God never dies. He just seems to be ignored when people feel too comfortable in their lives and become too arrogant to realize how insignificant they are. When things begin to go wrong, and people realize how little control they have over life. They begin to actually realize that there is a power much greater than them.
Religion is not only going to church or mosque, etc. It is about believing in something bigger than ourselves. All religions focus on the whole of humanity and the need to behave in certain ways to preserve the livability of life. Some do a better job than others.
One of the most profound lessons I learned came when I was a teenager. When a bunch of us were having a debate about religion, arguing what little disconnected knowledge we had. A man of the cloth, walking by, stopped to listen. A moment later he interrupts the heated debate about the various religions to explain. “Religion is not about going to church or mosque. It is not about how many times you pray, or how loud you proclaim your belief. It is all about TREATMENT OF OTHERS. The truly religious and spiritual will show the face of God in everything they do, through kindness, generosity of heart, understanding, humility and productivity”.
It took almost 25 years for that statement to completely ferment and mature in my mind. Maybe it took the witnessing of all the mindless killing in the name of God, and the counter-religious actions in the name of religion. I got to the point where I asked myself: If everyone is being killed in the name of God, whose side is God on? Why is not on my side? Why is he not saving us?
I do not believe God has asked any of us to kill the others. If the others are wrong, he has the power to deal with them himself. Narrow-minded killing of those who pray differently is not the command of God. It is the work of much more sinister hand.
It will shock you that the religious man was a Moslem Imam. I never knew who he was. He moved on after his brief statement. Unfortunately men who think like him have been silenced or even killed by the fundamentalist. His kind of Islam is considered heresy by the powers that be. But, his words are ever true.
Christianity has always spread under duress. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the world was surprised to find that the majority of Russians were baptized Christians, including Gorbachev and Yeltsin. They secretly received their baptism in the Orthodox Church of Antioch. The Russian church was considered a state institution by the Communists and all records of baptism were monitored. The Antiochian church was a foreign body and thus did not report its baptism. The church grew from a single bishopric representative into almost 20 churches all over Russia, just to handle the baptisms.
Today, in spite of the extreme restrictions on any other religion in Moslem countries, there are large numbers of conversions, even at the risk of death. The death penalty is applicable to conversions away from Islam in most places.
Moslem coverts to Islam have operated a radio station out of Cyprus for years, and are working on a TV station, dedicated to preaching Christianity to Moslems. They explain where Islam has gone wrong and how it has veered away from what they believe it should have been.
It is surreal to hear Father Mohammed, or Father Ali. But it is happening. They do not preach hatred or death. They do not incite people to fight and kill. They simply explain the words of God: love, understanding, humility, kindness and generosity of the heart. Sounds very familiar.
Belief in God is not a luxury people adopt when it is convenient. It is a faith people adopt all the time, regardless of consequences. True believers are those who stay the course under adversity.
Finally, Santa Claus is not a pagan tradition. The story is rooted in the life of St. Nicholas, who was a forth century Bishop of Myra in today’s Turkey. He had inherited a lot of money from his family and would go around distributing gifts to people on Christmas. He would slip into the houses of the poor at night and leave them money and other necessities to avoid embarrassing them. He even tossed money through open windows. One of those times the coins landed in a sock hanging near a fire place to dry.
One day the people of a near by village noticed a glow over the horizon. When they went to investigate, they found St. Nicholas dead against the trunk of a tree, and his halo had lit up the whole tree.
It has been the tradition in the Middle East to light candles on trees at Christmas and exchange gifts ever since. It has nothing to do with German Tannenbaum – where Christianity would not arrive until much later. Sure the tree fit well with their tradition and made them feel more at home with Christianity, but it not start there.
In those days, Bishops wore colorful clothes, including a lot of red.
The exact day of the feast is really secondary to the event it commemorates. Will the resurrection of Christ be any more or less meaningful if it fell on a different date? NO.
Cadmus
