What Does God Think About War?
If God Wrote A Letter To Organized Religion
Given the state of affairs of organized religion throughout the world, and particularly here in the US with the current crop of Christian “leaders” such as Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, I can't help but wonder what God must be thinking about all this. As some of you know, Mr. Romney recently stated that, if elected president, his first act as chief executive would be to launch an airstrike on Iran. Keep in mind that this is the same guy who is opposed to abortion and who calls himself “pro-life”. He fights for the rights of the unborn, but if you're already alive and living in Iran, you're toast. Go figure.
Of course, if you live in Syria, where the government is slaughtering the governed and where there is no oil, you're on your own. Yet in Iraq, where there is plenty of oil, we have occupied that country since 2003 while killing over 100,000 Iraqi civilians, over half of whom were women and children. But that war was supposed to be different because we toppled a terrible dictator. Never mind that that same dictator, none other than Saddam Hussein himself, was a former CIA collaborator and “asset”. So much for loyalty among allies. Yes, that's what our country has been doing in the Middle East since Gulf War 1 in 1990-91. And it is the American military-industrial-incarceration complex that has been doing this same thing throughout the globe since the Cold War.
Meanwhile here at home, one person in five depends on food stamps to eat. People can't afford medical care or insurance so they show up at emergency rooms only if they absolutely have to, knowing that the medical bills they are about to incur will bankrupt them. Twenty four million Americans can't find work, but since they can't afford to go back to school and get retrained because of the staggering cost of America's for-profit higher education system, they remain stuck in their situation with no relief in sight. As I wrote in my first book, “The Middle and Working Class Manifesto”, our country has more than enough money to pay for lifetime medical care and higher education for every single American who wants either or both. All they have to do is call off all the wars and bring our troops home. As I explained in my book, if the US government took all the money that is spent in just one day on the wars/occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan and put it into an interest-bearing bank account, there would be ample funding for 4-year college educations for every school kid in America from pre-K through high school, including tuition, books, housing, food and transportation. Yeah, just one day's war expenditures would do that. Besides, there is sufficient legal precedent in doing this very thing in the form of the GI Bill that was passed by Congress after the end of World War 2. If they could reeducate us then, they can do it now.
But what do we have instead? Overseas military adventures purely for the sake of economic domination by the US against any country regardless of cost. This is not just unsustainable, it is sheer madness. Our government has been taken over by a bunch of sociopaths. They operate from behind the scenes bent on world conquest at any cost, and they are an integral part of the so-called “new world order”. Unless they are stopped they will take the world over the brink of the abyss of World War 3. Yet these people are, by and large, religious conservatives of one church denomination or another. Their counterparts in the Muslim world are similarly conservative religious fundamentalists. Only their names for God are different. Yet, as far as I am concerned, there is only one true God who is undoubtedly far greater than the sum of all the world's different religious faiths combined. If this very same almighty God, who is “The Great I Am”, sent us an email about all this mess down here on earth, I think it would be worded something like this:
“My children, I appear before you now to bestow upon you a Brand-New, New Testament. I offer this directly to the peoples of earth, without intermediary, cleric, or agent of any kind. Circumstances have compelled me to sever all ties, contracts and assignments with my representatives on that planet. You see, I have been dissatisfied with their performance of their duties for some time. Children get molested in some churches, adultery runs rampant in others, while still others have turned their churches into businesses and have enriched themselves with material possessions beyond all reason. You pastors and evangelists who drive around in cars with six-figure price tags while flying around in your own jets, you know who you are. There's nothing wrong with having a nice car and a comfortable house, but a good bit of that money should have been used to feed the poor and house the homeless. But the rape of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, crimes committed in my name by the USA not counting the additional war plans they have made, has forced my hand. The perversion of my will displayed by these despicable acts, and so many others, has left me no choice. I hereby fire my earthly representatives, they no longer speak for me.”
“Humankind, however, remains in my affections and always shall. We will start again with a New, New Testament and hope for better days. But it would be remiss of me not to explain why I have taken such drastic measures. War displeases me. Five thousand years of war among the humans over the right way to pronounce my name has exhausted my patience. I will no longer be responsible for any murders committed under color of my authority. Although I do not require that you worship me in any certain way, I much prefer that you who claim to believe in me should put some legs on your faith. It's good when you fast and pray, but it's better to go and find someone in need and doing whatever you can to help him or her.”
“Someone who goes to church every Sunday but does nothing more during the week is not in as faithful in my eyes as someone who donates to charity, who volunteers their free time, who is a role model for the fatherless, or who visits the sick, the elderly and the prisoner, and someone who is a defender of the widow, the orphan, the homeless, the mentally ill, and other vulnerable individuals. I created you with a divine spark, in my image. But you persist in snuffing out that spark and destroying that image in those who don't agree with you about whether or not it is permitted to draw my face. Until you prove you can worship the divine spark I put in all of you, and desist from the mayhem and slaughter that you love more than me, I shall summarily reject and disallow all claims to my providence.”
“You have banded yourselves into tribes, nations and races and the results have not been pleasing to my eye. I take some responsibility for this distressing development; I should not have given you an earth so large. But had I started with a smaller Eden, you would have corrupted and polluted it until it became uninhabitable centuries ago. You have proven yourselves incapable of understanding the panoply of laws and wisdom I laid down for you, when I set you upon the earth. I have been mistranslated by your spirit guides and abused by your leaders. Perhaps I was too complex. Let us try to simplify. Respect my creation and all the inhabitants thereof. Any so-called religious leader who tells you otherwise is a false prophet and does not represent me, my brethren or any part of my Kingdom.”
“Those of you who find comfort in organized religion may continue to do so. I understand – I created you as vessels for love and love rejoices in the presence of others. Keep your churches, mosques and synagogues, but cease your bickering. And remember, when you engage in bloodletting, you commit blasphemy. I realize that in severing my ties with so many of the sects, denominations and "holy men" that you rely upon for moral guidance, I have created confusion where there was once certainty in your souls. But that cannot be helped. Your certainties were almost certainly wrong and most certainly misapplied.”
“But do not despair, my children, for I have not abandoned you. There is a little piece of me inside all of you, a fail-safe guide to good and evil, a moral compass that never leaves you, a true voice you can hear amidst the storms of fire that drive you mad with hatred and confusion. It is called your conscience and it always points north, follow it and you will be walking in my light, ignore it and you'll be lost in the darkness cast by your own shadow. Here is your New, New Testament, starting with Commandment One:”
“I have given you a conscience. Use it.”
“Sort that out to my satisfaction and maybe next millennium we can talk about the dietary laws.”
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saras
(6,670 posts)
exboyfil
(18,008 posts)telling his chosen people to kill women and children during war. That stopped any desire of mine to take the OT literally (that along with the craziness surrounding Young Earth creationists and evolution/geology/cosmology and practically ever other -logy). I am still working through the New Testament and the nature of Jesus.
In 20 years historians are going to look back at this period and realize that a certain group had lost its collective minds.
customerserviceguy
(25,185 posts)half fantasy, and half war manual.
midnight
(26,624 posts)of its staff bonuses, believes banks serve a social purpose and are doing "God's work."
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/business/goldman-sachs-boss-lloyd-blankfein-says-banks-do-gods-work/story-e6frfm1i-1225795627213#ixzz1oqL16mry
This statement might be a clue to the overall spiritual bankruptcy of those who are the faithful of the church.
napoleon_in_rags
(3,992 posts)"Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God"
http://bible.cc/matthew/19-24.htm
A long time ago I heard a quote, I think it was Maya Angelou.. She said when people ask her if she's a Christian, she says she tries, but she can't say she is, because its so hard. The above verse is one of the reasons its so hard: You are basically asked to renounce attachment to any possessions. Across all translations, the line is clear. It couldn't be clearer. But when you bring that up to many modern evangelicals, they will tell you this BS about how the "eye of the needle" was a place in the ancient world Camels walked through all the time, so rich always go to heaven, so long as the camel "Gets on its knees"
http://everything2.com/title/It+is+easier+for+a+camel+to+go+through+the+eye+of+a+needle
So yeah, as far as real Christianity, give me Angelou any day, over people who attempt to change the meaning of the most clear lines in the Bible to bless their material attachments.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)Catholic teachings on Just War. They have done a pretty good job on discussing just when and how war is to be fought, with some thoughts on violence in general. Methodists, Quakers, Lutherans, and others have taken their thoughts a bit further on the way, but the Catholic Church has done most of the work. No need to whine about how little they have actually done to stop wars-- they have often enough tried but to no avail with Stalin's famous question about "how many divisions the Pope has" being a good enough reason why they have had more success starting than stopping them. Around the same time Hitler mumbled about shooting unwilling clergy and that didn't help either. Curiously, through much of their history Baptists were pacifists. I don't remember what changed them.
There is, of course, the question of just which God we are talking about. Yahweh of the Old Testament was good with ordering the slaughtering of everyone living in a patch of land he promised the the Israelites when they stopped wandering, and wasn't above thunderbolts and floods himself when pissed. Jesus, on the other hand, was all about turning the other cheek. Allah, Thor, most of the residents of Olympus, and some of the Hindu gods have their bloodthirsty moments, too.
Relying on my god when trying to make a point to you rarely works.
ted08721
(6 posts)The 'Just War Theory" needs to be retired, there is no such thing as a just war just ask the people that are being attacked.
Most of the bishops in the USCCB are warmongers, there is even a bishop that sits on the board of the School of Americas.
Most of the mainline churches are in the same boat as the Catholic Church when it comes to this subject.
If the churches if just the Catholic Church came out against war we could end all war.
Imagine if Christians refused to fight in WWI and WWII what would the world leaders have done, they would have been forced to sit down and settle their grievances.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)and the Russian Orthodox church didn't have much ability to argue with Stalin when Germany invaded.
Here, the pacifist movement was huge and before Pearl Harbor even Lend-Lease was unpopular. After Pearl harbor, pacifists were suddenly traitors and even Quakers and Brethren were pressed into war duty.
As a Quaker, I don't agree with Just War myself, but it does deserve study.
Arkansas Granny
(31,847 posts)ted08721
(6 posts)Hi my name is Ted first time poster here, I didn't know this site existed till 10 minutes ago, nice to see they have a peace board here.
I really don't think what the OP express about showing up with a new testament for all people would work, I say that because from what I have heard the writings of all major religions are really about the message of peace but people tend to cherry pick and take out of context and meaning of what was actually written and twist it to justify their desire for war.
Just look at all the Christians and Christian leaders here in America, they are so swept up with this nationalism/American exceptionalism that they have become blinded to the teachings of the non-violent Jesus.
Somehow as a nation we have developed a very dangerous and evil thought process about war, and I say evil because war is evil.
The real challenge is to get our families, friends, neighbors etc. to embrace peace; to get people to realise that when Jesus told Peter to put down his sword that he was not only telling Peter but he was saying it to all of us, this was the last thing he spoke to us before going to his death on the cross; something to think about this Lenten Season.
Servius Valerius
(13 posts)Jesus also said he didn't come to bring peace- rather the sword.
I say that war has evil effects, not that it is evil in itself- war, after all, being a nebulous concept. Wars can be necessary, as in WWII. But there are far more wars than needed!
Indeed, nationalism and American exceptionalism have been terrible influences upon our foreign policy, tempting us to arrogance.
OswegoAtheist
(609 posts)NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)seems like it, sometimes
NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)assuming "god" even exists.
Paul Edward Snyder
(15 posts)I have never really found a good definition of existence. If it means that which can be affirmed by our senses, then there are a great many things that our senses cannot directly affirm, but that do impact our awareness – electricity and magnetism, for example. Do they exist? If not, then if they do not exist what are they, or does only whatever it is that causes them to happen exist (much like a collision between two cars)? Does the collision exist? If so, where does it go when the cars are immobilized?
This is the problem with words. They confuse us as much as they enlighten us. A good argument could be made that existence does not exist. It is a consequence, not an object or even a collection of objects.
To my mind God does not exist. It/He/She created existence
In fact, I believe historically we have come to view God from at least three different angles (perspectives that cannot possibly be reconciled with one another) simultaneously if our view is even close to being accurate. I call these perspectives “God Without Us”, “God With Us”, and “God Within Us”.
“God Without Us” doesn't care. It/He/She is Brahman in concept, not something we could possibly imagine, much less understand. This would be the creator God. This would be the God that created existence, whatever that is. This is the awesome God; the one that strikes fear into our hearts This is the God who would send us to Heaven or Hell arbitrarily (should Heaven or Hell exist) just on a whim
“God With Us” is the companion (compassionate) God. This is the God we talk to; the one we confide in (confess to). It/He/She is the one who forgives us for anything we feel we have done wrong. This is the personal God who cares for us so much It/She/He would give Its/Her/His life (if She/He/It were alive) to protect us from harm
“God Within Us” is a kind of spark, a kind of perfect (or perfectible) us. It/She/He is what we perceive as an inborn awareness of what is right and what is wrong, a kind of depersonalizing of ourselves to the extent that we interpret it as not us, but something within us guiding us; a kind of very personal mentor always with us and very judgmental though not necessarily vindictive.
All this speculation is, of course, ridiculous but it gets me through the day and it does confuse those who would convert me to their just as ridiculous delusions (God Fearing and Atheist Aggressive Evangelicals alike).
sunbob
(5 posts)12ZTR
(92 posts)Ask the Christians: Who would Jesus kill & what caliber handgun would he carry today?
CleanLucre
(284 posts)is left-handed?
ChazII
(6,324 posts)That sums it up.