Roadside Musings
No More Warrior Gods
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"If anything we are simply better armed fanatics salivating in anticipation of our God’s call to war against the infidels and their idols. But one fanatic’s idol is another fanatic’s God, and religious war is always percolating beneath the surface of human affairs."
This past Tuesday, May 14th, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, David M. Friedman, said that in its conflicts with other nations Israel has a secret weapon: God. He is correct:
“The Lord will fight for you” (Exodus 14:14)
“The Lord is a man of war, the Lord is his name” (Exodus 15:3)
“For the Lord your God is the one who fights for you against your enemies” (Deuteronomy 20:4)
“One among you can defeat a thousand, for it is the Lord your God who fights for you" (Joshua 23:10)
The problem with a foreign policy bound to and dependent upon the Israelite God is that it pits the United States against all the other Gods.
Do we really want to go to war against Allah? Do we really want to go to war against Krishna? In their holy scriptures, the Holy Qur’an and the Bhagavad Gita, respectively, Allah and Krishna stand no less undefeated than the Hebrew Lord of the Hebrew Bible.
Are we willing to risk our lives on the assumption that “my God can whip your God”? I suspect Ambassador Friedman is willing to let loose the Gods of war because he doesn’t believe Allah, Krishna, and humanity’s thousands of other deities are real. For the Ambassador and most Americans there is only one God and His Name is El not Allah; Christ not Krishna. But what if he and they are wrong? What if all the Gods of all the tribes are real? What if, as the history of religion suggests, they are more than willing to battle with one another using their devotees as proxies?
What used to be a matter of realpolitik is fast becoming a matter of theopolitik, and the world is about to experience a battle of the Gods unlike any we have seen before. One would hope that after centuries of tribal Gods battling for supremacy at the cost of the lives of millions, we humans would have outgrown our local deities in favor of something more cosmic and inclusive. But most of us haven’t done so at all. If anything we are simply better armed fanatics salivating in anticipation of our God’s call to war against the infidels and their idols. But one fanatic’s idol is another fanatic’s God, and religious war is always percolating beneath the surface of human affairs.
The solution is to outgrow these tribal warrior Gods. Sadly, it is a solution beyond the reach of our still largely tribal minds.
Keep reading: Pacifist in the War Zone
About the Author
Rabbi Rami Shapiro is an award-winning author, essayist, poet, and teacher. In the print version of our magazine, he has an advice column, “Roadside Assistance for the Spiritual Traveler,” addressing reader questions...
