I'm 57 years old, and this is the first time I can remember that Christmas is not being openly celebrated in Bethlehem, in Israel, where Jesus of Nazareth was born.
I grew up Lutheran in Ohio, where church was a pretty low key, but strong an traditional part of life, as a kid. In the decades since, Christianity has morphed into something I don't recognize now, and I don't go to any church. But there is some higher power at work in the Universe, and Jesus was one of the great prophets of history of that force.
During Jesus' infancy, King Herod had all the children under two years old slaughtered in the region, after hearing that a savior had been born in the area. Jesus, obviously, escaped that slaughter. Now over 2,000 years later, Israeli forces have killed over 8,000 Palestinian children in Gaza, along with over 12,000 adults, nearly all civilians, and more than a million people there are now homeless. This is in addition to the killing of 1,400 people by Hamas, and over 150 Israeli soldiers killed in action. History does not look kindly on rulers who kill thousands of children, regardless of the circumstances.
Moses, in the desert, gave the Jewish people ten commandments. Thousands of years later, Jesus gave his followers two commandments
...and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind, and all your strength. The second is this, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." There is no other commandment greater than these."
Mark 12:30-31 RSV
Merry Christmas to all my readers who celebrate Christmas, around the world. Pray for those who can't have a Merry Christmas, wherever they may be.
Two thousand years later, we still haven't learned that lesson. For the record, for anyone wondering, I spent much of my 20's trying to make sense of religion and spirituality. During that time, I read the New Testament of the Bible, start to finish, 3 or 4 times. I read the books of the Old Testament, start to finish, up through Jonah or Micah. I didn't read the last few books of the Old Testament. I've read the four gospels, the book of Proverbs, the book of Isaiah, start to finish, two or more times each. I've read the Catholic pseudo-epigraphs. I've read all the books of the Gnostic gospels, early Christian writings left out of the Bible, the most famous being The Gospel of Thomas. I've read the psychic Edgar Cayce's The Story of Jesus. I'm also a big fan of Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth interview with Bill Moyers, all six hours of it, which looks at religions from around the world throughout history. My personal beliefs are based on what I've learned from all of that, and plenty of other reading and searching, over many years. I don't care what your beliefs are, and I don't want to argue about religion with you.
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