No religion exists in a vacuum.
On the contrary, every faith is rooted in the soil in which it is planted. It
is a fallacy to believe that people of faith derive their values primarily from
their Scriptures. The opposite is true. People of faith insert their values
into their Scriptures, reading them through the lens of their own cultural,
ethnic, nationalistic and even political perspectives.
After all, scripture is
meaningless without interpretation. Scripture requires a person to confront and
interpret it in order for it to have any meaning. And the very act of
interpreting a scripture necessarily involves bringing to it one’s own
perspectives and prejudices.
The abiding nature of scripture
rests not so much in its truth claims as it does in its malleability, its
ability to be molded and shaped into whatever form a worshiper requires. The
same Bible that commands Jews to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus
19:18) also exhorts them to “kill every man and woman, child and infant, ox and
sheep, camel and donkey,” who worship any other God (1 Sam. 15:3). The same
Jesus Christ who told his disciples to “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39)
also told them that he had “not come to bring peace but the sword” (Matthew
10:34), and that “he who does not have a sword should sell his cloak and buy
one” (Luke 22:36). The same Quran that warns believers “if you kill one person
it is as though you have killed all of humanity” (5:32) also commands them to “slay
the idolaters wherever you find them” (9:5).
Reza Aslan, “Bill Maher Isn’t the Only One Who
Misunderstands Religion,” NYT op-ed, Oct. 8, 2014.
