[Peace-discuss] The Christmas He Dreamed for All of Us

[Paul M. King]

These are some of my personal thoughts on Christianity. I hope
it helps some of our Good Christians understand how many
people of their faith are viewed. Please don't take it as an
attack.

> Why the desire to erode Christmas of its spirituality
> for the secular popular sector?

I don't believe most people want to erode Christmas of its
spirituality. The problem with the Christians I knew when I
was growing up, though, is that they do not recognize
spirituality outside of Christianity.

> We have to decide whether or not we are willing to build
> coalition with believers that Christ is the one and only
> Messiah, Savior of the World. We have to decide whether
> we want our movement for social justice/ peace/ etc to
> be completely marxist-materialist or not.

I don't know how we can or should build a coalition with
groups of people who believe "that Christ is the one and only
Messiah, Savior of the World." These people seem to be
fanatics to me. And rejecting such groups of fundamentalists
does not reduce the social justice movement to a materialist
position.

Why are people threatened by Christians? Because most
Christians believe that their God is the only True God.
Because many believe that anyone who doesn't feel moved by the
story of Jesus is going to hell and needs to be converted.
Because they can reduce the ignorance of indigenous and Pagan
genocide to a surgical term like "syncretism". Because the
rhetoric of Christianity is replete with pejorative phrases
full of self-righteousness such as "Our Savior" and "other
gods". It is personally difficult for me to listen to these
words without disgust and anger; and the offense is on a very
basic, gut level. Many Christians simply sound fanatical to me.

The most exasperating thing about a lot of Christians I've
known is their inability to consider the story of Jesus as
only one of any number of methods capable of effecting
spiritual transformation in the life of a human being, that
salvation can come in many forms, that Jesus is not the only
Savior. I believe that if Jesus were alive today he would tear
down his churches and scatter his people into the arms of
other loving faiths.

Why are people threatened by Christianity? Because the most
powerful nation in the world is a Christian nation. Because
there is a man in a suit who stands within arm's length of
ending the furious saga of human settlement on our planet by
delivering us to his Christian God in a firestorm of nuclear
annihilation. Because the history of Christianity exhumes a
retched and horrific violence no less bloody than that of any
nation vying for geopolitical hegemony. Because Christians
today are the most visibly hypocritical people in the western
world. Because mainstream Christianity spectacularly fails to
enlighten most people I know, even though ministers and
preachers have the ears and hearts of hundreds of thousands of
followers who crowd into their sanctuaries and open their
minds to a new hope for a few crucial moments each week.

To most people I know the Christian metaphors are old, the
stories are stale and the passion is dead. When someone has
The Answer, when they are absolutely sure that they've found
The Savior, The One And Only True God, what happens to
curiosity? to empathy? to humility? to understanding? Being
reborn is not something that happens once. It is continuous
and it is painful. It happens when we realize we are wrong.

For most Christians I've known, love is enshrined within
emotion and idolatrized, violence is debased by sin and their
hearts are constricted with fear. Such people could live in a
dying world and they would do nothing.

Nevertheless, I believe that Christianity is essentially about
love and it's difficult to go too far astray if one simply
tries to observe this. So, after having said all these things,
I have to say that I love Christians for this. I just wish
more of them were better lovers. Who am I to criticize,
though? Love is quite a terrifying proposition in the world
today and I have a lot to learn too.