Christianity: The root of evil?
Strife arises from wrong application of teachings to justify lesser motives
By: Paul Bowers - Pleading the first
Posted: 12/1/08
Religion, some have said, is tearing this world apart. The recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai were reportedly carried out by a Muslim group. In Jos, Nigeria, we're seeing Christians and Muslims slaughter each other by the hundreds once more. Jews have killed for a homeland. Hindus have trampled lower classes in a brutal caste system.
The name of every world religion is tarnished by some dark track record. Why do we persist in these fighting faiths if they arouse so much violence?
The simple answer is that the perpetrators of these acts do not follow the actual doctrines of their respective religions. Most Muslims will tell you that the true jihad lies within, and Christians tend to condemn the wanton destruction of the Crusades.
This is, however, only the answer to a surface-level question. The real dilemma is this: Can mankind conscionably hold on to religion? Is religious faith, as Richard Dawkins has suggested, the root of all evil?
"With or without religion," physicist Steven Weinberg famously said in a 1999 debate, "you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
But people have, without an inkling of religious sentiment, built from an innocuous or even noble aim to carry out real atrocities. Che Guevara, acting on a heartfelt humanist concern for the poor and downtrodden, used guerrilla tactics to install tyrannical rulers.
A problem that arises with criticisms of faith is that people like Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens often lump all religions together. I, for one, feel neither compelled nor qualified to defend the worth of them all. Instead, I will speak for my own.
Weinberg asserted that, building from a Christian framework, a good man could find justification for terrible deeds. But my understanding of Jesus's message is precisely the opposite: that for evil people to be made good, it takes Christ.
Consider the apostle Paul, who once thought he was religiously justified in persecuting and killing innocent people whose beliefs differed from his own. Jesus taught him to instead serve those people and love his enemies. The Scriptures abound with examples of God choosing unlikely people for his purposes: prostitutes, drunks, thieves and hypocrites, people like me.
Christianity has been cited as the rationale for terrible things. This does not, however, make its doctrines evil. No responsible thinker would reject communism simply because Stalin practiced it.
The dark times of Christianity come about when we confuse the commands of a loving God with our own philosophies. In Ireland's Troubles of the late twentieth century, when Catholicism and Protestantism were transformed into mere shorthand for political ideologies, theological beliefs became a crutch for car bombings and assassinations.
The same thing is happening in Nigeria, where Christianity has been dragged into pre-existing ethnic and class conflicts. Look behind any shameful Christian movement, and you will find similar entanglements.
What, then, is the true value of Christian faith? I will attempt to explain in my next column.