Listening this week to Trump and Pence has convinced me that there is a need for a major change.
ISIS is not a perversion of Islamic history or traditions nor is Trumpism a perversion of Christianity and European tradition. These two faiths have terrorized the world for centuries always in the name of the need to spread and enforce their truths.
Not all religions have this burden. We Jews have been demonized both for keeping our religion to ourselves .. as if we were chosen .. and for refusing to see the truth of the Prophet or of God’s son, Jesus.
Missionaries led the way in Asia, Africa and the Americas, spreading truth while creating slavery and committing ethnocidal murder. Yet, nowhere in the history of Africa, Asia or the Americas do we read of a similar effort to fight the Muslims or the Christians in the name of Buddha, Raven, Ra, Shiva or Candit.
I think about the Navaho woman who asked a missionary, “If your religion is so good, why do you want to give it away?”
Nor is evangelism unique to religions. Political systems growing out of Christianity … Communism and Fascism … were very much in the Christian tradition. Mao, Stalin, Trotsky and Lenin all believed that they had been enlightened by Marx and that their chosen few had the burden of bringing truth to the unwashed masses .. even at the costs of mass starvation and suffering.
I hope this is not taken as an effort to demonize Islam or Christianity. Both regions have great teachings. Scholars, political leaders, philosophers, artists, physicians have done their work with inspiration from the Quran or the Roman Bible. In some cases, as in the roots of modern science in the soil of Spain, Baghdad and Alexandria or the awesome role Christianity had in giving birth to the enlightenment, the two evangelical religions have been the source of awesome goodness. But then, that is also true of the teachings of Buddha, Confucius, Hillel and probably many other teachers whose heritage has been lost to the thrust of the cross shaped sword or the swipes of the scimitar.
The madness of the ISIS caliphate just echoes Hitler and Stalin. Trump may not be either of these, but he scares me.
Without a great flight from evangelical religions, or without these evangelical religions accepting responsibility for their history, there will never be reform and world society will suffer.
Comments from FACEBOOK
Pastor Sunday Adelaja‘s video.
This is the impact Christianity would have on the masses in a few years. People would kill in the name of Jesus. It is happening now in a subtle way. In Nigeria the members of the political leadership are either Christians or Muslims and the problem remains the same due to their hypocrisy. The true religion is KNOWLEDGE. Everything else is a lie.