AT CHRISTMAS TIME, isn’t it weird that the chief message of Jesus Christ seems to be the farthest thing from the minds of people who call themselves Christians? Especially the pastors and priests for whom this is the busy season, like the textiles merchants?
It would make me laugh, if it didn’t make me weep, how those who belligerently claim the greatest connection to him are often the farthest from him in day-to-day life.
Now I’m not a Christian. I reject outright the notion that Jesus Christ died for my sins; I never even knew the guy. Further, I regard the basic tenet of Christian faith – that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son to suffer and die that mankind
might be redeemed – to be repulsive. When I explained John 3:16 to my own daughter – who was raised entirely without a religious belief and is one of the most morally upright people I know – she was mortified. “What,” she said, “a horrible thing for a father to do!” It is the rational reaction.
The message Jesus the historical figure brought, however, is unassailable, even if he was nothing more than human. Before Jesus came, mankind was at the mercy of the Old Testament God, who regularly demanded human sacrifice from and visited dreadful plagues upon his most devout believers.
Into that morass of violence and cruelty, Jesus Christ brought one message that, if followed, frees humanity from all evil and turns it to good: love thy neighbour as thyself.
At any time of year it’s bad enough but, at Christmas time, it seems especially abhorrent that those who claim to believe that Jesus died for their sins should advocate hate in his name. But every time you open the paper, it seems, there’s another clown with an expensively-cut suit and a poorly-faked American accent demanding that homosexuals be punished. These jokers claim to know what God wants better than Jesus.
Even if you don’t buy that he was the son of God – and I don’t buy that Jesus was the son of God any more than Osama bin Laden is – there is still a great deal of wisdom to be had from Christ’s life and teaching; and nothing is more important than the tolerance he taught; and lived. The modern mercenaries who claim his authority would happily beat lesbians to death – but, if Jesus were here, he’d wash their feet; and, if you don’t know that, you don’t know the love of God.
Even if you believe the Bible is the word of God – and I don’t believe that any more than I believe the TV guide is – nothing in the New Testament shows Jesus would have hated homos. Indeed, I’d stake my soul on it that he would have loved them all the same.
So, any time a supposed man of God preaches hate, we should all remember that Jesus invited the one without sin to cast the first stone; and we should ask ourselves if Jesus, man or God or both, died for nothing, if he would get, today, plenty apparently without sin and willing to pelt homos like mangoes if he came to some pulpits in Barbados today.
• BC Pires is not a Christian but follows Christ’s teachings.