Not in my name

Publish date 21-10-2024

by Flaminia Morandi

“When religion turns men into murderers, God weeps. So says the book of Genesis. Having made human beings in his image, God sees the first man and woman disobey the first command, and the first son of man commit the first murder. Within a short space of time, “the earth was filled with violence.” God “saw that the wickedness of man on the earth was great.”

Then we read one of the most devastating sentences in religious literature: “Then the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Gen. 6:6). Too often in the history of religion, people have killed in the name of the God of life, waged war in the name of the God of peace, hated in the name of the God of love, and practiced cruelty in the name of the God of compassion. When this happens, God speaks, sometimes in a faint, subtle voice, almost inaudible behind the clamor of those who claim to speak in his name. What he says on these occasions is: Not in my name. "

I have reported in full the incipit of this extraordinary book by Jonathan Sacks, Not in the name of God: Confronting religious violence (Giuntina 2017), because it is a book to meditate on for anyone who cries about the wars and hatred that now run through the earth, globalized by the Internet. Rav Sacks, who died in 2020 at the age of 72, was the greatest Jewish moral and spiritual authority in Great Britain, the author of surprising books like this one: a dense text that tries to trace the reasons that led the great monotheistic religions born for peace to what he calls "altruistic wickedness", of which violence in the name of God is the key example. “Religion in the form of polytheism entered the world as a justification for power. Why was there hierarchy on earth? Because there was hierarchy in the heavens […] Polytheism was the cosmological defense of hierarchical society […] Religion was the robe of sanctity worn to mask the naked pursuit of power […].” It was against this backdrop that Abrahamic monotheism emerged as a powerful protest with extraordinary claims: every human being, regardless of color, culture, class or creed, is in the image and likeness of God, life is sacred, murder is a crime and a sin. «Abraham himself, the man honored by 2.4 billion Christians, 1.6 billion Muslims, and 13 million Jews, ruled no empire, commanded no army, conquered no territory, performed no miracle, or uttered any prophecy […] He tried to be true to his faith and a blessing to others regardless of their faith […]

It was Machiavelli, not Moses or Mohammed, who said it was better to be feared than loved: the credo of the terrorist or suicide bomber. It was Nietzsche, the man who first wrote the words God is dead, and whose ethic was the will to power. Invoking God to justify violence against the innocent is not an act of sanctity but a sacrilege. "

Today, says Sacks, we as Jews, Christians and Muslims, must ask ourselves the most uncomfortable questions. One is: have we read our sacred texts correctly? And what is God telling us, here and now?
This is what Sacks' book tries to do, with a continuous reference between Scripture and modernity. Today God calls us, Jews, Christians and Muslims to finally be a blessing for others regardless of their faith. To honor the name of God by honoring his image: humanity.


Flaminia Morandi
NP June / July 2024

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