written 12 April, 2026
published 19 April, 2026
It was another week of turbulent changes. The president committed possible war crimes, threatening to destroy the entire Persian civilization, giving a Tuesday evening deadline to obey his demands. He relented at the last hour, issuing a 2-week ceasefire, declaring progress on a deal. His supporters claimed resounding victory by their God appointed savior. The price of oil dipped, and the Dow rose.
However, Iran still controls the Strait, shipping traffic is still less than 5 percent of prewar levels, and diesel in Healdsburg costs over $8 per gallon. Actual shortages have begun in some countries. Americans have paid an extra $17B in fuel costs, on top of the $50B for the actual war (so far). Yet there is no money for health care. There are major disagreements about what the "deal" is, so the chaos will continue.
Our Secretary of War has been vocal that this war is, in part, a holy crusade by righteous Christians to remove the evil of Islamic terrorism. He is even more specific that Evangelical Protestants are the chosen few, by excluding Catholics from Easter military prayer services. The president has invoked God in his regular social media blasts.
Everyone on the planet has a concept of "God". Even the 15 percent who are atheists hold some concept of what it is they deny. Most of humanity follows one of over 4,000 different religious sects, generally falling into five major groupings: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.
It is important to distinguish between spirituality and religion. A person can be spiritual without being religious. Spirituality can be understood as the personal experience and exploration of God, while religions are the manmade organizations that have grown up around a spiritual person. Religious sects have sets of rules, holy scripture, particular to their group. These endure throughout time because people have experiences they are trying to communicate. Even though the original words might have been inspired, these are all concepts, not the actual spiritual experience. As the Buddhists say, the finger that points to the moon is not the moon.
Sects within the same religion can have different interpretations of the same words. There are fundamentalists within each sect who believe their words to be the only sacred truth. Rigid within their scriptural concepts, religious fanatics will go to war, not only against other religions, but even against others of their same basic religious orientation. For example, the Sunni/Shia split in Islam and the Catholic/Protestant split in Christianity have perpetrated untold deaths for centuries, with everyone convinced that "God is on their side".
In contrast, some sects refuse to even apply a word to God, understanding such a limited concept can't possibly encompass the totality of spiritual reality, and only leads people astray. There are mystics in every faith who understand the limitations of word concepts, treating them as metaphors, allowing them to investigate the experience at the core of every faith.
Transcending the differences between sects and religions, there are God concepts common to them all: Transcendence (an ultimate reality beyond ordinary physical existence), Benevolence (fundamentally good), Omniscience (all-knowing), Omnipotence (all-powerful), and Omnipresent (present everywhere). Such wide spread commonality indicates the experience behind the words is significant and meaningful.
A version of the Golden Rule is also common to them all, pointing to a unity reality where separation is just a relative, limited perception. From this unity perspective, hating anyone is hating yourself. Killing anyone is killing yourself. This makes a violent religious fanatic a self-loathing suicidal lunatic, no matter what religion they profess.
It is easy to see that violent Islamic fanatics who kill in the name of their God are evil terrorists. It is perhaps harder to see that violent Christians fanatics who kill in the name of their God are evil terrorists as well.
In "A New Earth", Eckhart Tolle says "There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet: human unconsciousness. That realization is true forgiveness. With forgiveness, your victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges -- the power Presence. Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light."
I don't identify as a Christian, as that religion has spread too much hate for centuries. But I am inspired by Christ, who taught that there are two primary commandments: Love God, and Love Each Other. To my mind, anyone who hates or kills, and claims they are Christian, has completely missed the mark, the true meaning of sin.
