I guess it depends on what religion you are "in".

In Christian religion God "loves" everyone, except those who aren't Christians.

In Hinduism God tells people to kill others to prove your love for him.

I write a lot about religion and how it originated in my book, which you can download for free here http://www.warriorinyou.com/products.htm

Some scholars are now being convinced more than ever that in the beginnings of Christianity the notion of reincarnation was accepted and believed true. You can research the Internet to find out for yourself. Supposedly all that changed about the tenth century. At that time the Catholic Church started becoming more and more influential. More and more people all over the world were involved with this 'new' religion and even more wanted to join every day. Of course the will of the Church was to spread further and further. So what was the best way to spread the influence? A crusade.

'A crusade was one of a series of religiously-sanctioned military campaigns undertaken by European Christians in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries.'

The goal of these crusades were to 'convince' the majority of the pagan people of Europe to believe in one and true savior of man, Jesus Christ. So how did they try to 'convince' them? Not with the Bible and cross in their hands, but with fire and steal.

In fact the time of crusades, maybe besides the twentieth century, was one of the most bloody and violent times in human history. More people than ever were killed in the name of God during those three hundred years. But how did it come to pass? How did the Catholic Church convince so many people to go to different countries all over the continent to spread 'the word of God'? Well they used two things - greed and fear.

They used greed on people who were leading these crusades - the kings, monarchs and aristocracy. Those people wanted material goods. They wanted to gain the pagans gold, clothes, land, women and so on. The church in turn wanted human spirits. So the two of them made a pact and set off on this campaign. The rulers didn't fight themselves; they used their people for it.

How easy was it, in your opinion, to convince a farmer to leave his family and his land and go to a foreign country to fight with someone who never did him any harm? And with what prospects? To get killed in the process? It almost sounds like a suicide mission, but the church used what we, as humans, fear the most - the unknown.

Nobody of us knows what awaits us 'on the other side' and the people of medieval Europe knew even less than what we know today. They believed in every word that the priests would tell them, because they where led to believe that they had some kind of a direct link to heaven and could speak with God anytime they wanted to.

So what were the churches teachings? If you would teach that reincarnation is a fact what does that imply? It implies that whatever wrongdoings you make in this life you will always have a chance to redeem them in your next one. It's a very relaxed and laid back view of life. In fact it's so laid back that no person would feel the need to worry too much about what they are doing with their life right now. In other words they wouldn't have any fears whatsoever about what lies on the other side, because whatever it was it was all good, and even if they messed up a little they always could come back and redeem their sins.

That really wasn't the attitude the church needed to convince people to go on crusades. What they needed was some kind of a jolt, a secret weapon that would put fear into the hearts of men. But if you want to spread a deadly virus for the sake of becoming a hero later on you better have the antidote for that virus. So the virus for the church was the teachings that went somehow like this.

'You have only one life. Whatever you do in this life you will have to answer before the Almighty. If he decides your life was pure and good you will go to heaven. If not you will spend all eternity burning in the pits of hell.'

Not a pretty perspective, huh? The church also included a purgatory for the middle class of sinners to redeem themselves, to give them hope on going to heaven even if they didn't led the perfect life. Then again it wasn't clearly defined what the perfect life was, but the church had an antidote for that too - plenary indulgence. In the online Catholic Encyclopedia it states.

'An indulgence is the extra-sacramental remission of the temporal punishment due, in God's justice, to sin that has been forgiven, which remission is granted by the Church in the exercise of the power of the keys, through the application of the superabundant merits of Christ and of the saints, and for some just and reasonable motive.'

So how do you put two and two together? What was in it for the villagers and farmers who went on the religious crusades? Plenary indulgence. It meant that whatever sins they committed during their lifetimes, if they died during the crusades spreading the word of God, all of their sins will be automatically forgiven and they will go straight to heaven. Does it correlate with the 'war on terrorism' today?

Do you think that Jesus, if he was alive today, would lead a horde of scared and angry people on a crusade saying 'Let's get these pagans!'? Would the God that is all beings and all love would tell some people to kill others and by that they will receive a place in the God kingdom? God wouldn't, but men would in His name and that's exactly what they did. They convinced enough people that God was vengeful and mad and wanted to burn sinners in the fires of hell. These are the facts and they are indisputable.

So many question for you ursixx is - What do You want to believe? You want to believe that the Creator of all this beauty that is everywhere around us is jelaous of us? Do you think he could hate us for it even if it was him that created us? What makes more sense - that all loving God is vengeful or that men used him and his name to convince others to do what they wanted? I leave everyone to figure it out for themselves.