Opinion/Editorial
CHRISTMAS
So, okay, it’s almost Christmas. What a grand happier time of the year for those who are not in the vilest or brutal of circumstance. There’s the New Testament to get you through if you are in that kind of situation, and it is hopefully also sprinkled with caring friends, family, and even the kindness of strangers. But what’s happened over the past thirty years is anything but kind or caring when it comes to worshipping God. The word Christian has Christ as its first six letters. That word needs to be withdrawn from use in about forty percent of today’s evangelical congregations across the land. That’s right, they should not be allowed to use the word Christ, except in low shameful tones.
These new “Old Time Believers” are able to extract plenty of garbage out of the Old Testament to be as cruel as they feel righteously required to (and warmly pleasurable about) by whomever the alpha male (preacher) leading them orders. These people, among the most visible upper dregs of the culture, predominate in regions of the south, and southwestern states, are what is termed the “core of the core” at the very bottom foundations of the neo-conservative movement in the USA. They are not Christians, and Jesus Christ abhorred their kind of thinking, and He spelled it out in the New Testament. Read it. Even more, He loathed the conduct of phony believers who knelt, prayed and then violated every tenant of what He came upon this earth to teach.
The Christmas season is upon us. The first six letters of that word “Christmas” are about all about Christ, and what He intended (with His Father), in coming here to draw a template of how we should survive while alive on this earth and later on after we pass from it. Live the New Testament. Love the New Testament. Love Christmas, the celebrated birth of Christ. Do not listen to the many men leading movements glorifying the Old Testament because those teachings give that particular man great power. The much greater power is in God, and you benefit so much more from being the way.
Christmas is coming. We are close, and getting closer, every speedily passing day. For those who participate in the more commercial parts of the celebration, presents have to be found, acquired and then wrapped and presented at just the right time. A Christmas feast must be prepared for family and intimate friends. Christmas parties must be thrown and given, where applicable. There is no Christmas whatever inside prisons across the land. Most inmates get tossed a bag of candy or some such. There is no Christmas for the homeless. There’s no Christmas for those immigrants huddled together in and outside camps down at the border. We make Christmas happen, so let’s do that! It’s high time that this culture got to work and made Christmas possible for everyone.
How can that hurt? A billion dollars out of the 700 or 800 billion for defense. Take it out and change so many lives down at the dregs of society. That billion would, over time, be worth more to the country than the other hundreds of billions. Goodwill, understanding, and love overcome threats and attacks astoundingly well, but do not pay the military-industrial complex one penny…and there is the rub. How is it that the spear-makers, armorers and sword sharpeners of old have become the biggest businesses in the U.S.? How did America, the home of the brave and land of the free turn into a modern clone-like copy of Rome? Where is Jesus Christ? Not the image, or the crucifix or even the decorations and church services, but the teachings? Where is the New Testament application? Not the reading, not the Bible study, but the actions called for in that wonderful philosophical text?
Merry Christmas America, now get off your pew-stuck butt and go out there into the real world and make Christmas happen. The glow you’ve lost inside you will be re-ignited. I say so, and so did Jesus. Feed and help the poor. Visit the prisoners and have compassion. Take care of the homeless. The immigrants. God is sending them to and for you, not just for them…
Merry Christmas!
~~James Strauss
