"The reason for the season": Whatever our religion, we need peace and goodwill all year round!

The thing that I like best about the holiday season is the open and frequent call for “peace on earth” and “goodwill to people”(at one time, “men”). OK, at one time, many decades ago, I most liked the presents. Of course, the main “holiday” in the US is Christmas, a Christian celebration. But, as someone who is not a Christian, and was not brought up in any Christian church, I like those sentiments, expressed in Christmas cards and banners and the ubiquitous holiday movies like “A Christmas Carol” and its descendant “It’s a Wonderful Life” (Do you know how long it takes a working man to save $5000? A lot longer back in 1946!). What I hope that they mean is that Christianity, the dominant religion in the US values them.

It is important because it could, at most times of the year, be hard to identify these as the values held by the bulk of those who call themselves Christian. Peace, and goodwill, and empathy, and caring about others including strangers, are not – by a long shot – the dominant sentiments or behaviors we see among Americans (and others). War is big. Hate is big. Castigating and oppressing the other is big. Excluding, not welcoming, the stranger, is huge. Anger, rage, meanness, violence, and close-mindedness often seem to dominate the landscape.

While not Christian, I have read the New Testament, but more important have watched what many people who are Christians say and do in all seasons. There are many thousands who volunteer to help the needy, to feed them, to build houses for them, to offer both financial and moral support. In my area, southern Arizona, groups such as Samaritans, Humane Borders, and No More Deaths (No Mas Muertes) welcome the stranger and reach out, giving of themselves and taking real risks to help. As a doctor, I see others who travel around the world to impoverished countries and even war zones to offer their skills, usually at their own expense. These people are around all year, doing amazing things, motivated by their faith. I do not share their religion, but I am awed by the good works that they do. There are a lot of ads for St. Jude’s Hospital for Children on TV at this time of year. I knew that Danny Thomas, the late actor, was deeply involved in supporting it, but I looked it up and discovered that he founded it. And took responsibility for raising money to build it and to operate, and “never send a bill” to a patient or family. The former president and first lady Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter built houses for the needy with Habitat for Humanity.

There are many other examples of people whose actions demonstrate that they seek to emulate the Jesus of the New Testament who helps the sick and poor. Who commands his followers to treat their neighbor, and indeed the stranger, as themselves. Who reaches out and touches, not just heals, the leper, an act that would have made him unclean in those days. Who brings women into his ministry. Who turns over the tables of the moneylenders at the temple, and warns that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven.

It is quite remarkable that entire church structures have been built on principles at variance with, indeed in opposition to, those teachings and, more important, those actions throughout the history of the last 2000 years. Selling indulgences, passports for admission to Heaven for the rich? Crusades? Capital punishment? Hating the other? Excluding women from central roles? People of color? People with different gender and sexual identities? Fire and brimstone? Given that history, I guess it should not surprise me, then, that so many today who profess to be Christians in fact act on hate and intolerance rather than peace and good will. But it makes me sad.

When folks, I guess particularly Christians, want to justify hate, punishment, exclusion, and generally mean things, they turn away from the New Testament and cite the Old. That part of their Bible, the only Bible for Jews, is chock full of nasty and mean things that you are supposed to do to other people. Leviticus, the third book of the Torah (called the Pentateuch by Christians) is especially rich in meanness. It is where the proscription of men sleeping with men, for example, is found. Of course, there is a whole lot of other stuff proscribed, and to be punished with death (often with a specific type of death, such as stoning or burning – no guns, they didn’t have them, no lethal injections either). Chapter 20 is especially rife with things that folks should be put to death for. One of the most effective expositions of the selectivity with which many Christians choose the parts of that chapter to believe in and enforce is provided by the fictional US President Jeb Bartlet on the old TV show “The West Wing”, where he takes down an ostensible Bible fundamentalist by asking about how he should follow many of the less well-known commands therein. But, by the way, Leviticus also contains a lot of good stuff foreshadowing the teachings of Jesus in the 19^th chapter. Check it out. Some of that chapter is observed today only by the most Orthodox Jews (e.g., not cutting the hair at the sides of the head or the beard, Lev 19:27), but, relevant to today, there is Lev 19:34 “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.” This does not seem to be the dominant ideology around now.

A popular phrase not long ago was “What would Jesus do?”, abbreviated “WWJD?”. Taking it at face value, this is what those I have referred to above do. It is hard, reading about Jesus in the Gospels, to believe that he would not, in virtually in every situation or controversy, take the side of the poor against the rich, the powerless against the powerful, the peacemakers against the warmakers, the weak against the strong. It’d be great if that were what we saw that from most people, Christian or not.

There are rich people in the Bible, and I cannot find a call for them to be stoned to death per se. But they do not get the privilege and honor that they receive today. Today those who are billionaires and do not care about others, who keep hoards of wealth that neither they nor their dependents will be able to use while millions go hungry and homeless, are honored. But their behavior is despicable whatever religion or non-religion they subscribe do.

If they are Christian, they must be imagining a needle with a very big eye.

Christmas in the Desert

Even in the Tucson desert, it can get pretty chilly in the early morning around Christmas. On this Christmas Eve morning, it was under 40 as the dogs and I went out for a walk in the park, chilly enough for a lined jacket and keeping the cotton gloves on, but warmer than two days ago when the 26 degrees meant down jacket and hood and muffler and wool gloves. That night we had covered some of the cactus with sheets, and protected the arms of another with a plethora of Styrofoam cups (sorry, forgot to take a picture!).

Still, it is the Winter Solistice, and even leaving at 7:30am, and missing the red reflection of the dawn on the Santa Catalina Mountains by a few minutes (pic from another day), the sun was low in the sky that the first half of the walk was mostly in shade from the trees in the park and not warmed; of course, this is when the dogs stop most often to do their business. That it must have been some colder earlier was demonstrated by the frosted dew on the grassy part of park, not yet melted by the low sun. But it is quiet, even quieter than usual, with hardly any walkers (with or without dogs), joggers, or cyclists. Not sure I understand; you can take Christmas Eve morning off from running or biking, but the dogs need to be walked. I guess they’ll be out later…the only ones we run into, two friendly women with two friendly dogs, are generous, giving out treats to a receptive Fry and Maggie.

The birds in the trees all look bigger than normal, feathers puffed up to stay warm, the little house finches to the Cooper’s hawk. The quiet allows time to think, to reflect in this season that is an oxymoron of holidays of hope and positive thoughts as well as a time of painful memories of severe personal losses, that there must be good things in humankind to have created the sentiments that mark this time of year. While most of the news ranges from bad to worse, with leaders around the world, led by our own president, rattling sabers of war and spouting hatred in direct contradiction to the messages of Peace and Love that are ubiquitous this time of year. It is a time when the hearts of many are softened, at least a little; the time we re-watch films like “A Christmas Carol” and the Grinch and “It’s A Wonderful Life” to remind us that it is possible and, perhaps, even our world leaders can act upon the tenets that the religions that they profess to believe in are based on. And yet, as I feel anger rising at the irresponsible owner of the dog that left fresh poop in the middle of the path (someone must have been here earlier today, I guess), I realize how easy it is to not love. And I try to forgive, and hope.

I will not go through the litany of wishes for the many holidays celebrated at this Solstice, because I am certain that however hard I try I will leave out someone’s. But I will end with wishes common here at this time of year, and sincerely hope that they will come true:

“Peace on Earth, and Good Will to All.”