Christianity's “Power to Do Good”

Michael: “With all due respect, there isnʼt a single original thought in anything youʼve written. Your attempted indictment of Christianity is skewed towards the residual fallout of religious extremists. Religion, including Christianity, has the power to good, or to do evil. The scriptures say as much. In fact, the context of your entire post could have been easily taken from the Bible itself.”

Edward: With all due respect, you and Kevin both ignore that fact that for a thousand years, from the rise of Constantine to the Thirty Years War in Europe, Christian religious extremism was hardly what one might call “residual.”

You and Kevin also conveniently leave unanswered the question of WHY did/does the Bible and Christianity lead to religious extremism? What is it about many of the cruder ruder examples and teachings throughout the Bible that provides such fine soil in which extremism can grow and flourish and spread? I address that question in my reply to Kevin. Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian texts donʼt seem to lead to the amount and kind of extremism as Christian texts do.

It was C.S. Lewis who once admitted in a letter (written near the end of Lewisʼ life) to his universalistic friend, Dom Bede Griffiths (who hosted a Christian-Hindu ashram in India): “Even more disturbing as you say, is the ghastly record of Christian persecution. It had begun in Our Lordʼs time - ‘Ye know not what spirit ye are of’ (John of all people!) I think we must fully face the fact that when Christianity does not make a man very much better, it makes him very much worse… Conversion may make of one who was, if no better, no worse than an animal, something like a devil.”

As for the fact that the context of my post could have been taken from the Bible itself, so what? The context of my post could have been taken from the Dhammapada or the Tao Te Ching as well, or even from some passages in the Koran. My advice is wise up. The cosmos doesnʼt revolve around the earth, and the religious cosmos, along with morality and ethics do not revolve around the Bible.

Best, Ed