Questions of Faith 7

More hindsight...

How do we avoid war when the religions just can't agree?

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There is a popular myth in our culture that religions are dangerous and full of extremists and that we must flee from faith claims into the warm and peaceful embrace of secularism.  Don't believe the lie.  There's nothing necessarily violent about faith commitments.  And there's nothing neutral about secularism.  It has it's own faith commitments that are just as liable to produce warfare.

The 20th century was the murder century.  More people died violently in that century than all previous centuries combined.  And the great majority were at the hands of atheistically driven regimes.  If we want to avoid war, let's think twice before fleeing "the religious" to take refuge in "the secular."

The common denominator in all wars is not God, it's man.  So the real question to ask after the murder century is not "How can you believe in God?"  The real question to ask is "How can anyone believe in man?"  And yet secularism asks us to place supreme confidence in man.

I don't have any such confidence.  My hope for peace is in the Prince of Peace.  He is One who used His power not to lord it over us but to serve and bless us, to bleed and die for us.  He was One who refused to pick up the sword but instead was thrust through in order to reconcile His enemies.  He is our only hope for peace.

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