Ask Me Help Desk - Questions and answers!

Why are there wars in the name of God?

These are a few questions asked by infants who find it hard to understand why we, so often, use the name of God to justify all kind of injustices.

Q- What can religions do to avoid wars?
A- In constructing the world peace we should all be concerned, whether religious or atheists and agnostics; westerners or easterners. However, those of us who believe in Jesus have to assume this task as a major priority.

Q- Why?
A- If we believe that God is our Father, all of us are His sons, whether believers or unbelievers. Sons have to be treated as such. Fraternity is the great value of Christianity.

Q- Could religions pacify our World?
A- Not only could they. They have to do it. It is an urgent task!

Q- I had been told rather the opposite. That religions have always been a matter of conflict, of confrontation among persons and countries.
A- Yes, but this is because our Faith is not authentic or is wrongly interpreted. When the faith is really true, working for peace is an imposed priority.

Q- And what is peace?
A- Peace is not only the absence of war nor can it be limited to find a balance between opposite forces, nor it is the final outcome of a despotic domination; peace is the work of justice.

Q- What can we do to pacify our World?
A- To work for a global justice and develop the conscience of our unity.

Q- Conscience of our unity?
A- Yes. We have to realize that all human beings are brothers in our existence, we all come from the same origin and we should be aiming to the same result. Our salvation!

Q- And what about the differences that we can see?

A- The differences do exist, but they should not be a cause of conflict, but a motive of joy!

These questions and answers are simply put out because they are meant to explain basic problems of our society to Catholic children attending a catechesis, in preparation for their first communion.

However, many of us, adults, try to ask the very same basic question quite often. Why should there be any wars? And so many conflicts among people? Why so many of us DO NOT WANT to accept that we are all equal like branches proceeding from the same TREE?

I can only find one answer: GREED, with its many variations meaning the same: voracity, insatiability, materialism, selfishness, discord, lack of solidarity and, most important of all, lust for power, which is just a psychopathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of wealth or omnipotence. An obsession with grandiose or extravagant actions.

The most saddening thing, however, is that this GREED and ITS said variations cannot be confined to despotic regimes or dictatorships with no religion or belief whatsoever. It is also widely shared by those countries and people who belong to Democratic cultures, to the so called western civilizations and who, in most cases, consider themselves as defenders of Human Rights and claim their resolute and immovable faith in God.

Bearing in mind the above, I will close now by repeating with St. John "Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." (John 8:7)

I will certainly not throw any stone at her nor at anybody else!
Gromitt82

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Originally Posted by gromitt82

Q- And what about the differences that we can see?

A- The differences do exist, but they should not be a cause of conflict, but a motive of joy!

I can only find one answer: GREED, with its many variations

You forgot to mention FEAR. That, even more than greed, has caused far too many wars.

You are right! No wonder, you are always wondering!
But let me tell you something. Fear is something we all have innate as part of the instinct of survival, whereas GREED is a vice we acquire due to our lust por power and ambition!
Gromitt82

Fear can definitely be instilled, look at the conservatives in America, they prey on fear.

You are probably right. However, I would prefer to say that it can be increased. By instilling it, as you rightly say, it just keeps on growing to the point of being even afraid of imaginary things or of foreseing the most spectacular catastrophes!
This is peculiar of many conservatives all over the world.
Instilling fear is a very old tradition that could be traced back to the O.T. which is practically full of threats, punishments and menaces by Yahweh, possibly the only way to make people in those days walk the line!
Haven't improved much from then..
Gromitt82

I agree that materialism/consumerism is indeed the cause of many a misdeed. Pair that with fear and you have easily lead sheep. This Christmas I'm appalled by the materialism in our malls; I'm trying hard to teach and show my kids that 'buying stuff' isn't a way to be happy.

In the US they have a different problem in that the corporations basically own the politicians and that greed is the motivating factor. I don't know how they are going to break out of that.

My first thought... if these are designed to help answer questions for children in preparation for their first communion, then someone needs to bring it down a notch and offer up explanations in vocabulary children would more likely understand! :)

Other than that, there is no question wars and disagreements are caused by greed and fear. I would also throw in, as parts of the first two, the "need to be right" and to "save face".

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Originally Posted by NeedKarma

I agree that materialism/consumerism is indeed the cause of many a misdeed. Pair that with fear and you have easily lead sheep. This Christmas I'm appalled by the materialism in our malls; I'm trying hard to teach and show my kids that 'buying stuff' isn't a way to be happy.

In the US they have a different problem in that the corporations basically own the politicians and that greed is the motivating factor. I don't know how they are going to break out of that.

I fully agree with you. Materialism is flooding us everywhere and in every aspect of our lives.
50 or even 40 years ago (when all my children made their first communion) what mattered was the fact they were going to receive God for the first time. Later on, there was some sort of light celebration where we had chocolate and cookies.
Right now, is the other way round. What really matters is the party, which should be as big as you can afford. Receiving the communion is a must we have to go through to justify the great "fiesta".
In these particular pre-Xmas. Days, on TV, we can only see the hundreds of "marvelous" and expensive items especially made for our "happiness" and "well-being"
Certainly not a single small mention to the Nativity of Jesus...
WHat for? Jesus DOES NOT SELL!
Gromitt82:(:mad:

Quote:

Originally Posted by gromitt82

[B][I]Why are there wars in the name of God?

]

The answer to your question is that this is an effective way to get the population to participate in war.

The so-called religious wars of the 16th century were really wars about territory. Invoking God provided a strong impetus to fight - even though both sides invoked the same God.

However, Charlemagne, if we can accept the historians, actually seemed to be fighting sincerely in the name of God (Christian God) against the non-Christian Saxons in order to convert them. Of course the defeated Saxons became part of his empire.

The Crusades also seem to have been genuine wars fought in the name of God. The early medieval mindset was very religious among all classes.

The Hindu-Muslim conflicts in India, Northern Ireland, Israel-Arab conflict - these are good examples of wars that invoke God but are really about economic issues.

It's easier to persuade Johnny to get his gun if God is thrown into the motivation.

Many wars, of course, are fought for perfectly good reasons. Would anyone deny that fighting fascism in WW2 was anything but a "good" war?

Dear Athos,

As I have already pointed out wars are always provoked by greed and ambition or lust for power. Moreover, invoking the name of God is indeed, as you say, a good motivation to get Johnny get his gun.

The religious wars of the 16th century actually started with a fight for power between dynasties, expanded in a conflict between catholic and protestants that killed thousands of people, involved several kingdoms to end 36 years later, with the famous Edict of Nantes. However, initially, there were not only territories involved but also who would run them!
Religious wars probably are, along with civil wars, the cruelest ones. In addition, what proves the absolute naivety of the Jonnies that fight them is that, normally, both parties claim God is on their side and quite ready to destroy the other one. This, of course, is an idiocy for in the case of all wars between Christians, or between Christians and Moslems, all parties are monotheists and believe in the same God. Moreover, assuming God would patronize any kind of wars, obviously, God would not fight with Himself.

In the case, however, of Christians (who supposedly should follow what Jesus preaches in the N.T) there is no indication whatsoever that Jesus, during His short public life would have favored any kind of wars.

So in the case of both Charlemagne, and even more so, in the case of the Pope Urban II, who launched the first Crusade, God should not have been invoked.

Charlemagne most surely wanted to expand his domains and there is no question the Urban II wanted to conquer the Holy Land from the Muslims, as a matter of prestige and personal power, particularly, in the Middle Age, when as you say, religious feelings were so strong and Popes actually ruled the Church like kings.

It is amazing, how people, who certainly should know better, like to speak in the name of God by saying God wants this or that, or even worse, God has told me…
This only proves, in my opinion, that their faith is not genuine and they use it only for their convenience. The one and only message we have received from God lies in the Gospels where God’s Word, through his Son, is transmitted to all of us through the Evangelists and the Apostles.

I would not call WW2 a “good” war but rather a “necessary war”. And it could have probably been prevented if someone might have had the idea of murdering their main leaders, like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Franco, etc. Murder is, of course, a sin.

But surely, murdering a score of people is better than murdering 50 million… don’t you think?
Gromitt82

Quote:

Originally Posted by gromitt82

Religious wars probably are, along with civil wars, the cruelest ones.

The American Civil War killed 600,000. WW2 killed 50 million. In what sense are Civil Wars more "cruel" than other wars?

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Urban II wanted to conquer the Holy Land from the Muslims, as a matter of prestige and personal power

More accurate would be Urban wanted to RECLAIM the Holy land which had been conquered by Islam warriors.

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I would not call WW2 a “good” war but rather a “necessary war”. And it could have probably been prevented if someone might have had the idea of murdering their main leaders, like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Franco, etc. Murder is, of course, a sin.

Ok, necessary rather than good - semantics? To use your own argument, would Jesus have approved of murder?

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But surely, murdering a score of people is better than murdering 50 million… don't you think?
Gromitt82

You're on dangerous ground here. Do the means, no matter how evil (murder) justify the ends? This is the crux of the moral question.

Stalin said, "One million dead is a statistic. A single death is a tragedy". Food for thought.

Dear Athon,

Cruelty does not necessarily go together with numbers. Civil wars, in my modest opinion, are more “cruel” in that they imply “brothers” fighting against “brothers”. I know it quite well, for I found myself involved in the Spanish civil war, and different members of my own family were killed fighting in different sides. The hate and cruelty that inspired that conflict were unheard of and certainly had no equal with the 1808 Spanish/French war, for instance, when we were fighting to recover our freedom. In certain areas of the country that hate is still to be perceived after 71 years.

The Yugoslavian conflict that ended up in the disintegration of the State, to a certain extent, was also a sort of civil war and extremely cruel, by all means. A very good friend of mine, Bosnian and living in Sarajevo, was happily married to a Serbian woman, born in Bucharest. When the war started they had to split up, and subsequently, they divorced.
WW2 was substantially a war among different countries. Cruelties did happen as they do in every war. Killing six million people in concentration camps is a good evidence of cruelty. However, that was not the reason for that war. The reason was, as you said, our fight against fascism.
– o -
I agree that RECLAIM is more accurate than conquer. In fact, the Seljuk Turks were the ones that had conquered those territories from the Byzantine Empire. Still, Urban II, while also listening to the appeal for help from Comnemus he addressed the Council of Clermont by considering that reclaiming the Holy Land was not only a must for the Christian nobles and kings but it would also meant economic advantages to colonize those fertile territories so sparsely populated. Moreover, to better motivate the enthusiasm of the French nobles he offered them a generous distribution of indulgences. His prestige was at stake.
– o -
Semantics, perhaps, like RECLAIM and CONQUER. I did say that Murder is a sin. The Fifth Commandment (according to RCC and Lutherans) is, as you know, “You shall not kill/murder”
Therefore, it follows that Jesus would not have approved of any murder. But even Jesus, who preached during ALL his public life the nonviolence, Jesus, who in the Cross forgave His murderers, at a certain moment, could not control Himself and “…on entering the temple area he began to drive out those selling and buying there. He overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who were selling doves. “ (Mark 11:15).

We cannot pretend to foretell what Jesus would have done if given the possibility to choose between murdering five people or 50 million. However, if we consider the O.T. only, we could possibly say that Yahweh would not have probably hesitated.
At any rate, my premise did not contemplate involving God in it.

This would have had to be a decision taken by men only. In addition, more often than not, along history, men have been confronted by similar situations and murders of many kinds, without taking into consideration God’s opinion, and they have NOT been rejected.
– o -
Perhaps it would be better to ask whether “do ends justify the means?”

President Bush, Blair and Aznar seemed to believe it does. They did not hesitate to place thousands of American, English and other soldiers in harm’s way or at the risk of being killed, on the basis that it might make the Western World feel safer.

By the same token, therefore, the Western World rulers in 1939, should have anticipated (particularly after what happened at the Spanish Civil war in 1936/1939) what was most probably going to happen in the world if those dictators were let loose to quench their thirst for power… I was then only 15 years old, and by listening to what Franco was telling us in those days we could already envisage a dark future… So what should we say about the other European rulers? They were guilty of an awful myopic...

Democracy has its own peculiar ways to do things. That anyone is considered innocent until proven guilty is a great step towards equitable justice, except that it does not always works for everybody, and there are cases when the guilt is so evident that it should not necessitate any additional proves.
As for Stalin’s philosophy, I could not care less. According to his own daughter Svetlana, Stalin was personally responsible of the death of well over 20 million Russians. Other sources claim 34 to 49 “unnatural deaths”, under Stalin.

So no wonder that he considered that as simple statistics.
Gromitt82

Quote:

Originally Posted by gromitt82

Dear Athon,

Cruelty does not necessarily go together with numbers. Civil wars, in my modest opinion, are more “cruel” in that they imply “brothers” fighting against “brothers”. I know it quite well, for I found myself involved in the Spanish civil war, and different members of my own fam

Point taken about civil war cruelty. And thanks for correcting my "ends/means" misquote.

I have no basic argument with any of your points. But I do think what the "Western Rulers" should or should not have done in 1939 is a very large issue better taken up on the History board.

Also, Stalin's comment was intended by him as sarcasm, not philosophy (although there's some question whether Stalin ever said any such thing).

Dear Athos,
Thanks for your comments. I fully agree with you about "the Western Rulers" .
Should you wish to debate over that point on the History Board, let me know it and I will be pleased to go there with my point of view.

I love debating on History and Religion, especially with educated people like you.

As far as History is conerned, I believe debating, when properly done, open new possibilities of interpreting it.

Incidentally my mentioning Stalin's philosophy was also sarcastical.
Gromitt82