“The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him — that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.” —Swami Vivekananda
In all religion, God is taken for granted and his existence is based on the faith that he or she is real. But is God a real being capable of appearing in human form or an anecdote, a soul residing in all of us? The question of the existence of God has enraged mankind for thousands of years at least, pitting man against man and imitable god against god. Killing and mayhem have been the order of the day, with each god professing, through a channel and never by direct association, that he is the real creator of mankind. Yet wouldn’t all lives matter to God — a real god, a loving god?
The various books and their messages, from the Quran to the Christian and Hebrew Bibles, all claim to have been the words of God. Each book elucidates war and killing infidels — brothers, sisters, and even parents. One would be careless not to question who or what was actually channeled. The various bibles are invocations of a warring race of humans based on their religious adulation.
Organized religions of history have been the instrumentalities and precursors of war. The Israelis, the Christians, and the Muslims have been at war with each other for nearly 4,000 years.
But Islam and its two offshoots, Sunni and Shia Islam — as Christianity offshoots from Judaism — were once the foundation of the Crusades. The Crusades comprised seven separate wars lasting from about 1090 to 1295 and reemerged in the 16th century, only to reemerge yet again in the 21st century. And we are faced with its continuation.
This raises the age-old question: Is organized religion a danger to our survival? Or is organized religion a necessity for our survival?
“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. … We need silence to be able to touch souls”. —Mother Teresa
The land of Judea (Jerusalem) has been occupied by the Hebrews since Abraham. It actually began with the covenant established between the god of the Jews and Abraham around 1812 BCE., nearly 4,000 years ago. In 866 BCE, King David established Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Ongoing religious conflicts have endured for more than 4,000 years and will not stop until one religion survives and all others are extinguished. Yet the sad irony is that, if I am correct, all three religions are based on the same deity.
For these 4,000 years, religion has been at war with itself. Christians have fought Jews. Muslims have fought Christians. Muslims have even fought Muslims. For what? The land of Israel. A piece of property.
The Jewish land was home to the Israelis for more then 1,300 years until the Babylonians conquered Israel, destroyed the Jewish Temple, and exiled the Jews in 423 BCE. Islam and the Muslims are simply wrong when they claim that Israel was given their land in 1948 CE; Israel had long been a Jewish state and the home of the Jews.
Christianity splintered off from Judaism, the oldest monotheistic religion. The new Christians took the ideas of monotheism; the Messiah, the covenant between god and man, the notion of a chosen people, and the idea of a book of revealed wisdom from Judaism.
If Jesus was the true Messiah as Judaism had awaited and anticipated, he was only one of several who claimed the distinction. John the Baptist’s followers pressed his claim as did the followers of more obscure figures such as Theudas (see Acts 5: 35-39) and a warrior by the name Simon Bar Kochba who not only claimed to be the Messiah but led a revolt against Rome. He was what the Jews of the time expected the Messiah to be; Jesus was not.
Jerusalem was conquered by the Muslims in 638 CE who allowed the Jews to move back to their homeland. The Muslims built their mosques over Judaism’s holiest site: the Temple Mount.
The Muslims were defeated in 1099, and Christians returned to Jerusalem; but the Christians also slaughtered all the Jews living in the Holy City.
The Turkish Empire conquered Israel and Jerusalem in 1517 and ruled for 400 years until the end of World War I when, in 1917, the British defeated the Turks and Israel and Jerusalem were again conquered.
In 1948, the Israelis fought and won the War of Independence, and in so doing it lost Jerusalem to the Jordanian military. All of the Jews who lived within the walls of the ancient city of Jerusalem were either killed or driven out by the Jordanians.
Islam ruled Jerusalem for 12 centuries.
Jerusalem is important to Muslims because the prophet Muhammad had begun his mission in 610 CE. He followed Jews and Christians in facing towards Jerusalem during daily prayer, seeing Islam as a continuation of the Abrahamic family of faiths (in which all three religions believe). These sentiments and the change of qibla (the direction of the Kaaba, the sacred building at Mecca to which Muslims turn at prayer) for Muslims are recorded in the Quran 2:142-152, where the qibla for Jews and Christians is affirmed as being Jerusalem.
Jerusalem was the prophet Muhammad’s spiritual destination and where his ascension took place, during which he had a vision of God. This nocturnal journey is described in Quran 17:1 as being from “the sacred mosque” to “the furthest mosque,” the sanctuary of Jerusalem, also known as Temple Mount.
According to Islamic tradition, the prophet traveled from Mecca to Jerusalem and then upwards through the seven heavens. There he is said to have had a direct conversation with God. Before Muhammad’s alleged ascension, he is said to have led, in prayer, all the previous prophets of God. It is in this sense of continuation of Abrahamic faith that Muslims generally regard as being “Solomon’s temple,” Islam’s third holiest place of pilgrimage.
We have a dichotomy here: Muhammad traversed the seven heavens to speak with God. Moses spoke with God and brought us the Ten Commandments. Jesus was said to often speak with the father. Are we all referring to the same god?
If we are all referring to the same god, why can we not all live in peace?
Today, we are splintered by race, religion, culture, and beliefs based on perceived prejudices. The Black Lives Matter movement is an anecdote, a story based somewhat on fact and somewhat on fiction. It excludes humankind to substitute a racial implication.
It is not that black lives don’t matter so much as that all lives matter to God!
Terrorism like what we are seeing all around the world in France, Germany, Mali, San Bernardino, and elsewhere leaves but one message for mankind.
A god of war is a false god, whether that god be affirmed in the Quran, the Christian Bible, the Hebrew Bible, or any other scripture that claims to be the words of God channeled to the human race.
It would appear by the escalation of worldwide violence that we have been deceived.
Consider: “We were all humans until race disconnected us, religion separated us, politics divided us and wealth classified us.”
