Wars provoked by religion are complex. Today we witness the blazing aftermath of three armies of descendants of Abraham killing one another over land and its resources. We witness this ongoing conflict every day when we turn on TV for the news of the day–billowing clouds of black smoke as Jews, Christians and Muslims continue their battles over religious aggression in a triangle of revenge.
Dear Ones,
This fighting all started during archaic Biblical times. The story starts out with Abraham, the father of Isaac, about to kill his son Isaac as a burnt offering to the gods when the conscience within his mind said "Stop, in the name of God!" Coming to his mental senses, he ceased from burning alive his beloved son by rescuing him from the power of superstition, man's first religion. He then began to offer up the lives of animals instead.
Previously Abraham had another son, Ishmael, through Hagar, a hand maid. Abraham's wife, Sarah, said no son of her husband through Hagar would ever inherit his land. Unusual for the times, people of the Hebrew religion obeyed a jealous woman's voice since it supported claim to Jewish land.
Eons later another grandson in the genealogical line of Hebrew heredity was Paul of Tarsus in Turkey (originally Asia Minor) who broke away from his Jewish roots and started a new religion. Since the Hebrews rejected his foreign persuasion, Paul's followers were among the Gentiles and they became Christians at his first church in Antioch, Turkey.
Today older men train young soldiers to uphold these faiths in combat over cherished lands and its oil in the Middle East–Jews, Christians and Muslims. The United States is a secular democracy according to constitutional rule, but to most of the nation it comes across as Judeo-Christian. And to the Muslims, US bombs come from this joint-rival religion. (connected since Jesus was a Jew in the Hebrew Bible, that Paul carried over into Christianity.
Youths from this triangle of fire carry on the dissention that began in archaic times between two mothers whose Jewish faith split off into a Muslim faith. And the rest of the world is threatened by toxic munitions in their hands and those of radical religious extremists through chemical and radio-active nuclear weaponry.
Right now the world has even more lethal worries such as nature's radical weather from accumulative industrial war emmissions and contagious diseases such as ebola. We can't win over nature, but we can spend tazpayers money for health instead of religious deaths.
Young people in the United States have a choice of being recruited in armed forces or working as civilians. If they join the military, they have a choice of working for peaceful defense instead of non-combative defense as objectors of killing other youths. Perhaps the war department could metamorpholize into a Peace Department for check and balance between life and death.
Mame,
helenesmith1.blog spot.com helenesmith@(macdonaldsward)
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