Gross proportions of evils, extreme in most turpitudinous complexion have been committed in the name of God. There is no scintilla of wavering argument or doubt that most evils from the devil’s lair itself especially in the 21st century have been motivated and spawned by God. Blasphemy? Maybe. This claim is premised on the fact that “God pleasing” men discharge their egregious, feculent and toxic secretions on hapless victims by way of killing, butchering, maiming, extorting, exploiting, coaxing, befuddling, and brainwashing them using Him-God as a fulcrum. He is therefore responsible for the deaths and erosion of the minds of the unthinking and malleable many who have come under the physical and psychological guillotine of His men since He has not in any way exerted himself to rescue them- victims of “in the name of God” decimation and evils- from his loyal, praying marauders.
It is not tendentious to contend that in some religious texts God is shown to have dark, human propensities such as anger, hate, prejudice, disgust, murderousness, envy, jealousy and pride. This list is not exhaustive of the negative human propensities of God as can be gleaned from some religious texts. It is not inscrutable to read in some religious vademecums, “And God smote the people or that person”. Following this, it is not surprising therefore, if some depraved persons express their evilly actions in the name of God. Religion is by and large a channel for expressing all shades of human atavistic proclivities.
In the Medieval Era, campaigns of murder tagged the Crusades were carried out by the Church in the name God. Millions perished and God watched, perhaps, bathing his hands in their blood. And then, the inquisition in which many were tortured and dehumanised. This is not obviating the witch hunts in which many were summarily executed. All these were done in the name God.
In a similar vein, the Muslims led by Mohammed at first, waged atrocious and iniquitous wars called Jihads. What later followed after Mohammed, the progenitor of Islam was a series of murderous cleansing of obverse populations. Millions were killed over a span of twelve centuries. The murderous campaigns were carried out in the name of God. And as can be inferred, God approved the killings because he did nothing.
In Aztec in the 1300s, twenty thousand helpless people were sacrificed yearly to God because he needed daily nourishment of blood.
In India, in the 1500s through the 1800s, as many as fifteen thousand were strangled and sacrificed yearly by the Thuggee sect to the bloodthirsty God. All these were base, abominable and teeth- gritting violations of human life in the name of God.
Today, it is evident that the most challenging problem confronting the world is terrorism; terrorism with its fount in religion. It is also not wrong to aver that the cowardly killing of people by Islamist militants is done in the name of God. Deductively, the murderous past of Islam finds expression in terrorism today. This is not to imply that Islam is synonymous with terrorism, but it is a statement of fact that the Jihads of today are classified as terrorism. This implicates the Jihads of the past carried out by Mohammed and other Muslim warlords. If Jihads today are acts of terrorism what justifies the Jihads of Mohammed, Uthman Dan Fodio and others in the lineup of “holy killing” kingpins.
While Muslims lead the pack in violent terrorism, Christian pastors top the charts of subliminal terrorism. Subliminal terrorism is perhaps unknown, but it is as virulent as violent terrorism. Subliminal terrorism is an attack on the mind in a confounding way; a way that makes it difficult to process, examine, question and criticise a claim, a sermon, a story, an issue, a belief or reasoning. It thrives on ignorance and mental laziness.
Just as violent terrorism exploits fear to achieve a desired sinister objective, subliminal terrorism exploits fear and ignorance to achieve an immoral goal too.
Subliminal terrorism is visible in Christendom as many Christians who have refused to use their heads to bear their own mysteries are exploited, fooled, extorted and raped psychologically in the name God. An example of a subliminal terroristic act is the Christian theory of giving which entails giving mindlessly, effortlessly, uncompromisingly, without doubts, questions or ambivalence, for as they say, the earth is not a living place.
In view of this, umpteen of Christians give to the marrow as they have been wheedled into believing that they must store up their treasures in heaven and not on earth, or that they receive in the measure of what they give.
In contrast to the austere and quotidian existence of a mass of Christians, some pastors live in exorbitant affluence enjoying the so called worldly, ephemeral and material things of life.
Just as the world is battling violent terrorism, attention should be turned to subliminal terrorism too as it is leaving many people doomed to the fate of ignorance, poverty, aggression, mental laziness, and intellectual aridity, most especially in Africa.
Finally, it is a seminal deduction that owing to scale of malfeasance done in the name of God in which he seems complicit in, God may be man after all. This reasoning is informed by the fact that God as man portrays is not different man.
P.S. It is the reasoning of the writer not to use “god” as against “God” for any religion as some religions hold the singular idea of a being called God. Again, the writer feels it is derogatory to refer the “being” that other religions beside Christianity and Islam venerate as “god.”
Fredrick Nwabufo is a writer and a poet. Email:[email protected] 08167992075