A Quote by Pope John Paul II
In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance and even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is both timely and significant.
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In a world wounded by conflicts, where violence is justified in God's name, it's important to repeat that religion can never become a vehicle of hatred, it can never be used in God's name to justify violence.
Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.
No one must use the name of God to commit violence. To kill in the name of God is a grave sacrilege. To discriminate in the name of God is inhuman.
It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper.
Humankind has to get out of violence only through non-violence. Hatred can be overcome only by love. Counter - hatred only increases the surface as well as the depth of hatred.
But secondly you say 'society must exact vengeance, and society must punish'. Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.
We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all.
In this dangerous world that we live in, where hatred and violence and natural disasters sometimes collide to almost overwhelm us, we each can help in some way.
All the fear in the world, and the violence that comes from the fear, and the hatred that comes from the violence, and the lonliness that comes from the hatred. All the unhappiness, all the cruelty, it gathers like clouds in the air, and grows dark and cold and heavy, and falls like grey snow in thick layers over the land. Then the world is muffled and numb, and no one can hear each other or feel each other. Think how sad and lonely that must be.
What God is doing today is calling people out of the world for His name. Whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world, or the Christian world, or the non-believing world, they are members of the body of Christ because they've been called by God. They may not even know the name of Jesus, but they know in their hearts they need something that they don't have and they turn to the only light they have and I think they're saved and they're going to be with us in heaven.
I have to go on being a priest and bishop, that is, to celebrate God and what God has done in Jesus, and to offer in God's name whatever I can discern of God's perspective on the world around - something which involves both challenge and comfort.
... in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights", the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.
Every time someone ends a prayer in the Western world they say Amen - that is the name of an Egyptian god associated with completion. So we're still praying to their gods.
Violence is sometimes a duty.
Violence generates more violence; hatred produces more hatred. Peace cannot be conquered. Peace cannot be the result of violence. Peace comes to us only when we dissolve the Ego, when we destroy within us all those psychological factors that produce war.
I believe every act of violence is also a message that needs to be understood. Violence should not be answered just by greater violence but by real understanding. We must ask: 'Where is the violence coming from? What is its meaning?
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