Christmas reminds us that, to some of our “elite,” Jesus’
ultimate “crime” remains unchanged. Though two thousand years
separate them, some members of the liberal elite of our own day,
just as were the elite of his, are unwilling to accept Jesus
admitting to being God.
In Chapter 22 of his Gospel, St. Luke recounts Jesus being
brought before the High Council in Jerusalem. The following
exchange sealed his fate:
“You are the Son of God, then?” they all said, and he replied,
“It is you who say I am.” They said, “Need we call further
witnesses? We have heard it ourselves from his own lips.”
Despite all the manufactured transgressions with which Jesus was
accused, it was this direct question whether he was God, and his
admission to it, that caused the elite of his own society to reject
him.
As we confront an ever secularized Christmas, it is clear that
some members of our own self-appointed liberal “elite” likewise
reject Jesus because he is held to be God. However, for our
elitists their rejection is not because Jesus’ admission offends
their religious beliefs, but because it embodies a religious
belief.
There is no shortage of room for Santa Claus, for nonreligious
carols, for giving presents, and all manner of “seasonal
celebration” at this time of year. In such a vein, Christmas is
just good fun, and most importantly, it is not religious.
And there is no shortage of other secular “holidays” (though the
derivation of that terminology from “holy days” must rankle some
who stop to consider). Just the opposite! There is a veritable
explosion of commemorative days — federal “holidays” and even more
“recognition days” — such as Earth Day. Few people actually
“celebrate” them at all — beyond a day off from work at the most
extreme, to a bumper sticker at the spectrum’s other end.
If Jesus could just get with the program of not being God, there
would not be a problem with manger scenes on courthouse steps at
Christmas either. If his followers could simply accept him as just
a man — a wise man, or a good man, or even a revolutionary man
(preferably in the mold of Che’, not Washington), all would be
forgiven. Our modern day elitists have plenty of room for men of
any of these sorts — heck, Jesus would only need to be one, not all
three combined.
The problem is that Jesus will not now, any more than he would
two millennia ago. And because of it, it is just as clear that,
were Christmas not already a holiday, a true Holy Day, some members
of the liberal elite would fight tooth and nail to prevent it from
becoming a federal holiday now.
The reason for this visceral rejection of Jesus as God goes well
beyond just these elitists’ gross misrepresentation of the First
Amendment’s establishment of religion language into something the
Founders never intended: turning barring a state-sponsored religion
into a state-sponsored barring of religion.
The real reason for these elitists’ rejection is their need and
demand for relativism. If all things are relative, then all things’
value is arbitrary and must be arbitrated. In an endless range of
shades of gray, things are to be ranked and shifted at will — i.e.,
their will. There is only a need for arbitrators to assign things
their value. And of course, to these elitists, this is their role.
The rest of us can just follow along as best we can and perhaps
hope to fully understand later.
The problem with God is that God is anything but relative. God
is absolute. Instead of these elitists’ mélange of gray, God is
black and white. There is good and evil and there is salvation and
condemnation — all done on God’s terms, not ours. There is no place
in such a world for what these elitists imagine they do best and
want to do most: redefine the world in their own terms.
This is not to say that such elitists will not tolerate
religions. Just that, religions must know their place. These
elitists are happy to see religions as cultural trappings, rather
than expressions of God. Thus they are dismissed with a
paternalistic pat on the head. For these elitists, religions are
not about God, they are simply quaint.
There is no fuller demonstration of God as the dividing line for
these elitists than their disparate treatment of Christmas with
Easter.
These are the two most important holidays in the Christian
calendar. The former is far easier for these elitists to secularize
than the latter. Who cannot celebrate a birth? Everyone had one.
Contrastingly, only one person could rise from the dead on his own.
It is unambiguously the proof of being God. God is so plainly at
the center of Easter, that it is impossible to separate him from
it.
For Christians, were there no Easter, there would be no
Christmas. For these elitists, there can only be Christmas, if they
ignore Easter.
The world has changed much in the twenty centuries since Jesus,
but some of our elites have not in one respect. How dare Jesus
challenge their authority? Even in this age of elitism’s feigned
tolerance there’s still one thing that won’t be tolerated: someone
admitting to being God.
