I just finished reading a news article about how, at the current rates, Islam will out grow Christianity by 2070. On the legitimacy of such predictions, I don't know, but what I do know is that many people have seriously wrong ideas about the role of religion in the history of war.
Many of the reader comments regarding this news article lay blame upon organized religion for many of the wars. This mentality can be blamed on the Protestant worldview. Protestantism began, in a practical sense with the great schism in 1054. With the Protestant mindset came the idea that the individual can define Holy Scripture. That very concept has been plaguing the world since. And that very concept has led to innumerable wars, division and grief.
The sad thing about all this (not that war and death is not sad) is that the modern American pretty much defines Christianity by the Protestant worldview. And this has led to the need for the historic church to articulate itself as Christian but not Protestant. IT is too bad that Christianity cannot simply be defined as one who practically follows Christ.
When people denigrate the Christian faith because of the hatred and violence that has been propagated by many in the name of Christ, they are making a massive logical error. Claiming to be a Christian does not make one a Christian. Much of what is done in the name of Christ is exactly contrary to what Jesus taught.
People that reject Christianity because of the errors or faults of those that claim to be Christian, are mistaken. Read the Bible and see what the Orthodox church has to say about the Christian life and then decide what to think about Christianity. Anything else is simply not honest.
Friday, April 3, 2015
Killing in the name of...
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I would wholeheartedly agree, that being a Christian is more accurately defined by the extent to which one emulates Christ, not by the mere declaration of such. Of course, to those who are determined to rebel against God, pointing out this simple truth will probably be met with accusations of violating the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.
ReplyDeleteThe popularly repeated but erroneous correlation between religion and war has annoyed me for a few years now. True, misdeeds have been committed "In the name of" over the centuries but I note that when asked to list the wars committed in the name of religion, people invariably get little further than the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition before the supposedly long list quickly loses steam. Interestingly, the panel of military historians who contributed to the lengthy and voluminous Encyclopedia of War cite 123 wars connected to religion from 8000 BC to 2004 AD...out of over 1700...which amounts to just under 7%: hardly qualifying the atheist accusation that most or all wars arise from religion. Of note, 66 of those 123 are attributed to Islam alone.
Darned inconvenient, those pesky facts that the Godless claim to be their exclusive domain. Even more inconvenient facts: the exponentially higher body count that has historically occurred under atheist regimes. And of course, predictably defended by the fighting retreat of "yeah but wars aren't fought in the name of atheism.", to which I am fond of countering that neither are cigarettes smoked in the name of Marlboro, and yet lung cancer still happens just the same.
You can't reason with these people.
But to bring it back around to your point, people would/should get a more pure image of what it means to be a Christian simply by absorbing the Word - for all the common quibbling about what is metaphor and what is not, it's all laid out pretty plainly, for those who have eyes to see.