First casualty of war is truth. We’ve been at war since someone decided that they were special. Special to the extent that everybody else becomes of either lesser importance or of no importance at all.
Nothing new in that – there have always been the rulers and the ruled and slavery has always been an outcome of empire. Still is.
Throw in the power of religion and any obscenity can be justified.
Man creates God in his own image and not the other way round. Perhaps it is the other way round but man has debased this idea, creating and maintaining his religions. This is the religion of Judaism and the Talmud is its ‘Book of Rules.’ They are horrible ‘rules’ and they make clear that those who aren’t followers of Judaism are soulless creatures whose only purpose on Earth is to serve Jews. Difficult to accept that this is the truth of the matter, as seen by followers of the Talmud, but there it is.
So their God is not a universal God but a tribal god, a capricious, vicious god - a useless god to me. A false idol. That’s what I mean when I say that man creates God in man’s image. A limited, cramped and maniacal image.
Where is the love? Where are any of the virtues which are held high – the kindness, compassion, care which I find in Christ’s message.
‘Love your neighbour’ and ‘Do unto others as you’d have done to yourself’ replaces the Ten Commandments or rather, there is no need of the Ten Commandments if Christ’s way of being is lived in reality.
I can’t live that way without recognising the value and the need of anger – righteous anger rather than the anger felt by personal slight or injury.
I don’t know what God IS so my limited image makes of God a universal creative intelligence whose purpose is not slavery to dogma but something ‘more.’ That ‘something more’ is not to be found in hatred, nor in power or control.
What I make of this isn’t described by some words, cleverly or clumsily expressed.
The path I take through life is mine alone. The multiple experiences are common to us all but our reactions and perceptions are a different matter. There are also those experiences which aren’t common and, perhaps because of that, they occupy a special place within us. It doesn’t make me special to have experience which I know to be special.
Not my purpose to talk about experience other than to state that, in my experience, there is that ‘more’ that I’ve mentioned. It includes awe.
I don’t know what to make of Islam. If Christ’s message wasn’t sufficient, what need for Islam, what need for yet another ‘Book of Rules’?
So convinced of being right, of having the only truth, man becomes a zealot, an extremist and love is displaced. Perhaps it was never felt.
An appeal to self interest is always present in life. Throw in an afterlife and a potent brew is manufactured.
This isn’t about being anti Jewish – my neighbour is Jewish and knows nothing of the Talmud. More importantly, we are both human. We’re special in that equal sense of being human – it’s not because we’re chosen and find need to maintain that position, by fair means or foul, but because we’re not.