Skip to main content

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

Post a Comment

Please be respectful when posting comments

Popular posts from this blog

Art and Imagination: the apocalyptic vision

Rev 12.7-12   Michael Defeats the Dragon   And war broke out in heaven ; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.  Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, proclaiming, ‘Now have come the salvation and the power    and the kingdom of our God    and the authority of his Messiah, for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down,    who accuses them day and night before our God. But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb    and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death. Rejoice then, you heavens   ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Christmas Reflection 2015

‘He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him’. Corporately and individually humans persistently and consistently reject God. We are pretty good at choosing what is bad for us- being tempted by any number of false desires. We can become addicted to all sorts of bad behaviours, like alcohol, social media, pornography or self-hatred. The simple ways that we choose to spend our time every day determine the sort of people that we become; the minor details of our lives matter to God – he has given us each moment of every day. As a modern poet, Malcolm Guite puts it: O king of our desire whom we despise, King of the nations never on the throne, Unfound foundation, cast-off cornerstone, Rejected joiner, making many one Take the Biblical tale of the rich man at his gate. He ignores the daily pleas of the poor and sickly man, Lazarus, and after a life of selfi...
Post a Comment
Read more

‘Things Fall Apart – the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’

 Holy Week Reflection   The Jewish people had a framework for understanding the world and most importantly their relationship with God and with one another. They had the Law and the Prophets and yet at various points in their history they were radically challenged by the events that occurred in their communal history. The deliverance from the hands of the Egyptians became a foundational narrative for them about God’s ability to save. They were not a people unused to suffering, unused to war, unused to persecution and these experiences led them as a people to expect from their God – compassion, mercy and most importantly deliverance. They could understand their sufferings in various ways, they could attribute them to their own sin and waywardness, but at the centre of their faith was a belief that God had established a covenant with them and that he would be faithful even if they were faithless. Jesus came into this history as a possible Messiah, as the Anointed One w...
Post a Comment
Read more