It is Christmas eve, and I'm enjoying the deep peace of an
evening with my family, and I am thinking about this
beautiful season and the hope that it brings, and also about
people celebrating the season around the world under very
different circumstances.
These are the Christian communities in peril in places like
southern Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Turkey and too many other places
in the world. Almost universally, these communities are
threatened by Islam, and as that religion drifts more and
more into extremism, the danger to the Christians living
among them grows.
One of the saddest consequences of the Iraq war was its
effect on Iraqi Christians. This community has been
decimated, forced to emigrate, and generally oppressed in
recent years by both Shiites and Sunnis, who are united in
their prejudice against Christians.
The Turkish Christian Community, which is among the oldest
in the world, has been reduced to just a few thousand by the
orchestrated oppression of the Turkish government--and this
is a country that aspires to entry into the European Union.
It should never be admitted until it faces its own truth
both in regards to Christians and Armenians, not to mention
Greeks, and becomes a modern nation, which is to say one
that is genuinely secular, recognizes human rights, and
expects its citizens to respect all.
The Christians of southern Sudan are hunted like animals by
Muslim militias. They are considered barely human, if at
all, and
yet they are, arguably, the only civilized and compassionate
community in the region.
We live in a world whose outrage is methodically blunted by
the political correctness of governments and media who
endlessly try to placate Muslim extremists.
Let's resolve, in 2010, to forget this nonsense approach to
the problem. We need to admit something: Christian ethics,
Christian compassion and Christianity's regard for the value
of the individual human being are among the very greatest of
all moral achievements.
Whether one is a fundamentalist, a moderate or a
secular Christian, we absolutely must stand up for Christian
values--specifically, those values that Christ taught, and
that are embodied in the gospels.
We need to renew our support for the gospel and the
sterling excellence of its message.
No matter how much the modern secular community may wish to
deny it, in fact, western civilization is Christian
civilization. The reason is that it rests in recognition of
the value of the individual.
In pre-classical times, during the long ages of the Egyptian
and Mesopotamian empires, there was no such thing as an
individual. The concept simply did not exist. Even the
rulers were so constrained by ritual that they were not in
any real way free.
Then, with the advent of Greek thought and Greek culture,
the idea of the citizen was born, and unspoken within it,
the idea of the individual.
The Roman Empire was the first to build a body of law around
the rights of individuals, but, like the Greeks, the concept
of the individual and the citizen were essentially the same.
Jesus Christ added a single idea of absolutely extraordinary
importance to this: that every human being, no matter how
humble, had value in the eyes of God, and was a valid
individual.
This is the idea that Christianity has brought to the world,
and with it all the compassion, decency and cherishing of
the needs of one another that come with it.
And this is why we absolutely must recognize and defend the
value of all Christian communities in the world, for they
are precious outposts of civilization on a planet where the
light of human decency is growing dimmer every day.
What is best in modern civilization rests on the shoulders
of the Gospels. Even our most secular western communities
derive their awareness of the value of the individual from
their own Christian roots.
We must not assume that other traditions are somehow equal
to the Christian tradition. They are not equal. I know that
it is sacrilege among the politically correct to say so, but
it is, quite simply, true. Christianity offers to the world
one, single idea of overwhelming importance, that is, in
fact, the salvation of this overpopulated world: it is that
every human being has value, and it is incumbent upon all of
us to cherish each of us as much as we cherish ourselves.
Outside of the Christian world, this idea, is, at best,
severely diluted.
Insofar, for example, as Asian societies have embraced the
value of the individual, they have done so because of the
influence of Christian civilization. For example, the
Japanese constitution, promulgated after World War II when
Japan was occupied by the western powers, recognized the
rights and value of the individual. Before this, Japan
absolutely did not recognize individual rights. The only
individual in Japan was the emperor, and he was, himself,
severely constrained by ritual.
In China today, the individual is almost without legal
significance, and, except for a tiny affluent minority, has
essentially no social value.
It takes the clarity and force of the Christian message to
enable people to recognize the value of the individual.
So, in this season of celebration of the birth of the author
of this sterling and sacred ethic, it is well worth
considering that there are Christians all over the world, on
the peripheries of civilization, who are suffering for their
faith, and deserve our recognition and support.
Pray for them.
