Nail This on Your Door
Martin Luther wrote a little book that is known as the basis for Western Anti-Semitism. I'm not 100% sure on how this jibes with the Golden Rule. And I'm sure some will be to point out that the Luthern churches have repudiated the statement, the first were in the 80s and the others in the 90s but still all in all anyone who professes the "goodness" of religion doesn't have to look far at all to see the hate that it inspires.
posted by dan at Wednesday, August 30, 2006
by C.S. Walton
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2 Comments:
Hey Dan it's Erika (I'm sure you guessed from your favorite scissorkill). A good point on something I never knew about Martin Luther, but it has me thinking, while it was influential in Nazi Germany, the only info I knew on him were the 95 Theses. How influential could it really be in this country? Also, I think the assertion that religion=hate is placed in the wrong context. It isn't the religion, it's the interpretation and the people by which it is interpreted. The basic tenet of Christianity is that Christ=love and forgiveness. All else comes from that. If Martin Luther chose to take the interpretation that jews are evil or not deserving of legal protection, I wouldn't dare defend that even though he and I share the same faith. If a religion is blanket condemned b/c of a minority view, I would say that is falls prey to the same erroneous logic that Martin Luther fell prey to.
I not sure how influential it is in the country, but it was used as a religious justification for the Holocaust. And I'm not saying that all religion turns to hate, many good things of have come of it as well. There are two main points though. One it seems all too often though that religion can be used a way to influence people to do very bad things. From the Crusades, to the Holocaust, to current conflict between Lebanon and Israel.
This also lead to another point about religion, which I don't understand, people often pick and choose which parts they believe in, the Bible is very clear about many things, yet people only pick the parts that sound nice when defending religious beliefs. An example though set in a humorous context can be found here that points out some of the requirements of following the word of the Bible. Also more that people dig deep into the history of the texts of the Bible, they come to realize a few things. One is that there are a bunch of crazy thing in there that just seem wrong, two is that it conflicts itself all over the place and clearly was written by people (often with agendas) and three that there is a lot of stuff out there that gets glossed over or simply not known to the general public.
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