A very interesting story from the UN today:
World travel and live satellite television have fed cultural and religious tensions and alienation among nations, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a U.N. conference on Thursday.
“Today, there is an urgent need to address this worrying trend,” Ban said, opening a two-day meeting at the U.N. General Assembly on interreligious and intercultural understanding.
The U.N. chief said that during his travels he had found that people suffered from similar prejudices.
“They all fear that which is different from them: the other ethnicity, the other skin color, the other cultural or linguistic tradition and, above all, the other religion,” he said.
Possible reaction #1: Of course greater exposure to different cultures doesn’t automatically lead to global peace and happiness. We’re sinful people! When we see people who aren’t like us, it doesn’t make us more open-minded. It makes us even more sure that we’re right and they’re wrong.
Possible reaction #2: All roads don’t lead to heaven. There really is a marked difference between world religions, starting with different beliefs on the nature of God and how he relates to us. This leads to wildly different ideas of how we should relate to the world around us.
Almost a decade ago, I took the students in our youth ministry on a tour of a local mosque and a Buddhist temple. They interviewed the imams and monks. Many of the kids started the day thinking that we all worship pretty much the same God. But once they saw and heard first-hand what these other groups believe, they quickly realized that our God is very different from theirs. Sure, we might all believe the Golden Rule (which is evidence of God’s grace sprinkled throughout the world), but that doesn’t mean we believe in the same deity.
World peace is a nice idea. Unfortunately, with the state of human hearts, it will remain just an idea.