In Search of Whoville

Once more, it’s that time of year when millions of Christians not only reflect on the truly important things in their lives, but prepare to celebrate the birth of their savior.  They also set out in their annual quest to do battle against what they perceive as the single greatest threat to their faith. No, not the plight of the oppressed; no, not the increasing gap between the wealthy and poor; and no, not the corporate corruption that has permeated, polarized and paralyzed every aspect of our politics.  No, the battle that these Christians are waging that poses the greatest threat to their very way of life is the war on Christmas.

Yes, you heard right, the war on Christmas.  Poverty, injustice, corruption, that’s small potatoes.  For these “dedicated” followers of Christ, the only thing it seems that matters to them is the assault by the secular Left on not only Christmas, but on Christianity as a whole.

And this year the assault began early; Thanksgiving in fact.  Our beleaguered and elitist-socialist President, Barack Obama, threw the first salvo when he neglected to mention God in his Thanksgiving dedication.  The faithful wasted little time answering the affront by blasting the Dark Overlord.

Never mind that, in the words of Jon Stewart, Thanksgiving is really the celebration of pagans teaching religious zealots to farm, just neglecting to mention God was enough to whip up the hoards of the faithful into a frenetic lather.

Really now, this has gone way beyond bizarre.  With all the problems that beset our country, that any reasonably sane believer could spend even a nanosecond worrying about such trite and irrelevant issues as whether or not the President included God in a Thanksgiving message, or whether someone, in an attempt to be “politically correct,” opted to say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” is sad.  To suggest, as some do with a straight face, that their faith is somehow under siege or in jeopardy of becoming extinct just because of a less overt seasonal expression is pathological to say the least.

And yet every year now for the last two decades the rest of us have had to put up with these “believers” as they rant and rave about their phony war and the erosion of a holy day that long ago got sold down the river by the very same corporate interests they purport to hold as equally sacrosanct.  That’s the irony: the very same followers who defend with every fiber of their being the right to keep Christ in Christmas continue to worship at the alter of the very agencies that are ripping the guts out of it.

I’m not talking about the over indulgence of gift giving – though that certainly is systematic of a trend that has escalated to as yet unheard of heights over the last couple of generations.  No, the real culprit is the mindset that has persisted within this segment of Christians that their faith and the system of greed and avarice that embodies the heart and soul of capitalism are somehow joined at the hip.  To suggest that maybe the very basis for their way of life is at odds with the teachings of Jesus is met with the most fervent of denials.  One would have more success questioning the deity of Jesus than to insinuate that everything they have come to know as true is in fact a lie.  

And yet a lie is what it is, pure and simple.  Think about the actual story of the first Christmas.  A young child in a manger surrounded by his mother and father and some farm animals.  Hardly the way most of us would want to enter the world.  And yet from that humble beginning, God would usher in a new kingdom that would offer the world a chance at true freedom and salvation. 

The price for admission into this kingdom?  Simple.  Live your life according to the principles of that child, who as a man gave his life to save us all.  Those principles are contained in that most famous of sermons that Jesus gave his followers, called “The Sermon on the Mount.”

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.  Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”        

None of us – even on our best day – is up to the challenge of those daunting words.  Fortunately we have grace to compensate for our shortcomings.  But if it’s a war Christians are looking for, why not a war against anything that would challenge the righteousness of those words.  Where is the outrage for the suffering of millions who every winter have to choose between starving or freezing to death?  Where are the shouts of anger for the corruption that steals our elections and causes tremendous economic upheavals that rob us of our savings and cost millions their jobs?  Where is the indignation at the hypocrisy of a movement that would forbid a woman from terminating her baby, yet provide her with no assistance to help raise it?  Where is the outcry over the injustice at the incarceration of countless men and women whose only crime is that they fit the profile of someone who might mean us harm?  And finally, where is the condemnation of those who, in their ignorance, have badly tarnished the reputation of a faith they claim to hold near and dear to their hearts and whose actions might well have resulted in millions of lost souls turning away from a chance at everlasting salvation?

These words of St. Augustine are as relevant now as they were when he wrote them more than a thousand years ago.

“Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.”

This is our war: to feed the hungry, to tend to the sick, to help the oppressed.  We don’t need phony wars about holidays and seasonal greetings to distract us from what Jesus has commissioned us to do.  Keeping Christ in Christmas ought not to be something we do only every December 25^th, but rather all year long.  But to do that we must truly understand what Christ was and what he stood for.  Only then will we be able to “follow” him and be worthy dwellers in his kingdom.   

Wishing someone a Happy Holidays doesn’t mean you don’t care about Christmas, any more than wishing someone a Merry Christmas means you do.  In the end, it’s what’s in your heart that counts.  And, after all, wasn’t it our hearts that Christ was after in the first place?