Monday, January 4, 2010

Nonviolence is necessary

"It wasn't that the twentieth century had lost either the talent or the taste for the projects of mass murder - the autos-de-fe staged by Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Adolf Hitler on a scale undreamed of in the theology of Pope Innocent IV, but the miraculous births of Fat Man and Little Boy in the cradle at Los Alamos had placed the fire of heaven under the control of the secular authorities, into the hands of the wise scientists and caring statesmen. What had been divine had become human, the hydrogen bomb revealed as both symbol and freight-fowarding agent for the Day Of Judgment."

Lewis Lampham, p.15, Lapham's Quaterly, Vol III, No.1

And now that we can exterminate ourselves, what do we do? We have the power of God at our disposal. Learning nonviolence is no longer an option if humanity is to survive, it is a necessity. Unitarian Universalists who say they believe in the respect for the interdependent web of all existence must put themselves on the line. Do we have the courage, the moral fiber, the spiritual strength to become a witness to the world that nonviolence is no longer a choice but a moral mandate?

2 comments:

  1. Atheist nations are the most peaceful on Earth.

    Peace is non-theistic as the Global Peace Index analysis demonstrates.

    See for yourself:

    http://www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/results/rankings/php

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  2. I don't think the Soviet Union was peaceful. They killed and tortured millions of people.

    I also don't think that Mao Zedong's China was very peaceful. Certainly, the Nazi's under Hitler and other fascists were anything but peaceful.

    The United States dropping its atomic bombs on civilian populations in Hiroshima and Nagazaki also leaves a lot to be desired.

    No, Atheists are just as brutal and blood thirsty as religious people. Christopher Hedges makes these points better than I in his great book, "Why I don't believe in Atheists"

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