Leon's No News Bulletin 88 Sat 6th Sept 08

Shalom everyone,

Most of the tours I've conducted in my 25 years of guiding have included ruins where I explain how tragedies of war, earthquakes and other catastrophes brought about their destruction.

Typically tourists are saddened by the sight of the ruins of these, once magnificent structures and wish that they could be rebuilt. Pious, religious Jews stand weeping over the ruins of the Western Wall fervently praying for its reconstruction. They believe that this will be the main achievement of the messiah, and wish desperately for his arrival.

I ask myself "will the world really be a better place if all those prayers at the Western Wall, (Wailing Wall) are answered?" Is that really what the world needs? Won't they just collapse again into ruins? Isn't that the way of physical structures? Don't the ruins lying before our eyes prove that all physical beauty eventually ends up in ruins? So why go on making these physical objects of beauty if ruins are their fate?

Why are there so many people who want to see the rebuilding of the temple? All over the world people are busy building monumental religious structures. Why is this such a strong desire in the hearts of men and women?

Everyone knows the answer; human beings lust for physical power and physical riches shows physical power and religious buildings demonstrate the power of the religion and the power of its followers.

Every ruined structure is a sign that someone, at sometime in history, sought to demonstrate his power by building a physical structure that people would admire and wish to emulate. When one sees a physically grand structure it arouses the desire to accumulate wealth and build another such grand structure.

The prolific number of monumental structures is the result of an ever growing desire for physical wealth and its exhibition. This desire is part of man's nature and is one of the main causes of war.

This thought is expressed very well by Plato in the Republic in the following dialogue from book 2:

"Then a slice of our neighbours' land will be wanted by us for pasture and tillage, and they will want a slice of ours, if, like ourselves, they exceed the limit of necessity, and give themselves up to the unlimited accumulation of wealth?

That, Socrates, will be inevitable.
And so we shall go to war, Glaucon. Shall we not?
Most certainly, he replied.
Then without determining as yet whether war does good or harm, thus much we may affirm, that now we have discovered war to be derived from causes which are also the causes of almost all the evils in States, private as well as public.
Undoubtedly.
And our State must once more enlarge; and this time there will be nothing short of a whole army, which will have to go out and fight with the invaders for all that we have, as well as for the things and persons whom we were describing above."

Presumably, therefore, if we could curb the desire for physical power and wealth the chances of war between humans would be seriously reduced.

This is the main function/task of all religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism; to curb man from his desire for physical objects as a means of attaining happiness and to replace it with a desire for love and kindness.

Every place in the world where there is a ruin of a once beautiful religious structure it's a sign that religion betrayed its task. Every new church, synagogue, mosque, temple etc is a sign that religion continues to betray its task. Every time a pious Jew cries over the destruction of the temple at the Waling Wall it’s a sign that he has misunderstood the purpose of religion according to the prophets.(Isaiah 1:10-18)

Rabbis, priests, kadis etc. should be tour guides taking their congregants to the sites of ruined synagogues and churches (there are many of them in Israel) and explain that these ruins are proof that man's desire for accumulating physical wealth ends in catastrophe and destruction and must stop teaching his followers that the task of religion is to build new temples and synagogues.

Religion is a magnificent attempt to curb man's physical desires, but it has failed and the ruins bear the message of that failure and the constant wars are the result.

If Religion wants to be true to its task it must stop building Temples, churches, synagogues and mosques etc. or else it's helping to promote war instead of preventing war, the reason for which it was created originally.

Wishing you a great no news day

Yours truly

Leon Gork