I never speak about religion on the blog. Religion is something very personal and whether you are a religious person or spiritual, atheist or agnostic, I often feel that religion on the web has a somewhat dangerous connotation. I imagine all sort of devious people have websites where they profess their views on supremacy over other ethnic and/or religious groups.
You have probably all heard of the recent events in Norway. A 32 years old Christian (or so he called himself) nationalist killed 7 people in a bombing in central Oslo and shot dead 85 teenagers at a youth camp on the island of Utøya, not far from Oslo.
A Christian. He called himself a Christian.
But he probably had no idea of what being Christian means. He must have skipped that lesson about love. The word love is repeated innumerable times in the Old Testament and the New Testament both. He must have skipped almost half the New Testament, especially the passages where Jesus is speaking about His new commandment, “that ye love one another”, which is cited many times in John, Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, 1 Thessalonians, Hebrews, 1 Peter, 1 John, 2 John. Which Bible was he reading? Did he even read any Bible? Or was he just another anti-immigration, disillusioned, angry young man with poor education and too much time on his hands? A Christian nationalist. Maybe his Bible was misprinted without Deuteronomy 10:19 “Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
I am also 32 years old and I am a Christian. But I abhor all sort of blind extremism. What happened in Norway is utterly disgusting, unbelievably horrible. I am deeply saddened by the loss of so many young lives to the act of a crazy man who thought that being Christian meant killing those who don’t share your same political views. My friends come from a very wide range of religious backgrounds (Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Shinto, Lutheran, Seventh-Day Adventist, Anglican, Catholic, Jehovah’s Witness, Unitarian) and some don’t believe in anything at all, in terms of spirituality. However, what brings us together is, I believe, the same principle, “that you love one another”, from whichever book we’ve read it or even if we don’t think we need any book to convince us to follow this very simple rule.
