All historical experience demonstrates the following: Our earth cannot be changed unless in the not too distant future an alteration in the consciousness of individuals is achieved.
Hans KungRead
Time and again we see leaders and members of religions incite aggression, fanaticism, hate, and xenophobia - even inspire and legitimate violent and bloody conflicts.
Interpretation
Religious leaders often provoke negative emotions and violence, causing conflicts in society.
Hans Kung's quote highlights the troubling tendency of some religious leaders and members to incite negative feelings such as aggression and hate, which can lead to social unrest and violence. It suggests that rather than promoting peace and understanding, certain interpretations and actions within religious contexts may legitimize hostility and even warfare, thereby illustrating a detrimental impact on society.
In practice
During a speech on tolerance, one might quote this to discuss the responsibilities of religious leaders.
All historical experience demonstrates the following: Our earth cannot be changed unless in the not too distant future an alteration in the consciousness of individuals is achieved.
But I have to add - and this answers your other question - this catholicity in time and in space is only meaningful for me if there is, at the same time, a concentration on the Gospel.
However, if the religions in essence merely repeat statements from the United Nations Human Rights Declaration, such a Declaration becomes superfluous; an ethic is more than rights.
We are conscious that religions cannot solve the economic, political and social problems of this earth.
At the same time we are aware that our various religions and ethical traditions often offer very different bases for what is helpful and what is unhelpful for men and women, what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil.
In the last resort, a love of God without love of humanity is no love at all.
There is such a thing as man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.
I clearly saw the skeleton underneath all this show of personality what is left of a man and all his pride but bones?
Not to think of yourself / as someone who did not count -- / Festival of the Souls.
If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death Perhaps the world can teach us as when everything seems dead but later proves to be alive.
Under the strain of this continually impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self.
They can send death at once, but life is slower.
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