Ancient Empires and Conquerors: Reflections on my trip to Turkey, Greece and Italy

Last March, my wife and I had an opportunity to join an archaeological tour of Turkey with friends. We decided to visit Greece and Italy at the same time. We spent an entire month in this interconnected region.

Turkey and Greece have been assaulted by invading armies since the earliest recorded history. Even their legendary times, like the Trojan War, involved protracted military campaigns and sieges of impregnable fortresses.

Under Alexander the Great, the Greeks conquered Turkey, Persia  and most of the known world as far as India. A few centuries later, the Romans subjugated this region and built a world empire that lasted 700 years. After that, the Byzantine Empire ruled the Mediterranean region for nearly 1000 years.

From about 1400 to 1800, the Ottoman Turks dominated the entire Mediterranean region, and controlled much of Egypt, Arabia and parts of Europe. They became the most powerful empire on earth. Although Emperor Charles V was the most powerful ruler in Europe, he trembled at the military might of the Turkish Sultan. Fortunately for Charles, the reigning Sultan died right when the Turkish armies were poised to take Vienna and to sweep further into Europe.

At any given time, Turkey, Greece, and Italy were either ruling their neighbors or being ruled by them. And nowhere is this more evident than in the city of Istanbul, where our recent trip began. This city has been settled for at least 2,500 years, but it did not gain prominence until the Roman Emperor Constantine decided to make this city the new capital of the Roman Empire (which soon morphed into the Byzantine Empire). Constantine left Italy because Northern tribes were threatening to take Rome, which fell less than a century later. The Emperor Constantine named his city after himself: Constantinople. Later the city name changed to Byzantium and then finally to Istanbul.

There are many visible remnants of these ancient empires.  Museums overflow with statues, weapons, costumes, thrones, coins and sarcophagi commemorating ancient generals and kings. Ancient city ruins have been excavated and partly restored. Old stone roads that were built two thousand years ago still run through flourishing fields today. In Turkey, history lives visibly on.

Spiritual Conquerors

An entirely different type of conqueror also profoundly affected these Mediterranean lands. Small bands of unarmed travelers walked along Roman roads with an entirely different vision of conquest. I am talking about the first Christians who arrived in the First Century.  They sought to build an empire of the spirit. The evidence is hard to find at first glance. They left few objects to be found in museums nor did they build monuments. But in another sense, the evidence left by these spiritual conquerors is immense. 

Saul of Tarsus was the most notable early Christian missionary. He started his life as a devout Jew and rose to high leadership in that community. When Christians started attracting many Jewish followers, Saul led the movement to exterminate them completely. But on a trip to Damascus, where he planned to arrest and kill, Saul was struck down by an overpowering vision of Jesus speaking to him from Heaven. Within a few days, Saul was transformed and became Paul the devout Christian messenger.

Paul walked on endless Roman roads with Barnabas, Silas, Mark, and Timothy to found new churches throughout Turkey. Later, Paul and his companions moved on to Greece and Italy. Their intention was radically different from the plundering soldiers that lay waste every region they passed through. Instead of mass subjugation, these missionaries taught equality of all races, classes, and of male and female. They build new communities based on love and compassion, rather than on wealth and power.

Their teaching was deep love and compassion for all people: love for family, for neighbors, for strangers and for foreigners. Never before had such a compelling spiritual vision been offered with such great self sacrifice. These messengers were opposed, outlawed, tortured and killed in every city they visited. But still they marched on.

Leadership in early Christian communities was demonstrated by humility and by willingness to suffer.  The Apostle Paul wrote a letter to the church in Rome to explain his vision:

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us...  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In today’s post-Christian world of Europe and North America, we forget how profoundly the Christian message changed history. It soon spread throughout Italy and prospered during the Dark Ages. St. Benedict built the first Italian monastery which we visited at Monte Cassino in the mountains of southern Italy. Other monasteries soon spread out from there.

Eventually, all of the pagan tribes of Europe were converted to Christianity. Obviously, “converted” is a relative term, since no tribe or nation has ever become fully “Christian”. Even today I wince at things said and done supposedly in the name of Christ.

But the transformation of Europe was unmistakable. Read Sir Arnold Toynbee’s Study of History and his analysis of all civilizations that have been known since recorded history began.  Though not a “Christian” himself, Sir Arnold credited Christianity with being the fundamental element of European Civilization. For centuries, this civilization was labeled “Christendom”.  Later it became known as “Western Civilization”, and now its law, economics, and social vision have swept over the whole world.

Western Civilization brought us our calendar, our legal system, our modern concept of morality, social justice, public service, and the equality of all races and gender. It inspired universities, built hospitals, and freed slaves. Though many scholars in the 21^st Century consider Christianity obsolete, they forget what the world was like before it arrived.

I am not a Fundamentalist. I have high regard for other religious traditions. I believe in fresh spiritual insights for every century. But to deny our debt to these First Century Christian pioneers is unthinkable. Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, and the best thinkers of our planet have recognized the potency for societal transformation that Jesus inspired.

Obviously, many bad things have been done by people allegedly following Jesus Christ. But these so-called followers with their personal agendas of coercion can never offset the world transformation brought about by his sublime teaching.

By contrast, memories of the great Mediterranean kings have been mostly lost in the sands of time. We still see lovely statues, crowns, jewelery, and crumbling monuments built in their honour. But they didn’t fundamentally change history. People hardly remembered which marauding army had come through last. Their glory was in rampage, blood-lust, and plunder.  

The great English Romantic poet Percy Shelley wrote Ozymandias, which is about the futile poignancy of earthly conquest:

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Far better then generals or kings were those spiritual pilgrims who conquered their own minds, and who learned not to lose their temper. They helped gradually transform a violent society into one that is more gentle. These spiritual conquerors achieved the true immortality that former kings and emperors only dreamed of. They brought us a taste of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Photos from Turkey: Ancient Ephesus and Galata Tower in Istanbul

An Explainable Religious Faith

I have been traveling recently in Turkey, Greece and Italy. I heard many languages spoken. I saw evidence of religious faith in many places. I want to write a short explanation of my faith that could be understood by someone from a different culture and from another religious faith or perhaps no faith. So here are the main elements of what I believe:

I believe that it is very important to treat all people with the same love and respect that we show to our family and friends. We should treat neighbors and foreigners as we hope they will treat us.

That means forgiving others when they behave badly, loving difficult people, and having compassion for all people who are suffering. It means helping people in whatever way they urgently need to be helped.

It means treating everyone alike, whether they are male or female, young or old, rich or poor, educated or unschooled, of any religion or no religion. All people equally deserve my love and respect, no matter who they are.

Our natural tendency is to treat other people well only after they have demonstrated their good behaviour towards us. We tend to treat people well if they are already nice and friendly.

But that approach isn’t good enough to improve our world. Someone has to take the first initiative to offer goodwill whenever there is suspicion or hatred. To break the global curse of conflict and war, we must be willing to show love towards those who don’t (seem to) deserve it.

We need a higher moral and ethical standard than education, government or logic can produce in us. I believe that higher standard can only come through God’s inspiration.

Most people throughout the centuries have believed in God or in a Higher Power of some form. Regrettably, our human tendency is mostly to reject God’s wisdom. We would rather do everything our own way, even if it is wrong. Our unwillingness to listen God’s suggestions is the main cause of conflict and suffering.

There are many forms of religion in this world, but not all of them work equally well. I spent more than a decade investigating various religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Atheism. I have concluded that Jesus is the best guide to life. I have found no other faith teaching as helpful as his.

Jesus showed us how to find God’s wisdom and to follow it carefully. Unfortunately, many followers of Jesus do not imitate his life style. But whenever we practice his way of listening to God and loving everyone, we find new reason for hope. Jesus created a better world all around him by following God constantly. If we learn to listen intently to God, we will be inspired build a far better world around us.

Through Jesus, we see the face of God. It was for this reason that God sent Jesus to us. Jesus was willing to bet his life on his relationship with his Father God. Jesus died and returned to life to show us the potential for immortal life. That is our deepest longing: to live forever in a better place, on a higher plane.

I believe in miraculous events, but not in humans having magical powers. I see God doing astonishing things in my neighbourhood that you and I could never accomplish without Divine help.

I sense the Spirit of God participating in my daily life. In quiet moments I receive Spirit guidance for my challenges and my projects.

My faith affects everything I do and say. It changes who I am.

Not that I always get things right. I make many mistakes despite my belief in a higher standard. Often I don’t treat others with enough love and respect. But that doesn’t negate my faith.

I am on a long journey of learning: how to live and die, and how to find eternal life. My goal is to help bring a little bit of heaven down to earth. That is the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven which Jesus demonstrated for us.

Searching for a Credible Faith?

From time to time I meet people who are searching for a dependable faith. The older woman I mentioned in my April 23, 2009 blog post “I Believe in the Absence of God” was one of them.

I met this same woman again recently at my swimming pool and she questioned me intensely about my faith. This surprised me since she hardly knows me. She is searching eagerly for a source of hope before she dies—but she is not prepared to settle for any belief that lacks credibility. The blind faith she had as a child disappointed her. She now wants to find TRUTH, not just pleasant myth. Finding a reliable faith has been my life-quest as well.

I use the term “faith” (or religion) to mean our ultimate road-map for life. This concept applies to an individual, and also to a family or a community of people. It helps to have a group of people living together who share the same values and the same “faith” road-map. That is a faith community.

So in a sense, a Materialist or an Atheist can also have a “faith”—faith is defined as whatever system of living and thinking that we are willing to bet our life on.

Both Albert Einstein and the renowned British historian Arnold Toynbee included Communism and other secular belief systems in their observation of religious phenomena. I quite agree with them: any system of thought and practice that drives its adherents with consuming passion is a kind of “religion” or “faith”.

I would include “Environmentalism”; in my category of faith. Some of my friends believe that there is nothing more worth living and dying for than to save the fragile planetary environment. Heroes of Greenpeace have risked their lives in trying to save the planet and its endangered species. Although their faith is not supreme wisdom for living, I have no quarrel with most of their goals. On the other hand, they may fail to address some of life’s most perplexing questions. Or they may worship Creation, but forget its CREATOR.

The term faith implies principles we believe intensely, but that cannot be proven to a skeptic. True faith involves struggle and contention, almost by definition.

Faith is also something we value so much that we naturally want to share it with friends. That may cause conflict, particularly if we become too zealous and impatient to convince others.

Any search for faith that is not linked to finding wisdom and understanding will eventually prove unsatisfying. Real faith changes our emotions, but it should persuade our minds as well.

The religion of my childhood seemed too peculiar for me to accept without question. People in my Amish Mennonite community in the 1950’s followed their traditions as best they could. However, they believed some things that seemed naive, if not foolish to me.

My father was an example of this naivete, although he was also a marvelous man in many respects. My Dad was born over a hundred years ago in 1906. He dropped out of school after grade six to help support his family when his mother died in the great flue epidemic of 1918. Like many rural people, Dad had some far-fetched ideas that seemed laughable to his better educated children.

For instance, my father claimed that fishing worms fell down from the sky whenever it rained. There is no doubt that whenever there was a heavy rain at our farm, the ground was covered with earthworms; they came out of the earth to avoid drowning. My father’s interpretation, however, was that the worms fell down out of the sky together with the rain. His observations fit the facts as he understood them, but his line of reasoning was humorously deficient. His approach to the Bible seemed equally haphazard to me.

Traditional religions often become mixed up with elements of superstition or folk tales. We see this ofttimes in other people’s religions, but not always in our own tradition. I notice that city dwellers have their own superstitions, such as astrology. Whenever there is an absence of real faith, then folk tales and superstitions fill the vacuum.

Albert Einstein famously remarked: “All men are equally wise and equally foolish before God”. The Infinite One must laugh at the pretentions of small earth dwellers. How little we humans truly understand; but our preachers and academic teachers hold forth with bland confidence nonetheless on subjects none of us understand very clearly.

After years of observing religion and faith in its many forms, I have become less critical of primitive and traditional religion. I did not realize as a boy that people admired my Amish Mennonite family. I thought we were far too peculiar to be accepted by our neighbors. However, most people have considerable respect for sincere believers: whether they are Catholics, Baptists, Jews, Buddhists, or Environmentalists. In one sense, each of these faiths is incredible. Perhaps that is the very nature of faith—to believe profoundly in what other people do not (yet) find convincing.

I have concluded that even the ignorant and simple people rarely go far wrong when they sincerely try to follow their scriptures—that is exactly what scriptures are for. Thus in my older years, I find that I believe many if not most of the things that my father held dear. I don’t accept all of his superstitions, but I find faith in God, in Jesus, and in the Bible better for me than any of the alternative faiths/religions that I have investigated.

Although some people may be struck by the lightning of God’s truth at any age, authentic faith must be proven genuine on the battlefield of life. Faith that is not pure gold will not endure the refiner’s fire.

It is God who fortunately reveals Himself to those who seek Him; it does not depend on our intellectual sophistication. That is why highly educated people may never find faith, while simple folks are still finding God all around the world. Humility before the ULTIMATE INTELLIGENCE is the only requirement for faith and worship.

The language of faith is mysterious because it attempts to describe a REALITY so much larger than human intelligence can grasp or explain. Faith may sometimes seem vague or precarious, but it is a lifeline. It brings hope, enthusiasm, courage and vision. It depends more on guidance from above, than our mental gymnastics.

Where faith is totally lacking, people find life very dark. However, there is always light available for those who will follow it. That light grows gradually brighter as we approach the ONE who lives in LIGHT. St. Paul describes God to his young friend Timothy as the one … “Who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honour and might forever.”

Faith should be credible, but it will also remain tantalizingly and spectacularly incredible.

Trying to Comprehend a “Billion Times Bigger” God

We live in the Star Trek generation. Images of space travel are commonplace in movies and on TV. But most of us are oblivious to how drastically our world view has shifted during the past century.

I grew in up the 1940’s and 1950’s with uneducated farmers and tradesmen who retained much of the perspective of earlier centuries. One of my mother’s cousins questioned the idea that the Earth rotates around the Sun, because Old Testament scriptures in the King James Translation seemed to imply that earth is fixed at the center of the Universe.

Although I heard about the Russian Sputnik, the first satellite ever launched in 1957, my awareness of the stars and galaxies was minimal until I went to Harvard College.

I took a course in Astronomy in 1965. My Professor was Dr. Owen Gingerich. Little did I realize how profoundly this course would change my understanding of the universe. Nor did I realize that Professor Gingerich would become one of the better known and respected astronomers in the world.

Professor Gingerich explained the historical development of Astronomy and taught us the mathematical formulas that are used to calculate the size of the earth and to measure distances to the moon and to the other planets in our solar system.

We studied the great 16th Century astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus whose mathematical calculations of planetary orbits demonstrated why the earth could not be the center of the universe as was commonly believed in his era. Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei extended this research which brought a stinging rebuke from the Pope.

But it was not until the 19th and 20th centuries that astronomers discovered the full extent of the universe. This required new telescopes and other scientific instruments for observation. The distances of inter stellar space were so vast that entirely new concepts of measurement were needed.

The concept of light years still astounds me. If we could board a space ship and travel at the speed of light (roughly 186,300 miles per second) it would take us more than four years to travel to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri. However, traveling at the speed of our most distant space probe, Voyager 1, this journey would require 72,000 years just to reach this nearest star.

Our Galaxy, the Milky Way, has an estimated 200 - 400 billion stars that are the size of our sun or up to 100 times larger. The Milky Way stretches about 100,000 light years across. Our neighboring galaxy, the Andromeda, contains about a trillion stars. The universe is estimated to contain 80 billion (or more) galaxies like the Milky Way. The total number of stars is estimated to be more than 50 billion trillion (50 sextillion stars).

I sympathize with the 16th and 17th Century Vatican officials who rejected the revolutionary concept of a universe without the Earth at its center. And I understand the profound religious disturbance which is still being caused by a virtually infinite universe.

This radical development is upsetting the religious views developed over the past 3,000 years. Just when humans believed that we had figured out our World, our God and the Universe, new astronomic information has upset our view of the Cosmos.

The God which humanity had previously conceived of seemed powerful and ancient, but ruling only a single planet, plus some heavenly lights in the sky. (The lesser Greek gods were scarcely beyond the realm of mortals.)

But now we must either dispense with the God concept altogether, or else try to comprehend a Being that is billions or trillions of times larger. This development is profoundly challenging our religious and spiritual concepts. There have been at least four different responses:

1. This new information about the vast scale of universe has caused many people to abandon religion and faith altogether, particularly in the academic and scientific community. The world of faith and spirituality involves a different way of perceiving from the rational calculations of science. Some call this left brain and right brain. While some scientists have no problem using both kinds of thinking, others demand a single rational mode to make ultimate determinations. They want God to be proved by scientific methods, or else abolished completely.

2. Other people have retained religious concepts and practices as useful myths for our rites of passage, but for little more. They have become practical atheists with a nostalgic religious culture.

3. At the other extreme there are religious people who ignore or deny this new scientific information in order to hold on tightly to their historic faith. They view science with extreme skepticism. They see science as the enemy of faith.

4. Finally, some people refuse to discard either the new information coming from scientific observation, or to dispense with findings from the spiritual world. They hold both in dynamic tension. Albert Einstein was in this group and so is my former Professor Owen Gingerich.

He sees the hand of a creator at work in every aspect of nature, from interstellar space to the smallest aspects of the human gene. Dr. Gingerich remarked:

“As we look into the next millennium, we can see some redemption from suffering and evil in the hands of scientists. They can stem the scourge of plagues, can help bring forth more abundant produce from the earth, can tap the abundant energy of sunshine. Yet some of those same keys also unlock biological warfare, can generate monsters, can destroy our atmosphere.

“Salvation does not come from science. Salvation comes from age-old insights into human nature, and the on-going quest to be reconciled to God. It comes from Jesus not only reminding us to love our neighbors as ourselves, but with the parable of the Good Samaritan, where he told us our neighbors can be strangers anywhere.”

So what kind of God can we try to imagine? God is not a billion times bigger than before, because God doesn’t change. God was just as big when he called Abraham out of Ur and when Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

I believe that God is the Source of all music, all inspiration, all knowledge, all design, all thought, all power, and the source of all matter and energy. He inhabits the affairs of the entire universe from immensely large to infinitesimally small. Even the most brilliant human minds today can grasp only a tiny fragment of all that God has created.

The most astonishing thing of all is that this immensely powerful God still communicates with us and nourishes us in more ways than we ever comprehend.