America Awake! Killing is not a Christian virtue

Posted on July 2, 2008 by

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By Guest Author Geoffrey

First, I am not a Christian, although I would support Christian values as they are espoused by the New Testament. I feel uneasy about religion generally. I was born to a Jewish Mother and a Catholic Father! Perhaps, that’s a little like a Woody Allen joke I once heard, “It means I get guilt and anxiety in equal measure!”

I profess to not knowing what good religion has ever done for mankind. What I see in the world is a mass of prejudice and hatred being enacted in religion’s name.

I wrote about the concept of projection recently in my “Love’s Passage” blog. There seems to be good grounds to suggest that religion has underpinned (what Jung might have described as) much ’shadow projection’ in our recent history. Shadow projection is a process whereby one expresses those dark parts of oneself by its attribution to another. It is a little like unconscious blame, blaming someone else for something that one cannot face about oneself.

The Nazis did shadow projection en masse to the Jews. There might be some justification to argue that the Iraq war is underpinned by the same dynamic. I believe that we may be facing unparalleled social, political and economic problems in our western world. They are as difficult to face and accept, as they are to deal with! Rather than accept that the problems are our own, not God’s, but our very own, I suspect we seek to look for causes outside ourselves and the Iraqis were an easy target. Next, it may be the potential (nuclear) threat posed by Iran. I will need some convincing of that one too.

First, the justification for the Iraqi war was the existence of WMD. There were none. So the focus changed. Next, it was Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda and the so-called “war against terror” that fuelled the conflict after the WMD fiasco. So where are they? Prove it! I’ll take a very unpopular position now. I suspect there are as many links to Al Qaeda in the USA or the UK as there are in Iraq.

Whatever the truth might be, religions, that seek to expound their own veracity and that deny the validity of the beliefs of others, produce conflict.

I am not wholly sure if religion is necessarily the root cause of our difficulties, or if it is some other kind of symptomatic, largely ethnocentric, false justification of social and political wrongdoing. I regard killing, mass slaughter and genocide as fundamentally wrong in common with Christian beliefs.

Christianity, at least, Christianity as I understand it, teaches tolerance and acceptance of difference. Therein, lies an innate contradiction, since it also seeks, in common with Islam and one might argue Judaism, to establish its primacy among religions as the only truth. It was after all, St Augustine, who said, “I take all gods prisoners of Christ.” This was the justification for the “holy crusades”. It may be worth emphasising that St Augustine was talking about Mohammed, Jahweh and Buddha too! If one is a Muslim, then similarly one might believe that one’s own religion has primacy over others. Inevitably if one sees the religious truth of others as false, then conflict will result.

Your assertion that “by the twentieth century Christian churches were advocating war as long as it served to stop the Nazis, the Fascists and the Communists.” is incorrect.

Hitler was a Catholic and he maintained that he was fighting a Christian cause. The Nazis entered a “concordat” with the Vatican. Here are some words from the man himself:

“My feeling as a Christian beads me to be a fighter for my Lord and Saviour. It leads me to the man who, at one time lonely and with only a few followers, recognised the Jews for what they were, and called on men to fight against them… As a Christian, I owe something to my own people.” — Adolf Hitler

“The (Nazi) party stands for positive Christianity” — Adolf Hitler

So the attempted genocide of the Jews was a valid, “Christian” cause in Hitler’s eyes. How frightening is that? Just a reminder…the Nazis killed six million Jewish people during the holocaust in a cause bolstered by so-called Christian beliefs.

I know this is uncomfortable to think about, it’s uncomfortable to talk about, as it is difficult to accept. But then I’m not out to make converts either! Nor would I criticise or condemn those who had a different viewpoint.

Even in the war of terror, both the Christian west and Al Qaeda would maintain that they have God on their side: Two different gods, but God, nevertheless. Al Qaeda also claims religious justification for their abominable acts of killing that included 911.

Let’s put the question another way. In the context of conflict, what exactly does religion express? Why did Hitler choose to victimise the Jews? Most German Jews I have known were completely integrated within German society. So why them? What fuelled the Nigerian conflict between the Ibos, the Yorubas, and the Hausa in which millions of Biafran people died? What sustained the UK conflict in Northern Ireland and on the mainland for so many years? To say it was religion might be a little glib, although many would be quick to seize upon it.

There are, of course, all sorts of factors offered up by history books, some of which are honest enough to acknowledge the role of religion in causing conflict. Ethnic and religious groups provide easy targets. The Jews were different, both culturally and socially, as were the Irish Catholics and the Biafrans. In times of economic and social difficulty, people look outside of their own, usually dominant social group to attribute blame. It’s been happening for a long time, and now we can do it globally. We can pick on those less close to home.

By the way, if you are still sceptical, whatever happened to the global threat posed by the Vietcong? Remember them? That particular problem went away when the United States ceased the Vietnam War. I wonder why?

I’ve never regarded Jung as a political theorist although I am coming to believe he had more to say than most! Perhaps in wars and conflicts, he might have talked about “pseudo-speciation”, a process whereby we take human social and cultural differences including religion to differentiate ourselves as a, usually superior, species. It was exactly what Hitler did to the Jews. Similarly, it might be what Al Qaeda does to Christians and vice versa.

Given economic and social difficulties (that are present in the German / Jewish, Nigeria / Biafran, and Anglo-Irish conflicts), it might be argued that we seek to attribute the blame for our difficulties elsewhere through “shadow projection”. The Iraqis become the big, bad, evil bogeymen, as did the Jews in Nazi Germany.

I struggle with knowing what so-called bad Iraqis have done to most in the western world, although I know about their slaughter of the Turkish Kurds. I am a friend of a man high up in the Kurdish government. But no one is seeking justice for the Kurdish people in this conflict. Saddam was undoubtedly a ruthless, murdering politician. I also believe that in time the Iraqi people would have seen that and dealt with him too. Neither the USA nor the allied forces will solve the internecine strife within Iraq that is again based on social, cultural and religious differences. But we go on. So why?

My conclusion? First, I’m not sure if I buy into this “God on our side (against others)” bit at all. There is nothing Christian or holy about war or killing people. I’m not sure I buy into the justification for the Iraqi war either. Please can someone give me a good rationale for it that is not couched in jingoistic patriotism or paranoia for this war? Sorry for my naïveté, but what outcome are we seeking here? Ah, there is one point I missed. Our economies are totally screwed up as is our energy supply and Iraq can produce an incredible amount of oil. There were all those pipelines that America helped lay across Afghanistan after the war there too. Mmm I wonder…

Second, it’s time Christians lived by their own words: Words of tolerance, love and inclusion. Jesus never said, “I take all gods prisoners of me”. He said, “I suffer (permit) little children to come unto me,” meaning in my non-Christian understanding, I welcome the innocents and the non-believers into my view of goodness. Jesus never spurned people because they were different either.

A poem just crossed my mind about Jesus. It’s by Antonio Machado:

I love Jesus, who said to us:
Heaven and earth will pass away.
When heaven and earth have passed away,
my word will remain.
What was your word, Jesus?
Love? Affection? Forgiveness?
All your words were
one word: Wakeup!

So Wake up!

Last point now: Please will all you Christians read that darned book of yours and seek to understand how we have changed it! You’ll need to go back to scriptures that were translated from Greek. I’ve done that too. Two things stood out to me. The new bible talks about “righteousness” that was translated from words meaning “loving kindness”. How different those words are. Then there is a definition of sin too that changes the world. Sin is translated from the Greek word, “hammartia”, meaning missing the mark or getting it wrong. The thing about missing the mark is that you can try again and get it right! It’s not some judgement for confession; it’s a lesson for life.

I’m an Englishman living in France, and my favourite words about sin are these. It’s a French proverb:

“Qui ne tente rien, n’a rien” I’m not sure if that’s quite correct, I wanted to say, “Only he who does nothing makes no mistakes”.

For me, that’s wisdom to live by. So let’s all sin lots and learn from our mistakes. God knows! There are many of them.

Related post: Wake up America: God is not on your side

Posted in: Relationships, Spirituality