The Christian Church has a disgraceful legacy of Christians fighting Christians. In the aftermath of the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Christians fought among themselves for two hundred years over the nature of Jesus. Was he fully divine or a combination of fully human/fully divine? Tens of thousands were killed in these wars over belief.

There were three crusades—1074, 1147 and 1201—in which Western Christians fought Muslims and their Eastern Christian brothers. Popes promised their soldiers salvation in heaven for their participation in these wars to defend a particular brand of the faith. Such a promise has a creepy, modern ring.

Martin Luther stirred up things when he sent his Ninety-five Theses to the Archbishop of Mainz on October 17, 1517. By 1525 large areas of Europe were in flames over issues of belief. The wars ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia which allowed each Prince to determine the religion of his state. As a result of these wars, historians have estimated between 25% and 50% of the populations in Germany and France lost their lives fighting over church doctrine.

Moving to the modern period, events spiraled out of control in Rwanda on April 6, 1994 when President Juvenal Habyarimana’s airplane was shot down. Hutus, the dominant ethnic group, went on a rampage against Tutsis, the second largest ethnic group. Both groups were Christian. It was a common occurrence for Hutus to attend church in the morning before heading out to commit their atrocities. There are reports of Tutsis seeking sanctuary in a church where they were attacked with vengeance.

A similar genocide involving Christian groups occurred within the former Yugoslavia. The breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991 led to the establishment of several independent republics and to fighting among them. The most brutal of these conflicts was the Bosnian War between Republika Srpska and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Republika Srpska is Serbian whose citizens are predominately Greek Orthodox Christians. The Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina is largely Croatian whose citizens are Roman Catholic. There is a long history of Serbian and Croatians fighting each other.

A few days prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a dark speech in which he claimed Ukraine was an indispensable part of Russian history, culture, and spiritual space. Two days later Patriarch Krill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, blessed both Putin and the troops as they prepared to invade. He praised Putin’s leadership as a miracle of God, and framed the invasion as a larger metaphysical struggle against immoral western values. (1)

This sad history tells me there are many Christians both now and in the past whose religion has been an ideology, a system of beliefs, that doesn’t in any way touch their hearts. These Christians have believed in a God they have never known in a deep, experiential sense. To know such a God, to be a person whose heart is overflowing with love, would have made it impossible for that person to support or participate in wars of violence over issues of Christian belief.

What does it mean to know God? God is met in an encounter of deep love. You sense from this experience that you are at one with the universe, that life is good and beautiful, that love is built into the structure of the universe. This encounter is an experience that can’t be defined or explained. God is not some concept that can be believed. The encounter is often deep enough to rearrange one’s personality. The Apostle Paul underwent such a transformation when he met God on the Damascus Road.

This encounter takes place in the soul, the place where humans and God meet. The soul generates thoughts that float through our awareness reflecting God’s goodness and love. The problem is the human ego generates thoughts of a different sort that reflect a person’s self-centered concerns, thoughts that are organized around survival. These ego-derived thoughts compete with the thoughts of God from the soul and initially drown out the thoughts of God.

The ego is a personality structure organized around our insecurities and demons. It’s based on the assumption that we need to be defended, protected. In pursuit of our defense, the ego generates thoughts that tell us to win, to succeed, to compete. It condemns others and seeks revenge when it believes we have been attacked. It seeks to control others as a means of self-defense. It creates thoughts that we are under attack so that we will pay attention to it. These self-centered thoughts function as a dense smokescreen that block the thoughts of divine love from the soul.

An important conclusion results from the analysis above. God can’t be known until we have dealt with the problems of an egocentric perspective. We must discover ways to clear away the smoke. If the church wants its members to live the teachings of Jesus, especially those relating to nonviolence, it must help its members make the inward journey toward ego transcendence. This would involve offering both counseling services and instruction in Eastern meditative techniques. There is no point in practicing religion unless one is able to meet God in a deep, experiential sense.

Dr. Rick Herrick (PhD, Tulane University), a former tenured university professor and magazine editor, is the author of four published novels and two works of nonfiction. His most recent books: A Christian Foreign Policy, A Man Called Jesus and Jeff’s Journey.

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1. In all fairness, as the brutality of Russia’s invasion became more apparent, 280 Orthodox priests issued a statement condemning the attack.  See Jack Jenkins, “How Putin’s Invasion Became a Holy War for Russia,” Religion New Service, March 19, 2022.