any people say that religion causes wars and conflict around the world. I would agree that religion often causes conflict and division. I think that religion can be false and can simply be a man-made construct which causes division among people and can give rise to hatred of others.

In fact, the people that Jesus Himself criticized most harshly were often the most religious people in His society. He called them, ‘white-washed tombs’ because they looked clean or religious on the outside, but on the inside they were spiritually dead. Jesus also called some religious people of His time ‘a brood of vipers’ and told them that ‘their father was the devil.’

Jesus often criticized the most religious for being controlling, or for putting heavy burdens on others. He said that those who truly worshipped God would not be limited to only worshipping Him in a temple or a church, but would worship God in Spirit and in truth knowing Him as their Father. The danger of religion is that it becomes all about what you do to reach God or to try to retain His favour. This easily leads to comparing yourself against others, feeling superior to them and judging them. Sadly, this is so often what human religion has descended into throughout history.

The living God does not call us to follow or adhere to a simple religion. The God of heaven invites us into a relationship with Him through Jesus Christ. God offers us peace with Himself through faith in the perfect life; sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus and calls us to live in peace with people around us. Christ asks Christians to love their enemies and to bless those that persecute them. Christ Himself cried out from the cross ‘Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing’ asking God to forgive the people who were crucifying Him.

When we come to know Jesus as our Saviour, and our Lord we are called to follow and obey Him. Christ Himself said that if we love Him we will obey His commands. He left us teaching to follow and adhere to and He enables us to obey Him from the heart by the power of His Holy Spirit. Jesus taught that people would know His disciples by the love they have for others. He also said that people’s lives would produce fruit in keeping with what we say we believe.

So, If I hear a person tell me that they are a Christian, but this is not evidenced in the love in their lives for others I begin to wonder if what they say is true. Christ said that Christians would be identifiable by the fruit in their lives. If the fruit of a person’s life is conflict, murder and violence, then this would give rise to the question- is this person truly a Christian?

Following Jesus does not cause conflict and war. In fact, true Christians who are persecuted, tortured or imprisoned for their faith do not fight back with weapons and war, but pray for their persecutors, and seek to show love to their enemies. There are many Christians all over the world today who are being killed, or martyred for their faith. Men, women and children have been beheaded and brutally killed. Some are in prison, and some are persecuted in terrible ways for being Christians. True Christians do not violently retaliate against such action, but attempt to demonstrate love in these situations. A Christian knows that people can kill our bodies, but God is the one who hides our souls, and our very lives with Christ. Although religious wars have their victims, the last century has been filled with the shed blood of countless millions of victims from secular, irreligious regimes. Consider Hitler and the Nazis, or Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader who tried to form a Communist peasant farming society which actually resulted in the deaths of 25 percent of the country's population from starvation, overwork and executions. While Christians have done wrong things, those actions are contrary to the morals and values of their creeds. However, secular humanism loses the ability to call anything truly right or wrong, good or evil and promotes the idea of survival of the fittest. Therefore, mass murder or genocide is a consistent possible outworking of these beliefs.