TERRORISTS

Karl Marx once famously quipped that religion is the opium of the people,

By that he was saying that religion is used to keep people happy, to keep them complacent, and to keep them in line.

Basically, if you be good and follow the rules and do not stir up any trouble, you are being faithful to God, who is in charge anyway, and you will be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams in the afterlife.

To be fair, Marx was right that too often this is what religion becomes. I saw it growing up where some of the more strict baptists I knew believed the world to be a vale of tears from which they would one day be rescued. And when you see this life as a place you need to be rescued from, what difference does anything really make? Why recycle for example, if there is no value to this world. Why worry about the environment? Why try to change things?

As long as you are good, follow the rules, confess your faith… you will be rescued from the hell that is life on earth.

If you are a Christian I am thinking this might not sound all that crazy. There is at least a part of that way of thinking built into every denominations way of understanding the faith. I just don’t think that most of us are so black and white anymore. But when someone dies we console each other with the thought that they are in heaven, and we make half hearted jokes about getting rewarded for our good behaviour.

I feel that sometimes we conveniently forget our own foibles when we look out into the world and condemn others.

So I want to suggest to you that when a fundamentalist does something terrible, when there are suicide bombers, when there are death threats, whenever religious extremism resorts to violence, their thinking is not very far off from our own.

Religious extremists come in many forms, don’t forget. There was that guy in Norway who shot all the teenagers, there was Timothy McVeigh in the states, I could do you a whole long list. But here is an interesting fact as reported by the Globe and Mail, 90% of the worlds terrorist attacks are performed by non Muslims, while the number one, overwhelmingly, targeted group of terrorism, is Muslims.

Terrorism, Murder, even rudeness have their genesis in this idea I have been talking about, that this world, these people, life itself, is only temporary. That there is something better waiting on the other side.

But for some reason we convince ourselves that Islamic extremists who are willing to strap a bomb on themselves, or open fire on strangers are completely crazy for thinking their reward is in heaven.

It is also a very Christian way to think. Think of the crusades, for example.

Think of Waco, the Jonestown Murders, even Charles Manson. These people all felt that death was preferable because it would usher in salvation. And they are all Christian.

Which brings me to the latest bit of London terror, the attack on the Finsbury Park Mosque. The media plays it up as if this guy was mentally ill and that is why he did it, which certainly is true. But he was also anti Muslim, and Christian.

I know I am circling around a topic without naming it. So here it is, the only true religious value is love. That is it, pure and simple. And the worst, the absolute worst people in the world for disregarding this truth are Christians - the people who claim to follow a person whose one message was that all of religious truth can be boiled down to “love God, love others, love yourself.”

That is not opiate stuff - that is not get into heaven stuff - that is hard truth, and hard work. And the first step to getting back in track is to admit that we are the ones who got off track in the first place, just saying.

THE NEWSPAPER INJUNCTION

Karl Barth, a famous and influential theologian of the modern world, once said that a preacher needs to preach with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. In other words, one has to pay attention to the world and the word at the same time – and try to make sense of how they fit together.

So I would like to offer an opinion. It is solely my own. But I make it while keeping those two documents fresh in my mind.

 For the last three months I have driven some 22,000 kilometres across Canada to the Yukon and then across the United States from Alaska through to Maine. I have seen many things, but what I saw the most of is people. People with outrageous accents, people with many different skin tones, people who were rich, people who were poor, people who wore tank tops and people who wore cowboy hats. You get the idea…

What I also saw is that they all go to Tim Horton’s for a coffee, they all get a doughnut at Dunkin’s, they all seem worried about self image, and most cannot drive. In other words – there are very few things that make us different compared to the things that make us the same. I am not sure whether that is a newspaper or bible type realization; perhaps a bit of both.

But then I read comments on social networking about how Trudeau is ruining the world by bringing Syrians into Canada. Or I see news articles about how Britain is leaving the European Union. I listen to campaign speeches by Donald Trump. I see so much in the news about differences – about making sure we remember it is us versus them. Whether them is a different religion, skin tone, sexuality, or nationality… there always has to be a them.

I lived with a Syrian for a week in Ontario during June. He made me think that I need to re-think what nice, calm, and hospitable means. It was Ramadan and he was fasting, He was a corporate lawyer in Syria, and here he was working in the 35-degree sun putting up canvas tents for weddings while not eating or drinking, and still being pleasant and hospitable. I get angry when I skip breakfast.

 It was the same story over and over. I almost never met someone who was not just like me, and who was not happy and nice. And the people I met who seemed ornery, I am pretty sure it was because their dog just died, or someone else had treated them badly, or a whole slew of problems all of which I have too.

Wasn’t it Jesus who tried to help Jews, Samaritans, Roman’s and Greeks alike? Did he say to the Pharisees; no I will not heal you? Did he ever turn someone away? How about Paul who said that there are neither slave no free, Jew nor Greek, but all are one? Or the simple judge not lest ye be judged of my grandmother’s admonition.

I know that many, many people have weighed in around Brexit, Trump, Syrians and the like. I know that you have all heard the love your neighbour shtick. Even the there but for the grace of God go I statement makes most of us pause and think. But these columns have a specific audience. If you are reading them, you already are interested in religion and the faith. Perhaps you go to church or temple or synagogue. So I just want to remind you that we need to take the newspaper with a grain of salt. We need to take the Bible as a tool. We need to balance the reality of the world with the values of our faith. And we need to actually look at the people around us.

 We are all in this together