JUNE 24, 2022 – (Cont.) “Want me to continue?” I asked, fearful that I’d exceeded the alien’s intake capacity.
“Yes. I’m here to learn.”
“Christianity wasn’t—isn’t—alone in experiencing innumerable internal rifts, splits, and schisms. Islam has been fraught with the same, leading to bloody, titanic conflicts between Shiites and Sunnis, and among a host of extremist offshoots like Al Qaeda and ISIS.
“Even Judaism, the smallest, and non-evangelical of the ‘Big Three’ Abrahamic faiths, has its factions—Reform, Orthodox, and Conservative—and sub-sects within those factions.
“As I mentioned earlier, members of Judaism—or to be more precise, people of Jewish mothers—that is, people defined as Jewish under Jewish law, even if they aren’t subscribers to the religion—have been the most persecuted of all. Christians accused them of killing Jesus, who was himself, by the way, Jewish, when in fact, it was humanity that happened to do the dirty deed. The particular members of humanity who were directly involved were Romans and, okay, members of the local Jewish leadership who feared Jesus’s claim of divine authority. But when everything got twisted out of context, Judaism generally took the hit.
“Over time, the Jewish population of what was Palestine and what later became the modern state of Israel was dispersed to the four corners of the earth in a great diaspora. Most wound up in Europe, where the ever-so-friendly, love-your-neighbor-as-yourself-Christians treated Jews with contempt and prejudice and the worst kind of persecution during numerous pogroms and inquisitions. It became a matter of survive and thrive—or perish. They excelled at pursuits left open to them—commerce, education, professions, the arts, and wound up contributing mightily to humanity and civilization.
“Not so long ago, in one of humanity’s darkest hours, six million Jews of Europe were murdered by German Nazis, while all too many Christians looked the other way or tacitly approved.
“The result? Many survivors emigrated to Palestine, where many European Jews had settled before the Holocaust unleashed by the Nazis. They turned Palestine into a Jewish state, thus setting off yet another religious conflagration, this time between Jews and mostly Sunni Muslim Arabs but also Shiite Muslim in sprawling Iran quite some distance away from tiny Israel. Whatever becomes of this interminable and imponderable conflict can be attributed in large part to the interminable and imponderable anti-Semitism suffered by Jews since the beginning of the great Diaspora.”
I subconsciously rubbed the knotted muscles in the back of my neck. The alien’s filaments flashed erratically, as its humming resumed, albeit at a low and barely audible level. I put the lemonade tumbler to my lips but didn’t imbibe.
“Wow,” said the alien in a flat, almost despondent tone. “Earlier you said that religion can and does enlighten and edify the human experience. Are you sure about that?”
“I’m sure.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“Uh, yeah, uh huh, of course.” I then took such a big swig of lemonade, some nearly passed into my nostrils. “For all of its flaws, contradictions, hypocrisies, religions at their core have given humanity a moral compass and a guide for living in peace and harmony with one another. To the extent of my limited knowledge of the basic tenets of each of humanity’s main, established religions, each espouses universally laudable principles—well, universal to earth, anyway.” (Cont.)
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
