Human beings were designed by God to build their lives around him. It is easy to see that when people as a whole fall away from God, they inevitably replace him with something else. The past Hundred and thirty tears or so have been an time of secularism in western society. We have simply replaced God as the primary focus of life with nationalism and ideology, often with very destructive results.
It may not seem like it today, but intense, large-scale nationalism is a relatively recent development. In times past, people tended to think as their nation as merely a collective earthly servant of their god or gods. When nations and empires fought, warriors more often thought of themselves as fighting for their god against heretics or unbelievers than for their nation against another nation. In the Nineteenth Century, borders between nations were often poorly defined and many people in outlying areas were not even sure which nation they belonged to. Even today, if you asked a person in much of the world "what are you?", their answer would be their religion and not their nation or ethnic group.
The same is true with secular ideology. There have always been politics in the world but through most of human history, it was far less important than religion. To people in times past, the great ideological clashes of the past hundred years would be nonsensical. The ideology would be scarcely worth going to war for if no religion was involved.
All that we have done during this time is to replace God with secular ideology and nationalism. We are designed with this space for him and if we do not follow him, we replace him with something else. It is true that there have been wars and other destruction done in the name of religion. But what about the same done in the name of ideology and nationalism over the past hundred years? Nationalism or ideology is no replacement for the one true God and we can be sure that when we face God that our ideological beliefs and the nation we were a part of on earth will mean absolutely nothing to him.
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It is apparent that throughout history people have used their religion as justification to take over other "defiant" cultures and expand their empires and rule themselves the chosen ones. Nowadays, organized religion as a majority is a tool to control, influence and manipulate other less dominating forces. Instead of a gift from God because you believe in something that is written by man and inspired by visions and accounts that are given by a past minority, people are told they will be damned to an existence of pain and suffering because of their lack of conformity to other people's ideas.
It's weird to think that a loving God would cause his creation great injury because they were misinformed or had other inspired ideas that weren't backed up by the majority. Maybe God isn't all loving and more a balance between what we see as Good and Evil. I'm not claiming to know the makeup of what exists beyond what I see here on Earth. I'm just saying that the first step to finding the solution is to admit that you don't know more than somebody else because you believe something that a bunch of other people have claimed is the truth because they read it in a book, learned it as they grew up or had an epiphany at a retreat.
Why are people so afraid of the unknown? Because they've been taught that if they don't claim to know and, even more powerful, don't believe in a certain ideology that they will experience great pain and despair when they leave Earth and are judged by God.
Give me a break!
I recently had someone tell me that I should believe in God, which he associates with the belief that Jesus is the Eternal Savior, because I could live without guilt or consequence. That's just the problem. Dealing with guilt and consequence is the process of making a change to divert the energy going into the actions that promote the deception that causes the guilt and the need to face consequences.
Make a difference. Seek the truth. Not the historical characters that are used as symnbols of the truth, but the truth tht we can help each other live more comfortably through care and understanding. Stop hiding behind a fable and stand up for what is real and tangible. See that understanding is reached only after confrontation, and that doesn't mean war.
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