First...I'm going to be fair and warn you now. If the topic of religion or war might offend you and end our friendship, just stop reading. :)
Now, with that out of the way...
We're gonna start with a few historical facts. What do the Peasant's War, the Third Battle of Panapet, and The Six-Day War have in common?
Well simple folks...at least one side claimed to be fighting for God. The Peasant's War featured two sides who both claimed to be fighting for the same side...
Say it with me...Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
Different cultures refer to it in different ways. You've all heard the term Jihad, but did people realize that nearly every culture has some sort of word or words for "Holy War"? The Europeans call them Crusades, the Jewish (faith, not the state of Israel) refer to them as Milhemet Mitzvah (Commandment war). Any way you look at though, war isn't fought for God, war is fought because God lost.
Today is the 10th anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado. To say that Columbine is a watershed moment in United States history would be something of an understatement. Ask people where they were when they heard about the attacks on the World Trade Center and they will remember that information instantly. Ask someone where they were when they heard about the attack on Columbine and the answer will come just as swiftly.
Watershed events like this occur in every generation. Ask your parents where they were when it was announced that President Kennedy, or John Lennon, had been shot and killed. Those were watershed days for their generation, as Columbine and September 11th will be remembered throughout our generation.
My issue today, on this tenth anniversary, is how religious groups, those same groups that use God as their excuse for war, deal with the situation at Columbine. Mostly, I continue to hear, ten years later, these two things...
"It was all part of God's plan."
"I guess God needed a few more angels."
Say it with me folks...
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot....
The problem with those statements is that they come from what I refer to as "trendy religion". I know a lot of people who practice what I refer to as "Trendy Christianity". I'm tired of typing that, so I'm going to call it "TC" from now. "TC" pretty much was just gathering steam in the late 1990's, around the time that Columbine occurred. If you listen to the things being said about some of the people who died at Columbine, you would believe them to be part of one "TC" group or another. I am not faulting them, nor am I judging them for this, nor anyone who is part of a "TC" group, I'm just not sure I understand it.
Statements like the two things above lead you believe that God is the only force influencing our lives, that nothing can possibly happen without God making the decision that it is going to happen. The "TC" people I have met seem to firmly believe this, and that somewhat frightens me. The God of the "TC" church is all-powerful, and completely merciful. The people I have met who are members of "TC" churches never make any mention of Satan, or his evil works...which is a centerpiece of the Catholic faith...
When the people of several Christian religions renew their Baptismal Vows they are asked; "Does thou renounce Satan? And all his works? And all his pomp?"
Yet, the "TC" churches I have been into, and the "TC" members of those churches, seem to never mention, nor fear, nor acknowledge the existence of, this ultimate evil.
I say to those people...God's been around a long time. He has plenty of angels, and if He had 12 more angels in those 12 people, and a choice as to what they did, He would have left them here, because He knows the Earth certainly could use 12 more angels more than Heaven could.
This is what I want to say to those people mostly. This wasn't God's plan. War, blamed on religion, attacks upon high schools, innocent people slaughtered by airplanes. These ARE NOT God's plan!
The Earth is a battleground. On it God and Satan struggle for dominance over the mortal souls which so many of us take for granted. God is awesome, but Satan is a worthy, and formidable, foe. Sometimes Satan wins, and takes possession of a soul that might have belonged to God. Sometimes those people then go out and do things according to Satan's plan.
God didn't want for these things to happen, but he doesn't win every battle for every soul. Sometimes he loses. If he didn't lose sometimes the battle would have ended a long time ago and we would live in some sort of utopian paradise. We don't, and that is because sometimes Satan wins...sometimes things don't go according to the plans of the good guys. In divinity, as in life, sometimes the bad guys triumph, so the good guys have to do the best they can to put the pieces back together again...
I wish the people in these "TC" religions would get it. You can't have one without the other. To believe in a warm and fuzzy God, in complete control of everything, forgiving without question all of our sin, always there to pick us up, and never believing that we could be fault...to believe in this warm and fuzzy God without a belief in his counterpart, without a belief in Lucifer, seems blind and false to me.
If God is in complete control of everything, and nothing happens without it being according to his plan, why can we think? Why can reason? Why we do have the capacity for love, and hate. Why would this God put us here with the ability to hate? Why do I have anything resembling freedom of thought if God has already predetermined everything?
It's time for these "TC" religious people to just plain stop. Stop with the platitudes about "God's plan". Stop telling us that there's nothing we can do, for God has already determined our entire life course.
Tomorrow I could change my mind. I could decide that my immortal soul is no longer worth the work. Tomorrow I could give myself over to Lucifer...
Is that God's plan? No, it's not...because my God fights for the soul of each person on this planet...
It's just that sometimes he loses...
It's late, I'm tired...and this turned out to be pretty long. If you're going to delete me for talking about this, I'm sorry, I'll miss you...
