Something To Think About - 09

The Ten Commandments and Religious Conversion - Part 4

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” This is the third of the Ten Commandments.


The sixth among the Ten Commandments says, “Thou shalt not kill”. This is the King James Version translation. Some other versions such as New Revised Standard Version and Jewish Publication Society give it as, “You shall not murder”. May be there is some validity to this since killing animals for food should not become a problem because of this commandment.


These two commandments should be of some special import to the Christian community since Papacy has been often involved with murder and mayhem, in the name of “the Lord thy God”, throughout history. In fact the last Pope, the one just before (the late) Pope John Paul II, died under mysterious circumstances hardly one month after he took office, and it is widely believed that it was a politically motivated murder caused by palace intrigue. It doesn’t create a very inviting environment for other religionists to convert to your religion, does it, Mr. Pope?


The Crusades, a series of wars over a period of two centuries, between Christians and Muslims, for control over Jerusalem in the name of “the Lord thy God”, resulted in the loss of millions of lives. In more recent times we have the spectacle of the Roman Catholics of Ireland and the Protestants of Britain fighting for northern Ireland, again with a considerable loss of lives, in the name of “the Lord thy God”. In between, there have been countless other wars, between the Christians and the Muslims, for the Christian God versus the Muslim God, as well as between different factions of Christians, like the Protestants against Roman Catholics involving the Protestant God and Roman Catholic God. Where is the one and only “the Lord thy God” of the First Commandment? And Mr. Pope and other Christians want to impose this War-prone God, or is it these War-prone Gods, on the Hindus and other Asians through conversion.


Isn't it the Catholics from Portugal who showed their "Christ-ian" love by going on a rampage to convert Hindus to Christianity on a mass scale, and murdering thousands of Hindus who resisted this conversion madness? What a tribute to the 3rd and 6th Commandments?


It was the Roman Catholic Irish Republican Army, and not Islamic terrorists, who assassinated Lord Louis Mountbatten. And, of course, Hitler and his loyal Nazi officers and foot-soldiers, as well as Mussolini and his Fascist forces, were all Christians -- Catholics to boot whom the Pope heads -- and they did their best to lighten the load on Mother Earth by eliminating about six million, or is it eight or ten million, Jews from the face of the earth. The Pope of those days, Pius XII, is said to have given a tacit nod of approval, or at best kept his gaze trained in an opposite direction, as some people would like us to believe, when this holocaust was going on in full swing.


Isn’t it the Christian countries of Europe and America, belonging to a thousand different Christian denominations, which inflicted World War I and World War II, in the late-lamented 20th century, on the world, leading to enormous loss of life and property? The then-President Harry Truman of the USA showed his “Christian love” by dropping two atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan towards the fag end of WW-II. It is being debated even today whether it was necessary at all to drop those two bombs. The casualities were only a little less than half a million people, which is of course insignificant compared to the millions of Jews that Hitler disposed of.


Of course the Super-Christian, highly ethical and moral, Presidents of the USA (including JFK and Bill Clinton of sexual-escapades fame, and Richard Nixon of Watergate fame. and currently George W. Bush of Iraq-gate fame) have mastered the art of telling the world that “the Lord thy God” appears in their dreams regularly and tells them that only they are authorised by Him to have nuclear weapons and no one else in the world should possess one, unless specifically permitted by the Americans.


Then we have seen the Americans throw tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of chemical weapons all over Vietnam which destroyed all their forests and vegetation as well as caused severe burn injuries to the people, just because the Vietnamese were going the Communist way and the “Christian” Americans did not agree with the God-less ideology of the Russians. After all the severe destruction caused to the Vietnamese people and property, the "Christ-ian" Americans were bothered only about a piddling few American soldiers who were Missing In Action (MIA) as a result of their own criminal action in Vietnam, and never about the wholesale damage done to the Vietnamese people, their country, and their economy by the American military action. “The Lord thy God” must have been extremely pleased with this supreme display of love and compassion towards their fellow human beings. Obviously the Popes plan to sell this idea of neighbourly love to the Hindus and other Asians and induce them to convert to Christianity. What a Unique Selling Point!


Well, how can one forget the Born-Again Christian George W. Bush and his Iraq-gate. When a few terrorists from the Middle East Islamic nations managed to hoodwink his own security forces and hijacked some airplanes from his own American airports, and pulverised the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, and killed about 3000 people in that process, up rose GWB and declared, "What the terrorists can do, I can do better", and has now killed not only about 5000 of his own US Army personnel but nearly a million more Iraqis, most of them innocent civilians. One has to wonder whether Jesus Christ is proud of this Born-Again Christian and his brand of conservatives, the Southern Baptists, who are also active in India with their conversion business.


Again going back to Kenneth C. Davis (“Don’t Know Much About the Bible”, Avon Books Inc, New York), this commandment, as Rabbi Joseph Telushkin comments, is also aimed at those who commit sins in “the name of God”. Telushkin writes: “If they ‘carry’ God’s name in promotion of a cause that is evil (e.g., the medieval crusaders who murdered innocent people in the name of God, or members of racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan that claim what they do is God’s will), then they violate the Third Commandment”.(Biblical Literacy)


My, My! Isn’t this again a severe indictment of the Catholic Church and its head, the Pope! This Pope and his loyal fellow idolaters, who don’t seem to know anything about God’s commandments, and violate them left, right and centre, are busy planning to spread their form of ungodly religion to India and the rest of Asia, which is only bound to result in conflict and bloodshed. What an appetising prospect!
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