Picture of the "Four Crowned", four martyrs who refused to make a statue for a Roman Emperor that would be used as a worshipped image. In their hands they hold the instruments of building and construction, symbols to make a better world in accordance with God's master plan.
The above stone plaque hangs in the workplace of this Benedictine monk (Benedictusberg, Vaals) who is working on a statue for a customer's garden, symbolizing the world upheld by people from very different cultures and religions. His face expression tells us that he is working on something very difficult :).This week I read in the Newspaper that a previous TV anchorman had established a website for adherents of “Somethingism”. Somethingists are people who don’t call themselves atheists but won’t belong to a church, because don’t want to buy the dogmas and truths a church imposes (in their vision) on the members. Also they don’t want to be evangelicals or Pentecostists because they don’t feel these deep emotional streams that these people strive for or acknowledge. They find sermons and preaches useless, they don’t “buy” it anyway. In general they are tolerant towards traditionally-religious people, also for Muslims Buddhists and other religions, but find themselves not appealed by any of them. And yet, they are convinced that there must be “Something”.
During all history since the Bible has been written, millions and millions of people have been slaughtered, humiliated, expelled, embarrassed etc. just because they had an other religion than the dominant religion of the area. Is that the purpose of religion?
Now in the Western countries we see how in less “developed” countries religion becomes more intolerant and more orthodox, especially towards homosexuals, women in priest-functions, and evolutionists. They “cling” to the one and only truth found in the Holy Book which they read as literal truths. They simply deny that it isn’t possible to read it as “the truth” because if somebody from whatever modern culture really would live up to the Biblical prescriptions he would have no life at all. Furthermore, they throw simply away decades, centuries of scientific research with one move of the Bible. And last but not least they sin (in their own terminology) against the commandment of Love. Aggressive Muslim fundamentalism seems to create a Christian response in the sense that Christianity grows more to orthodoxy.
These two things: preaching and dogmas on the one hand, and intolerance often ending up in bloodshed and war, creates an image of religion that deters many people from adhering to it. In modern Western countries they can easily discard religious adherence because of the freedom of religion and viewpoints. People are not dependent anymore on a religion or on churches. In other cultures such an attitude will be severely punished by becoming an outcast or worse. This creates an a-religious society where, in the words of Nietzsche, God is dead.
This is such a shame: religion, and especially Christianity, reflects the deepest desires and wants of men. In all cultures, Christian or not, there is a desire for love and being involved with each other’s wellbeing, for honesty, for hospitality, for helping family and neighbors in need. All Jesus did and said comes down to these things. Also the Somethingists adhere to these values. He even said to his disciples when sending them to bring the Gospel in the world: Wherever they mock with you and don’t want to receive you, wipe off the dust from your shoes and continue your path. That’s something different from the recommendations of the Quran on how to deal with non-believers! Yet, the core of also the Quran is love. Only the way, the method on how to spread Islam over the world, differs. Millions of Christians were driven out of Turkey by killing them, charging them with unpayable taxes and expelling them, because they didn’t convert to Islam which is such a crime that even death penalty is required by the Quran.
So I think there is only one solution: On the level of the United Nations freedom of religion should be recorded as an obligation for all nations. In the accompanying text it should be emphasised that although one is free to consider the own religion as the one and only truth, one is not free to require by force from others also to obey that religion, because the inner drive is inherent to religion.
Of all Islamic countries, there is only one which could undersign (up to now!!) such a declaration, and that is Indonesia. I don’t have much hope about a- or anti-religious states such as China and Cuba. But in the end, maybe when climate and pollution dangers seriously jeopardize our capitalistic economy and living environment, I hope that religion will not be used (as traditionally) to put the blame on the “others” but will serve as a source of spirit and power for humanity, totally on a voluntary basis. We’ll see where the Somethingists will stay: in their own “reasonable” area or will join a religion, no matter what, as long as it reflects the religious core given to us by Jesus, and will not have yielded to intolerance and fundamentalism.
During all history since the Bible has been written, millions and millions of people have been slaughtered, humiliated, expelled, embarrassed etc. just because they had an other religion than the dominant religion of the area. Is that the purpose of religion?
Now in the Western countries we see how in less “developed” countries religion becomes more intolerant and more orthodox, especially towards homosexuals, women in priest-functions, and evolutionists. They “cling” to the one and only truth found in the Holy Book which they read as literal truths. They simply deny that it isn’t possible to read it as “the truth” because if somebody from whatever modern culture really would live up to the Biblical prescriptions he would have no life at all. Furthermore, they throw simply away decades, centuries of scientific research with one move of the Bible. And last but not least they sin (in their own terminology) against the commandment of Love. Aggressive Muslim fundamentalism seems to create a Christian response in the sense that Christianity grows more to orthodoxy.
These two things: preaching and dogmas on the one hand, and intolerance often ending up in bloodshed and war, creates an image of religion that deters many people from adhering to it. In modern Western countries they can easily discard religious adherence because of the freedom of religion and viewpoints. People are not dependent anymore on a religion or on churches. In other cultures such an attitude will be severely punished by becoming an outcast or worse. This creates an a-religious society where, in the words of Nietzsche, God is dead.
This is such a shame: religion, and especially Christianity, reflects the deepest desires and wants of men. In all cultures, Christian or not, there is a desire for love and being involved with each other’s wellbeing, for honesty, for hospitality, for helping family and neighbors in need. All Jesus did and said comes down to these things. Also the Somethingists adhere to these values. He even said to his disciples when sending them to bring the Gospel in the world: Wherever they mock with you and don’t want to receive you, wipe off the dust from your shoes and continue your path. That’s something different from the recommendations of the Quran on how to deal with non-believers! Yet, the core of also the Quran is love. Only the way, the method on how to spread Islam over the world, differs. Millions of Christians were driven out of Turkey by killing them, charging them with unpayable taxes and expelling them, because they didn’t convert to Islam which is such a crime that even death penalty is required by the Quran.
So I think there is only one solution: On the level of the United Nations freedom of religion should be recorded as an obligation for all nations. In the accompanying text it should be emphasised that although one is free to consider the own religion as the one and only truth, one is not free to require by force from others also to obey that religion, because the inner drive is inherent to religion.
Of all Islamic countries, there is only one which could undersign (up to now!!) such a declaration, and that is Indonesia. I don’t have much hope about a- or anti-religious states such as China and Cuba. But in the end, maybe when climate and pollution dangers seriously jeopardize our capitalistic economy and living environment, I hope that religion will not be used (as traditionally) to put the blame on the “others” but will serve as a source of spirit and power for humanity, totally on a voluntary basis. We’ll see where the Somethingists will stay: in their own “reasonable” area or will join a religion, no matter what, as long as it reflects the religious core given to us by Jesus, and will not have yielded to intolerance and fundamentalism.
