Islam

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Christmas For Christians and non-Christians Alike


What is Christmas? It is the celebration of the birth of Jesus. But how would you feel if you were born on February 15 but no one celebrated your birthday until September? Well, that is exactly what happened to Jesus. He was actually born in the spring, no one really knows the actual date but the Bible itself hints at this plus historians know that the census Joseph and Mary were participating in happened in the spring. But the early Christian church had a problem, well, actually it had a lot of problems but with regard to the birth of Jesus they would have had to place his birth around the time of Easter. And how would that work? Celebrating the birth and death of Jesus in the same month, maybe even the same week? Their resolution was to take over the old Roman holiday of Saturnalia which was on December 25. This was done to displace one of the many pagan holidays with Christian holidays.

But Christmas as a holiday was really an invention of the 17th Century Christians. But not all Christians! The Puritans of America considered the holiday as blasphemous and did not participate.   And even with those who did celebrate it, it was ill-defined. An English tradition called wassailing was imported to America. In late 18th Century Boston bands of boys would go around the city banging on doors and demanding food. Needless to say, the gentry of Boston thought Christmas just a nuisance. And even in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Scrooge was simply uttering the feelings of many Englishmen of the day, that Christmas was just an excuse for workers to get a day off. Similar sentiments were held in America.

But as the 19th Century rolled on, the first Christmas Card was invented, a minister wrote The Night Before Christmas for his children and the sentiment of good will and giving was born. The first American Christmas carol was written by Phillips Brooks of Andover Massachusetts in the 17th Century. That carol is Oh Little Town of Bethlehem. But most carols were written in the late 19th Century and 20th Century. The words of these carols usually speak of the nature of Christmas.

That said, I suggest that even though Christmas was born in the Christian tradition, it is no longer a strictly religious holiday celebrated only by Christians. Many people who do not believe in Jesus as a messiah or deity, celebrate the date none-the-less. Many in the American Jewish community will have both the menorah and Christmas tree in their homes. And if not the tree, then Christmas ornaments. It should be noted that the idea of bringing greens into the household is also an old Roman tradition that went with Saturnalia.

For those who are not Christian they can still celebrate the spirit of Christmas. The old idea and ideal of peace and good will should easily transcend all beliefs to be embraced by people of any religion or of no religion at all. The idea of selfless giving at this time of year can be practiced by anyone. It is my hope that this year when Americans consider the people of Islam they look upon them using the spirit of Christmas, good will to all. And this spirit should be extended to everyone of any belief.

 

 

 

 

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It is God’s Will! Really?


I really and truly hate the expression, “it was God’s will.” Really? How do you know? To be fair, the overwhelming majority of people living in the United States were brought up on one of three basic belief systems: Jewish, Christian, and Islam. Each of those general religions loves to use the expression in question. But my question to any of them is, “how do you know?” If you nail any of them down they will probably refer to some ancient religious text which supposedly gives weight to their contention.

But don’t each of these religions refer to God as a “father” meaning, of course, a family member.   And each contends that God is also the epitome of love, kindness and understanding. Great! Then how can you call it God’s will when an earthquake strikes a region and kills thousands of people? Are you telling me that either God wanted those people dead? As a father I believe it a part of my job to protect my children from any sort of harm. This actually makes God sound like some sort of sadistic being rather than the all loving purported.

Another of my favorites is when a person comes down with a deadly form of cancer and that somehow is God’s will. Again, really? God favors kind and loving people with deadly diseases as some sort of test of their love for Him? It makes it sound like He lacks love for the person involved. Which, as a side note, brings up another of my annoyances: unfairness. People love to say how unfair it is when someone is visited by some life altering, or worse, life ending disease while they are young. No! It is entirely fair! Diseases and disasters do not go around picking out individuals if affect. Fairness exists entirely in human interaction, that is, how one human treats another human. Diseases and disasters simply do not have the capacity to care.

If the basic claims about God of these three religions are to be believed then God could only want for our happiness, good health, and long lives. God does not punish nor reward any living being but saves such things for the afterlife. God does not take the side of one nation over another in a time of war, or for that matter, in any sort of human contest, conquest or endeavor. If God so favored any group of people does it not make sense that He would have protected people against the likes of Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Adolph Hitler or any of a long list of evil persons? But He did not which means His is an entirely hands off position. What happens to us here on earth is always the result of our own actions, or lack of action, or of natural phenomena. And that is my universe. If tomorrow I am told I have some sort of stage 4 incurable cancer I will not look upon it as God’s will or even bad luck. It will simple be the end result of a long string of natural events, and sometimes, many times, we humans are incapable of putting together all of those events or even explaining them. I accept my situation as it is. I promise myself to be as kind, courteous and thoughtful as possible. In the end, after all, is that not what each of us is evaluated on, by those who know us and God?

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Mankind Versus Religion


When I was young, an adolescent or young teen, I as my father, once Sunday noon over our traditional Sunday meal, why I never saw him in church.  He responded, and rather quickly too, that “when they stop preaching politics from the pulpit, I’ll go back.”  The backdrop on this is my father was a Unitarian and my mother a devout Roman Catholic.  When they were married, in 1946, the Roman Catholic Church did not allow for marriage between two people of different faiths.  And while they did not prohibit Catholics from marrying those of other religions, such marriages were never allowed in the church proper.  And so, my parents, two really good people who genuinely loved each other, were married by a priest but not within the walls of the church.  To be fair, the Catholic Church was not alone in such practices, and while that practice no longer exists today in the Catholic Church, it does in other religions.

My first crisis of faith happened at age 15 when, having suffered a very traumatic experience at the hands of another, I sought out a priest, an Augustinian, who after hearing my story told me I should ask forgiveness for my sin.  He showed absolutely no understanding, no empathy, and to my mind, not to slightest knowledge of New Testament Bible teachings.

And now we arrive at the Bible, the basis of all Judeo-Christian religions.  I have actually read it!  Even when I was young, many parts of it did not make much sense to me.  But I was instructed that it is a work of faith, and I must have faith in its teachings.  Really?  I cannot help but wonder what is to be learned from the Old Testament teaching of “an eye for any eye” except that we will end up with a bunch of blind people!  And actually, the New Testament contradicts that saying with Jesus telling his followers to “turn the other cheek.”  Now that makes a whole lot more sense.  Except that one of Jesus’ first pronouncements was that he had not come to change the law.  I am assuming he was referring to the old Mosaic Law.  And that law, if you considered it based on the 10 Commandments, was freely lifted from the ancient Egyptian “Book of the Dead.”  Such facts make me wonder about the honesty of religions.

Conservative Christians today are quick to condemn gay people to hell claiming it is God’s will.  I find that curious since the New Testaments clears states that you should judge someone in the same manner you wish to be judged.  I don’t think they believe such an admonition applies to them.  They are quick to point at the passage in the New Testament condemning one man laying with another.  But the proper historical perspective on that saying comes from the fact that traveling merchants of the day would take young boys with them who would satisfy their sexual needs.  It was not a commentary on people who were gay but upon the corruption of old men using innocents for their own selfish needs.

One of the most basic problems for all religions today is their interpretation and application of the Bible.  If you were of no religion and desirous of joining a particular religion based on the Bible it used, you would first have to read through literally hundreds of Bibles, the Catholic Bible, King James Bible, New American Bible, Mormon Bible, and so on.  The Hebrew Bible, of course, contains no New Testament, while Christian Bibles vary as to which Old Testament Books they include.  What that alone tells us is exactly how personal religion is.

Here in the United States we have many religions which do not have the Hebrew-Christian-Islam God.  Buddhists believe in Buddha and Hindus believe in an eternal spiritual truth.

Probably the most divided church today is also one of the largest, Roman Catholicism.   Millions of Americans, I am one, call themselves Catholic but cannot remember the last time they went to church.  Why?  Disillusionment with its archaic laws and teaching.  I suspect other religions are experiencing the same issues.  Historically, religion has badly trailed present-day issues its followers must face.  Unreasonable restrictions and admonishments by those church do little to comfort and much to confuse, frustrate, and cause anxiety among its followers.  It is hard to believe, at least in Christian churches, such church orthodoxy would be embraced by its founder, Jesus.

It might be good for man to consider that it was not God who created religion, but man.  Man has always searched for answers to those things he did not understand, and to bring meaning to life.  For the answers to things he did not understand he created science, and for the meaning of life, he embraced God.

If God had intended for all humans to be alike he would not have allowed for free-will, for considered decisions, or for humans to have a brain that would function on a higher level than another other animal on the face of the Earth.  And yet, there it is.  We are endowed with minds that allow us to make individual decisions and, even more importantly, allow each of us to be unique in our own way.  But it is that very uniqueness that does not allow us to think and act exactly as another other human being.  And that is a good thing because oh what a boring place this earth would be if we were all alike.

It would shock many Christians to hear that monotheism pre-dates Moses, and by thousands of years at that!  But it does not change the fact.  The fact is man has been working on the idea of one religion fits all philosophy.  If one thing the over 5000 years of recorded history should have taught us is the fact that that idea has failed miserably.  But it has always been small-minded men who have had a vested interest in securing places of power within their followers, who have usurped the God-given right to think for themselves.  To be fair, there exist a few religions that actually promote this think for yourself idea.  And if you think about, that is the only thing which makes sense when trying to ascertain “God’s will.”  Therefore, by definition, each person’s relationship with God is a very personal one and can only be defined in that one-on-one relationship.  It is certainly not the job of religions to tell us what that relationship should be defined by or look like, but our own personal responsibility.  It is the responsibility of religion to assist, the lend help, to show compassion, and to be there at the time of a person’s greatest need and without the least bit of judgment.  And on that last point it is my belief that most religions fail miserably.

This brings me back to my father.  Although he was a member of a particular church, I never associate that church with him.  I look at him as the person he was and cannot help believe, though he was absolutely of a different religion form me, he was none-the less, a literal saint of a man.  He died monetarily poor and richly loved.  I should be so fortunate.