A Convenient God

 

Humanity and God.  God of love, God of peace, God of war.  We take our pick.

Is there some causal relation, or perhaps a correlation, between substance abuse and religious belief of the showy "Praise God!" and "pray with me!" and salvation- show variety?  I think so.  Those who think themselves saved indulge in a kind of exhibitionism; they enjoy being noticed and watched.  They also seem determined to see to it that others are similarly saved or at least pretend to be saved, and are certainly TOLD they should do as the saved do.

Humanity's God, though so often described as loving and merciful, is also often a God of war.  The God described in what's called the Old Testament, for example, exuberantly urges his chosen people to kill the men, women, children and even domesticated animals of those various peoples occupying the Promised Land before them.  He himself obliterates the sinful very dramatically, and in one famous instance even kills nearly the entirety of the human race.

In fairness, it should be noted that other ancient nations or at least their leaders delighted in describing the destruction they caused in war against their enemies and their domestic animals (killing the livestock of enemies seems to have been important then, judging from the frequency with which it's noted).  I've mentioned the lavish detailing of their wars by the Assyrian kings in this blog before.

It's not as easy to find support for or approval of war in what's called the New Testament as it is in the Old Testament, but no matter.  Christians have waged war since Christianity began.  In fact, they've waged war against each other far more than they've waged it against non-Christians.

We've been engaged in war throughout our history.  It's something we do.  We can't claim that we're less warlike than we were in the past.  There always seems to be some war going on somewhere, as there is now.

So, naturally enough, and quite conveniently, our God is almost always a God of war.  Sometimes, God is considered the reason why wars take place.  Wars have many causes, but religion is so often one of them if not the primary cause of them, and God so frequently evoked by wars' participants (though the God of the warring parties may differ) that it may fairly be said humanity's God is a God of war, when we want God to be a God of war.

And that's what we have wanted, and som want now.  

The claim is regularly made that belief in God is needed for us to be moral; indeed for morality to exist.  If that's the case, though, it appears that causing death and destruction through war is moral, i.e. that we should wage war. It's difficult to think of any war in which religion wasn't involved or in which God wasn't invoked by those at war as justifying it or as favoring the victory of one side or another.