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Monday, December 6, 2010

Religions, People, and Wars

Religion, to me, is whatever means people use to connect to what they perceive to be the supreme power. For instance, what I perceive to be my supreme power is God, the Almighty. Some people may consider money, power, or eternal life to be their supreme power.

It is inconceivable that people who believe in God would intentionally cause the death of other human beings. Unfortunately, this has been the case throughout history.

People start wars and use religion to justify their actions. They display hatred and then hide behind religion in order to rationalize their disposition.

Religion is no longer about the sacred. It seems also as if people have lost the standard as to what is considered to be sacred.

Are the existing religions corrupt? Or is it the people who are corrupt? Can religion corrupt people? Or is it people who corrupt themselves? Can people corrupt religion? Actually, though it may be difficult to believe, people cannot corrupt religion. They can, however, corrupt their perception of religion. And given that, beside the deity, it is human beings who are the major players, they can create a deceptive layer around religion so to shape it the way they would like it to serve them. It is in this context that people start wars in the name of God or religion.

Let’s wake up and smell the stench. Religion does not speak a language of war, but of peace. By the same token, true religious people do not speak a language of war, but of peace. Only corrupt religious people speak a language of war in the name of their pseudo religion. Hence, wars come from people; not religions. The truth is that the combination of religion plus people cannot lead to war.

The equation “religion + people = war” is not right. It can only mean one thing: something is wrong. Just like there is no way in math that the addition of two positive values would produce a negative sum, there is no way that the association of religion and people, in its pure sense, would produce a negative result such as war. Something is wrong. And that something is not religion, but people—fallen people.