Violence inspired by religion wreaks havoc on the world.
Religion is a tool. It serves a purpose in our lives. There is a nearly universal need for people to understand the reason for their existences and to have a means of expressing the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, life and death. Religion gives us a sense of organization and structure. We created religion as an expression of our innate spiritualities, in order to offer ourselves solace of some kind during our stay in this physical realm. The need for religion nearly always grows out of the fear of death and that which lies beyond it.
Bereavement is the impetus for many spiritual questions, and thus religion is completely tangled up in transience. Rituals to appease or ingratiate gods (and thus stave off disasters and death), festivals to rejuvenate or replenish resources (and thus stave off famine and death) and purification practices that inspire holiness (and thus stave off damnation and death) are all observed in an attempt to thwart physical suffering and spiritual mortality.
Religion is soaked in blood. The reason for this changes in relation to time and place but the historical truth remains that more people have died because of religion than because of any other man-made phenomenon. Sometimes people die because they practice a particular religion (e.g. the Holocaust). Sometimes it’s because they don’t (e.g. the Inquisition). With the advent of anti-religious governments prior to World War II (e.g. Communism) people were killed for not bowing to the pressure of worshipping the state. With so much death connected to religion it brings the value of its second greatest commodity into sharp focus.
Because of death, life is precious. Many people today have a hypocritical sense of abhorrence connected to the religious practice of human sacrifice. They will say something akin to “Religion should celebrate the value of life, not death!” or “Only heathens kill people for their gods!” The irony of that perspective is staggering. In places where human sacrifice is practiced it is specifically because the believers of a particular religion value life so much that they are willing to offer the gods the most prized commodity they had: themselves.
We look with horror at religions such as that practiced by the Aztecs. Their insatiable sun god required the blood of countless thousands in order to be reborn each day. Huitzilopochtli required so much blood that the Aztecs were forced to capture other nations in order to feed him. Granted, the captives the Aztecs used for sacrifice didn’t much care for the exercise (which is why they helped the Conquistadors overthrow the Aztec empire), but the Aztecs offered human blood specifically because it was so priceless. There are many other religions around the world where sacrificial victims saw their selection as a privilege and went willingly into the celestial arms of the divine as a means of honoring their people.
So then, how does one understand the change in the value of life? Those sacrificed were once considered to be living treasures. Whereas sacrificing people to religion was once an expression of the importance of animation, it seems that over the course of centuries this has eroded so that an individual’s being has value only if it is connected to one’s own belief system. How exactly does that work? How is it possible to say with one breath that life is of inestimable value to the creator, only in the next moment to then wage holy war? Holy war? Holy?
Crusade (Christian conflicts encouraged by authorities with spiritual directives), jihad (Islamic violence accompanied by the endorsement of religious leaders) and milhemet mitzvah (the ongoing obligatory Hebrew war proclaimed by God for the purpose of conquering and holding the Promised Land intact at all costs) seem to their adherents to follow along with the notion that atrocities committed as an act of faith are heroic, that to give up one’s self (or to rob others of their selves) for the divine is to achieve glory. And yet, it becomes difficult to see the difference between these contradictions and the Aztec rituals mentioned earlier. A loving god wants you to hate, lie, pillage, rape, torture, maim and murder? Really?
Is it any wonder that these religions have to focus on an unseen reward in the next life? They are propped up by faith in intangible paradises, places that will be much better than this world (this world of suffering that they themselves have created). Many of the older earth religions know that this world is a paradise, if we allow it to be. The universe itself is the tangible reward for the living. It is the manifestation of the divine and should be treated with awe and respect. Appreciating creation as it is and accepting all the various inhabitants within it creates heaven. Why wait for rapture? Why not create it here? If all the effort and resources put into destroying Earth were redirected toward healing her we could achieve that. We have chosen not to do so and therefore we create our own destruction. Such is the cost of free will. The gods have nothing to do with our demise, and there isn’t anything holy about it.
Jack Kirven holds an MFA in Dance from UCLA and a national certification in personal fitness training through NASM.
— Q-Notes’ “Health and Wellness” column rotates between physical fitness, spirituality, green living and medical wellness.
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