[This is a talk I gave at the ACTS Academy of Higher Education on 29 May 2024.]

Introduction

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi famously said, “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.” And John Steinbeck wrote, “All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.”  In these days of increased polarization and violence between religions, it is important for us to be able to determine what the contributing factors might be and what evidence we might be able to witness. After all, if we hope to reach a point where discord and violence are things of the past, we will need to heal the memories of the past – those memories that keep us trapped in unwholesome ways of thinking.

Of course, we are here at ACTS Academy, which is a Christian institution. Hence, what we say about conflict and any proposed solutions should honor Jesus. In addition, wherever possible, we should try to understand things in light of the scriptures. Hence, I have divided my talk into four parts. First, we will attempt to understand the human condition from three scriptural lenses. Second, we will attempt to understand what the consequences from these three lenses mean in terms of the divine judgments they represent. Third, we will look at sources of conflict. And fourth, we will consider some symptoms of conflict.

The Human Condition

Lost Wisdom

The human story in the bible begins with two accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and 2. In Genesis 3, we are introduced to a significant problem resulting from the disobedience of the humans. God had issued a single command to the human, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” (Genesis 2.16-17) If it is true that God is a God of order rather than chaos, this command must make sense. Unfortunately, it is often taken just to be a case of God setting down a law to see if the humans would obey or not. 

However, this would mean that the single command issued to the humans was actually just an arbitrary command. In other words, God could have issued just about any other command. He could have, for example, told them, “You shall eat figs only on Wednesday” or “You must always face North on Thursdays” or “You must drink from the Gihon and Pishon on alternate days.” You see, if a command is arbitrary, then any command will do. But this would make God out to be doing things quite randomly rather than with a purpose. Hence, it is not enough for us to simply say that the prohibition from eating that particular fruit had no reason other than that God simply felt like it.

We must, therefore, delve into the text of the bible. But not just this text. We need to ask ourselves, “What kind of relationship does God intend to have with his human creatures?” And here we see that Jesus makes it very clear that God’s intention is to share meals with his people. Hence, in the letter to the church in Laodicea, Jesus says, “I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat with you, and you with me.” Indeed, every Christian church celebrates and observes an ordinance or sacrament we call the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist or Communion, in which we remember a meal Jesus shared with his disciples.

We have to understand that sharing meals is one of the most meaningful ways of saying, “We are one family.” Hence, for God to intend to share meals with us is an expression of his desire to include us in his family. But if we see this as a goal, showing up in the promises of Revelation, should we not expect it to be there right at the start? But think of this. I have a good friend who is allergic to milk products. When we go out to eat, she doesn’t order anything with milk products in them. I, on the other hand, not being allergic, go ahead and order dishes which have cream and cheese without any reservations. What I am eating could be quite dangerous – potentially life-threatening – to her. 

And if I were like some of my relatives, she could order something with peanuts in them that would be life-threatening to me. In other words, we can easily think of a situation where two people share a meal without them actually sharing the food. If, then, it was God’s desire to share meals with his human creatures, could the two trees represent the kind of foods each could consume? God could eat from both trees without facing any harm. However, the humans could only eat from the tree of life without damage to themselves. Somehow, eating from the other tree would result in irreparable damage to the humans. In this case, the commandment is like a health warning to the humans rather than a test of obedience in itself.

When the humans disobey and eat the forbidden fruit, which they know is from the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, they conclude that consuming the fruit automatically gives them the nourishment promised by the fruit. The fruit could indeed give the knowledge of good and bad but only to someone who was capable of ‘digesting’ the fruit. To a person who could not ‘digest’ its contents, it would do the opposite, just like, if my friend ate cheese with me, she would get painfully bloated without any nourishment actually reaching her body. In other words, after eating the fruit, the humans believed they had wisdom, when in fact they had become foolish, only thinking that they had gained wisdom by eating the fruit.

The result of the disobedience is that humans are under the grave deception that they are wise. Isn’t that why we call ourselves homo sapiens? After all, that means ‘the wise human’! Though possessing no wisdom, we have convinced ourselves that we are the wisest creature ever to have lived on the earth.

Abused Power

The second scriptural lens on conflict is from Genesis 6. There, in v. 5 we read, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” If we were wondering what specifically was evil, the text does not leave us uninformed, for in v. 11 we read, “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.” Indeed, the opening verses declare, “When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair, and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose.” 

The precursor to this is in Genesis 4, where we read of Cain’s descendant, Lamech, who kills a boy for causing a minor injury and who then boasts about it to his two wives, the first recorded instance of polygamy, which inevitably leads to the exploitation of and violence against women. The opening verses of Genesis 6 along with the account concerning Lamech tell us the kind of violence that was particularly troubling to God. In the case of Lamech, it is the use of overwhelming power to kill a weaker person in the context of the exploitation of women. Ironically, the same sort of violence surrounding the sons of God is described in the opening verses of Genesis 6. 

In case you are unconvinced that this is the main problem identified in the passage, we can see some parallels between Genesis 3 and Genesis 6. In Genesis 3.6 we read, “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.” The same pattern is repeated in Genesis 6.2 where we read, “The sons of God saw that they were fair, and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose.” In both cases, we have a ‘seeing’ of some object – the seeing of the fruit by the woman in Genesis 3 and the seeing of the daughters of men by the sons of God in Genesis 6. 

This is followed by a recognition that this object is good. Indeed, in both passages, the humans involved see that the object is tov, the Hebrew word for ‘good’. In Genesis 6, it is translated as ‘fair’ or ‘beautiful’, thereby obscuring what the text is trying to say, since Hebrew has other words that specifically refer to physical and visible beauty. This is followed by a taking of the object.

We see the same pattern in 2 Samuel 11, in the incident where David violates Bathsheba. There, we see the same three words in action – David sees her, finds that she is beautiful, again with the word tov, and takes her. This pattern – see something, evaluate it as good, and take it for yourself – is very common in the Old Testament in contexts of human sin. Hence, its presence here in Genesis 3 and 6 should indicate to us what God really found objectionable. In Genesis 3 it was the humans taking and eating the forbidden fruit. In Genesis 6, it is the sons of God taking the daughters of men. This is not the place to go in depth into Genesis 6. If you wish you can hold your questions till the Q&A time.

But what we learn from Genesis 6 is that the principle of ‘might makes right’, where those with power – the sons of God – prey on those who are weak – the daughters of men – and ruthlessly and violently dominate them, is found to be intolerable, leading to the judgment. When later, in chapter 10, we are introduced to Nimrod, who is celebrated for his violence, we should understand that, despite the devastation of the flood, which was unleashed against the human inclination toward violence, humans did not learn. They continued to celebrate precisely the kind of people whose practices God had found objectionable enough to justify judging the world with the flood.

Rise of Fascism and Totalitarianism

The human inclination for violence continues until we get to Genesis 11, where we read, “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.” Do you not find this strange? I mean, many of us use the same language. Right now I am using English and I presume you can understand what I am saying. But if Dr. Rajesh had asked someone else to present this talk, you would, hopefully, have heard a different perspective. However, Genesis 11 tells us that the people not only spoke the same language, but also that they spoke the same words. But when do you find different people saying exactly the same things?

This is possible only under a fascist and totalitarian regime, one in which no differing views than the official propaganda are permitted to be expressed. This is a situation in which a so-called unity is achieved through enforcement of uniformity. Hence, we read that, rather than spreading over the earth as God intended, they gathered in one place, in an attempt at severe centralization. In addition, there was only one language, indicating one mode of communication. And finally, the declaration that there was only one word points to the extreme indoctrination and propaganda that is required for any fascist and totalitarian regime to survive.

So what we have seen from the three scriptural lenses is that, after eating the forbidden fruit, humans begin to believe that they possess what the fruit provides. But because we cannot ‘digest’ its nutrients, we only have a false sense of possessing wisdom. This illusion of wisdom leads us down the path in which we celebrate violence and even institutionalize it. The end result of this is a fascist and totalitarian society in which no dissenting voices are permitted.

Divine Response

Banishment

This gets us to the divine responses in each of the three cases we have looked at. In Genesis 3, we read, “Then Yahweh God said, ‘See, the humans have become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and now they might reach out their hands and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever’ therefore the Lord God sent them forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which they were taken.” I interpret the first part, where God says that humans know good and evil as a sarcastic statement to contrast what humans think they have achieved and what is actually the case.

Given that the humans had caused themselves irreversible damage by eating something they could not ‘digest’, causing them to be placed under an illusion that they had actually received what the fruit provided, the humans were in a particularly vulnerable state. If they ate from the tree of life, they would live forever in this state of delusion. Hence, the divine judgment of banishing them from the garden was actually a sign of mercy on the humans and not an example of retributive justice. But now the humans no longer had access to the tree of life and became subject to their mortality. Hence, in Genesis 5 we repeatedly read about people who lived a certain number of years before dying.

Attempt to Create a New Humanity

When we come to Genesis 6, the divine judgment is that of unleashing the flood. Since, according to the account, the flood covers the whole world, theologically speaking this is a universal judgment against the evil that God had identified. Hence, the flood was intended to put an end to the human inclination toward violence, and especially, in the contexts of Genesis 4 and 6, the violence against women. The eight occupants of the ark were supposed to form a new humanity with the knowledge that God had found human violence and exploitation worthy of judgment. Hence, following the flood, God makes the only covenant that includes every part of creation along with the humans.

With a covenant made with not just humans but with every other lifeform on the earth, the intention is to tell humans that they cannot exploit and violate other parts of creation, let alone other humans. However, it is in the next chapter itself that we read about Nimrod, who is celebrated for his violence. And it is under his command that the ancient cities of Babylon, Erech, Akkad, Calneh, Nineveh, Rehoboth-ir, Calah, and Resen are built. Of course, Babylon and Nineveh will play an enormous role in the history of the Israelites, being the capitals of two empires under which the Israelites are dispersed into exile. Hence, Nimrod, as the founder of these cities, serves to show that human violence has not been dealt with.

Disunity and Decentralization

If the flood judgment is explicitly against human violence and exploitation, the judgment in Genesis 11 is against the fruit of human violence and exploitation. The scattering of the humans, with the subsequent rise of different languages, is intended so that there would not be one language to unite all humans and take them down a path of destruction. Further, the confusion caused at Babylon forces the humans to spread through the earth, thereby undermining their centralizing efforts. The possibility of differing voices now, literally through the variety of languages, is supposed to protect against the human inclination toward totalitarian thinking.

Sources of Conflict

Answers to Worldview Questions

Of course, we need only look around us to realize that humans continue to have totalitarian tendencies. And this leads us to the sources of conflict. The first source of conflict comes in the form of answers to worldview questions. Worldview questions are not necessarily explicit questions that we ask ourselves. There are different sets of questions that various scholars have suggested as worldview questions. For our purposes, I would like to consider the following questions: Who are humans? Where do humans come from? What is the problem? What is the solution? 

The answers to these questions are crucially important and shape our identity and our purpose. Due to this, different answers to the questions inevitably give rise to conflict because these answers reach to the depths of our being. Any different answer calls into question our answers and, therefore, our understanding of the world we live in.

Now, the four worldview questions ask for responses concerning identity – who are humans?; origin – where do humans come from?; difficulty – what is the problem?; and conclusion – what is the solution? As we move forward, we will address these questions. However, we will focus mostly on the solution. If there is a solution, then it is obvious that not all humans possess the knowledge of this solution. The solution, then, will reside in the hands of a select few – a chosen people – who have been given insight about the true nature of identity, origins, difficulty, and conclusion and who, therefore, bear the responsibility of the future. So let us see how different answers to the questions can give rise to conflicts.

For example, to the question, “Who are humans?” we could answer, as per the Ancient Near Eastern myths, that this world and humans are the by-products of a battle between the gods. This would indicate that violence is foundational to us as it is the context within which we were created. It would also indicate that creation is nothing but the ruins left over after this cosmic battle ended. Or we could say that we are the creation of a God who only had to speak things into existence and who entrusted us with the task of spreading his reign over all the earth. In other words, the biblical story asserts that violence is not something inherent to us and that care for this creation is intrinsic to our vocation as God’s image bearers. 

We can see that these two visions of human origins and vocation would result in conflict since there is no way both could be true. But this difference raises another important question, “Who are the chosen people to whom this knowledge has been given?” You see if there are different visions that cannot coexist, this automatically claims that one group – our group – has the correct answers while the other groups – their groups – do not. 

This leads to the next source of conflict – identifying these chosen people. You see, if only certain people – our group – has the correct answers, then how do we recognize who belongs to our group? This is where ritual and practices come into play. A Muslim may pray five times a day and fast during Ramzan, a Hindu may fast on Tuesdays and perform aarti in her prayer room at home. These are the kinds of practices that define people. And while the words used, like ‘prayer’ or ‘fasting’, might be the same, they carry different significance within each worldview. So once again, we have a source of conflict in the practices and rituals that define us.

We even have a problem arising from determining where you can locate people who belong to our group. According to some quite misled people from India, people who adhere to the Abrahamic faiths do not belong to India. But on what grounds do they say this? If such reasoning is given, we might as well say that, if your favorite food is Mexican, you do not belong in India, or, if your favorite sport is football, you do not belong in India. This is the origin fallacy, which, incidentally, none of those Indians would use if you brought up the presence of the Angkor Wat, a Hindu temple dedicated to Vishnu, in Cambodia or the Vishnu temple in Bandar Abbas in supposedly extremist Islamist Iran.

In addition to this, another source of conflict is the sacred periods. When are the rituals supposed to be performed is a crucial question. Muslims have their calendar of festivals based on a strict lunar calendar. Hindus use an adjusted lunar calendar, while Christians use a combination of a lunar and solar calendar. Muslims have their festivals at various points in their calendar and similarly the Hindus. While in India we get a holiday for just about every festival, what would we do if we lived in a country where Christmas, Good Friday, or Easter were not holidays? It would likely give rise to resentment at the very least.

Of course, once we have identified a chosen people, we need to ask ourselves the purpose for which they have been chosen. According to Hindu doctrine, the world is cycling through various ages and we are expected to side with good in each age. According to Muslim doctrine, the world is moving to a culmination when the whole world will be Islamic. However, according to Christian doctrine we are expected to be God’s agents in the world and await the return of Jesus. These are three different visions for the chosen people and they do not fit well together.

And of course, the worldview has to indicate the final goal toward which we are moving. Hinduism, with its cyclical view of history, has no final goal apart from that of each soul somehow liberating itself from the endless cycle of samsara by achieving moksha. According to Islam, the righteous will be allowed to enter paradise while the unrighteous will be punished. However, in the Christian scheme of things, we await a new creation when God will set everything right and restore what went wrong with his current broken but good creation. Once again, these three ideas do not fit well together.

The Logic of the Lenses

We can, of course, approach the issue of sources of conflict from what we read in the bible. The three lenses in Genesis 3, 6, and 11 actually tell us, from a theological perspective, a lot about why humans are almost always poised for an outbreak of violence against each other. Regarding the question, “Who are humans?” the three lenses tell us that we are people who grab things for ourselves, even if it means alienating someone else, if need be with violence, even if it means exploiting them, but who have no name and are desperately trying to make a name for themselves.

With regard to the issue of practices that characterize humans, we have already devoted some time to the pattern of seeing an object, evaluating it as good, and then taking it for ourselves. Even Cain’s first act of building a city can be seen in this light. When an ancient city was built, it involved marking off some land as inside the city and building a fortified wall, thereby saying that everyone else was outside. It makes the inside of the city the ‘possession’ of a small group of people when in fact the whole earth was given to all of humankind.

The complete blindness of humans comes across when we ask ourselves the question about place. Where do we find humans? In Genesis 3, they are driven to the East of the garden. And then from Cain onward to the people in Genesis 11, we see a continuous move Eastward, and, therefore, away from the presence of God. This continuous movement involves movement that increases the distance of banishment, until they finally reach the plains of Shinar in Genesis 11.

If we ask about the purpose of humans, each of the three lenses gives us related, but slightly different, answers. In Genesis 3, we see that humans see their purpose as being to possess wisdom. In Genesis 6, it becomes gaining reputation as warriors and having superior status through the designation ‘son of God’. In Genesis 11, it is to prevent scattering and to make a name for themselves. 

However, there is no plan, because everything is based on immediate gratification. Hence, all the perceived purposes of humans serve no higher goals. The pursuit of these purposes becomes an end in and of themselves.

Logic of Conflict

However we frame the questions and however we answer them, there is a logic that automatically gives rise to conflict. We have seen that the different answers given to the worldview questions and the answers given by the scriptural lenses do not fit well together. Either in relation to each other, as seen in competing answers from different religions, or by ourselves, as seen in the answers from the scriptural lenses, humans are gripped by an either-or mentality that gives rise to the following logical reasoning.

First, there is the recognition that the answers given cannot sit well alongside each other. Second, there is the conclusion, “If your answers to the questions are right, then my answers are wrong.” This leads to the third step, “If I am wrong, I have misunderstood everything – who I am and what I am supposed to do.” This, of course, leads to the fourth stage, “Then I am either deceived, being weak willed, or deficient, being intellectually challenged.” Now we have reached the logic that states that, if I am wrong, I am either easily deceived or have a poor intellect. We then move to the fifth step, “I cannot stand the idea that I am either deceived or deficient.”

Since I cannot bear to admit that I am wrong, I conclude that I am not wrong. Then I proceed to the sixth step, “Since both of us cannot be right, you must be wrong.” And this leads to the final step, “Then you are either deceived or deficient or yourself deceptive.”

Hence, from the recognition that some sets of answers are incompatible, we conclude that the other person must be defective in some way – either in will or intellect or intention.

Symptoms of Conflict

Conflict, however, does not always appear in plain sight. Hence, it is important that we learn to recognize some symptoms of conflict. Here, I would like to mention a few symptoms without explaining them in great detail. First, the intolerance of difference as seen in the one language and one word of Genesis 11. Second, what is now commonly known as cancel culture, which is the use of power to silence those who hold opposing views. Third, as seen in the terms ‘sons of God’ and ‘daughters of men’, terms are used to elevate or put down different kinds of people. When we use labels as arguments, we are guilty of doing this. Fourth, the spread of paranoia and fear. In Genesis 11, the people say they want to build the city, “Lest we be scattered.” When you see people trying to motivate you based on fear and paranoia, you know that there is some conflict they do not want to deal with but are scaring you so that you do not attempt to resolve the conflict. Fifth, the formation of echo chambers, as seen in Genesis 11, with only one message being permitted expression. Sixth, the development of an ‘us versus them’ mentality, as in Genesis 3, which resulted in the breakdown of relationship between the woman and the man. Seventh, the move toward apathy and disengagement  as in Genesis 11 where they make no attempt to try to understand each other. Eighth, the development of a lack of trust as in Genesis 3, with the refusal to accept responsibility and the passing of blame. Ninth, the use of dehumanizing language about those who disagree with us. And tenth, allocation of different status to different groups of people.

Conclusion

So what might the solutions to conflict be? What would they look like? While we are not presenting any possible solutions today, we must ensure two things are kept in mind when we propose solutions. First, solutions must address the underlying differences in the answers people have to the worldview questions. Not understanding someone else’s worldview is a sure fire way to ensure conflict is never resolved. Second, some worldviews, such as extreme capitalism or racial supremacist views, are inherently not conducive to solutions. Such worldviews must be challenged and dismantled rather than be pandered to. 

Discussion Questions

1. Think of an ongoing situation of religious discord. What are the parties involved in this discord? What do you think are the root causes of the discord?
2. In what ways has the Church contributed to religious discord in the world? What do you think are the reasons behind this contribution?
3. What can be done to minimize the effects of worldview differences on religious discord? How can groups of people who have different worldviews thrive alongside each other?