Yahweh has never been about love

 

 

Everywhere that the Abrahamic god is worshipped, his worshippers will swear that the core truth of their religion is love. A love infinite and boundless, as vast as the distance from East to West. A love greater than human failings, a love greater than human comprehension, a love greater than even death.

 

And generally, among his worshippers, you’ll even find a select few people who behave as if that’s true.

 

But the actual results of Yahweh worship in the world make it clear that what he is REALLY about is to justify state violence. His true origin as a Canaanite war god shows through, every time.

 

From the very beginning, he’s killing Egyptians by the thousands, commanding Joshua to genocide entire cities, leading the hosts of heaven and of Israel against the enemies of Israel.

 

Then a small group of his followers briefly try to re-brand him as a god of love when Christianity starts, but he almost immediately becomes the mascot for Roman conquest. In This Name Conquer, says the sword in Emperor Constantine’s vision, and who’s gonna argue with the Emperor right after he just killed a bunch of people?

 

Then Mohammed re-invents him to be HIS nation’s war god, tosses in a few bones for people who want religion to be a force for good in the world (like making alms-giving one of the Five Pillars). But the one pillar Islam was REALLY founded on was violence. “Religion of peace” my ass.

 

Every war ever fought in Europe and the Middle East has been fought by people who, to greater or lesser degree, used Yahweh as their mascot to justify why their side was right. Israel and Palestine keep trying to exterminate each other in his name and for his glory. The white nationalists in 1940s Germany and 2020s America  have always invoked him as their leader and their inspiration.

 

It doesn’t matter that some decent people found in the Abrahamic faiths an emblem to inspire good and loving deeds. It doesn’t matter that some hospitals were founded in his name, or some rich people were shamed into giving a little bit of their wealth to feed poor people in his name. It doesn't even matter if the historical Jesus really existed and really tried to get people to be peacemakers instead of warmongers. Those aren’t the majority of Yahweh's worshippers, and they never have been. 

The people who control what the Abrahamic religions actually DO in the world are, and always have been, the people who wanted not an almighty master to command them to be kind and merciful, but an almighty servant to help them to be cruel and merciless. 

Despite the best intentions of Jesus and a handful of Jews, Christians, and Muslims: Yahweh never stopped being the god of war, and the hands of his worshippers have never stopped being steeped in blood.

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