Chapters 8-10

Chapters 8-10

In the second page of chapter 9, I stopped for a moment to think in what the bishop of Caesarea, Eusebius, said about Jerusalem and the relationship between the people and God. Eusebius argued that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had had no Temple and no elaborate Torah, that they had worshipped God wherever they found themselves, simply, in spirit and truth. God would not come to those who sought him in "lifeless matter and dusky caves" but only to "souls purified and prepared with clear and rational minds." Eusebius imagined Christ saying:

I, giving freedom to all, teach men not to look for God in a corner of the earth, nor in mountains, nor in temples made with hands, but that each should worship and adore him at home.

I may not be personally a religious person, but when I think about religion and God I do not think about a certain mosque or church. Religion is behaving according to the morals and teachings of his prophets and messages.

When looking at Jerusalem throughout the history up to the current days, I don’t believe that God or any religion would accept what has happened in this holy city. When I say holy city, I do not mean a certain building or rock, buildings are created by humans and rocks are no more valuable or holy than the lives of human beings.

Up to what we have read until now, I became more certain that the instability in Jerusalem was never a result of any religion. Rather, I believe even more and more that it is no more than the greed of human beings to control the city and used religion as an excuse to justify their actions. All the prophets that were mentioned up to now and prophet Mohammad who we will read about in the following chapters had a single message, which is to worship God and only God and came to continue the messages of the prophets before them and not to abolish them or proof that they were wrong.

Then why do people continue to use religion to kill and displace others?