Religion, Militarism and Industry

by Rebecca Bynum (September 2014)

Religion can never be completely codified or reduced to a doctrine or set of beliefs, though many men have tried. Religion is rooted in experience and the fact is, every person’s religious experience is different. It cannot be replicated in a laboratory. It cannot be so fully explained as to be transferred to another person. Religion is not experienced by the senses or in the mind alone. The religious experience is total, involving all levels of being at once. As the search for total reality, religion is an all or nothing affair.

Many people tire along the way and find a comfortable place to rest, accepting a doctrine or form of religion which offers stability and some degree of safety from confusion. The true religious pioneer, however, is not satisfied with that. He will go through any storm, any test and any trial to find the Truth. He will swim against the current of his time. He will fight the moral battle of the ages alone if need be. He will find what is needed for the journey and he will follow the divine beckoning wheresoever it may lead.

The belief system of Islam is currently the final bastion sustaining war and conquest as a religious obligation. The Western world has abandoned anything approaching that kind of reasoning. That thinking lies buried in the terrible destruction of the great world wars of the twentieth century. Expansionist wars have long since lost their glamour. Instead, the Western world requires peace and stability in order to advance through industry, commerce and technology.

Territorial conquest is a thing of the past because it is no longer required in order to bring increased prosperity to the people of a nation. War that once promised glory in battle is now only indiscriminate mass bloodshed. As Robert E. Lee once said, “It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.”

Our Western world is trying valiantly to transcend war, yet is being reluctantly dragged back into it by the religion of war, a religion which thrives on hatred and fear. This is undoubtedly a struggle not only between levels of civilization, but also between levels of spiritual and moral reality – religious reality.

Our brave new world of technology and industry desperately needs a new and greater religious vision in order to create and sustain that center of unity and integration, without which it is apt to fly apart from the great centrifugal force it has created within. Our world also needs to articulate the moral vision with which it must confront our implacable enemy and his vision of reality. I do not presume to know what that greater vision will be, but I do know that it is absolutely necessary and I also know that it must be rooted in individual religious experience. In my upcoming book, I will attempt to describe and explain the reality of religious experience as the search for total reality, for Truth, and the yearning for absolute Goodness, profound Beauty and the thrill of experiencing God’s Love.

We may not yet see the way forward, but through faith, we can know it is there.

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Rebecca Bynum contributes regularly to The Iconoclast, our Community Blog. Click here to see all her contributions, on which comments are welcome.