How Many Christmases Must We Celebrate Before Reaching World Peace?
Commentary by Pete Haug | FāVS.News
Last month people of many faiths commemorated Christmas in ways sacred and secular. Since the first observance of Christ’s birth in Rome, 336 CE, billions have celebrated Christmas.
To his followers, this mild-mannered, scholarly carpenter’s son Jesus was an emissary of God’s love for humanity: Messiah, Savior, “Prince of Peace.” Christians, the world’s largest religious community, number more than 2.6 billion. Unified, these followers of the Prince of Peace could be a major force for establishing world peace, good will among humankind.
Sadly, Christians comprise more than 45,000 divided denominations, many warring against one other. In the Holy Land, “the birthday of the Christian Messiah is celebrated three times” annually by different denominations. Elsewhere, Christmas is observed on different days. But the date of Christ’s birth is not as important as his message, inspiring untold generations.
Many Understandings
Competing translations and interpretations of both Old and New Testaments, with followers sometimes obsessing over word choices, have created disunity. A small-town church in upstate New York split over whether to say “debts” or “trespasses” in the Lord’s Prayer. My wife, Jolie, a church soloist, helped defray college expenses singing for various denominations. “I was never able to figure out what the differences were,” she says.
Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” may help explain. As Antonio observes, “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” That’s probably the same dissension-sowing devil that causes devout Christians to argue over “debts” or “trespasses.”
Scriptural interpretations vary widely among denominations. Symbolism is particularly vulnerable. What do the bread and wine of the last supper really symbolize? Is wine necessary for Communion, or will grape juice suffice?
The Devil in the Details
The devil in the details of Scripture inhibits our understanding. Sometimes called Satan, this devil seeks to undermine God’s purpose and lure humans to hell, an indeterminate location. John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” begins with Satan on hell’s lake of fire after attempting to overthrow God, who has cast him out from heaven. This “vengeful” God ejected Satan for trying to usurp God’s governance of heaven. There wasn’t even an election!
Milton characterizes Satan as someone with a monumental ego, God’s right-hand angel, now fallen, who tried to wrest control. Although I don’t believe in either hell or the devil, I find Milton’s characterization spot on. I view the “devil” in each of us as our individual egos, our insistent self, the “evil promptings of the human heart.” It tempts us with desires incompatible with the highest ideals of Christianity as well as many other religions.
My Early Christian Days
I was raised Episcopalian. Each Sunday in church I repeated the Apostles’ Creed, beginning, “I believe in God, the Father almighty …” By age 17 I no longer believed. I’d become agnostic. I didn’t deny the existence of God; I questioned it.
I still believed in the ideals promulgated by Jesus but was thoroughly confused by the layers of ritual and smorgasbord of interpretations imposed on the sacred text by different branches of Christianity and by internal inconsistencies.
Some believe that if one isn’t “Christian,” one is destined for hell. But which Christianity must one follow? Which has cornered “truth”? And what about souls who died before the coming of Christ or who have never heard of him? Different theologies rationalize this question differently.
And Other Faiths?
Many, if not most, extant religions, including those of Indigenous peoples, espouse a single deity and some form of the Golden Rule. The Quran retells biblical stories about Jesus and Old Testament prophets. It reinforces and validates their truths, even while recording the revelation of Muhammad, another step in God’s progressive revelations. How then, as we enter 2024, can religions promulgate the hatreds and atrocities that permeate today’s world?
Making Sense of It
In the 19th century, Baha’u’llah explained how periodic renewals of God’s eternal covenant advance human civilization, building on earlier revelations and allowing an ever-advancing civilization to effloresce. New revelations bring guidance commensurate with humankind’s ability to understand and implement the latest “updates.”
Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all monotheistic religions, share much in common with other widespread faiths. Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Hinduism contain elements of monotheism. Such similarities among faiths reveal their essential oneness. Recognizing this would do much to unify humankind, as implored by this prayer by Baha’u’llah:
O my God! O my God! Unite the hearts of Thy servants, and reveal to them Thy great purpose. May they follow Thy commandments and abide in Thy law. Help them, O God, in their endeavor, and grant them strength to serve Thee. O God! Leave them not to themselves, but guide their steps by the light of Thy knowledge, and cheer their hearts by Thy love. Verily, Thou art their Helper and their Lord.
If Earth ever needed unity, now is the time.
Thank you, Pete, for your commentary, which is as usual heartfelt and thought-provoking. I share your yearning for peace,but I’m wondering if the path toward peace might not be a unifying monotheism but rather a respect for a diverstiy of faiths–including faith in that real old time religion, animism.
I do believe that the God of the Bible, the creator of all, speaks to all souls (John 1:9) through that still small voice, our conscience. If a person follows that voice and does what is right, God can and will save them. If they reject that voice for, what seems to be the strongest regardless of faith professed, our human nature of selfishness, me first, their heart is hardened and less likely to hear God’s voice to them.
To me, what Paul said is the heart of the gospel, the cross, is what is missing in most Christian churches and other faiths. The cross kills. It IS to kill our selfishness, our human nature, and replace it with God’s nature of selflessness. We are to DIE to self.
God, because He created us, owns us. He has the right to make the rules. I can choose to follow and obey Him and His rules (He only wrote 10, Deut 5:22) and He will be my God or I can choose the rules I want and I am god.
If I am god, along with 8 billion other gods all choosing the rules that benefit “me”, there will be no peace.