Chris Brown

I am always interested by those who say they are not religious but who love the carols and Christian symbols used at Christmas.

And while I’m on the subject of Christian symbols at Christmas – I was interested to see on a TV programme the other day (it was a BBC effort to show Christmases of the past but which left us all feeling a little dissatisfied – at least it left everyone I know dissatisfied) that after putting up some outside lights and standing back to look at them there was a comment about how there were not any Christian symbols – let me clear up what there was:

• A star – obviously the star of Bethlehem that the wise men followed, a Christian symbol.
• A Christmas tree – a Christian symbol started by Martin Luther
• Father Christmas – a Christian saint (St Nicolas)
• Candy canes – a Christian symbol invented by a candy maker in the USA (shepherds crook with white for purity/Jesus and red for the blood of Christ)

No Christian symbols??? It was nearly all Christian symbols but they were too ignorant to know it.

Anyway, I understand that some folks might like the feeling of listening to music, giving presents, eating, etc. but it always seems to me that carols, and the other Christian celebrations, offer something much more than you will ever get with just the Seasons Greetings stuff. It is all very well being jolly and talking about goodwill but you need the words of hope that only the birth of Jesus Christ can give to offer any real meaning. Otherwise it is just sentimental mush and how is that going to help anyone? The point of a Christian Christmas is NOT a sentimental wishy washy vague hope that things might get better if we keep grinning but that God has sent his son and so we can, at last, put our trust and hope in something concrete. If you remove Jesus all you have is a sentimental selling fest where we are all persuaded to spend obscene amounts of money on stuff we don’t need with limp talk of peace and happiness with nothing to back it up but with Jesus there is so much more. With Jesus in Christmas the lonely, the sick, the abused, the poor, the suffering are offered hope but take Jesus away and you have nothing to give them but glitter and mulled sentiments which are all, in the end, useless to anyone.

No, you cannot have a true Christmas without Jesus – if you try you are just conning yourself.

Have a very happy  – Jesus filled – Christmas.

I have often heard the accusation that religion is evil. The evidence, it is claimed, is that many wars have been fought in the name of religion and many people have been mentally and physically abused in the name of religion. There is then usually a comment about the restrictive laws that have subjected women, people of other races and the sexually orientated minorities to terrible suffering in the name of religion.

Of course, many of these accusations do have foundations because many religious people have been the source of much suffering (to deny this would be a crime in itself). I would like at this point to add my voice, again, to the many others who have said sorry for the suffering that has been caused in the name of religion.

When the religious counter this argument by pointing out that the same suffering (if not more) has been caused by atheist regimes the counter-claim is made that these were of course regimes that were  – to all intents and purposes – religions, in that they encouraged the worship of individuals.

However, such an argument  – in my opinion – misses the point completely and here is why. An organisation and the philosophy that drives it are two distinct things and should not be confused.

The truth is that it is not the religion that causes the problem but it is the organisation that is set up in the name of that religion that is to blame. Sadly, when power, influence or money is at stake people look for justifications to allow them to take what belongs to others (be it oil, land, gold, whatever). They can find excuses in the corruption of any philosophy to justify their actions. Sometimes organisations get so big and the people who run them so powerful that they get corrupted. This is as true for any atheist organisation as it is for the Church or government or whatever other organisation you might mention. We are currently seeing this played out with FIFA where so much power and money is concerned that people have manipulated rules – or so it seems – to allow them to have a greater share of the power and money than perhaps they should have done. It seems obvious to me that the problem is with the organisation and not necessarily with the philosophy behind it. If you want to learn about organisations that cause suffering you have to include the old communist states of the world in your reckoning – atheist organisations of course who did everything in their power to stamp out religion – including causing great suffering to the religious.

So why do religions get more blame than other organisations? Is it because we are all aware that they should know better? Is it because we know that the religions behind them have such a high moral code at their heart that they should know better than to cause such suffering and problems? I think this is certainly true of the Christian church  – though I cannot speak for other religions. Christians should know better but sometimes they get it wrong and the organisation becomes corrupted (even if the people at the top don’t understand that what they are doing is wrong – but that is a big subject for another day perhaps). And that is why, from time to time, the church issues an apology – what other organisations do you know that do that? Has the scientific world (for instance) apologised for the part it played in the extermination of thousands of Jews during the second world war? If it has I’ve never heard of it.

Here are some links to church apologies in case you doubt this: From JP2 from Methodists

Of course, the organisation that breaks its own codes of morality should be held to account for it but that does not make the codes of morality evil. I am quite happy to say that atheists are not evil people – misguided yes but not evil. I don’t blame atheism for the suffering caused in its name  – though I do have questions about the lack of moral absolutes that can so easily lead to such suffering. So, you can’t blame the Christian faith for the bad things the church has done in its past – to confuse the two is either extremely nieve or downright ignorant.

The best you can do is to attack each religion on its moral code – not the organisations associated with it (hence, to condemn the Muslim faith on the grounds of terrorism alone is nonsense). To make any such argument you would have to attack the moral codes of each religion and at least decide on each religion individually (this would require a detailed examination of what each religion ACTUALLY says and not your own interpretation of some obscure texts or literal out of context quoting or quoting some extreme minority position, as most atheists seem to do). I am happy to say – without spelling it out in detail here – that I believe Christianity can stand up very well to such an attack.

No, religion is not evil.

P.S. Of course, without religion you couldn’t even ask the question because without God there are no moral absolutes and without moral absolutes there is no such thing as good or evil. If you are an atheist who wants to make the claim that religion is evil then you are defeating your own argument – sorry.

There seems to be a backlash going on at the moment regarding people’s affiliation with faith groups. People are angry at terrorists and, mistakenly, believe that it is a fault with belonging to a faith. Hence the dramatic rise in those who claim no affiliation to any religious group. I think there is also a belief that there is something hypocritical about saying you belong to a religion and yet never have anything to do with its institutions – maybe this is people being more honest but in my view it is more people being confused over what it means to be a Christian (or whatever).

Of course the church has colluded in this in many ways. It has not been open and honest and (like all institutions) has suffered from those who have used the organisation for their own selfish ends – people have got fed up with it (I note that the church has apologised for this behaviour but no one seems to notice).  The church itself has suffered from a crisis of faith sometimes preferring doubt to faith and being confused by various modern approaches to thinking about faith that have left us all wondering what it is we actually do believe. The church has avoided confrontation with atheists (presumably in the hopes that if we stick our head in the sand it will all just go away) – handing the atheist the intellectual high ground where they have set about disturbing the minds of countless University students who have been persuaded (wrongly) that atheism is the only intellectual option. This has been passed on to the whole education system which is now so confused about what Christians believe that it prefers a simplistic ‘all religions say the same thing’ approach – they don’t. How can people say they are Christian (or not) when they don’t have a clue about what being a Christian is? I notice that this leads the ignorant to call for less Christianity in our institutions – we don’t need less we obviously need more.

The situation just seems to be getting worse. I do see signs of hope and my understanding of history is such that I can take assurance from bad periods in the history of our nation where things became pretty Godless previously.

I guess what concerns me most is that the majority of the country seems to be quite happy to go along with being Godless. I am worried about the soul of this nation and although others do feel the same how can we convince the media – who seem to have a tight grip on what we as a nation believe?

We are always being encouraged to think that free speech is important and it is all about being free to say what you want. I do believe it is important but I don’t think it is about being free to say what you want. In fact we have laws to stop people saying what they want when it is going to incite hatred or violence against another. We rightly  – in my opinion – stop people from attacking people verbally just because they have differing coloured skins , etc.

Free speech should not be about saying anything but should be about rational and thoughtful discussion of any issue.

We are also given the impression that we should restrict speech if someone is going to be upset by what is said. This is nonsense, of course. We cannot decide to ignore issues just because someone might be upset in the discussion. If we are going to have real freedom of speech and try, together, to discover what truth really is then we must be prepared to allow people to say things that might be personally upsetting. Of course, I’m not suggesting in a Politician/School playground sense but in a clear and reasonable way. Arguments can be put in such a way that they are designed to cause a reaction in the hopes of winning a point by causing the challenger to feel uncomfortable – or even angry. That way of arguing does not get us any closer to the truth.

I firmly believe that what we need is the ability to have a talk about anything with an approach that says anything can be said as long as it is logical (backed up by evidence if necessary) and said in a way that is not a personal attack or said in a offensive way. I think there is a difference between talking about something that someone might strongly disagree with (and hence find upsetting) and talking in an offensive manner (using words or phrases designed to get an emotional reaction). We have to learn to use language better and find a way of not getting all hot under the collar when someone disagrees with us.

One of the problems I find as a Christian is that few people are actually willing to have a sensible debate. Nearly all discussions of faith, outside faith communities, degenerate into name calling with points trying to be scored by citing the badness of those who have claimed to be Christians (or whatever). Yes it is true that there have been many misguided people who have believed they were doing something in the name of Christ (this could also apply to Mohammed by the way) when in fact what they ended up doing was anything but in the name of Christ.

It would help everyone if we could get beyond the pointless name calling and start talking in a sensible way.

I sometimes hear/read atheists, for instance, saying that 9/11 changed everything and so now the gloves are off and we are free to start name calling. I’m afraid 9/11 changed nothing in regards to what the truth is and that name calling is still (and always has been) a pathetic attempt by those with weak arguments to win by making the opposition embarrassed. Free speech is not freedom to make offensive jokes or produce offensive cartoons – this is an abuse of an important value (and sadly for many reason seems to leave when laughter begins).

I pray that one day the world will wake up and start taking truth seriously and seek after it in a good way  – that for me is what free speech is about.