Christmas time out for atheists and fundamentalists. PUTTING THE REAL CHRIST BACK INTO CHRISTMAS.
Christmas has really been getting it in the teeth this year. On one side, atheists bashing away at the poor old feast, blaming it for every evil committed in this or any other century; on the other, fundo Evangelicals and Baptists using it as yet another proxy in the racist hate-mongering that is the lifeblood of so-called conservatives.
In a way both atheists and fundos agree on the Christ they see in Christmas. The former may want to abolish it and the latter make it more 'Christian', but the Christ they're talking about is the same cartoon.
For the abolitionists, Christ is and has been the cause of incalculable bloodshed over the last two thousand years, as well as the oppression of women, the brutalization of the poor, the genocidal enslavement of people of color - any color - and environmental devastation. (The list is a lot longer than that, but it'll do for now) For the atheists it's Blame Christ First.
To do them justice they've got a point. Because that Christ is also the Christ of the fundos. The fundo Christ is only The Man of Mercy, Gentle-Jesus-Meek-and-Mild for the fundos themselves. The rest of us he hates. Anyone from gays to Muslims to feminists to commies to astrophysicists and biologists to you, me, Arianna, Susan Sarandon, George Clooney and especially Jimmy Carter. The fundo Christ will arriving here any day now, to butcher all of us by the billion. A Christ of vigilante justice, vengeance and prejudice: a Christ dedicated to the shedding of blood, oceans of it, the more barbarically the better. In short a non-Christ, a pseudo-Christ, an anti-Christ.
The Christ the fundos want to put back in Christmas.
Christmas celebrates the birth of a man called Jesus (or Yeshua) in Judea roughly two thousand years ago; who later became a charismatic itinerant teacher and was subsequently crucified. That this guy actually existed seems likely, given the 1st century accounts of his life and death and one important confirming source, a Jewish historian called Joseph ben Matthias. True, the Christmas story is heavily larded with myth and later interpolations, like all Judeo-Christian scriptures including the Gospels (which is why it's beyond idiotic to read them literally), so it's impossible to know who the real Jesus was historically.
But we're talking about something far more compelling than that shadowy thing, historical accuracy. We're talking about a great story and its true meaning and the vast influence they have on people. There's one question about that story which should be asked this Christmas (or Yuletide or Hanukah or Kwanzaa or however you celebrate the winter solstice), a time when so many people - well-intentioned and ill-intentioned - are still talking so blithely of war, killing, self-defense and revenge.
What according to the story, did the real Christ have to say about war, killing, self-defense and revenge?
As far as I can tell from a close reading of the Gospels (including a couple of the Synoptic Gospels), nothing good. If there was one thing Jesus was adamantly against, it was violence of any kind. Sure he got hot under the robe once in a while; he overturned a few tables in the Temple, he withered a fig-tree, he made some poor old pig-farmer's pigs dive off a cliff. But he never raised a finger to anyone.
In fact he was radical on the matter; in defiance of - or as he put it in fulfillment of - the Jewish tradition in which he was raised of an-eye-for-an-eye, of justifiable revenge, he forbade revenge, even self-defense. We are to turn the other cheek when struck. We are to love our neighbors even our enemies, as ourselves. And he meant it: when the time came and his enemies seized him to lead him away to certain death, he refused to defend himself or even to let his followers defend him.
Here's the uncomfortable truth, one Christians have spent seas of ink and forests of paper, trying to get around: there is no way that someone who calls herself or himself a Christian, who believes in Christ's words and emulates his life and actions, can fight in a war, support a war, carry a weapon, pack heat, shoot back, or take revenge.
That's why Christmas - the birth of the man who preached this intensely radical idea - is called a time of peace. And why Jesus is often called the Prince of Peace. (Not a title I like much since all the Princes I know are blithering inbred twits, but I can live with it for now).
But that doesn't mean peace is over, once Christmas is. Or that the other 364 days of the year Jesus is the Prince of War. For real Christians peace is non-negotiable.
Impractical? Too bad. Every conflict that ever polluted our planet arose because someone claimed this right: they killed ours so we have the right to kill theirs. And once that cycle begins, it goes on for millennia, every war in some way, seeded by the last. Christ said in effect that even at the cost of life, you've got to start somewhere in breaking that cycle, the cycle of killing. A cycle that sustains the brutes of any tribe, 'Ours' as well as 'Theirs', those who believe that their right to life is superior to another's. They have no such right, however magnificent their titles or however often they say their prayers.
I wrote a book earlier this year about the 'real Christ'. (And no I don't want you to buy my book - for once I truly don't intend to commercialize my message). It's just that sometimes a story and a character in it can make a point better than another thousand words of blog.
In my book I imagine Christ returning in our time, a poor self-educated Latino man from the Bronx. His messages are as radical as they were the first time around. Towards the end as his Christian enemies close in, he talks to an audience of tired and battered infantrymen recently returned from war, outside the gates of Fort McGuire in New Jersey:
"Love your enemies. I do.
"I have loved every soldier on every side of every war ever fought. I have loved every child of God murdered by another child of God. Because - make no mistake - whenever one of my children kills another intentionally, it's murder. Whether it's from 30,000 feet or 3, it's murder. It's no less murder than creeping into their bedroom while they're asleep and beating them to death with a tire-iron.
"Murder is not a mission or a calling or a career. If you go to West Point or the Air Force Academy to get a degree in it, it's still murder. All the fancy words your superiors come up with: retaliation, extreme prejudice, overwhelming force, collateral damage, smart-this and pin-point-that cannot alter that all these words mean murder.
"Wearing a uniform does not to stop it being murder, doing it for your country does not stop it being murder. Clicking on an icon a thousand miles away does not stop it being murder. Sending a command to a robot does not stop it being murder. If your sergeant tells you to do it it's murder, if you are told by your officer to tell an enlisted man to do it, all three of you commit murder. It's murder if a court absolves you of all wrongdoing. It's murder if a man of God blesses the weapon you murder with. It's murder if you vote for someone who tells others to murder in your name. It's murder if the one you murder has murdered.
"And if you say God told you to murder - I say to you it is not God you are listening to.
"Thou shalt not kill. There are no exceptions."
That I believe, is the Christ we need to put back into Christmas.
by Tony Hendra
In a way both atheists and fundos agree on the Christ they see in Christmas. The former may want to abolish it and the latter make it more 'Christian', but the Christ they're talking about is the same cartoon.
For the abolitionists, Christ is and has been the cause of incalculable bloodshed over the last two thousand years, as well as the oppression of women, the brutalization of the poor, the genocidal enslavement of people of color - any color - and environmental devastation. (The list is a lot longer than that, but it'll do for now) For the atheists it's Blame Christ First.
To do them justice they've got a point. Because that Christ is also the Christ of the fundos. The fundo Christ is only The Man of Mercy, Gentle-Jesus-Meek-and-Mild for the fundos themselves. The rest of us he hates. Anyone from gays to Muslims to feminists to commies to astrophysicists and biologists to you, me, Arianna, Susan Sarandon, George Clooney and especially Jimmy Carter. The fundo Christ will arriving here any day now, to butcher all of us by the billion. A Christ of vigilante justice, vengeance and prejudice: a Christ dedicated to the shedding of blood, oceans of it, the more barbarically the better. In short a non-Christ, a pseudo-Christ, an anti-Christ.
The Christ the fundos want to put back in Christmas.
Christmas celebrates the birth of a man called Jesus (or Yeshua) in Judea roughly two thousand years ago; who later became a charismatic itinerant teacher and was subsequently crucified. That this guy actually existed seems likely, given the 1st century accounts of his life and death and one important confirming source, a Jewish historian called Joseph ben Matthias. True, the Christmas story is heavily larded with myth and later interpolations, like all Judeo-Christian scriptures including the Gospels (which is why it's beyond idiotic to read them literally), so it's impossible to know who the real Jesus was historically.
But we're talking about something far more compelling than that shadowy thing, historical accuracy. We're talking about a great story and its true meaning and the vast influence they have on people. There's one question about that story which should be asked this Christmas (or Yuletide or Hanukah or Kwanzaa or however you celebrate the winter solstice), a time when so many people - well-intentioned and ill-intentioned - are still talking so blithely of war, killing, self-defense and revenge.
What according to the story, did the real Christ have to say about war, killing, self-defense and revenge?
As far as I can tell from a close reading of the Gospels (including a couple of the Synoptic Gospels), nothing good. If there was one thing Jesus was adamantly against, it was violence of any kind. Sure he got hot under the robe once in a while; he overturned a few tables in the Temple, he withered a fig-tree, he made some poor old pig-farmer's pigs dive off a cliff. But he never raised a finger to anyone.
In fact he was radical on the matter; in defiance of - or as he put it in fulfillment of - the Jewish tradition in which he was raised of an-eye-for-an-eye, of justifiable revenge, he forbade revenge, even self-defense. We are to turn the other cheek when struck. We are to love our neighbors even our enemies, as ourselves. And he meant it: when the time came and his enemies seized him to lead him away to certain death, he refused to defend himself or even to let his followers defend him.
Here's the uncomfortable truth, one Christians have spent seas of ink and forests of paper, trying to get around: there is no way that someone who calls herself or himself a Christian, who believes in Christ's words and emulates his life and actions, can fight in a war, support a war, carry a weapon, pack heat, shoot back, or take revenge.
That's why Christmas - the birth of the man who preached this intensely radical idea - is called a time of peace. And why Jesus is often called the Prince of Peace. (Not a title I like much since all the Princes I know are blithering inbred twits, but I can live with it for now).
But that doesn't mean peace is over, once Christmas is. Or that the other 364 days of the year Jesus is the Prince of War. For real Christians peace is non-negotiable.
Impractical? Too bad. Every conflict that ever polluted our planet arose because someone claimed this right: they killed ours so we have the right to kill theirs. And once that cycle begins, it goes on for millennia, every war in some way, seeded by the last. Christ said in effect that even at the cost of life, you've got to start somewhere in breaking that cycle, the cycle of killing. A cycle that sustains the brutes of any tribe, 'Ours' as well as 'Theirs', those who believe that their right to life is superior to another's. They have no such right, however magnificent their titles or however often they say their prayers.
I wrote a book earlier this year about the 'real Christ'. (And no I don't want you to buy my book - for once I truly don't intend to commercialize my message). It's just that sometimes a story and a character in it can make a point better than another thousand words of blog.
In my book I imagine Christ returning in our time, a poor self-educated Latino man from the Bronx. His messages are as radical as they were the first time around. Towards the end as his Christian enemies close in, he talks to an audience of tired and battered infantrymen recently returned from war, outside the gates of Fort McGuire in New Jersey:
"Love your enemies. I do.
"I have loved every soldier on every side of every war ever fought. I have loved every child of God murdered by another child of God. Because - make no mistake - whenever one of my children kills another intentionally, it's murder. Whether it's from 30,000 feet or 3, it's murder. It's no less murder than creeping into their bedroom while they're asleep and beating them to death with a tire-iron.
"Murder is not a mission or a calling or a career. If you go to West Point or the Air Force Academy to get a degree in it, it's still murder. All the fancy words your superiors come up with: retaliation, extreme prejudice, overwhelming force, collateral damage, smart-this and pin-point-that cannot alter that all these words mean murder.
"Wearing a uniform does not to stop it being murder, doing it for your country does not stop it being murder. Clicking on an icon a thousand miles away does not stop it being murder. Sending a command to a robot does not stop it being murder. If your sergeant tells you to do it it's murder, if you are told by your officer to tell an enlisted man to do it, all three of you commit murder. It's murder if a court absolves you of all wrongdoing. It's murder if a man of God blesses the weapon you murder with. It's murder if you vote for someone who tells others to murder in your name. It's murder if the one you murder has murdered.
"And if you say God told you to murder - I say to you it is not God you are listening to.
"Thou shalt not kill. There are no exceptions."
That I believe, is the Christ we need to put back into Christmas.
by Tony Hendra
posted by Paschal Baute at
11:43 AM
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