|
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 18, 2002
When Silence Isn't Golden
By Dennis Prager
This is not an auspicious time for religion. Millions of religious
Muslims celebrate their co-religionists who blow up innocent
people while chanting "Allah [God] is great." Here
in America, we learn of more and more Roman Catholic priests
who sexually molested children though, happily, unlike in the
Islamic Middle East, there is no celebration in the wider Catholic
world of evil done in God's name.
All of us who believe that God-based religion is indispensable
to moral progress need to condemn religion-based evil as vigorously
as possible. In fact, we need to condemn it even more strongly
than we condemn secular-based evil such as communism and Nazism.
From a religious perspective, religious evil is the worst form
of evil. While secular and religious evil do equal damage to
their victims, religious evil is more destructive because it
does immense damage to the only things we believe can solve the
problem of evil — God-based morality and moral religion.
The damage Muslim terrorists and their supporters are doing to
the name of God and to religion is immense. Speaking personally,
the fact that millions of people believe that God rewards those
who massacre innocent men, women and children — with 72
virgins in heaven, no less — almost makes me want to hide
my being religious (even though not Muslim) from the world. I
so easily understand why many Catholic priests, according to
news reports, do not want to wear their collar in public.
All religious people need to vociferously and publicly condemn
those who commit evil in God's name, especially members of the
faiths in whose name evil is being committed.
If American Catholic leaders do not believe many members of their
great religion have been negatively affected by the sick men
in collars who molested children and by the institutional silence
that concealed these men, these leaders are fooling themselves.
Perhaps that is why the cardinal under whose jurisdiction 80
priests are charged with molesting children has not resigned.
He does not realize how important such an act would be to restoring
credibility to his church.
Even more so, Muslim leaders who do not understand how terribly
the name of Islam has been sullied among decent people are only
inflicting more damage on their religion. That is why one can
only wonder at the absence of any public Muslim demonstration
against Muslim terror — the best service Muslims could
render their religion at this time would be to organize demonstrations
and condemn Islamic terror (and not hide behind condemnations
of "terror committed by all sides").
Whatever our religion, we who are religious need to acknowledge
that religion does not guarantee goodness. The sobering truth
is that it is quite possible to believe in God, in Allah, in
Christ and do great evil. A major 18th century rabbi, the Gaon
of Vilna ("genius of Vilnius"), compared the Torah,
the book he believed was dictated by God, to rain. Just as rain,
he explained, produces both beautiful flowers and poisonous weeds,
so, too, religion can produce both beautiful and poisonous human
beings.
Because religion can be the greatest tool for goodness, it can
also be the greatest tool for evil. And those who use it for
evil commit the worst of sins. The second/third (depending on
your enumeration) of the Ten Commandments reads, "Thou shall
not take the name of God in vain, for God will not hold him guiltless
that takes His name in vain."
This commandment prohibits much more than merely frivolously
saying the word "God." What it really prohibits (and
describes as essentially unforgivable) is committing evil while
acting religious. Or, as the original Hebrew literally reads, "carrying" God's
name in vain.
Such people have a uniquely harsh judgment awaiting them. And
it is time for religious people to state this loudly and clearly.
Because every day religious people stay silent about religious
evil is another day that they, their religions and God Himself
fall into disrepute. |
 |
|
|
