Lesson 4.3

People use religion as an excuse for everything. Most commonly and sadly, many people use religion and religious texts to hate and to control people.

Judaism is older than Christianity. Not to mention, I believe there has been plenty of research done that indicates that the religious preacher Jesus was Jewish. I thought it was more common knowledge that Jesus Christ was most likely Jewish. Along with that fact, many of the people involved in his crucifixion were most likely Jewish as well — since that was the dominant religion at the time.

Throughout time, Jews have constantly been used as a scapegoat and have been targeted repeatedly. The Inquisition, the Holocaust, and random times throughout history. Antisemitism has roots in many aspects, and it is always so easy for humans to blame everyone but themselves for issues. It was the fact that many Jews and Jewish businesses were thriving in Germany after the Great War while many Christians and Germany as a whole were dealing with the reparations owed. How easy was it for someone to point the blame? How easy for people to angry at someone who was doing better than them in life and turn it into us vs. them?

The KKK was created during another surge in religion — particularly the Christianities as that has been the more popular religion in America. Most people don’t want to admit that they are a hateful person, they don’t want to admit that they lack compassion or empathy. Or that they are a bad person. So people always look for external reasons to justify their actions or internal thoughts.

People turn to whatever they feel can give them enough justification for whatever action they wish to make. Unfortunately, that justification does not always make sense. People pick and chose parts of a whole to justify themselves, and by doing so, they often leave out the important parts. To me, as someone who isn’t associated with a religion, I don’t understand how a religion that believes that Jesus Christ, a Jew, is the only son of God can then attack Jewish people. I’m surprised people don’t feel that attacking Jews is equivalent to attacking Jesus.