Celebrating Christmas In A Sharply Divided Society
By
Allan C.Brownfeld
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The
message of Christmas and today’s sharply divided American society could
not be more at odds. Jesus called upon men and women to love their
enemies. In today’s America, people seem to hate those with whom they
disagree on this or that public issue, whether the environment,
immigration, taxation, America’s role in the world or a host of other
questions.
It is
important to remember that the teachings of Jesus are meaningful not
only to Christians but to Jews, Muslims, and those who are secular and
affiliated with no formal religion. Jesus was a Jew and his teachings,
such as the Lord’s Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount, were, writes
Rabbi John Rayner, a respected British rabbi, “thoroughly Jewish.”
Muslims regard Jesus as one of the great prophets who brought divine
guidance to humanity.
In
the Sermon on the Mount, a collection of sayings spoken by Jesus and
found in the Gospel of Matthew (Chapters 5,6), he advises his listeners
to “turn one’s other cheek” and to “love one’s enemies.” Jesus
condemns those who judge others without sorting out their own affairs on
the matter. “Judge not that ye be not judged,” he told his listeners.
There
are some who tell us that America is a “Christian” country. They seem
innocent of knowledge of the Virginia Declaration of Religious Freedom,
written and promoted by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, a
forerunner of the First Amendment. At a time when religious freedom
hardly existed in the world, the Framers of the Constitution guaranteed
separation of church and state. But if America were a formally
“Christian” country, how would it act?
Historically, when the Catholic Church dominated Europe, it did not
follow the injunction of Jesus to love one’s enemies. Instead, it
engaged in Crusades and inquisitions. In 1478, Pope Sixtus IV issued a
papal bull authorizing the Catholic monarchs to enforce religious
uniformity and to expel Jews who did not convert to Catholicism. In
recent years, the church has apologized for disregarding the values
preached by Jesus. Today, many of those who proclaim America a
“Christian” country seem to be among the most intolerant of those with
whom they disagree. They seem not to be aware of the values of
tolerance which Jesus preached.
Many
who proclaim themselves to be Christian fail to understand that the
view of man and the world set forth by Jesus—-and the one which
dominates in the modern world—-are contradictory.
This
point was made in the book “Jesus Rediscovered,” published in 1969 by
Malcolm Muggeridge, the respected British author and editor.
Muggeridge,
who had a religious conversion while preparing a BBC documentary about
the life of Jesus, pointed out that the desire for power and riches in
this world—-a desire to which so many are committed—-is the opposite of
what Jesus commanded. Indeed, Jesus was tempted by the Devil with the
very worldly powers many of us so eagerly seek:
“Finally, the Devil showed Christ all the kingdoms of the world in a
moment of time and said: ‘All this power will I give thee, and the
glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I
will give it.’ All Christ had to do in return was worship the donor
instead of God—-which, of course, he could not do. How interesting,
though, that power should be at the Devil’s disposal, and only
attainable through an understanding with him! Many have thought
otherwise, and sought power in the belief that by its exercise they
could lead men to brotherhood and happiness and peace; invariably with
disastrous consequences. Always in the end the bargain with the Devil
has to be fulfilled—-as any Stalin or Napoleon or Cromwell must testify.
‘I am the light of the world,’ Christ said; power belongs to the
darkness.”
Speaking of
our own time, Muggeridge notes, “The parts of the world where the means
of happiness in material and sensual terms are the most plentiful…are
also places where despair, mental sickness and other…ills are in
evidence.”
Malcolm
Muggeridge lamented, “I firmly believe that our civilization began with
the Christian religion, and has been sustained and fortified by the
values of the Christian religion, by which, admittedly, most men have
not lived, but to which they have assented, and by which the greatest of
them have tried to live. The Christian religion and these values no
longer prevail, they no longer mean anything to ordinary people. Some
suppose you can have a Christian civilization without Christian values.
I disbelieve this. I think that the basis of order is a moral order:
if there is no moral order there will be no political or social order,
and we see this happening. This is how civilizations end.”
And
yet, despite all of this, there is a spiritual yearning in our American
society, a feeling that things are not what they should be, a desire to
set ourselves and our country back on a better path. Christmas speaks
to that spiritual vacuum in our lives——but only if we will listen to its
message.
G.K.
Chesterton, discussing the message of Christmas, wrote: “…there is a
quite peculiar and individual character about the hold of this story on
human nature; it is not in its psychological substance at all like a
mere legend or the life of a great man. It does not in the ordinary
sense turn our minds to greatness; to those extensions and
exaggerations of humanity which are turned into gods and heroes, even by
the healthiest sort of hero-worship.”
In
Chesterton’s view, “It does not exactly work outwards, adventurously,
to the wonders to be found at the end of the earth. It is rather
something that surprises from behind, from the hidden and personal part
of our being; like that which can sometimes take us off our guard in
the pathos of small objects or the blind pieties of the poor. It is
rather, as if a man had found an inner room in the very heart of his own
house, which he had never suspected; and seen a light from within. It
is as if he found something at the back of his own heart that betrayed
him into good.”
A key
question for Chesterton was, “How can we contrive to be at once
astonished at the world and yet at home in it?” His sense that the
world was a moral battleground, wrote his biographer Aliza Stone Dale,
“helped Chesterton fight to keep the attitude that has been labeled
‘facile optimism,’ so that he could never recover the wonder and
surprise at ordinary life he had once felt as a child.”
This
holiday season, we would do well to reevaluate the real gods in our
lives and in the life of our country. Our health and that of America
may depend on such a genuine celebration of Christmas.