I just saw an ad for a bumper sticker proclaiming: “Atheists don’t start wars.”  In our local newspaper, a recent letter to the editor stated: “Nonbelievers are the most politically defiled people in America, yet we neither create nor fight wars and kill people.”  And do you remember John Lennon’s song, “Imagine”?

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…

If we were all rational atheists, the common argument seems to run, violence would come to an end, and the world would finally be at peace. History, however, shows us otherwise. Here are just a few examples from the twentieth century:

• Stalin, a fanatical atheist, was responsible for the deaths of many millions of people: a common estimate is 20 million, although some have thought the number of victims to be as high as 60 million.

• Hitler knew how to use religious language when expedient, recasting Jesus in the image of an anti-Semitic Aryan fighter. Far from being a Christian, Hitler is quoted in Konrad Heiden’s A History of National Socialism as saying, “We do not want any other god than Germany itself. It is essential to have fanatical faith and hope and love in and for Germany.” And according to William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, what Hitler’s government envisioned was that eventually “the Christian Cross must be removed from all churches, cathedrals and chapels … and it must be superseded by the only unconquerable symbol, the swastika.”

• Later in the twentieth century, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge (Cambodia) banned religion. The victims of his genocidal and anti-religious reign of terror are estimated to be around 1,700,000.

Sadly, though, too many people have indeed turned to violence in the name of God in whom there is no violence. (See “Who Would Jesus Torture?”)  Some of these sincerely believe that war is a righteous undertaking. (Even conceding the very rare situations when war may have been necessary or unavoidable, we must not forget that it remains an evil.)  Other makers of war may find in religion a convenient excuse for the violence already in their hearts and justification for the violent acts that they would do anyhow, with or without religion. (If this sounds farfetched, we might look into our own hearts, for I believe most of us carry, like a virus, the potential for violence, no matter how hidden.)

But despite the scandal of wars undertaken for “religious” reasons, to claim that belief in God causes war, or that without belief in God humanity would be peaceful, is to neglect the overwhelming evidence of human history.

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus said, “for they shall be called the children of God.” May all of us, believers and nonbelievers alike, be peacemakers for our troubled world.

When Christopher Hitchens declares that given the emergence of “the telescope and the microscope” religion “no longer offers an explanation of anything important,” Eagleton replies, “But Christianity was never meant to be an explanation of anything in the first place. It’s rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekhov.”

Stanley Fish, “God Talk,” New York Times (May 3, 2009)

But if Christianity was never meant to explain anything, then what in the world is it for?

Its purpose is far more important than explaining the intricacies of the human body or how molecules and quarks behave.  Nor is Christianity a set of rules or a list of doctrines.

David Fagerburg, of the University of Notre Dame, quotes Blessed Dom Marmion:

Columba Marmion highlighted the fact that Christianity is not a creed or institution or cultic activity or doctrine (although it includes all of these); he says Christianity is Christ’s life lived by us.   “What in fact is a Christian? ‘Another Christ,’ all antiquity replies.”  And what is the life the Christian lives? “A list of observances? In no wise. It is the life of Christ within us … it is the Divine life overflowing from the bosom of the Father into Christ Jesus and, through Him, into our soul.”

David Fagerburg, “A Theology of Liturgy,” Liturgical Ministry, Vol. 14 (Fall 2005)

“Christianity is Christ’s life lived by us.”  Fagerburg goes on to say that the theological virtues – faith, hope, and love – “understood in this mystical sense, are supernatural participation in the life Christ lived.”

In that case, faith is not our belief in God, it is a share of Christ’s trust in the father; hope is not our optimism, is is Christ’s confidence in the Father made ours; love is not our affection for the deity, it is Christ’s filial intimacy with the Father spilled over to include us through the Holy Spirit.

How consoling this is! We hear Paul say:

…it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  (Galatians 2:20)

Note that an alternate translation of this verse reads, “I live by the faith of the Son of God…”

Is our faith weak? We draw on the very faith and trust of Christ himself.

Does our hope falter? We live through the powerful hope of Jesus Christ who, in giving himself, relied totally on the promises of God.

Is our love inadequate to the task of life? Our own love is always inadequate to the Christian life which calls us to love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, love our neighbor as ourselves, forgive those who sin against us, and love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.

But the love of God is always sufficient.