Suicidal Religion - The Worst Kind of Religion

The world has seen many forms of religion with belief in a god or gods whose followers want to please or at least placate or smooth over the perceived wishes of the deity.

Religion has purported that if you do what you perceive that God wants, if you do what is “right” in His eyes, you’ll be pleasing to God and be accepted and rewarded in His afterlife.

And many forms of religion throughout history have assumed that God wants His followers to wipe out His enemies on the earth. Anyone whom they see as opposing God’s ideals should be eliminated.

“The time comes when whoever kills you will think that he does God a service. And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father, nor Me” (John 16:2-3).

The Babylonians wanted to wipe out all non-Babylonians. The Assyrians wanted to wipe out all non-Assyrians. Alexander and the Greeks wanted to wipe out all non-Greeks. The Romans wanted to conquer the world but also to eliminate all people who did not conform to their perception of their gods.

The Crusades by the Roman Catholic Church against the “infidels” in the Holy Land was a desire to please God by physically destroying His supposed enemies.

In more modern times, Hitler wanted to wipe out all whom he perceived as opposing his godly “super-race”. We have seen so-called “ethnic cleansing” throughout Russia and the Balkan states. Many Irish believe God wants them to wipe out the enemy British, and vice-versa. Saddam Hussein wanted to wipe out the “infidel” Kurds as enemies of God.

This concept of doing God’s will by physically destroying His enemies has long been a common doctrine of religion.

And, let’s face it, the Old Testament of our Bible shows many examples of God’s instruction to Israel to wipe out their sinful enemies! Is this not a message to all of God’s followers throughout history to kill, kill, kill God’s enemies?

We must remember that God dealt with people in the Old Testament very differently than after Jesus came in the New Testament. There was such a prevalence of evil in all of the cultures surrounding God’s chosen people that the only way that His nation of Israel could be established in such surrounding evil was to wipe out the evil people. The world was so evil at the time of Noah that destroying people by the great flood was God’s only answer. Before Jesus Christ brought grace and forgiveness to the world by His death, evil people could not be tamed.

God does not require His followers today to physically destroy the evil of the world. The great Commission of the gospel is to go among the world and show them the message of grace and forgiveness.

Suicidal terrorism

Now in our day we see arising and expanding the worst form of this religion to “please God” by killing His supposed enemies – suicidal terrorism.

Killing only yourself to please God would be bad enough. We have one of the most incredible tragedies of our lifetime in the followers of Jim Jones. Once identified with evangelical Christianity, Jones departed to form his own false religion at the People’s Temple in San Francisco. So persuasive was Jones that he drew nearly one thousand people with him to Guyana, South America. And his followers, believing that they were receiving the truth of God, drank poison under the assumption that they were going to heaven. The greatest tragedy of Jonestown is not that nearly one thousand people died. Everyone will one day die. The tragedy is that they died all the while believing they were serving God and on their way to heaven.

We will never know how many of the deaths at David Koresh’s religious compound at Waco, Texas were suicides in order to please God and get to heaven.

Yes, the tragedy of suicide is bad enough. But when you mix suicide with the desire to please God by killing God’s “enemies” as the terrorists did who flew the jetliners into the World Trade towers and into the Pentagon, and as they continue to do with suicide bombings in public places, you achieve the WORST form of religion.

Fortunately for us, God doesn’t really deal with us on the basis of our ability to please Him, but on the basis of His love. It’s a common misunderstanding of worldly religion and even much of Christianity that pleasing God by humans is His purpose. Religion says, “It’s up to you!” The Christian message says, “It’s up to God and God’s grace.” Religion says, “People get exactly what they deserve!” The Christian message says, “Christ got what we deserve!” Religion says, “Follow our laws and
traditions! That’s it!” Christian faith says, “Follow Christ! He’s it!”

Ultimately, what Calvary means is that religion cannot save; salvation requires the life of Another. Religion has purported that if you keep the Law, if you do what is desired by God (as you see it), you’ll be pleasing to God. But God’s New Testament concept is that He desires to place another life - the Life of Christ - in you and which is, in fact, the seed of His very nature. It is at Calvary that religion is ultimately put down, but there is more to it than this.

Religion was instigated, originated, and first operated by Satan in the Garden of Eden, for it was Satan who very religiously declared to Adam and Eve that if they would eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree, they would be as gods. Note that this was not an anti-God message. It was, in fact, a message that sounded so good to Adam and Eve that they obviously felt it was a God-truth. This was the birth of religion. Religion, operated by Satan, will attempt to get as near to God-truth as possible, deceiving those who hear into thinking it is the total truth.

The Moslem fanatics who have terrorized many countries see their suicidal destruction as a godly enterprise - as a God-truth. They are sincere - but sincerely wrong.

Many have said that we are in “the time of the end” - near to the return of Jesus Christ. The “Left Behind” series of books about the return of Christ have sold millions of copies.

I myself have been very leery about calling this THE time of the end and even skeptical about prophecy. I have seen predictions come and go without fulfillment. Matthew 24 predicts wars and rumors of wars as being a sign of the end; but there have always been wars. Earthquakes are predicted; but there have always been earthquakes. Famines and pestilences also; but there have always been these.

I have been a history buff throughout my life and have studied many previous cultures. I have seen many examples of religion attempting to kill the “enemies” of God. But one factor is coming to the fore in my thinking. And you should consider this factor very seriously also.

This is the fact that there were many battles to kill “infidels” throughout history, but THE ATTACKERS WERE NOT SUICIDAL! They expected to survive and win! They were not entering conflict IN ORDER TO DIE AND GO TO BE WITH GOD.

When you stop and think about it, suicidal religion - that is, trying to die killing God’s “enemies” - is, for the most part, unique to our present time.

The Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Nazis, Saddam Hussein, didn’t go into war suicidal. They went in to win and live! These people did not blow themselves up with bombs in order to die with the “enemies of God” and thus please God and attain heaven.

Is this the most frightening and dangerous situation the world has ever seen? I don’t know. But our present war against suicidal terrorism is certainly going to present us with uniqueness in how to proceed. Mistakes in garnering protection are going to be made around the world. How do you fight people who have short-circuited the genetic will to survive?
If this is not the most dangerous era of the world, it is certainly the beginning of a new era of SUICIDE FOR GOD - suicide thinking that “they do God a service!” (John 16:2)

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