I have been for most of my life and will probably always be an incurable Marvel comic book geek (sorry DC—I could never stand Superman). I particularly like superheroes and comics with spiritual and deeply philosophical themes. To that end, I particularly liked the X-Men and Captain America.

I will always remember issue #256 of the Incredible Hulk from 1981. In this issue, the Hulk lands in Israel and finds a quiet place and turns back into Bruce Banner. Banner walks around and encounters a young man who makes him laugh and gives him a moment of peace in his otherwise troubled life. Unfortunately, though because this is a comic book and the Middle East, there is no rest for them.

A terrorist bomb goes off and the young boy is killed. Banner quickly turns into the Hulk and starts fighting with Sabra, an Israeli superheroine. She actually thinks that the Hulk is responsible for the attack and that he is working with the Arabs (as if). Well, the Hulk gives her the beating of a lifetime and in the end gives a speech to her that, as the Hulk’s intellect is that of a child, helps Sabra see things from a child’s perspective. And as we well know, a child’s perspective can sometimes be very very poignant. He says to her with tears in his eyes that the boy was killed because the Israeli’s and the Arabs are both told to take the land by two old books, but that the child who befriended him and who was killed by the terrorists bomb did not read books and had no hatreds or desire for land, the boy was just a boy.

I often wonder what that says about religions, including my own. How many little boys or girls in Syria or in Israel or Ireland or even in America are infused with hatred by the Bible or the Quran for other people because they are Jews or Christians or Muslims or English or just different? How many little boys and girls have been killed by (sometimes other little boys and girls) others due to something in someone’s holy book that they cannot even read?

Now for atheists this a big point. They like to say that if only there were no holy books then there would be no hatreds or prejudices and everyone would live in harmony. Northern Californians would love Southern Californians and Eastern Pennsylvanians would have been more loving to Western Pennsylvanians. Communist Russia would have loved Jewish and Black people and not put writers and artists in the Gulag if there was no Bible. They say communist Chinese people would not be prejudiced against people with disabilities and gays and Africans if only they had never heard of Jesus.

However, I do not believe that. I believe that it is unfortunately in our human nature to find things to separate ourselves from other people. It is something that we always need to guard against. And as soon as we think we have “arrived” at non-prejudicial perfection, we start seeing ourselves as better than others. It is a vicious cycle.

However we need to see ALL other people as made in the image of the One Above All.

I remember the words of Christ recorded in the book called the New Testament that the first commandment, loving God, is like the 2nd: love your neighbor as yourself. That commandment applies to your neighbor whether or not they are straight, homosexual, Jews, Muslims, atheists, white, black, purple, whatever.

Any expression of, “religion” that leads you to see ANY neighbor as less than created in the Lord’s image and worthy of love, is not from any God I believe in! 

34 When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they came together, 35 and one of them, a teacher of the Law, tried to trap him with a question. 36 “Teacher,” he asked, “which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”37 Jesus answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and the most important commandment. 39 The second most important commandment is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ 40 The whole Law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

————W.