God's Words: Preaching Peace While Justifying Violence

5 Star Review

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Editorial Book Review:

By Robert Anderson

Ricardo Victor Sibilla opens with a question that sounds simple and isn't: who decided that God dictated a manuscript written thousands of years ago? That question, and the ones radiating outward from it, have never been more urgent than they are right now, in a world where groups claiming religious identity while endorsing violence appear on the news with numbing regularity. God's Words is Sibilla's life's work brought to a point, and it arrives at exactly the right moment.

What makes the book genuinely distinctive is the combination of credentials and accessibility behind it. Sibilla studied theology through a rigorous four-year social work degree at the Catholic EDSS, an annex of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, and continued his research under the guidance of sociologist and theologian Bishop G. T. Farrel Cahill for years afterward. That depth of training gives his arguments the weight of genuine scholarship. And yet the writing reads, as one reviewer put it, more like a conversation than a dry textbook, which is exactly the right register for questions this important.

The most fascinating scholarly thread running through the book is the parallel between biblical covenant language and ancient imperial treaties. The discovery that scribes adapted Bronze Age political structures into religious text by replacing emperors with gods is not a fringe theory. It is documented historical analysis, and Sibilla uses it to trace how the machinery of political power quietly wrote itself into the language of divine command. That process, he argues, is the root of the specific problem he is examining: the gap between a religion's stated commitment to peace and the violence that its texts have been used to authorize throughout history.

Kirkus called it an acerbic, well-argued case against the undue influence of religion in public life. Literary Titan gave it their Gold Book Award. IndieReader said the book understands what humankind will need to confront before moving beyond religious cruelty.

For anyone trying to understand how sacred words become weapons, this book is the clearest and most rigorously argued guide currently available.

About the Author

Ricardo Victor Sibilla

Award-winning author Ricardo V. Sibilla studied theology while pursuing a four-year social work degree at the Catholic EDSS, then presided over by Bishop Miguel Raspanti, an Annex Institution of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina.

After graduating in 1974, he continued researching theological issues, initially under the guidance of one of his professors, G. T. Farrell Cahill (1930 – 2000), a sociologist, economist, theologian, and Diocesan Advisor Priest, who was later ordained a Bishop.

Over time, Sibilla redirected his investigations to focus on the roots of religious intolerance, its historical evolution across cultures, its patterns, and ways to challenge its power.