Who teaches that killing is good?

A moment that makes life thrilling:
watching a gathering of crows.
Then thoughts of war dead come chilling.
As every soldier rightly knows,
there’s no god who favors killing.
- Anthony S. Maulucci, US born poet and novelist

Recent documentaries and interview programs have convinced me that soldiers do not kill "people," they kill enemy entities. They are trained to annihilate devils that they are persuaded inhabit the bodies of the men, women and children who stand before them. The actual people who die are, to the soldiers, not really people any more than those in a video game are real.

Is this realistic? It's the way soldiering has worked since the "profession" began. Like it or not, right or wrong, soldiers are trained to kill entities they believe are less than human.

"There's no god who favors killing." Yet every soldier in just about every modern war is trained to believe that God (by whatever name) supports what he or she is doing.

No modern religion favours killing. Older ones--now mostly extinct--accepted death under certain circumstances.

However, sects within religions preach death by suicide and even murder. Al Qaeda is a collection of such extreme sects, even though Islam teaches that murder is wrong and suicide is the ultimate sin. Within Christianity there are many examples, but Jamestown comes to mind.

We know who teaches that suicide and murder are supported by God and are good.

Who teaches that a gathering of crows is worth watching? Or fish leaping from the lake surface to catch flies that have recently hatched and are hovering above the water? Or the flight of a hummingbird? Or the swirling mist over a lake in the early morning that shows how hurricanes and tornadoes form? Or how much the smile of a baby can touch the heart of a mother?

Someone should.

If not enough people teach these things, we can't blame it on those who train the solders. We can't blame it on those who train the minds of religious sect members.

We shouldn't blame it on our own parents. Maybe they didn't know.

You know. Are you teaching actively or passively, by example? Doing nothing is a lesson to a child, by example.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to encourage everyone to teach the things they believe are important, instead of leaving it to others.
Learn more at http://billallin.com