If religions preach peace, why does the world face atom bombs and cruelty?

Because words and deeds fall apart. Governments and religions alike speak of peace but often act otherwise. A religion deserves trust when it rejects all compulsion in faith and lets the truth work by its own inner power alone.

People and communities should not be judged by their claims. Everyone makes good claims. All the governments of the world say they are working for peace and for a suffering humanity. But when one looks at what they actually do, their actions often belie their words. The threat to peace grows instead of shrinking. The first verse above names the cause: corruption comes from what human hands have done.

It is no different with religions. Almost all of them say they lead to God and to peace. Yet whoever follows some of their representatives is led rather towards destruction. Among Muslims, too, there are people who tie the spread of Islam to worldly power. They believe they can only spread the faith once they hold the power to do so. Such an attitude deserves no attention.

How, then, can one measure a religion that truly brings peace? By one clear test. It rejects all compulsion in faith, as the second verse above says. No one may be forced under threat to change their faith. And it trusts that the truth needs no outside help. God needs no worldly power to support the truth. The truth carries within it an inner beauty that prevails in the end.

A religion that holds strictly to this principle and proves it in its own conduct deserves serious attention. The path to a better world therefore does not begin with fine words, but with an honest test of whether words and deeds agree.