A little bit of sanity for a less than sane world.

This is probably going to be a short post, I'll have to run back to school shortly, but I wanted to touch on something that has always confused me. Honestly, if anyone is reading this that knows more about the topic please let me know your thoughts.

I watched a National Geographic documentary last night about Jerusalem, I actually thought it was going to be about historical Jerusalem, but it turned out to be about modern day struggles between the Muslim culture, Jewish culture, and Christian culture in Jerusalem. Watching all of the separation put between the groups, and the different groups efforts to exclude each other from places that are important for all three religions beliefs. It made me so upset to watch, There was a man in the documentary that said before 1948 when all of the Jewish people were thrown out of the city the Jewish minority and Arabic majority lived in peace (mostly). They were neighbors and helped each other. After the mass genocide of World War II the Jewish population started traveling back to Jerusalem to return to their religious roots, most having the belief that they couldn't be persecuted there. That the genocide couldn't touch them there. And instead, ever since, there has been a massive struggle between religious nations.

I read an article a while back that said if you aren't Jewish by birth or "Jewish enough", meaning your lineage isn't pure, there are parts of the government in Israel and Palestine that won't consider you part of the religion. You aren't able to travel to certain places, you aren't allowed to worship in certain ways...I don't talk about my religious beliefs a lot, but I was raised Lutheran and have since changed my opinions many many times over. Never officially changing my fundamental beliefs, they have simply been rearranged and re-evaluated over and over again. Maybe its the fluid nature of my beliefs that make me wonder how people can justify turning religion into such an exclusive club. How can you teach love and compassion and at the same time build walls and express such hate? That duality is just too much for me to understand...