Are religions making the world better?
15th April 2014 · 0 Comments
By Fr. Jerome LeDoux
Contributing Columnist
In the swath of the bully takeover of Crimea and the massing of tanks and troops at the border of Ukraine, one can argue that the cold, beastly-like thinking of a Vladimir Putin — a chilling holdo?ver from the NKVD and the Soviet Union — holds no surprises for us. After all, materialistic, atheistic Communism is an historical hotbed of horrible evils.
The only “improvement” in the Crimean takeover was the guile of Putin who was slick enough to effect a bloodless annexation of the country without firing a round. Now he is bluffing and posturing on the Ukraine border with 40,000 troops, a sizable number of tanks rolled in on trains, attack helicopters, field hospitals and other makings of battle.
In sizing up Putin, both President George Bush and President Obama would have saved themselves a ton of grief by starting with the premise that no spiritual good and barely any social or political good can be expected to well up from a source so toxic and bloody as a mind and political system not even a step removed from the atheistic brand.
Whatever President Bush or President Obama imagined that they saw in the eyes of Putin, it was not the reality of the cold-blooded, ruthless eyes of a confirmed killer whose every thought, every desire was to acquire, to occupy and, if necessary, to kill. One does not dip into an oft-used septic tank to pull up fresh, clean, healthy water. Yet, political leaders the world over are still trying to draw good water from that fetid tank.
Naturally, militant David Silver?man, the current president of the American atheists, a non-profit organization that supports the rights of atheists and the removal of all expressions of religion that appear to be government-en?dorsed, would argue that any religious influence can do no better than poison whatever is good in government.
“In the name of God!” is what we all want to hear in hairy, trying, especially terminal situations in life. However, the sad problem is that deranged individuals or groups, as well as delusional nations have killed even to the point of genocide in the name of God. Yet, God is the Author of life, not of maiming, killing and death.
Excepting one or the other such as the Quakers, almost every religion has been abused and hijacked by raving fanatics who resorted to torture and killing, at times accusing hapless people of heresy, at times claiming to avenge blasphemy of God. By its very definition, a holy war is an oxymoron that can find no justification on any ground.
Such holy war slaughter happened repeatedly in the Old Testament. Supposedly heralding a new era of mercy, forgiveness, kindness and love, the New Testament’s teaching, especially through the mouth of Jesus, lays out for all the most inspiring, admirable road-map of life that belies the Inquisition and excesses of the Crusades.
Centuries ago, fanatical Christians sometimes viciously persecuted, tortured and murdered Muslims. With the shoe on the other foot in recent years, fanatical Muslims are persecuting, torturing and murdering thousands of Christians in majority-Muslim areas.
Sadly, in spite of the great road-map given us in the greatest Book of all time, and despite the powerful witness of the Decalogue, huge portions of humanity continue to do terrible things in God’s name or in defiance of God’s name. Mahatma Gandhi put it to us, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike Christ.”
A man endowed with as profound a spirituality as the eminent common sense he so readily displayed, Gandhi gave the lie to superficial Christianity just as did Gilbert K. Chesterton, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” If personal and world situations are this bad with religion, perhaps the crucial question is, “How much worse would the world be without religion?”
Resurrection from the dead and assumption into eternal life with God is the ultimate point of departure from the materialistic, atheistic things peddled by Soviet communists and closet communists, the latter of whom compromise most of the world’s unbelievers. While some Athenians in Acts 17:32 scoffed and others said, “We should like to hear you on this some other time,” most folks hardly discuss resurrection at all.
There is nothing more life-and-death in nature, nothing more critical, nothing more foundational than the question of to be or not to be forever. Likewise, there is nothing more integral to our peace of mind, our over?all well-being and our fulfillment as human beings than the assurance that we and all our loved ones will live and love forever.
The thought that we can live and love forever in God’s house is so galvanizing and electrifying that it suffuses our quiet moments of prayer and meditation, seizes our rapt attention at the most unexpected times, and haunts our awareness, even if we engage in distracting entertainment, adrenalin-buzzing, death-defying spectaculars.
This article originally published in the April 14, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
