Have you noticed the great evil that comes from
religious exclusivity? Whenever one group of people claims that they have some
kind of special arrangement with the Creator and all previous ways of relating
to God are not to be tolerated, evil inevitably follows.
Zoroastrians gained power in Persia and
promptly threw out the pagan religion of the Magi. Christians threw out the
Pagans in Europe after stealing most of their holidays. Mayday, Christmas,
Halloween, Easter – it’s all spiritual booty.
Jews have hated Arabs and denied their right to
live in the traditional Biblical lands. Arabs returned their lack of hospitality
with as much passion. They all give as good as they get.
Christians march into places where primitive
peoples practice ancient faiths, some of them not practiced anywhere else in the
world. And we tell them to forget their traditional ways and give their hearts
to Jesus so they won’t burn in hell.
The Taliban persecutes infidels and destroys
ancient Buddhist statues by blowing them to pieces with their tanks.
Everywhere you look, the children of God wage
physical and spiritual war against each other. The blood never stops flowing,
and the rest of the world looks on in amazement. When will we learn that you can’t force people
to change their ways of expressing faith and devotion to the Creator?
At some point your spirit or your gut or your
humanity must speak to your theology. At some point you look at your holy book,
and you look at all the death and terror and ugliness that comes from fighting
people with other holy books and you say, “To hell with it. I’m not doing this
anymore.”
At some point you look at the sacred rituals of
the people you have come to save, and you fall silent. You sit quietly and
listen to their ancient songs and stories. You watch their bodies perform dances
that predate Christianity and are about to pass out of existence. And you ask
yourself, “How is it that I have eyes but did not see?”
At some point you look at the Dome of the Rock
and the Temple Mount, then you look at the bodies littering the streets and the
children living in squalor and you say, “Enough is enough! Burn every Koran and
every Bible if we must, but the lot of them are not worth the lives of these
children.”
At some point don’t you start listening to the
spiritual stories of other people and find the beauty and the common ground in
them? At some point don’t you realize that our myths are delicate, like
environments? The oldest ones are very fragile, and many have already been lost.
At some point don’t you come to understand that these things are worth saving?
HEY, RELIGIOUS GUYS!
Humanity is moving on, fellas. You can get
onboard the tolerance train or you can stay behind, but this train is leaving
the station. Humanity is going to a new place.
Your way has not worked, and anyone with an
ounce of sanity knows that. Beat your chalices and your pulpits into
ploughshares. Hell, beat your sacred books into ploughshares too, if that’s what
it takes. Beat everything into plowshares, but you better get on this train.
It may take a century. It may take several
centuries, but the Day of the Lord is coming. The year of Jubilee is at hand.
This Ramadan will last all year, and we will party like it’s 2099. The Lord God Almighty, He who created the
heavens and the earth does not need you. God can raise up children from the
stones and from the dirt beneath your feet. He’s done it before. He can find a
new Abraham, if that is His desire. There is always someone ready to hearken
unto the voice of The Lord.
So come on guys, we’d rather take you with us.
You’ve played such an important role in our history, and there is deep beauty
and ancient wisdom in your traditions. We’ll listen to you. We’ll try to see the
beauty that you speak of, if you’ll just quit yelling and shooting at us.
Hell, we’ll even pitch in and help you rebuild the sacred monuments that hatred has
torn down.
It would be sad if the children of Abraham were
to miss this train and end up nothing more than a sad footnote in the story of
humanity.
rlp
