Thursday 20 December 2012

Contradictions in a modern world

Leave a Comment




It is somewhat surprising that in an increasingly secular world the celebration of Christmas seems to be gathering more and more momentum. The commercial world undoubtedly initiates the fervour and there are more and more houses lit up with yuletide greetings, a multitude of channels beaming Christmas shows on television, and aisles and aisles of decorative ornaments, the majority of them ironically made in atheist China, packing the shelves of our superstores to eventually adorn the trees that invade our living rooms. Some enterprising folk are selling authentic pine saplings cocking a snook at the “genuine Taiwanese plastic” versions that have been making inroads for years.

We love Christmas for a variety of reasons, few of them religious. It heralds the start of the summer holiday season which usually means inclement weather right up until it’s time to go back to the grindstone. But mostly we enjoy the reaction of children - in my case grandchildren - the wide-eyed look on their faces as we reiterate the myths that entranced us when we were kids. That Father Christmas comes down the chimney and drinks the beer and eats the mince pies on the hearth and leaves behind the colourfully wrapped presents as a kind of quid pro quo.

I’m not sure just how modern day mums and dads get the jolly fat gentlemen into the confines of the log fire and through the glass fire door with a latch on the outside. I guess they’ve embellished the story to fit the composition of a contemporary home and anyway we were always desperate to believe the impossible even when some smart-alec worldly kid in the primers awakened us to the fact that we were being mightily deceived.

The real story of Christmas is always under constant threat. More and more academics articulately reject the birth of Christ in a lowly stable and find the claim of a virgin mother and an immaculate conception harder to stomach than a sleigh riding, North Pole domiciled, deliverer of gifts to millions of waiting kids, overnight.

They offer up Jesus as simply a prophesier and a good man who brought a message of love and reconciliation, which they find easier to swallow than Jonah was for the whale. However it’s unlikely that 2000 years on we would consistently remember merely a good man.

And the world around us changes. The Apostle Paul’s miraculous conversion took place on the road to Damascus. Today he would likely be caught in the crossfire of troops loyal to Bashar al Assad and the rebels opposing his regime.

Fundamentalist Islamic revolutionaries dream of a world without Christians and by destroying them, and themselves in the process, believe a paradise awash with virgins beckons.

I suspect both Christ and Mohammed would weep at the misinterpretation of their teachings.

Despite these diversions the Christmas story still endures. Locally the churches will be gearing up for the usual influx as many choose to attend just once or twice a year. Humourists point to C of E being an acronym for Christmas and Easter, the only time many Anglicans make the pilgrimage, rather than Church of England.

Contrary to popular belief church regular attendance may not be on the wane. Arguably Masterton’s most imposing church is the newly-built Lighthouse facility in Intermediate Street and St. Andrews at Upper Plain recently celebrated the opening of a brand new hall for their junior congregation. This indicates the churches are still popular as places of worship, although many people now use secular facilities for funerals and prefer to conduct weddings in restaurants or garden settings with non-religious vows led by celebrants rather than clergy. Few women want to honour and obey their menfolk.

The church’s influence on our lives however cannot be brushed aside. Christ gave the world its calendar and our two greatest holidays, Christmas and Easter, marking His birth and His resurrection. His teachings gave us the doctrine of marriage and aroused men to abolish slavery, create orphanages, homes for the blind, the first hospitals, and the first schools. History shows that nations of the past rose and fell according to their beliefs in His teachings. Rome under Constantine, England under Alfred the Great and Queen Elizabeth the First and Queen Victoria and the United States under their Christian forefathers.

Christ inspired the world’s greatest art and music such as Michelangelo’s Pieta and Handel’s Messiah. Our doctrines of right and wrong, the morals of life, are based on His utterances. No other human being has changed so many sceptics into peace-filled believers, offered so much hope to the mentally disturbed, the physically ailing, and the spiritually lost.

The centurion at the foot of the cross said it all: “Surely this man was the Son of God.”

Have a great Christmas!

“How many observe Christ’s birthday! How few, his precepts! O! ‘tis easier to keep holidays than commandments.” - Benjamin Franklin

Read More...