“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.”
Christmas carols are being banned from public schools in Florida and
New Jersey. People in Denver complain that “direct religious
themes” were prohibited in a “parade of lights,” but
homosexuals were allowed to participate.
A city in Kentucky forbade the staging of a live nativity scene in
a public square. In Kirkland, Washington, authorities stopped the production
of “A Christmas Carol,” because Tiny Tim prayed “God
bless everyone.”
Reports have it that New York City allows the Islamic crescent displayed
during Ramadan and Menorahs during Hanukkah but no distinctly Christian
displays during the Christmas season. The political correctness censors
demand that Christmas parades be called “holiday parades,” “Santa
Claus parades,” or “winter parades.”
Some Christians are accused of insensitivity toward non-Christians.
Other Christians
threaten law suits to enforce their interpretation of religious freedom.
One wonders what Jesus would say about all that quibbling and fighting over the
borderlines between religion and the pluralistic state.
He succinctly told the Pharisees: “Render therefore to Caesar the things
that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthews
22:21).
Jesus’ wisdom, however, does not seem to satisfy some of the spokesmen
of America’s Christian Right today. One of them, Randall Terry, made this
very clear when he wrote in the Indiana News Sentinel: “Our goal is a Christian
nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country.
We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.”
Surely, Jesus’ central theme was not the assertion of parochial demands
but the cultivation of peace with God, peace of mind, and peace among men. In
Luke 2:14, the birth of Jesus is heralded with the words “Glory to God
in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."
Later Jesus reiterated: "Peace I leave with you.” (John 14:27). “My
peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your
hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." Jesus knew that his message would
cause conflicts: “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword,” he
told his disciples (Matthew 10, 34). Those, however, were the conflicts over
the meaning and justification of his calls for change--in men’s hearts
and in the relations between individuals and nations.
Jesus surely did not advocate unilateral wars for political and economic hegemony,
for regime change, for material resources, or for the sake of retaliation. "Put
your sword back in its place," Jesus asked Peter, "for all who draw
the sword will die by the sword."
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus confirmed the timeless validity of the Ten
Commandments, the fifth of which sternly admonishes mankind: “Thou shalt
not kill.” Yet, today American Christians fight against the abortion of
unborn life while compliantly suffering the sacrifice of hundreds of their young
sons and daughters, and the killing of untold thousands of foreigners thousands
of miles away from our land--all allegedly to keep us free and bring the blessings
of our way of governance to others.
Significantly, Jesus did add two commandments that would govern man’s compliance
with the Ten Commandments: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great
commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew
22:37-40).
This call for neighborly concern surely should guide Americans in their search
for doing justice to the unborn, the homosexuals, the gun owners, the poor and
the homeless, the stricken by disease, and the dying. Jesus did not teach his
disciples to get stridently confrontational in pursuit of what they so subjectively
deem to be right.
Jesus certainly was intolerant of sin but never intolerant of those searching
for peace, truth, and righteousness. “Woe to you, the scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier
matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith: these you ought to have done
without neglecting the others.”