Why Doesn’t Religious Conflict Ever End?

Throughout human history, conflicts born of religious discord have left a shocking record — in sheer frequency, in how long they lasted, and in the lives they cost.

These weren’t only wars between different religions. Conflicts between Catholics and Protestants who believed in the same God, between sect and sect split over the same scripture — through the dark ages of the medieval period and on into the modern era, these conflicts have run alongside the march of human civilization, and the cost in blood has never been small.

It’s a strange thing. These were, at one time, people who believed in the same God — people who kept love, service, and harmony on their lips. How, then, did they come to live through an age of hating and ultimately killing one another?

The answer is ignorance of God and humanity.

Scripture was first written on a partial understanding of God and humanity. Because that understanding was partial, interpretation went astray, and the mistaken direction kept widening over time. And before the light of truth had dawned, in a dark world, whoever held political, economic, and social power didn’t let the opening go to waste — they put on religion as a mask, and moved people according to their own intentions.

Not knowing the true nature of God, people cannot even tell the difference between God and the devil. It is the devil, chasing worldly gain, wearing God’s mask.

The True Bible puts it this way.

“Religion is only religion when it correctly knows the reality of the spirit. True religion is one where God — the spirit of eternal life — is present; if God is not present, it is nothing but a gathering of devils, and cannot be religion.” — RU 3:1-2

If religion fails to know what it should know, and fails to do what it should do — it is not religion. Conflict arises precisely because people wear the mask of religion to pursue political, economic, collective, or personal gain.

So what, then, is true religion?

True religion is the work of restoring people to God, to Buddha. People were, originally, God; they were Buddha. That is why true religion carries the knowledge, the principle, and the labor and fruit it takes to transcend the human dimension and be born again as God, as Buddha — and this is what proves true religion to be true.