Our world ticks along according to its own rules. Natural and manmade disasters devastate homes and loved ones. Wars leech away the health and vitality of our nations. Angry and intolerant people slap aside reason and compassion to advance their own closed-minded beliefs. Greed plunders our planet to leave devastation, poverty, and misery in its wake. Self-inflicted Ignorance retards our growth and promotes decay and hopelessness.
Is humanity doomed?
Scientists tell us that there are sound neurological and evolutionary reasons why humanity believes and acts the way it does–that it has adaptive value. Well, seems to me, we are “adapting” ourselves into extinction.
As I write this, conflicts in India-Pakistan and Israel-Palestine are once again flaring because hate and anger flow stronger than compassion and understanding. Iran continues to shake the fist of intolerance at evil infidels as it not-so-secretly builds a nuclear arsenal. Genocide, terrorism, wars of aggression, and coups of ambition blight our globe while we gripe about how expensive it is to fill up the SUV or how we can hardly afford our big screen HD TVs and comfy couches. The USA and now China, India, and other emerging nations continue to rape the Earth in order to build ever higher towers and glittering palaces of worship to the gods of personal wealth and power.
This, then, is survival of the fittest. Billions go hungry every day so that a few can wallow in relative luxury. Millions are killed, tortured, displaced, or brutalized to justify the ideologies or ambitions of a few. The Earth is plundered and critically wounded to satisfy humanity’s growing consumerism. Other life forms are casually kicked aside or eliminated if they get in the way of “progress.”
How long will it be before something disastrous breaks?
How long before humanity commits corporate suicide through environmental abuse, nuclear holocaust, or corruption and decadence? Perhaps you will escape the horror. Your children or grandchildren, however, will not. The process has already begun; the outcome is inevitable.
Merry Christmas! Peace on Earth and good will to all!
“Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!” … “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry?”…
“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time … as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time…. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”
Tragically, as the media tells it, Christmas is a huge failure. We didn’t spend enough money buying those morsels of love and happiness. Family and friends are, no doubt, weeping in their pillows because they didn’t get enough stuff.
Where, then, do we hear about the metrics of kindness, forgiveness, and charity? Where do we hear about people and nations putting aside hatred, distrust, and belligerence for the sake of peace and joy? Have these things lost their place within the heart of Christmas? Has humanity evolved into nations of idol worshippers and self-righteous fanatics?
Ostensibly, the joys of the Christmas season is celebrated the world over by many faiths. The daily news headlines, however, seem to tell a different story. It is just another day in a long chain of days where greed, ignorance, and hate rule–another day of “survival of the fittest.”
“A small matter,” said the Ghost [of Christmas Past], “to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.”
“Small!” echoed Scrooge.
The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig: and when he had done so, said,
“Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?”
… “It isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ’em up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”
Small things add quickly into life-styles, community values, and national ideologies.
Who, then, is responsible for these small things? Them, out there?
How do you count-up the treasures of Christmas Past within your memory? Do you mark Christmas with your family as a failure if you are unable to spend as much money as last year? Who are the real beneficiaries of your largess? Have you joined the herd of frantic shoppers sponsored by corporate America?
Perhaps the headlines would read differently if we redirected some of our energy from “shopping frenzy” to “love thy neighbor” during this special time of year. Gifts of food and necessity adorned with the power of smiles, words and looks, become the greatest treasures within our memories.
Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit [of Christmas Present] stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery’s every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts.
We all belong to the community of humankind. Your neighbor across the street or across the border is you: mother, son, brother, sister. Perhaps your neighbor wears a different hat, or marks their life with a different song, but, underneath, we are of one fellowship.
We find the enduring peace and joy of Christmas when we open our hearts to all our neighbors and share the wealth of friendship and compassion.
“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” said Scrooge, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?”
Still the Ghost [of Christmas Yet to Come] pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.
“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!”
The Spirit was immovable as ever.
Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, EBENEZER SCROOGE.
Humanity’s future is not painted irrevocably onto the canvas of the cosmos. God gifts humankind with the freedom to choose our paths into the future and the legacy that we leave behind. What you do today builds what you will be tomorrow. What kind of future are you building for yourself, your children, friends and neighbors, the world?
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.
A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, was published in 1843. Its legacy lives on in many different forms, but many people have lost the message. Click here and read the rest of the story. You, too, can change the world simply by changing yourself.
Christmas is not about how much money you spend. It isn’t even specifically about Christ. It’s about how much love and understanding you share with family, friends, neighbors, and every one.
Make this the priority for your next Christmas.
And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!