’s ‘no room at the inn’. Mary’s thoughts and feelings are not mentioned in Matthew at all, whilst from Luke we get the story of the Visitation, Annunciation and the wonderfu...

Silence

Lent Study Group One of my top 10 books of the last 10 years has to be: 'A Book of Silence' by Sara Maitland. I first heard Sara talk at Greenbelt many years ago and I was fascinated then by who she was - an eccentric woman, speaking with intensity and insight, offering an alternative and captivating viewpoint on the human experience. In this book she explores silence in all sorts of ways: by living on her own; by visiting the desert; through analysing the desert traditions within early Christianity; and through attending to what happens to the body and the mind in and through extended silence and isolation. Her book begins: I am sitting on the front doorstep of my little house with a cup of coffee, looking down the valley at my extraordinary view of nothing. It is wonderful. Virginia Woolf famously taught us that every woman writer needs a room of her own. She didn't know the half of it, in my opinion. I need a moor of my own. Or, as an exasperated but obvious...

God's Photos of You

Most of the time it’s possible to live quite happily with the absence of religion. Our lives are full and content without it, indeed most people would probably say less restrictive and less judgmental. But then Christmas arrives with its magical talk of angels, a miraculous birth and God with us . The nativity at school, the lit candle in the darkened church and the carol service remind us of a time when going to church and believing in God made sense. The tune of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ is grasped like an old friend – and it takes us to a place of remembered community, of solidarity, of a secure identity and experience. It gives us a story, which stretches way back, that we can be a part of. Our memories, faded and nostalgic as they are, nonetheless are full of hope, reminding us of an identity that we’ve lost, encouraging us to claim a future that will always be ours. Like the Queen’s Speech, Match of the Day, Strictly Come Dancing – Christmas is the photo frame which colle...

Rev elations

Search This Blog