It's easy to characterize religion as a blood - thirsty enterprise. History seems to be strewn with the wreckage of witch hunts, crusades, and religious jihad. If God does exist, a caller to my radio show offered, He ought to be tried for crimes against humanity.

The recent terrorist attacks have added a new twist: Our battle is not against terrorism per se, but against any religion that claims to be true. Thomas Friedman writing in the New York Times called it "religious totalitarianism."

Friedman’s solution: pluralism, the idea that "God speaks multiple languages." No one faith is exclusively true. Instead, all faiths are legitimate paths to God and anyone who claims otherwise is the enemy. Friedman’s call to arms, however, is misguided for three reasons.

Friedman Fails

First, it’s self-defeating. The issue is not God’s linguistic ability, but whether anything particular is true about God and whether God has made any specific demands on us regarding conduct, worship, or salvation. Do the details matter to God?

Friedman says no; God is a pluralist. He fails to recognize that this is a narrow, exclusivist (excluding non-pluralists), religious claim that he thinks is true. Not only is he dogmatic about this doctrine of God, he’s also militant. Those who disagree should be silenced. Friedman counters what he mistakenly perceives to be "religious totalitarianism"(in fact, most exclusivist religions are not militant) with the genuine article. His view commits suicide.

Second, Friedman misdiagnoses the problem, which he thinks is religious dogma. Of necessity, though, everyone (including Friedman) is dogmatic about issues of truth. It can’t be otherwise. Any claim is either true or false. If true, then those that contradict are wrong by simple force of logic.

The problem is not religious dogmatics, but religious error. The problem with Muslim terrorists is not fundamentalism, but that their fundamental beliefs are simply false. Ironically, Friedman’s pluralism prevents him from asking the only question that really matters: What religion is true?

Finally, it’s just erroneous that religion has been responsible for more carnage than anything else in history. The challenge has two parts. An allegedly factual observation about history is then taken as an inherent criticism of religion in general and Christianity in particular.

This is misguided. First, the crimes themselves have been exaggerated. Second, the greatest evil in the world actually comes from those who deny God’s existence. Third, Christianity cannot be held responsible when people do un-Christian things. Finally, Christianity’s real record of goodness is without peer in world history.

Exaggerations

The first problem with this objection is that many "religious" crimes have been misconstrued or greatly exaggerated.

Many conflicts that appear at first glance to be religious in nature are actually political or cultural wars that divide along religious lines. The strife in Northern Ireland is not a theological dispute about Catholicism vs. Protestantism per se, but rather a cultural power struggle between two groups of people. In like manner, much of the conflict in Eastern Europe and the Middle East is the result of ethnic hostilities, not genuine religious differences.

The Crusades, the Inquisition, some of the religious wars of the Reformation, and the Salem witch trials, on the other hand, were more theological. Even so, the record is not as grim as many make it.

Thousands of witches were not burned at the stake. The Salem witch trials resulted in only nineteen executions before it was stopped by Christians. The Spanish Inquisition involved thousands and the Crusades tens of thousands, not millions.

Of course, it’s tragic when even a handful of innocent lives are taken. Injustice isn’t justified because the numbers diminish. But an accurate accounting does serve to put things in perspective, especially when one considers the alternative: Has atheism fared better?

Greatest Murderers

The simple fact of history is that the greatest evil has always resulted from denial of God, not pursuit of Him. Dennis Prager has noted, "In this [20th] century alone, more innocent people have been murdered, tortured, and enslaved by secular ideologiesnazism and communismthan by all religions in history."

Grab an older copy of the Guinness Book of World Records and turn to the category "Judicial," sub-heading "Crimes: Mass Killings." You’ll find that carnage of unimaginable proportions resulted not from religion, but from institutionalized atheism.

Guinness reports, "The greatest massacre ever imputed by the government of one sovereign against another is the 26.3 million Chinese killed during the regime of Mao Zedong between 1949 and May 1965. The Walker Report published by the U.S. Senate Committee of the Judiciary in July 1971 placed...the total death toll in China since 1949 between 32.25 and 61.7 million."

In the USSR, Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn estimated that state repression and terrorism took over 66 million lives from 1917 to 1959 under Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev.

The worst per capita genocide happened in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. According to Guinness, "More than one third of the eight million Khmers were killed between April 17, 1975 and January 1979."

The greatest evil does not result from people zealous for God. It results when people are convinced there is no God to whom they must answer.

"I Never Knew You"

The third problemone often overlookedis captured in a question: Is oppression and bloodshed either a religious duty of Christianity or a logical application of the teachings of Christ? If not, then violence done in the name of Christ cannot be laid at His door.

Imagine yourself a builder who sent out crews with detailed, written instructions for their work. Instead of building, though, they destroyed. Would you be responsible? That would depend on one thing: the written instructions.

One can’t hold Christianity responsible when so-called Christians violate the written instructions. The fault is not with Christ, but with people who disobey Him.

Jesus was quite clear on this: "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments" (John 14:15). His command to love extended even to one’s enemy (Luke 10:29-37).

The Apostle John reflects the same view: "By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother" (1 John 3:10).

Nothing in Christian teaching itself mandates forcible conversion to the faith or coerced adherence to Biblical doctrines. The teachings of Christ do not lead logically to wanton bloodshed.

Jesus Himself warned of interlopers, wolves in sheep’s clothing. His assessment of them is unmistakable: "I never knew you. Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness" (Matthew 7:23).

The actual track record for genuine disciples of Jesus Christthose who follow the written instructionsis much different. Two Biblical teachings have made Christianity the greatest force for good in the history of the world.

First is the teaching that God reigns over a moral universe He created. He requires virtuous behavior from His subjects and will one day judge each person’s conduct with perfect justice.

Second, Christian morality is informed by the notion that human beings are made in the image of God and therefore have transcendent value. This has been the foundation for Christian ethics for 2,000 years.

Love for Christ and a desire to obey Him has transformed the world in four areas: education, human rights, acts of mercy, and general moral transformation of culture.

Education

Modern education owes its origins to Christianity. The reason is simple. One of the goals of the Reformation was to get the Bible into the hands of the common man, in the language of the common man. This did no good if he didn’t know how to read. Primary public education, then, was part of the foundation for the Reformation. Continued...