How a religion is conceived and how it can be exploited – Part II

There have been reactions for all tastes in the comments written to the First Part of this issue, I’ll try now to give a response to them at the time I include in this Second Part new elements of consideration to the problem under revision.

It is thought that giving the economy as a root motivation for the crisis that is going on in the Middle East is an oversimplification of the problem. I do not believe it is, I firmly believe it is the reason for everything going on in the region. Simple reasons can be the answer to difficult problems, sometimes matters are made difficult to understand because those who deal with them so want them to be to hide the real situation behind. In this connection I remember an Einstein’s anecdote when he had to confront the number one student in a class room to solve a problem. The student took just some minutes to find the solution, while Einstein took very much longer to find the same solution because he used a scientifical process to do it.

If you look at things with simple eyes is quite different to looking at them with complicated ones.

Religions have all the time since their inception been exploited. Men were always exploited in one or another way, and they still are, much that they want us to understand that slavery has been erased off the face of the Earth. But this is another question I am not going to deal with here.

It is religions and their exploitation that have brought us to this post, and on them I am going to focus here.

Thirst of power is what have made men and women(the latter in scarce circumstances) divide into two sides : those wielding the power and those suffering the consequences. The growth of populations caused the growth of memberships in all religions. The Ecclesiastical Hierarchies organised them in a way that the faithful were permanently subject to fear of God. God was made in the image of man, not all the way round because this is absolutely impossible as God has never been seen by any one.

Fear, the most abject of the human traits, is at the root of all our problems. We have fear of wars, of fights, of not having enough money to reach the end of the month…, and above all of death. The Catholic Church instituted the sacrament of Confession as a unique instrument to keep its faithful in the fold. Psychologically speaking Catholics owe their souls to the Church dignitaries who are allegedly endowed with the grace granted by God of absolving all sins. The Imams are in charge of this mission, although in a different way, in the prayers all Muslims are compelled to pray every day, while Jews must have a weekly time, the Sabbath, to strengthen their relationship with God. All of these are rites in which the faithful of each religion firmly believe which keep them united in each of the folds.

And those who wield the temporal power, or want to wield it, know and use it for their own benefit.

We have seen in all these years since the problem in the Middle East became really serious, that there have been situations where suspicions might have arisen of attitudes which went against one or another religion. The cartoons issued in Denmark, the Pope’s statements about Islam’s being violent, whilst Judaism has maintained the same position it has for centuries continuously using today the Holocaust to keep undesirable situations off its limits, that is Muslims fighting against Christians, Christians uniting to Jews – of all unions – to fight Muslims, and all of them making the world a complete chaos to live, this in sheer fear of one another.

I do not believe for a second that religion be at the root of the problem, of this universal problem we have been compelled to live with, religions are being used just to keep us watching the locks of our houses, the persons who walk on the streets about us, the suspiciously-coloured passengers that will be travelling in the same planes we travel, the strange bags that have been left unattended anywhere, in sum distrust about each other is growing non-stop in the world. Why?

I do not believe in conspiracies, I believe in evil and in goodness, I believe a human being is capable of being evil or of being good, of being greedy and of being modest. How many times have we seen how a human being has used another one for the former’s benefit? Numberless. Husbands using wives and viceversa, children using parents and viceversa, friends using friends, etc, why then human beings cannot use religions, too? And above all the members of those religions?

Why, for instance, cannot Jews use Christians and Muslims against each other in their own benefit? What are the Christian-Zionists (not Zionist-Christians curiously) but an aberration which is being used in favour of Zionists? Why cannot Muslims use Christians against Jews? Or Christians not use Jews against Muslims?

While they are busy trying to settle their enormous differences, some take advantage of the situation to fill their own coffers.

Religions should avoid to have any interferences in politics, but it is imperative that religions do not allow politics to use them because politics have not anything whatsoever to do with religion. Politics is material, religions are spiritual. The day this is achieved, we shall start to have peace because religions are in their origins meant for peace and love among the human beings.