Contemplating Peace on Earth

by Michelle

categories: Activism & Advocacy, War Crimes & Crimes Against Humanity

Published December 25, 2008 @ 05:10PM PT

Peace on earth, good will towards men. Such a simple concept.

I don't talk about religion often, and am not about to wax theological here, but I will say this: I believe that there's more that unites than divides us in religion, and that faiths everywhere are fundamentally rooted in peace.

And yet religion is used everywhere to condone violence and mass atrocity. People---and in my field, violent dictators in particular---wrap themselves in the protective cloak of religion, invoking God's name to justify their actions---as a shield, or a mask, that creates a buffer between them and their destructive agendas, removing, in their minds, individual accountability by transposing it on to the shoulders of the divine.

But the mask is a transparent one. Violence is purely man's work.

I don't claim to know where God is, and I (unlike others) certainly am not arrogant enough to claim to speak on his/her/its behalf, but I cannot believe that the act of senseless slaughter does anything but subvert the principles of any religion on this planet. If there is the hand of a higher power in creation, I cannot believe that creation was divinely destined for self-destruction.

Violence is purely man's work.

Chief among the fallacies implicit in religiously-justified violence is that nothing can be done about it. If this is God's will, well then good luck trying to stop it. But while humans have the ability to wreck absolute havoc, to push the extremes of cruelty, we also have the ability to stop it. And yet more often than not, we don't. We find our own reasons-masks, cloaks, degrees of separation between us and those left utterly unprotected against the hand of violence, creating a divide with reasons which, when considering the stakes, ultimately seem meaningless. Yet with this divide, we justify our inaction, we go about our lives, perhaps with an occasional cheer for human rights, perhaps a prayer, and a donation to <insert charity here>.

And I use the collective "we" consciously, recognizing that there are many among us who dedicate their lives to action in the face of atrocity, but also noting that as a collective, we have yet to come together to effectively push for meaningful change in the way the world responds to despots and dictators.

Wherever you find God---or wherever you don't---whatever you believe in, is there any acceptable excuse for inaction in the face of atrocity?

Peace on earth, good will towards men. Such a simple concept.