Judaism, Christianity, Islam – Children of the One God? (#51)

As we approach Christmas, one of the largest Christian religious festivals, celebrated through most of the World, we couldn’t help but reflect on the continuing, wilful and incomprehensible conflict, between the practitioners of the three major and related religions that emanate according to their own Scriptures, from a single Divine source.

Linearly, Judaism developed first, Christianity next, and a half a century or so later Islam. And, in spite of their God’s Commandments, in which they all believe, the greatest being ‘Love the Lord thy God’, and second most important being ‘Love thy Neighbour as Thyself’ (we paraphrase), to this day they may profess to practice the first, but woefully neglect the second, choosing over the eons to pursue division, hatred and war instead.

Children of the One God? Definitely, at least according to their own Scriptures and their professed beliefs in them.  The Jews, Christians and Muslims, all profess that their spiritual beliefs descend originally from the Patriarch Abraham and his wife Sarah (therefore the three religions are called “Abrahamic”).

Additionally, they all profess to worship the one and only ‘God of Abraham’.  Yet, over the centuries, most of these decent believing people, who all extol and worship the infinite love, forgiveness, compassion and mercy of the ‘One Almighty God’, who created everything and everyone, cannot find it in their hearts to love the other children (in effect their siblings) of the same Heavenly Father, as brothers and sisters.

Instead, all brothers and sisters of the same God have indulged in centuries of hatred, war, bloodshed, intolerance and acute suspicion of each other, egged on by centuries of passionate, self-serving, divisive sermons and speeches from their own leadership and teachers.

This irrationality has resulted in the children of the ‘Most Powerful’ and ‘Most Compassionate Father’ and ‘Creator’, forever being distrustful and vengeful of the other children, of the same ‘Most Powerful’ and ‘Most Compassionate Father’ and ‘Creator’.  How anyone can justify this seeming insanity that has persisted throughout the ages right into the twenty-first century, causing nothing but hatred and division, is obviously beyond the comprehension of the human mind, as it continues to persist century after century into the present.

To further illustrate the degree to which humans can go in indulging in destructive and irrational behaviour, for centuries people of the same religion, worshiping the same God, but choosing to follow a different human teacher, or a variation of the interpretation of the original Scriptures, and therefore becoming a different sect, have hated and waged war on each other, even though they are absolutely the same in every other way, and the original Commandments of their God never changed. This consistent behaviour simply goes to show that in spite of their professed love and belief in God, and in the practice of His teachings, people choose to love and believe their human teachers even more (Catholics vs. Protestants; Sunni vs. Shia; etc.).

The destructive self-centeredness of the average human, needing to feel ‘special and different’ from others, stoked by parental, political and religious leadership that benefits more personally from stressing differences and division rather than commonality and unification, makes everyone squabbling children, hurting and killing one another for the attention and special favour of their ‘One Heavenly Father’.  There will have to be someday an incredible and implausible explaining to do, to the common to them all, ‘One Heavenly Father’, by all these believers on the final Judgment Day, in which they almost all believe. 

How does one explain and justify to the ‘One Father’, the killing and hatred of his other children, when He has made it clear in all Scriptures that every human is created by Him, whom He obviously and equally loves, in spite of claims to the contrary by certain teachers and groups?  There is no explanation except our irrational and bipolar need to distinguish ourselves from others on the one hand, and at the same time seek comfort in the sense of belonging to an ideological or racially similar group on the other.

This irrational and divergent need makes us and our teachers, be they parents or external teachers, ignore the express instructions in the Scriptures to place love, tolerance, compassion and forgiveness above all else, and that all people are God’s children, as taught by all Scriptures emanating from the One God.

The known ‘scientific’ (the word is used loosely here) history of early humans indicates that we were a primitive version of ourselves, hunting and gathering food like other primates and animals, living in crude shelters or caves, and being fearful and generally ignorant of our kind, our earthly environment, the Universe, and other species.  To paraphrase an old advertisement line ‘we have come a long way baby!’.

While we have progressively developed over show that in spite of their professed love and belief in God, and in the practice of thousands of years to our current form, where most humans no longer have to hunt and gather or live in crude shelters (granted, some unfortunate people still do), and are now certainly knowledgeable about our earthly and universal environment, and know fairly intimately other species, we seem to have made little progress, or none at all, when it comes to knowing other humans.  We are still fearful, ignorant and distrustful of others of our own species, if they don’t belong to our ideological, religious or racial background with which we are familiar and comfortable. 

The other area we humans have not evolved enough in, is not to covet more than we need at the expense of others.  This deep seated primitive need to acquire, gather and hoard all that we can for ourselves, and share very little with others (in comparison to what we have) still drives us in the way we behave as nations, societies, families and individuals. This entrenched primitive acquisitive nature of otherwise relatively modern human beings, necessitates the formation of armies and inflated defence budgets, and other institutions, instruments and mechanisms of war, to supposedly ‘protect’ ourselves from other human beings, similar to ourselves, who have literally been our ‘neighbours’ and ‘co-inhabitants’ on this Earth for tens of thousands of years. All that we as humans end up doing with our military and economic power is to subject others, weaker than us, to our aggression, and in doing so take more of what we want in material things, all the while professing love for the ‘One True God’ and His creation, through the rituals of religions.  Just about all nations and races at some time are guilty of that behaviour.

Either, we are wilfully defiant of the One God’s Commandment to ‘Love thy Neighbour as Thyself’, or we by our dogged and irrational persistence in hating our neighbours, forcefully prove the evolution theory, that in spite of our arrogance as a divinely created superior species, we are nothing more than an ignorant, fearful, self-centred, simple, evolving, ‘eat or be eaten’, natural earthly organism.  We cannot have it both ways, on the one hand claiming to be ‘God like’ -  ‘in His Image’, direct divine creation of God, and on the other hand, perpetually acting as ignorant, compassion-less, brutally violent, acquisitive, grubbing organisms.

As we approach one of the Christian World’s (the single largest religion) biggest festival  ‘Christmas’, celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, the One who most clearly and unambiguously admonished his followers to follow God’s Commandments, (and we paraphrase): ‘Thou shall not kill’; ‘Thou shall not covet’; ‘Love thy Neighbour as Thyself’, etc, which all came from the Judaic Scriptures and went on after Christ to be supported by Islam, we wonder why over the centuries, especially the leadership of all these three religions, professing to believe in the same one God, giving generally the same instructions, cannot put aside their earthly differences and embrace the heavenly dictates of their own Scriptures, to ‘love one another’?

If the leaders won’t change then the people of these three religions must, to better follow their God’s Commandments, and have a better World for all generations.

‘Happy Christmas!!’ - to all our readers.

[To all who might be offended by us for not using the more neutral greeting, ‘Happy Holidays!’  which seems to be in fashion in some quarters– we want to say: at Hanukkah we say ‘Happy Hanukkah!’; at Eid we say ‘Eid Mubarak!’; at Diwali we say ‘Happy Diwali!’; – well, you get the idea.]