God wills it!!! God wills it!!!

Not too long ago in my camp, I was in the bunk with my detactment bumming around. It was one of those rare days where there was nothing to do. My bunk mate came up to me looking innocent as a baby and asked me, "Eugene, what were the crusades?" Time stopped, I prayed for divine intervention hoping that the heavens will open and God himself would come down in all His blazing glory and answer that question with His unfailing and perfect wisdom. Of course that did not happen and I was left to my own devices, so I started, "ahem, well you see... well..."

Not a very good start. The crusades subject is not a matter I would take up with a Christian let alone a non-Christian, yet now I have to deal with this question asked by my bunk mate that is not yet a Christian. All I could do was smile and let out the involuntary and occasional "well...", "ahem...", "I think..." and the blabbering goes on.

"God wills it" was the rallying cry of the crusades, three little words that plunged mankind into one of its darkest periods in history all thanks to a Pope with nothing better to do. Pope Urban II was his name. But when I think of the crusades, I also can think of three little words, "what a mess." It is one thing to start a war to regain territory or to vanish an enemy, it is quite another to drag religion into it like what the crusaders did. I remember hearing someone commenting about the crusades like this, "never before in mankind's history did religion and dogma cause so much destruction as in the crusades." Well I say it was men who cause the destruction, religion and dogma was misused and was dragged along for the ride.

So I managed to get myself together and answer my bunk mate the only way I know how, with honesty. I told him about it as it is, not white-washing the unspeakable things the Christians did at that time. After that he gave me that enlightened expression and the subject of the conversation changed. Some of you might think I dodged a bullet, others might think I shot myself in the foot handling things the way I did, I am a Christian, talking bad about Christian history is not a wise thing to do.

But here's the thing, everything with a history has a part of their history they are not so proud of. For Christianity it was the crusades among other things, for Germany there was the Holocaust, for Japan it was the rape of Nanjing, examples of this abound everywhere, there are even many things in my personal history I would rather die than disclose and I am sure you have skeletons in your closets as well. I think it is how you face it that counts, is there a right or wrong way to do it? I don't know but it reveals a huge part of who we are as people. What goes around comes around in the most lethal and sadistic way possible. Trust me, I know about that all too well and I am sure most of you do as well.

Things you did in the past and even things your forebearers did in their past will come back to haunt you just like the crazed crusading forebearers of my Christian history did to me. Your history, where you come from, what you believe, whether positive or negative is a part of who you are like it or not. How you handle it determines who you are and what you will become, so I urge all of you to handle it with the utmost care.