Where is God?

For sometime now, our newspapers, television and other media seemed to be dominated by conflict. In Afghanistan schoolgirls have been threatened and attacked with acid just for wanting an education. While men have been warned to grow beards or face the consequences by the Taliban. In Gaza, Israel again tests its military might on Palestinian civilians and Hamas cowardly fires rockets on other innocents before scurrying away. Such bravery. Taken with Iraq, India and Pakistan, Dafur etc, it seems like the Human Race is on self destruct. Not all of this conflict is simply down to differences in faith, but the monotheistic religons have a lot to answer for.

From almost its early beginnings the Catholic Church has used Christianity to justify the persecution of women, torture, murder and war, while becoming one of the richest and most powerful organisations in the world. Because of “Original Sin” even babies aren’t spared its dogma. Jesus, whether you believe he was just a man or divine, preached love and tolerance. He championed the poor and weak and spoke of the Kingdom of God being in us. Yet we are told that we can only worship and speak to God via the Church and its doctrine. Ever since the Crusades, the “Holy War” seems to have become an acceptable way of doing God’s work. It’s been said thousands of times before but those two words should NEVER sit beside each other in a sane world. How can anyone, be they Jewish, Muslim or Christian reconcile their belief in God with the sight of children being cut to pieces, maimed and abused in the service of that God.

I think most people are basically the same, regardless of whether they practice a religion or not. They just want to be able to live in peace, earn enough to live on and raise their families. But any moderate voices are trampled on by the hate and intolerance of extremists. How can you reason with someone who’s just convinced a young Muslim man or woman, probably brought up in poverty and little hope, that strapping explosives to themselves, saying “God is great” and then blowing their bodies apart along with a bus of Israelis will make them into Martyrs and allow them into Paradise. Or with a Christian fundamentalist who is so sure, so very sure that all unbelievers will burn in Hell when the time of Revelations occurs. I know good people, kind compassionate people with no malice in them who are Atheists. Are they to be damned?

Where is God in all this? He supposedly created us, he is all seeing , all knowing, yet he seems to be totally absent. Is he impotent? Has he no power? When we question God we are told he works in mysterious ways or that he gave us free will. Or that we’re just being blasphemous. If there is a God and he has no power over us then why do we worship him? If he is all powerful and sees all that we do in his name and chooses to allow this, should we worship him? Shouldn’t these extremists question whether they should worship a God who seems to demand that they kill others. And if they really do believe that by martyring themselves or persecuting others and even worse, they will be welcomed into Paradise. Aren’t they acting for purely selfish reasons? Just to get themselves into Heaven? Does that make all religious belief selfish?

I know people will say things are a lot more complicated than that, that there are other factor involved in these conflicts, bit when so many people are suffering because of other’s beliefs we have a right to ask where is this God that people hold so sacred.