Although the Romans, with collaboration from the Scribes and Pharisees, horribly persecuted the early Christians, this was a political persecution, based on fear on the part of both the Roman and Jewish leaders of loss of power and control to the new, intensely passionate followers of Jesus Christ.  This is the same fear that has fuelled political persecution of the religious throughout history, right up to present day China.

So, while fear of loss of power and control explains the persecution of the religious by political leaders, what explains an identical kind of persecution called for by religious leaders?

Now, I'm sure psychologists would come up with a variety of compelling arguments for why people kill one another in the Name of God; distortions of perception, damaged egos, hopelessness, rage, a deep sense of injustice and persecution, alienation.  I wouldn't argue with this reasoning.  Ego and psychology, in all their complexity, play a large part in the decisions we make about how we conduct our lives and relate to other human beings.

We know how to dress up our actions in justifications and rationalizations, no matter how bizarre the costumes, but we also know these justifications and rationalizations are nothing more than our ego explaining/excusing our behavior to ourselves and others.  Our real motivations lie much deeper, buried in a tangle of family and social experiences, religious influences or lack thereof, gender, place in family and history, even where we live.  Beneath the tangle, however, lie two basic elements that energize the whole mess, two sides of the same coin as it were; on the one side fear of losing power and control, on the other a furious determination to get hold of them.  This is the connection, so to speak, between the individual and the group.               

            I’d like to introduce a third thread and suggest there exists among us human beings who are driven by neither fear of losing power and control nor a furious determination to get hold of them, a make of human being who is energized by something quite different.  I refer to those who have given their life to God, Christian or otherwise.  The truly religious do not proselytize.  They seek to influence by example.  They do not seek power in order to force others to believe and worship as they themselves believe and worship.  They lead through acts of kindness and generosity.  They do not behave like avenging angels with flaming swords whose holy task it is to force the light of Truth on the world.   They speak, instead, of their own profound joy and inner peace at their liberation from ego and psychology, at their freedom from concerns over power and control.  They speak of their human weaknesses and failings, their doubts and mistaken attitudes, of how they keep reaching for the Hand of God to pick them up and set them on their spiritual feet again.  They say we are all Children of God.  Most of all, they emphasize how the concept of taking the life of another human being in the Name of God is beyond their ability to comprehend, let alone carry out.

(I understand the disconnect between religious dogma and spirituality, but for the purpose of this blog, I leave that path to others to pursue.)

If, as I suggest, persecution comes from the fear of one group of people to losing power and control to another, or a furious determination to get hold of them after long being denied, what are we to make of those who demand the destruction or violent suppression of other human beings in the Name of God?  What are we to make of their followers?   They claim they’re after the spiritual redemption of the world.  However, to follow my line of speculation, if the root cause of persecution of others is fear of losing power and control or a furious determination to get hold of them after long being denied, and if power and control belong to the realm of the ego and not to the realm of the soul, logic suggests that what these religious leaders seek is, in fact, not spiritual redemption at all but political power.   

If that’s the case, and I believe it is, we run into another problem.  Aside from the fact you can’t force spiritual redemption on anyone, all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Simply put, the more power a human being gets hold of, the more they seek to enhance it and, worse, the more they fear losing it.  History is littered with the bitter consequences of human beings who, through justification and rationalization, persuaded their followers to grant them unchecked power.  Whether political or religious, the outcome was equally terrible. 

These are dangerous times.  The world is full of leaders demanding their followers grant them unchecked power.  We mustn’t confuse religious certainty with a bid for political power because, if we do, we will all surely be destroyed.

I realize this is a troubling topic.  I put this out to invite debate.  I welcome your thoughts and comments.

I have to go back and fix Chapter One of Willow.  It doesn't work the way it is.  I've rewritten that chapter at least a hundred times, dissatisfied with every one of them, finally slammed it into one paragraph and it still isn't right.  I could scream!!  Dale suggested making it a sort of prologue to the current Chapter 2, so I'm going to try that.   Rest of the novel is finished.  I'm going through it yet one more time to clean out every extraneous word.  I'm amazed at how many I find; words like 'very', 'some' 'began to', etc. etc.  I'm pleased with this final version.  It's only taken me four years!!  Admittedly, I've written other things in between, including extensive work on novels two and three but Willow has been my main focus.  Started out as a simple historical romance, morphed through countless revisions to become a journey into the heart of the human spirit, especially the Irish spirit.   

Joined thenextbigwriter.com in December 2005, with some skepticism.  A helpful online writing community?  Yeah, sure.  Over a year later, I can tell you, it was the best thing I ever did for myself.  I started earning credits by reviewing other writer's work, amazed by the quality of the writing I was reading, an inspiration in itself, began posting Willow, and was absolutely blown away by the variety and generosity of reviews from fellow writers, covering everything from inconsistencies, to overly long sentences to which I'm prone, to punctuation at which I'm terrible, to praise for my characters, my dialogue, my descriptive passages, by ability to set a scene.  This was how I discovered my strengths and weaknesses as a writer.  How valuable is that?  Open forums allow writers to chat with one another, and they do, at great length, with much spit and fire and lots of TLC.  If you're a writer, doing your lone thing, don't.  Sign on to TNBW.  You'll never regret it.   No, I don't get a commission or extra credits for people who sign up!!  You can sign up and never even mention my name.

Need to add an author's LINK page so anyone looking in on my site can easily access other writers' websites. 

Aside from integrating Chapters 1 and 2 of Willow, will add Chapter 3 and post a new short story, not about Ireland but about Iraq, called The Interrogator.  Might post some of my 'Love Talk" shorts as well.  Most people seem to enjoy them.  Well, that's it for Friday, 25th January in the Year of Our Lord, 2007.  Off to make dinner!