Events of the past week, and indeed the past few years, give pause to the most religious about us to consider the efficacy of religion in general. For most Westerners religion is the product of a revelation where God speaks to humankind and commands them to do that which is moral and to refrain from that which is immoral. The reason that we follow revelatory commands is precisely because they are from God. They are beyond human reasoning, and by most accounts, cannot be doubted. We are to do what God commands because God has commanded us to act.
Sadly those who profess to speak in the name of God often pretend that their words are the of God. Nicholas Berg was beheaded, according to Muslim fundamentalists, because that is what Allah (God) desired. Ayatollah Khomeni and those who find strength in his teachings believe that America is the Great Satan because they believe that some people’s ordinary speech is itself the word of God.
Catholics, who haven given their lives to the interior life; who have promised to live lives of celibacy have taken advantage of Catholic children. Sisters who live in the image of their messiah have whipped those whom they were expected to love and to teach of love of their faith.
Christians by the thousands and Muslims by the thousands have murdered each other in the name of the same God. More people in these past generations have been butchered by people who profess to accept a God of peace.
Something about religion is terribly wrong.
For the Jew religion does not mean accepting the dicta of people who speak in God’s name. Our faith is defined by acts first and belief second. Our deeds to be holy must be deeds of kindness. No one Jewish can profess to believe in God and kill for no particular reason. No man can practice unethical behavior and identify as a practicing Jew.
And no person of any faith can profess a belief in a God of peace and practice deeds that are not peaceful. Radical Muslims and lapsed Catholic leaders have taught us what religion is not. It cannot be the result of the speech of man or the deeds of unethical man.
In this modern time it is for every man and woman to find God and define religion by searching for a voice from within, by recognizing that revelation does not begin with thunder and lightening, but rather from the depth of silence. In this modern time we have learned that no man can take it upon himself and his whim to speak for God.
In this modern time we have the opportunity to discover the common truths that every major religion share; that bind all together into one peoplehood. Those truths begin with one fundamental idea. Religion was never based upon the sword; religion begins in the search for peace with the recognition that all people are created in the divine image.