Ancient Answers To Modern Problems: Constantine's Lessons for Today

In 325 AD, the Roman Emperor Constantine called the bishops of the Christian Church to a council at Nicea to gain consensus on a number of issues that were dividing adherents of Christianity. Constantine had recently declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. The primary issues centered on Jesus, and whether he was God, or a man, or some combination of both and what the nature of that combination was. I won't give you the answer - you can look it up. Other decisions made at what became known as the First Council of Nicea were how Passover and Easter dates would be determined each year, and who had the ultimate authority to set these dates. This was likely the first example of proposing "let's form a committee" as a solution to a difficult problem.

Our world has changed a lot since then. In spite of our President's best intentions, we no longer have empires that stretch across most of the "known world"; rather we have independent nations and regions having their own dominant religions, and within each of these religions, various sects and denominations holding major tenets and traditions passed from generation to generation. One major difference between our world and that of 325 AD is the degree to which followers of the world's variety of religions must interact and coexist. In our modern world - certainly in America - differing religions attempt to live side-by-side within the same neighborhoods, offices, public institutions and political groups. In our best moments, we attempt to see all religions as equal, and allow religious decisions to be made by individuals.

The success of that approach is being severely tested in our world today. The barriers of distance and opportunity no longer limit the degree to which religions are forced to interact. And groups of certain religions believe they are bound by those beliefs to express them in manners that run counter to a desire to allow all religions to co-exist. Islamic terrorists are certainly an extreme example of this, with dangerous beliefs about God and how he accomplishes his will in the world passed from parents to their children in never-ending cycles of violence, prejudice and hatred. Crimes are committed by individuals who claim to have heard God tell them to do such atrocities as drown children and blow up abortion clinics. In more subtle ways, the Religious Right works to legislate its beliefs through churches and grass-roots political organizations, claiming only they possess knowledge of "what God wants", to borrow from the title of a song by Roger Waters.

Perhaps, in this first decade of the 21st century, it's time for us to call something similar to a Council of Nicea to resolve these differences. Sadly, although each of the world's major religions claims to have some form of "loving its neighbors" as a major belief, it would no doubt be a challenge to make this happen, perhaps even more so to see it happen in a polite, respectful manner. But I believe that the present events in our world, and certainly any future we may have to peacefully co-exist, demand a legitimate discussion of religious differences to be presented and subjected to debate and analysis.

I propose that leaders of each major religion come together and present each religion's historical background, how that original vision is expressed today, why there are differences within the various denominations and sects of that religion, and the major differences between that religion and all others. After each presentation, those leaders would be respectfully questioned about what was presented by a panel comprising representatives of other religions, atheists, agnostics, and political leaders. Because of the serious nature of the discussions, it might help to lighten the tone occasionally by having each religion present its major tenets in the form of a David Letterman Top Ten list, for example, "Top Ten Reasons Snake Handling Is the Purest Form of Worship," or "Top Ten Beliefs of Ten Thousand Hindu Gods." While I offer those titles slightly tongue in cheek, sometimes the best way to get across difficult messages is to use a little humor. God knows – not that I claim to speak for Him (or her, if you're so inclined) – we could use more laughter in our world today.

And why stop there? The Hebrew Bible recounts a story of a serious drought that existed in the land inhabited by Israel in ancient times. A prophet of God, Elijah, claimed that the drought was God's judgment on the king's attempt to allow worship of gods other than Yahweh, the one God of the Jews. Elijah went before the king and told him to assemble several hundred prophets of Baal, the deity worshipped by the groups which had abandoned the teachings of Moses, and meet him out in the desert for a little religious one-on-one. In a nutshell, Elijah and the prophets of Baal were to build separate altars on which animals would be sacrificed. Neither group, however, would be able to light a fire; God or Baal would have to prove He was best by starting the fire himself when called upon by Elijah and Baal's prophets.

The Hebrew Bible records that the prophets of Baal went first. All day and night they prayed for Baal to show himself and create the fire to consume the sacrifice they had laid on the altar. And nothing happened.

Elijah laughed at them, and then took his turn. Before he prayed, though, he called several times for buckets of water to be poured over the altar he had built, as if to mock Baal and his prophets by showing that Israel's God could not only start a fire, but he could do it with everything soaking wet.

When this preparation was finished, Elijah called out to Yahweh. The Hebrew Bible says that fire came from heaven, consuming not only the sacrifice, but also the altar and all the water around it. Naturally, the prophets of Baal realized they had hooked their camels to the wrong chariot, and promptly fell down in worship of the God of the Israelites.

What is to stop us from having the same type of competition today? We could make it into a blockbuster reality series, or something like "American Idol", where each week one or more Gods could be eliminated from the competition, and adherents of that God would humbly be forced to realize that their affections were misplaced. At the end of the contest, everyone in the world would know who the one true God is, and we could all exist in harmony in his worship. No more holy wars, no more proselytizing, no more witnessing from your co-workers, no more terrorist attacks, no more people getting to miss work due to holidays that few others celebrate, no more having to cover Saturdays or Sundays for individuals who could not work the weekend due to religious reasons, no more arguments in our school boards about whether creation or evolution could be taught, no more ten commandments displays taking up court time, no more allowing accused criminals to plead insanity because they "heard God" tell them to do something, no more endless seasons of materialism tied around celebrations of births or deaths or resurrections of certain religious figures, no more elections where one candidate can claim that another is "ungodly" or "immoral", no more lumping other countries into axes of evil, no more accusing persons or governments of being "The Great Satan," no more children forced to commit suicide in bomb vests their parents have strapped to them, no more time and money wasted looking for arks in Turkish mountains, no more dichotomies about a loving God burning people endlessly being instilled in impressionable children, no more confusion about a God who plans everything being allowed to plead innocence to tsunamis and the supposedly free will choices by individuals, no more money wasted on self-perpetuating clergymen, buildings and programs, no more charities spending large portions of gifts on "administration" and "fund-raising" – the benefits, obviously, are endless.

And maybe, when all is said and done, we could simply love the victorious God. And, without the differences in His worship that have divided peoples for centuries, we could be free to love each other.

We could love God. And love our neighbor. And get rid of all the rest.

Because, in the end, that amounts to nothing more than the results of committee meetings anyway.