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originally posted by: datguy
a reply to: whereislogic
I think they can.
While in religious terms, the examples I used show that there will not be any unity until the return of Christ.
originally posted by: datguy
a reply to: whereislogic
These Machiavellian constructs combined with religious zealotry is what has given rise to our current predicaments.
ALTHOUGH there is a general loss of confidence in religion today, yet many people believe that religion instills love and brotherhood. Of course, on the individual level there have always been noble lives lived by all types of religious people. But what do the facts reveal about this world’s religions in general? What, for example, is religion’s record in relation to war—the very opposite of love and brotherhood?
It is a very shocking one. The record of suffering, cruelty and bloodshed caused or blessed by false religion is frightful. Speaking of “holy wars,” the book Age of Faith says: “None have been bloodier than the Christian Crusades of the Middle Ages. . . . The Crusaders . . . raped and plundered fellow Christians and committed incredible atrocities on their Moslem foes.”
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Such inhuman conduct and other abuses led to the Reformation in the early 16th century. But before long, the Protestants became deeply involved in politics just as the Roman Church had been for centuries. Then, in 1618, the Thirty Years’ War broke out between Protestants and Catholics in Germany. Soon it involved most of Christendom. It was “a war waged with a ferocity to which history offers few parallels. . . . moral restraints broke down and ceded to wild bursts of profligacy.”—A History of Europe, by H. Fisher.
These are but a few brief accounts of the many wars caused or supported by religion in the past. But what about today?
Religion’s Modern Record
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But that was a minor tragedy compared to what took place in World Wars I and II. During those conflicts, millions of Christendom’s members, along with Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and others, inflicted appalling loss of life and misery on one another. Yet the clergy on both sides of the conflict prayed for God’s blessing.
The failure of this world’s religions to act as a force for promoting true brotherhood stems from this basic error: getting people to follow human leaders and their ideas instead of doing what God says in his Word, the Bible.—John 12:43.
Hence, such worldly religions cannot be true religion. As an inspired Bible writer clearly said: “Pure, unspoilt religion, in the eyes of God our Father is this: coming to the help of orphans and widows when they need it, and keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world.” (Jas. 1:27, The Jerusalem Bible) Those words breathe the spirit of love and brotherhood. But on the other hand, think of the millions who have been made widows and orphans due to the violence and persecution caused by impure, false religion! And it is because such religion is ‘contaminated by the world.’
How clear it is, then, that we can never hope to see a true, universal brotherhood established by false religion, of which the churches of Christendom are the dominant part. They have had centuries of power and opportunity to do so. Instead, the result is a world agonizing in crime, terrorism and wars, a world deeply divided by politics, nationalism, racism and thousands of religious sects.
Is there no hope, then? Is the situation so bad that the brotherhood of man will remain just a dream? Many people would probably agree with these plaintive words of a popular song entitled “Why?”: “Someone’s lost the plan For the brotherhood of man And no one’s trying to find it anymore.”
But take courage! The “plan for the brotherhood of man” has certainly not been lost. In fact, the nucleus of the brotherhood of mankind is already being formed!
originally posted by: whereislogic
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*: which isn't really true for the Trinitarianism taught by most of Christendom, including Roman Catholicism, which actually is polytheism in disguise (they can argue 'these are not 3 gods but 1 God' all they want, it won't change that).