I posted something on Facebook a few days ago that really hit a nerve.

Most of my posts go largely unnoticed. This one got 2,200 reactions. Nearly 600 shares. A post about Netanyahu, Trump, and why criticizing Israel’s government is not the same as hating Jewish people. Why criticizing our government isn’t anti-American.

And then the responses came.

My Jewish friends pushed back. They were concerned I’d stir up anti-semitism, make the world less safe for Jews. The trolls arrived. Ugly memes I won’t repeat. Someone claiming the Talmud teaches Jewish people to defraud non-Jews. Then another person informed me that Islam is a “Satanic death cult.”

I’ve been sitting with all of it. And I think I know why the post resonated.

We are exhausted.

We Are Tired of Being Told to Be Quiet

We are tired of governments killing in our names and calling it patriotism.

We are tired of religious leaders blessing wars and calling it faith.

We are tired of being told that if we speak out — if we dare to say this is wrong — we are bad Americans, bad Christians, bad Jews, anti-semites, traitors.

Even Jewish people who criticize Israel are being ostracized by their own communities.

This is not an abstraction. I work with grieving people. I have a client right now whose grief is not about death — it’s about exile. She has been cut off from friends and family because she speaks out against what is happening in Gaza. She lost her community for telling the truth as she sees it.

That is its own kind of death.

And it is happening everywhere. The message is consistent: Stay in line. Don’t make waves. Don’t embarrass us. Silence is loyalty.

I reject that.

What a True Patriot Actually Does

There’s a version of patriotism that says: my country, right or wrong.

I don’t believe in that version.

A true patriot doesn’t blindly follow his country. A true patriot wants to make his country right — even when that means standing against the government. Especially then.

The same is true of faith.

A true person of faith doesn’t follow religious leaders into violence without question. A true person of faith goes back to the source — the actual teachings, the actual words — and asks: Is this what we believe? Is this who we are? This is the journey I took for several years before I left Christianity.

And sometimes the answer is no.

Sometimes the leaders are wrong. Sometimes the nation is wrong. Sometimes the institution built in the name of God has wandered so far from God that the most faithful thing you can do is say so out loud. Sometimes, you even have to leave.

When Prayer Becomes a Weapon

This week, Pete Hegseth stood at the Pentagon pulpit — at a mandatory Christian worship service that civilian employees and uniformed military personnel were expected to attend — and prayed.

It wasn’t a prayer most of us would recognize.

He read from the Psalms: “I pursued my enemies and overtook them. I did not turn back till they were consumed. I thrust them through so that they were not able to rise. They fell under my feet.” Military Times

He then recited what he said was the chaplain’s prayer from the mission that captured Venezuela’s former president.

“Behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous. Snap the rod of the oppressor, frustrate the wicked plans, and break the teeth of the ungodly. By the blast of your anger, let the evil perish.” The Hill

And then this:

“Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation. Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” Military Times

He closed by asking God to “let justice be executed swiftly and without remorse, that evil may be driven back, and wicked souls delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them.” Military Times

This is the Secretary of Defense. Using the Pentagon as a church. Praying for death and damnation in the name of Jesus Christ.

And I’m supposed to stay quiet about that?

I’m supposed to nod along because criticizing it might mean I’m not a good Christian? Not a good American?

No.

As an aside, the people who cherry-pick verses from the Quran or the Talmud to condemn those religions as violent are so self-unaware that they forget these verses are in their Bibles and have been to justify all sorts of atrocities.

This Is Why I Left

I grew up in a church.

I know the Bible. I’ve read the Quran. I’ve studied the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, and the teachings of the Buddha. I have found profound, beautiful, life-giving wisdom in every single one of them.

I have also watched people use every single one of them to justify violence, indifference to injustice, oppression, exclusion, and hatred.

And I made a decision: I respect all of these traditions. I will not participate in any organized religion.

Not because I don’t believe in something larger than myself.

But because I refuse to let the 10% define my relationship with the other 90%.

The 90% We Share

Pick any major religious tradition on Earth.

They all teach some version of this: love your neighbor. Do not kill innocent people. Care for the poor. Treat others as you want to be treated. There is something sacred in every human being.

That’s not a guess. It’s documented. Across Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism — the core ethics are nearly identical.

We agree on roughly 90% of what matters most.

But we’ve built the last 3,000 years of human conflict on the 10%.

The dietary laws. The holy days. The name we use for God. Whether salvation comes through faith or works. Whether Jesus was divine or a prophet. Whether Muhammad was the final messenger.

We have tortured and enslaved and burned each other alive over these questions.

And men like Hegseth are still doing it. Not with fire — with bullets. And calling it prayer.

The Congressman Who Changed His Mind

Here’s a story that gives me some hope.

Mark Siljander was a congressman from Michigan in the 1980s — a hard-right Reagan Republican, a staunch member of the Religious Right. He once walked out of the National Prayer Breakfast when a speaker quoted from the Quran. Porchlight Book Company. He believed Islam was dangerous, so dangerous that he would not sit in the room while someone read from the Quran.

Then he lost his reelection. And he started actually reading.

He had what he called a “paradigm crash” after discovering that much of what he’d been taught about his faith was nowhere in the Bible, and that the Christian and Muslim religious texts are surprisingly compatible when studied in their original languages. Amazon

He came to realize that Islam and Christianity were “not contradictory at their core.” Amazon

He wrote a book about it. A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman’s Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide.

The title wasn’t just about Islam and Christianity.

It was about all of us.

I read the book. It gave me hope.

The deadly misunderstanding is the belief that the people on the other side of our theological 10% are our enemies. That our God wants us to defeat them. To break their teeth. To send their souls to eternal damnation.

That misunderstanding has been killing us for millennia.

What I Actually Believe

I believe in something.

I believe consciousness doesn’t end at death. I’ve spent 30 years studying the evidence — near-death experiences, after-death communications, mediumship — and I find it compelling. I believe love is the fundamental force of the universe. I believe we are all connected at a level that makes the 10% seem almost absurd.

I believe what Jesus actually said, not what empires and politicians later decided he meant.

I believe what Muhammad actually taught, not what has been distorted by those who want war.

I believe what the mystics of every tradition have always known: that God — or Source, or the Divine, or whatever name you use — is not asking for “overwhelming violence of action.”

That’s a human invention.

A very old, very dangerous one.

The Trolls Didn’t Teach Me Anything New

When the anti-semitic memes showed up in my comments, I wasn’t surprised. Hateful people use whatever thread they can find. I didn’t create the anti-semitism. I didn’t feed it. But I did expose it.

When someone said Islam was a Satanic death cult, I thought of the 1.8 billion Muslims I’ve never met — most of whom are simply trying to live with integrity, raise their children, and find meaning in a world that doesn’t offer easy answers.

When I was told my criticism of Netanyahu was anti-semitism, I thought of the many Jewish voices who are also criticizing Netanyahu. Loudly. Courageously. At great personal cost.

Criticizing a government is not the same as hating a people.

Studying a religion honestly is not the same as endorsing everything done in its name.

And praying for “overwhelming violence” is not the same as following the man who said, Blessed are the peacemakers.

What Would Change If We Focused on the 90%?

That’s the question I keep asking.

What would change — in our politics, our foreign policy, our neighborhoods, our comment sections — if we led with what we share instead of what divides us?

I’m not naive. The 10% is real. The differences matter to people.

But I am asking you to consider the cost.

The wars. The exiles. The clients I sit with who have lost their entire communities for speaking truth. The children in Gaza. The 150 or so girls in the school we bombed in Iran. The children in Israel. The soldiers coming home broken. The families who never get to come home at all.

Is the 10% worth all of that?

I don’t think it is.

And I suspect, in the quiet of your own heart — away from the noise and the tribalism and the trolls — neither do you.

Speak anyway.

That’s not disloyalty. That’s love.

Where have you felt silenced for speaking what you believe is true? I’d genuinely like to hear from you. Drop a comment, or hit reply.

Brian D. Smith is a grief guide, certified grief educator, and host of the Grief 2 Growth podcast. After losing his daughter Shayna in 2015, he has dedicated his work to helping others find evidence-based hope in the face of loss.

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