Jesus Is The Reason For The Season But He Influences Us Daily
With over 40 million views, this video captures the essence of the article you are about to read.
A funny thing happened “on the way” as I was contemplating writing this piece. While listening to a Christian radio station the announcer said, “Jesus is the reason for the season.”
At that moment this very familiar phrase hit me like a thunderbolt. For not only is “Jesus the reason for the season,” but Jesus is the reason our world, nation, history, culture and society are the way they are.
So regardless of whether you believe in Jesus, practice another faith, or are devoid of faith, Jesus has impacted you by virtue of the fact that you are alive.
For no person has affected mankind – past, present and future –more than this Jewish teacher who lived over 2000 years ago, whose birth we will celebrate with great fanfare.
Although Jesus’ life, death and resurrection were the impetus behind His followers’ establishing Christianity, the world’s largest religion itself is only the starting point for the influence Jesus spawned in countless non-religious venues as people over the centuries were moved and motivated by Him to express themselves in a multitude of ways that we continue to see played out everyday across the planet.
With so many examples of Jesus Christ’s effect on mankind it is impossible to even mention them all in this short piece — the purpose of which is to not only enhance your celebration of “the reason for the season” but to also increase your awareness of just how much Jesus impacts the world around you every day of the year.
If after reading this piece you are moved to delve deeper into this topic, I recommend a book published in 1994 that has since become a “modern classic,” What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?, co-authored by the late Dr. D. James Kennedy and the still very much alive Jerry Newcombe.
This book had a profound influence on me as it oriented my thinking about Jesus in ways that I had never contemplated.
So here in alphabetical order is only a short, incomplete list of the most obvious “non-religious” aspects of how Jesus Christ has impacted the world.
As if none of that would have been possible absent Christianity. Can we please enact a separation of church and press?
Dear Michael,
Your comment is breathtakingly ignorant. Much of what Myra outlines indeed would NOT have occurred without Jesus. Read Kennedy’s book (and many texts with similar themes) and you should be inspired to retract your ill-advised statement.
Merry Christmas!
Unbelievable! You don’t have to be a Christian to understand the amazing influence that Christ and Christianity has had on this earth.
Don’t be such as Scrooge, Michael. Lighten up!
Hospitals exist because Christians invented hospitals, and the pagans recounted with much embarrassment that Christian physicians and nurses treated not only Christians, but pagans as well, charging nothing to the indigent. Infanticide was outlawed because Christians outlawed it. Pagans have never opposed abortion or infanticide; only Jews and Christians banned the practice, and Jews rarely tried to convert pagans.
Thank you for writing this piece, Myra. Just the thing for your readers to peruse this Christmas season. Yes, Jesus has had an amazing influence on this world. But that is what one should expect from Our Lord and Savior. Praise Him this day and every day!
No event in all of history approaches the impact of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Even if you decline to believe He is the Son of God: No other figure has had his transformative effect on so many persons and societies.
Perhaps the greatest irony arises from militant atheism. Who have they chosen as their principal target? Moses? Muhammad? Buddha? Or Someone Else?
He disdained to write down any of His teachings. Yet He predicted that they would not pass away…and they haven’t, and they will not.
Merry Christmas to all, and may the joy of His coming resonate throughout the New Year!
The bulk of the greatest scientists of the ages were Christians. Judeo-Christianity forms the foundational bedrock of science.
Why? Because the Triune God is a God of order. Pagans had very little science because there was no understanding or belief of order in the universe.
Science at its essence is based on the belief, the FAITH, that events are demonstrably repeatable. There is nothing that requires this be so. The understanding of rationality is what allowed the great Christian scientists to make the leaps they made.
Let us also remember orphanages. Created by Christians.
Believe it or not, Christians were also the first to promote public education in the U.S. In the northeast, a state passed a law funding public education and it was called something along the lines of “Defeating Satan the Great Deceiver Act”. The idea was that by educating our youth we could defeat evil. Guess what kind of education they meant?
I heard a fantastic 40 minute presentation, but have not yet read the book, by Pastor John Ortberg who wrote “Who Was This Man?”, about the overwhelming impact/influence that Jesus and his followers have had on the world. I thought I knew how much He had changed us, but I was wrong. It is far far greater than even suggested in this article by Myra.
Myra,
Thanks for writing this. Don’t know why Kathy S. is getting more attention…