Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: murphy@mips.com (Mike Murphy) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: How to get to Heaven Message-ID: Date: 3 Feb 91 03:49:42 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Your Organization Goes Here Lines: 50 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Our moderator wrote something which troubled me: >[The comment was "historically". Certainly lots of wars have been >fought in Jesus' name, and lots of people persecuted. I don't >consider the people who do such things proper Christians, but it has >been prevalent enough that at some point it becomes hard to completely >ignore. Certainly this sort of thing would be less likely with >religions that consider all religions more or less equivalent, or with >agnostic beliefs. It does seem to be connected with the Christian >idea that we are *right* and everybody else is going to Hell. From >there it seems not far to the idea that other people don't matter. >--clh] First of all, I think more wars have been fought for nationalistic reasons than for religious reasons. This gets tricky to measure because it is common to invoke religion after the war is started, but from my own study of history it seems that the root reasons of most wars, especially modern-day ones, have very little to do with religion. An obvious example of how nationalism and religion get mixed is the current war with Iraq, where both sides have claimed God is on their side, and Saddam has tried to declare a holy war, but the real reasons for the war have very little to do with religious beliefs. Christianity gets blamed for a lot of stuff via "guilt by association", but that's ignoring the real causes. I'm also not convinced that more tolerant religions produce fewer wars or persecution. I would consider Asia in general to have a more tolerant religious viewpoint (e.g. Buddhism and Confucian thought are more inclusive than Christianity), yet they have not refrained from wars and bloodshed. Another point of reference is that despite Christianity having declining influence in the Western world, we can't really say that we have any fewer wars or bloodshed than back in the "golden days" of Christian political influence. On the Christian side, the fact that I may believe someone is going to hell doesn't necessarily mean that "other people don't matter", to quote clh. Although you could make that link, I think the more common response to the idea of hell is to increase evangelism efforts because such people "do" matter. In fact it can be argued that the absence of religious values has also led to the belief that "other people don't matter". My real point in all of this is that I think most wars and persecution are caused by our "sinful" desires (James 4:1-2); we want something and get angry when we don't get it so we fight (a little simplistic, but I'm trying to keep this short). It is anger, pride, fear, hatred, greed, etc. that cause fighting, not religious beliefs about heaven and hell. There's a separate issue here of "just wars", where it may be appropriate to fight, e.g. in self-defense, so I don't think things are as simple as saying that all fighting is wrong. But I don't think there is really anything special about Christianity that causes "more" fighting.