The three Abrahamic faiths have a long history of waging covert and overt wars against the spiritual systems of other people and cultures.

Apparently, the birth of monotheism in the Abrahamic faiths led to the seemingly inevitable afterbirth of monotheism, namely religious persecution. Brother Moses climbed Mount Sinai, inhaled some smoke from a burning bush, and proceeded to unleash the ancient version of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the fun-loving polytheistic Canaanites.

Not to be outdone by the Jews, the Christian community, after enduring several waves of intense persecution initiated by Jews and the Romans, turned the tables on their enemies and soiled their own garments with the blood of Jews and the worshippers of the pantheon of gods embraced by the people who occupied what remained of the Roman empire.

Islam was literally birthed with a sword in its hand. Muhammad made light work of the polytheists in Arabia then set his sights on the Levant region and beyond. Islamic armies expanded Dar-al Islam with sword, spear, and shield. As the new kids on the block, Muslims drank the heady wine of being the favourites of the deity of the Abrahamic faith. Muslims made concessions to their fellow monotheistic religionists who were referred to as People of the Book. People who did not follow the way of the Book were dispatched to the afterlife with alacrity.

Perhaps one of the most volatile and politically incorrect statements uttered by the Christ of the New Testament can be found in the eighth chapter of the Gospel accredited to John. In this chapter Jesus dropped a cruise missile on his Jewish detractors. Confronted by religious authorities who thought it was their duty to kill anyone who disagreed with them, Jesus went for their jugular by categorically stating that this murderous trait placed them squarely in the camp of the spawns of the Devil.

As a corollary to this bombshell Jesus adds two chapters later, in John 10, that the thief or his nemesis the Devil specialises in stealing, killing, and destroying. To further drive home this point, Jesus chastises two of his disciples who wanted to call down fire from heaven to burn up a Samaritan city that refused to extend some courtesies to Jesus and his disciples. (Luke 9: 52-56)

On the authority of the founder of the Christian faith I can, therefore, boldly say that any religion that specialises in stealing, killing, and destroying does not have the imprimatur of Jesus and by default is following the other fellow. When religionists choose to stain their hands and garments with the blood of their enemies, we can be certain who they are representing.

When religionists under the guise of a supposed burden for the heathen enter other people’s land and proceed to kill them prior to appropriating the goods and property of the indigenous of the land, we can be certain whose banner they are marching under. When religionists steal the bodies and souls of men and women, transporting them from their native lands to labour like beast of burdens in thinly disguised concentration camps, we can know for certain whose spawn these religionists are.

If the religious acts of stealing, killing, and destroying were purely historical we could breathe a collective sigh of relief and chalk it up to the ignorance of the past. Unfortunately, the religious spirit of stealing, killing, and destroying is alive and well in our modern world. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on record invoking the Old Testament command to exterminate with extreme prejudice the Amalekites as he prosecutes his ethnic cleansing war against the Palestinian people.

Muslim fundamentalists went on a search-and-destroy mission, leaving in their wake the rubble of priceless statues and other works of art. The misogyny of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Iran are a scandal in the modern age. Suicide bombings and religious terrorism have also been taken to new, unprecedented heights by Islamic militants globally.

Killing in God’s name has become state of the art even in modern ‘democracy’-loving America where abortion clinics have been burnt or bombed and anti-racist marchers brutalised and even killed by white nationalists marching to the drum beat of Christian nationalist rhetoric. The current debate about Agenda 2025, which has been dubbed a blueprint for the creation of a Christian America, brings into sharp focus the extent to which fundamentalist Christians are prepared to go to establish their version of a Christian nation.

The human race has evolved morally and ethically. The perpetuation of a Dark Age morality and ethic that is rooted in an outdated spiritual paradigm is unacceptable in the modern age. Even distinguished theologians have recognised a disconnect between Jealous Jehovah of the Old Testament era and the gentle Jesus meek and mild of the New Testament. Few would seriously dispute the reality that the spirituality of Gentle Jesus is a breath of fresh air when contrasted with the primitive spirituality of Jealous Jehovah in the Old Testament.

Much to the chagrin of Christian nationalists and racist fundamentalists, Jesus commands his followers to love their neighbours. It matters not if their neighbours just crossed the US/ Mexican border, or are living on reservations after having had their land outrightly stolen by the good Christians of America, or are descendants of a stolen, brutalised, and exploited race from the African continent, or are card-carrying members of the LGBTQIA fraternities or sororities.

Religion can prove to be a force for good in the modern world, but to perform its healing role a new vision of the divine is sorely needed. The divine image that emerges from the Abrahamic faiths needs to be consigned to the dustbin of history. The god of Jews, Europeans, and Arabs is a deity crafted in their likeness and image. The deity of the Abrahamic faiths promotes the interests of these three ethnic groups at the expense of the other ethnic communities of the world.

Like Zeus and Odin, Jealous Jehovah needs to be retired and the Father so eloquently declared by Jesus brought into sharper focus. Maybe Marcion of Sinope from the second century CE and the Gnostics of the same general era were on to something when they rejected the Old Testament and its deity in favour of Jesus, the Gospels, and some of the writings of the Apostle Paul.

Lenrod Nzulu Baraka is the founder of Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Center and the author of Is God a Moral Monster. Send comments to Jamaica Observer or rodenynimrod2@gmail.com.