This was originally part a message I wrote to somebody, but I thought that some other people might appreciate it, so I’m re-posting it here with some minor edits.
When people make decisions, they do so mostly based on their experience and education. If we grew up in a society that taught us violence as the primary solution, then most people would be using that as their primary solution unless their experience strongly dictated otherwise. If a friend said something that you thought was true, that could be something that helped you make decisions in the future, just like if somebody read the Bible and thought that was true. Those are both education.
A large number of the people I know from the Western Hemisphere rant against the evils of what they call “organized religion.” Their cultural background is all Catholic, Christian, or Muslim, for the most part. They grew up in a society whose history is riddled with things like the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, areas where men misused the great power of faith for their own selfish ends–something that people have been doing since time immemorial, not limited in any way to organized bodies of religion, even though those are the most prominent instances taught in our average history classes. A shaman, tribal leader, king, or peasant is equally as likely to misuse power as a Pope is. (A great example is the misplaced sense of faith many people have in the false “patriotism” of aggression being practiced by our government currently, or the misplaced “faith” that some battered women will have in their abusive husbands.)
It’s all well to say that “people developed” and “History evolved” as the explanations for historical improvements in the world, but that negates any type of causation. If you read something, and it changes your mind or makes you think, somebody had to write that first, before it could be read. Often when we study history it’s all too easy to just look back and say, “Oh, look, there’s a nice, orderly progression of ideas. Sure is nice that they just happened to be there.” But a closer look will show that, in fact, societies advanced when specific great thinkers (or groups of thinkers) came along and made those advances. The Golden Age of Greece was not a coincidence, it was generated by a specific procession of philosophers and artists, many of whom are probably lost to us.
If indeed history had just been an orderly evolution, there would have been no Dark Ages. There would not have been such continuous reversion to methods of violence, or so many collapsed and failed societies. Things live or die for some reason, and that reason is people.
At the time immediately before Christianity was introduced, the common form of entertainment was gladatorial pits and other forms of public death. The Roman virtue was “might makes right.” The average person relied on superstition to determine whether or not they would be happy, and over 70% of the population of Rome was in abject poverty.
So then this Jesus guy is born, probably goes and studies in India, and comes back having been influenced by Buddhism (which at that time is 500 years old, in the East, but hasn’t penetrated Westward much at all), which teaches that reason and kindness may be the path to happiness. He comes back, and he sees the injustices of Roman society, and also the misuse of faith that was happening in the Jewish temples, where material wealth was overpowering spiritual values. He starts talking about it with people, and the power of these ideas–largely unknown to the masses of common Romans, though some bit of Greek philosophy would have been known by the aristocratic classes–is such that they spread and people want to make him King of Judea. Cue history.
Now, granted, that is not the only influence that made a difference in the world at that time. But off the top of my head, the only Roman philosopher that I can think of is…Jesus of Nazareth. That’s out of almost a thousand years of Roman history. This one man saying, “Hey, guys, have you ever considered that maybe being nice to each other is better than killing each other?” And just like the things said by other students in a philosophy class, it makes you think. 🙂
Have various organizations done terrible things in the name of God? Yes. Do those things really have anything to do with the fundamental philosophies of Christianity? For the most part, no. You can certainly twist the words of the Bible to justify terrible violations of human rights or strange notions–such as the Monastic disgust of women–but just like Jesus wasn’t the only influence in Rome, these twistings of faith were not the only influence in the injustices of later societies.
By the way, I’m not Christian in the least. But I do have a great respect for the power of ideas. Even imperfect ideas can change the world, and if they make it even a little better, that’s good by me.
-Max
Max Kanat-Alexander 