I always find it especially intriguing how Christians will so often so zealously defend certain passages of their Bible, while so casually discounting or even completely ignoring others. Take the following passage from Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” as a prime example of the latter:

“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others … But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father in secret.” ~ (Matthew 6:5-6)

Yes, despite the blatant clarity of this admonition — and despite the fact that it comes directly from Jesus Christ himself, every Sunday of every week of the year you will find millions upon millions of Christians dressing up to go to church and pray publicly to a God that they believe has reserved space in Heaven only for them and those who ultimately believe as they do.

And yet such flagrant displays of zealous pride are not reserved to Christians … No, all over the world each & every day we can also find millions upon millions of Muslims & Jews & Buddhists & Hindus & Sikhs doing exactly the same thing; praying with varying degrees of passion, and yet always doing so with an underlying tone of arrogance — a certainty of belief in the exclusive correctness of their own individual faiths, at the spiritual expense of all those who believe differently.

Needless to say, this is not a recipe for Peace.