Christmas is approaching in Fayette County. A surprising number in our community will celebrate the Christian holiday with no reference to Jesus Christ at all, just shiny ornaments, bright lights, Santa references, and lots of commercial gift-giving.
Cultural influencers have done such a good job of erasing Jesus Christ from the societal memory and our lexicon that the celebration of a Savior’s birth has been replaced with ski trips, shopping sprees, and just about any activity that has nothing to do with contemplating humanity’s relationship with God.
The Anti-Christians vs the United States
Many of the children in our community have never been in a church or taught the historical importance of the Christian faith to the world. Consequentially, there is an intellectual blind spot and an obvious explanation for the overwhelming approval of the new religions of science and humanism (Marxism), alluding to humans as deities.
Our nation’s Founding Fathers were very well-educated men. They understood the constructive influence of Christianity on their world, including life before Jesus Christ, and life after the birth of Jesus Christ (the object of Christmas).
It’s about at this point where secular political humanists chime in that some of the Founding Fathers were deists, atheists, or some other form of anti-Christian. It’s a desperate attempt at distraction from truly examining the influence of Christianity.
Back in early America, the classic liberal education was steeped in history and philosophy. They knew the Greek philosophers Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. They studied the Romans like Cato the Elder and Younger as well as Marcus Tullius Cicero. They had a keen understanding of both the Old and New Testaments and the sway Christianity had in transforming the Roman Empire and the world after that.
They attended schools and universities immersed in Christian doctrine that shaped the formation and foundation of our nation. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and others had strong religious traditions. Princeton’s crest still says, “Under God she flourishes.”
The Declaration of Independence pronounces humans “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
The First Amendment clearly states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” The freedom of religion, Christianity, and Judaism in that day were of vital importance to the subsistence of our nation, protected and insured by federal decree.
There is no denying the influential Biblical context in the education, thoughts, and actions of the founding and the existence of the United States. Unfortunately, we have entire generations that will never be exposed to these lessons.
Many of our young people will be taught to believe in the divisive power of mankind and “The Science” (not the same as the scientific method).
Annihilation of the Christians
Would it be appropriate to remember and pray for the Christians around the world of various races, ethnicities, and nationalities who are being slaughtered for their faith before we open gifts around our Christmas trees?
The Anti-Christians are proceeding with the systematic elimination of Christians taking place from North Africa to Syria and Iraq. In parts of the world where Christianity predates the rise of the Muslim faith by centuries, at least one million Christians have either been killed or have fled because of persecution.
Should we be dismayed that the United States government evacuated many Sunni and Shiite Muslims citing their persecution in Muslim areas of conflict, but left the Christians and Yazidis to be murdered?
Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, recently asked, “Why is the world silent while Christians are being slaughtered in the Middle East and Africa?”
Where are the American media, Congress, and influential Christian voices on this emergency?
Anti-Christian violence towards Christians is growing in Europe, 285% in France alone, with the Catholic Church reporting a worrisome increase in brutal acts including “threats, violent attacks, murders and profanation of churches and places of worship, cemeteries, and other religious properties.”
The Peacemaker is beyond politics
For the Anti-Christians, their self-made gods relying on human intervention have led human beings down the path of war, destruction, slavery, and poverty since the beginning of time. The return of Marxism is literally doubling down on those tragedies using divisive tactics to upend the world as we know it.
Jesus Christ expresses the inner peace that humankind cannot give you amid world suffering. Read His sermon on the mount.
Merry Christmas, behold Jesus Christ
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him,” (the Gospel according to John, chapter 3, verses 16 and 17).
[Brown is a former mayor of Peachtree City and served two terms on the Fayette County Board of Commissioners.]
Happy Holidays to everyone in Citizen-land!
May your Holy Days be joyful, whether you celebrate Diwali, or Hanukkah, or Christmas, or Ramadan, or Bodhi Day, or you are of any other faith.
Mr. Brown’s incoherent and illogical argument is baffling even by the low standards we’ve come to expect from his output. Christianity has been losing market share for many decades. Instead of focusing upon the problems with the brand, he blames the competition. Apparently, science’s testable and much more logical explanations of phenomena threatens his god. And humanism – a positive world view that is certainly not synonymous with Marxism – attracts more new adherents than condemnations and accusations of “total depravity” based upon millennia-old religious teachings. And then there’s that problem of hypocrisy. Fundamental and evangelical Christians have totally abandoned any semblance of adherence to their historic yardstick of right and wrong by wholeheartedly embracing a heathen who never met a commandment that he didn’t immediately violate.
Brown is correct to condemn violence against Christians or any other religious sect around the world. However, no religious faith has been more responsible for slaughtering others who differed with them than Christians over the last 2,000 years. Indeed, Christians have spent centuries killing each other over doctrinal differences. World history is replete with copious examples of organized Christianity leading “human beings down the path of war, destruction, slavery, and poverty.”
The Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees freedom FROM religion just as much as freedom to practice a religion. Many today have found Christianity wanting and are exercising their Constitutional right. If Christians wish to reverse this trend, they will be more effective focusing upon upgrading their brand rather than condemning their competitors.
What are you talking about St. Fiction? Christianity was founded on condemning the competitor. I would say everyone, even atheists and humanism, are founded on and promote their brand by condemning competition – even the illustrious Saint of Fiction.
Yikes. Let’s keep Steve and his increasingly unstable mental health in our prayers.