Religion and War

It is common to hear people speak of religion as though it were a cause of war. It is true that religion is a factor in the problem of war, but not the way many think of it, as being a root cause. Rather, the root cause of war is now and always has been the desire of certain minorities for economic and political power, and that religion has been and is still being used as a tool to convince the people that these wars are worth fighting.

Religion is the most powerful force for social mobilization, because it touches the deepest fibers of the human heart--our love for a Being that we perceive as the sum total and maximum expression of all the most noble and beautiful qualities that fill us with awe and reverence as we observe them in the world around us and in the wonderful people we love and admire.

As such, religion has inspired people throughout the ages to make the personal sacrifices necessary to serve others with love and excellence through large and small efforts that over time have contributed to building up the great civilizations that all people admire. There is nothing else in the social world, be it politics, economics, science, or even philosophy, that can inspire such abnegation in service to the common welfare.

Self-serving leaders are fully aware of the tremendous power of religion to move the masses, and so they use it as a means to serve their own personal, short-sighted political and economic interests. This is like taking a powerful technology, that is capable of bringing well being to the great masses of humanity, and using it to destroy the lives and hopes of those same masses. We should not blame the tool for having been wrongly used, but rather the individuals and groups who have perverted its original purpose.

If those leaders were to be fully honest and tell the people sincerely that their wars are fought to benefit themselves politically and economically, nobody would follow them or send their children into battle. So they hide their true interests behind a guise of religious fervor and convince the people that fighting the war is a noble, heroic, even religious act of self-sacrifice for some greater good or high ideal.

As a result, today more and more people are rejecting religion as a potential source of human welfare, when what they should really be rejecting is the divisive political system and the misguided economic theories and practices that serve only the interests of the powerful and leave the helpless masses drowning ever more deeply in a sea of despair.

We, the peoples of the world, have the power to wrest religion--this most powerful instrument for social transformation--out of the hands of self-serving political and economic leaders, and to return it to its original purpose, which is to unite the hearts, upraise the downfallen, ease the pain, cure what is diseased, mend what is broken, and inspire the self-sacrifice that will empower humanity to build the kind of world we all dream of--a world of true justice, unity and peace.