MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘Christ’

The Gospel of Taki – Taki’s Magazine

Posted by M. C. on December 19, 2022

https://www.takimag.com/article/the-gospel-of-taki/

Taki

It’s nice to be back in good old Helvetia again, but as the holiest of holy days approaches, I cannot help but think of my friend Jeremy Clarke and his struggles. Philosophers have dealt with life’s problems starting with the Greeks, yet not one of them was able to pin down man’s ultimate defeat: death, that is. The one who did manage it was no philosopher, just a simple carpenter, and his take on it has given more comfort and hope to us mortals than all the eggheads put together. Nowadays we have doubters who see us believers as dark-age ignoramuses; you know the kind I’m talking about—smelly, bearded, lefty, conceited know-it-alls. But even Charles Darwin believed in God, so who are these modern clowns to doubt him and his son?

Mind you, who am I—a very fortunate man—to talk about pain and death? We’re all hostages, as far as I’m concerned, to fate or destiny or whatever you want to call it. When religion that is now equated with ignorance and superstition gave way to science that we now equate with fact and reason, it was the beginning of the end. Has man seen a worse century than the 20th? The senseless slaughter of young men during World War I should have had the generals on both sides lined up against a wall and shot, their bodies given to wild animals for Christmas. Instead, their statues are still around. Two atomic bombs dropped on innocent Japanese women and children was as great a crime as I can think of, yet Truman’s statue stands proudly near my Athenian home. George W. Bush is a sort of hero to Americans because of his folksy manner and tangled syntax, while the foul neo-cons who planned the war in Iraq walk around Washington with their ugly heads held high. One million dead, I suppose, is not enough to shame them. Israel’s cruel treatment of the Palestinians and arbitrary appropriation of their land now overshadows that greatest of crimes, committed against the Jews by the Nazis.

“Take it from me, life can be beautiful if one only has beautiful thoughts.”

I’ve been finding lots of faults with today’s America as of late, only because no one in the land of the depraved ever practices what they preach. Land of the free sounds fine, but dare to say a word that is not politically correct and the mob demands your head. Canceling people over one wrong word has become very American, but also in Britain one’s canceled the instant they pronounce it. John Locke, everyone’s favorite philosopher at the time of America’s founding, tolerated everyone except atheists: “Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of God.” The good philosopher insisted that the taking away of God even in thought dissolves us all.

Try to tell this to some of those monstrous-looking females who refer to women as people with cervixes, and watch the ghastly ones go bananas. The trouble with the left has always been intolerance, and their way of thinking has always been how things should be. That is why they look as troubled and downright frustrated as most leftists do, both men and women. Take it from Taki, life can be beautiful if one only has beautiful thoughts. Forget hating and envying people who are better off, richer, better-looking, and have better-looking wives or hubbies. It’s the luck of the draw. Stop being antisocial and hateful. Try going to church and see how cleansed and hopeful you emerge. Believe you me, as they say, it is the exact opposite feeling when emerging from a nightclub, and I’m one who knows.

Sometimes I think that anti-Christians take Christ more seriously than true believers do.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Resisting Jesus

Posted by M. C. on December 25, 2020

http://fgfbooks.com/Sobran-Joe/2020/Sobran201223.html

A classic by Joe Sobran
Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation

The Western world, including many of those who consider themselves Christians, has turned Christmas into a bland holiday of mere niceness.

Many Christians find this annoying and churlish. Some even feel that Christianity is being persecuted.

The columnist Michelle Malkin writes, “We are under attack by Secularist Grinches Gone Wild.” Pat Buchanan goes so far as to speak of “hate crimes” against Christians.Subtracting Christianity

I disagree. In some parts of the world, from Sudan to China, Christians really are being persecuted, even murdered. But what is going on in America’s symbolic opposition to Christianity is something different.

Sometimes I think the anti-Christian forces take Christ more seriously than most nominal Christians do. The Western world, including many of those who consider themselves Christians, has turned Christmas into a bland holiday of mere niceness. If you don’t get into the spirit, you’re likely to be called a Scrooge.

The natural reaction to Christ is to reject him. He said so. In fact, when he was taken to the Temple as an infant, St. Simeon prophesied that he would be a center of contention. Later he predicted his own death and told his followers they must expect persecution too.

His bitterest enemies weren’t atheists; they were the most religious men of his age, the Pharisees, who considered his claims blasphemous — as, by their lights, they were.

Nice? That’s hardly the word for Jesus. He performed miracles of love and mercy, but he also warned of eternal damnation, attacked and insulted the Pharisees, and could rebuke even people who adored him in words that can only make us cringe.

The natural reaction to Christ is to reject him.

To many, he was a threat. He still is. We honor him more by acknowledging his explosive presence than by making him a mere symbol of nice manners. At every step of his ministry, he made enemies and brought his crucifixion closer. People weren’t crucified for being nice.Subtracting Christianity

Get a free CD of this book with a donation of $25 or more.Donate

The negative witnesses

Some people think you can take Christ’s “teachings” and ignore his miracles as if they were fables. But this is to confuse the Sermon on the Mount with the Democratic Party platform. Chief among his teachings was his claim to be God’s son: “I and the Father are one.” “Nobody comes to the Father except through me.”

His teachings are inseparable from his miracles; in fact, his teachings themselves are miraculous. Nobody had ever made such claims before, enraging pious Pharisees and baffling his pious disciples at the same time. After feeding thousands with the miraculous loaves and fishes, he announced that he himself was “the bread of life.” Unless you ate his flesh and drank his blood, he warned, you have no life in you.

This amazing teaching was too much. It cost him many of his disciples on the spot. He didn’t try to coax them back by explaining that he was only speaking figuratively, because he wasn’t. He was foretelling the Last Supper.

At virtually every step of his ministry, Christ accompanied his words with miracles. And the remarkable thing is that his enemies disputed the words rather than the miracles. Of the wonders he performed, there was no doubt; they attracted, and were witnessed by, large crowds. It was their meaning that was controversial.

To many, He was a threat. He still is. We honor him more by acknowledging his explosive presence than by making him a mere symbol of nice manners.

The blind saw, the deaf heard, cripples walked, lepers were healed. Where did he get the power to do these things? From God or the devil? He used them to certify his power to forgive sins, the claim his critics — enemies, rather — first found outrageous.

Chief among his teachings was his claim to be God’s son: “I and the Father are one.” “Nobody comes to the Father except through me.”

His claims still reverberate. The Gospels attest the total coherence of his mission, the perfect harmony between his words and his deeds, even the careful order of his progressive self-disclosure. His modern enemies, many of them professed Christians, don’t try to disprove the miracles; they simply assume he never performed them. And now some of them assume he never spoke many of the words the Gospels record him as saying.

The poet Tennyson remarked that Christ’s greatest miracle was his personality. Could anyone else — the four simple authors of the Gospels, for example — have made him up, and put such resonant words in his mouth?

This skeptical attack floors me. The poet Tennyson remarked that Christ’s greatest miracle was his personality. Could anyone else — the four simple authors of the Gospels, for example — have made him up, and put such resonant words in his mouth? “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” That’s another claim that seems to be holding up pretty well.

Such a strong, indeed unique, personality could only meet strong — and unique — resistance. This is why Christians shouldn’t resent the natural resistance of those who refuse to celebrate his birth. In their way, those people are his witnesses too.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Open Letter From a Pastor: Can We At Least Let the Children Play? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on April 25, 2020

This was courage in a city of cowering people, going through every which means of contortion in order to comply: the face masks that probably don’t work, the social distancing that probably doesn’t work, the quarantines which almost certainly don’t work, the shameful ‘essential workers only’ mandate which evokes this.

Even the USSR had no massive peacetime lockdown of hundreds of millions like this. The atheist communists couldn’t manage to close churches like America has done this spring………

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/04/no_author/open-letter-from-a-pastor-can-we-at-least-let-the-children-play/

By Pastor Rich Little

Pastor Rich Little sent this message to friends, family, and leaders in his Michigan community on April 9, 2020.

All Brothers & Sisters in Christ –

I have been trying very hard to “stick to my lane,” as I was told when I was in the Army, and concentrate on Christ and the Gospel as a pastor during this crisis.

Truly, the Lord and His Word is the one eternal thing that endures and matters, and will save us in the end – His promise of forgiveness and life are literally all we have.

However, as a human being, deeply flawed and self-serving and sinful as I am, I can’t help but being very upset and dismayed by what I see taking place around me. So I am going to take a bit of a risk, perhaps going “out of my lane” a bit, and speak from my heart now on what I see going on in the world, because what I saw today disturbed and saddened me greatly. 

We live in a county in Upper Michigan that has zero cases of this virus. Yet, children are not only not legally permitted to play with one another outside of immediate family (by order of the Governor), but now our local officials have seen fit to put chains and locks on the playgrounds.

Think about that: chains and locks on the playgrounds!

As I have been taking my 10-year-old granddaughter, Lorelei, out daily, so she gets some fresh air and sunlight in God’s good creation, the playgrounds were the one place where we could play and have fun and be, well human again – no fear, no stress, just love and fun. Now, that’s gone too.

What next? Arresting people for walking too much? What price are we paying here when we become so myopically focused on “flattening the curve” or even “saving just one life” that, even if we are still physically alive at the end of all this, it now feels much more like death and hell than actual life? And make no mistake about it, this is a foretaste of what hell is like: being alone, afraid, suspicious of others, constantly in fear of others as a threat to your life – self-preservation above all.

Yes, this coronavirus is new and scary and some people are dying if not of, at least in part, from it. We can debate numbers and how many of this and that and what to do etc. We can even also debate if we are being short-term “wise” but being “long-term” foolish as the economic costs add up to many future lives lost too.

But I think that all of you have pretty much already formulated from whatever source you have gotten your information where you stand on all that stuff. I am not trying to talk you out of that as it’s almost an impossibility, as the one truly defining characteristic of sinners, that is to say humans, is that we are natural “self-justifiers” and we will go to great lengths to be “right,” even if wrong (all of us are both right and wrong on this factually to one degree or another).

So, again, I am not writing this paragraph of this message with the hopes of trying to talk you out of your opinions but I would just like to point out once more, as we are all sinners, none of us gets to claim to be righteous before God in their opinions or actions in all of this. To our sin, Christ says “I forgive you.” He alone makes us right before God. So where you stand on this is not a “right hand kingdom” or salvation issue. This is not a matter of the Gospel. It’s a matter of the law and how we live in the earthly or “left hand kingdom” for now until Christ’s return.

Having said that, one of the great gifts we receive from Christ, as His chosen, forgiven sinners (Christians) is that even as we patiently await Our Lord’s return, and with it the new age of grace, He alone will usher in. We do receive back this old creation (the earthly or “left hand kingdom”) for now to love and to care in our humanity for as it is still God’s good work too. In this regard, in our humanity, we work hard to care for God’s creation and our neighbors. In this capacity, we are all called to fight evil as we see it under the law. The law is for now God’s gift to preserve life and order in this age, and I can’t help but feel a great evil is at work here beyond whatever deaths or economic ruin this virus may bring. The evil is we are losing our humanity.

What truly saddens, and what I think is a great evil, is that we fail to recognize that we lose our humanity by not realizing that there are many other forms of dying we can experience before physical death.

Living in constant fear, not only of some virus, but of the people around you too – either that they may be carriers of the infection or informers to the police that you are a “violator” of the “orders” – so we go about our day, even the best of us who recognize the problem and try to fight off this urge to fear, suspicious of the intentions of others. Not that we didn’t have this tendency toward self-preservation before, as sinners, but now it is on the loose “on steroids,” as the expression goes.

This constant looking over one’s shoulders is a powerful form of dying before physical death, I think. We are now looking not with charity to our neighbors who actually simply want to get on with the business of being human, but are actually treating them as criminals, or somehow selfish, for somehow posing a hypothetical risk of being disease carriers.

Were we not enjoined by Luther in the 8th Commandment to “think well of our neighbor, promote their good name, property, etc”? I know we fail in this regard routinely, but how can we even remotely attempt to do this under these circumstances?

Last night, as I was surfing the internet news late, as my sleep is not the best now either, I ran across this story that literally made me cry as it summed my personal experience today ironically and incredibly well.

As I acknowledged, yes, we all have our own opinions on this virus, the “lockdown”, etc and I know this person has a particular bias too; certainly politically he is biased toward personal liberty. But, then again, we all have our own biases. So yeah, there is stuff you may disagree with in the article – perhaps strongly disagree with or even say is “dangerous” and that’s okay.

I am not trying to impose an opinion on you, even if I am perhaps very poorly trying to express my own opinion. But I do think the author does capture what, from my perspective, is an important eternal, biblical truth quite well. In our never-ending quest for health, “safety,” and security in this world for our physical lives, are we not actually, in the process actually failing to live out our humanity in love?

I will just give you with this short quote from the article to consider as the sheer, simply beautiful truth of it touched the deepest reaches of my heart:

“But there she was.

Here was a mother bucking that, taking her son to the playground. A profile in courage, in the midst of corona.

And before long, the father followed with their dog, who was also happy to get out.

They ran about the morning park, availing themselves of the beautiful playground that everyone else was too gullible and cowardly to visit. Dozens of parents an hour would pass through that park just a few weeks earlier.

This was courage in a city of cowering people, going through every which means of contortion in order to comply: the face masks that probably don’t work, the social distancing that probably doesn’t work, the quarantines which almost certainly don’t work, the shameful ‘essential workers only’ mandate which evokes this.

Even the USSR had no massive peacetime lockdown of hundreds of millions like this. The atheist communists couldn’t manage to close churches like America has done this spring………

In the midst of that, a mother and a father courageously determined they would reject that distraction and instead live their lives.

Courageously they stepped out to go to the park. Courageously they stepped out of the house to live their lives.

And I want to thank them.

Because courage is contagious.”

I don’t know if this family was Christian or not, and frankly, I don’t care. They were human. Deeply human. And as Luther would say, they were “caught” taking a risk and doing and living exactly as God meant human life to be: a circle of peace, love, joy, and harmony with the Creator and other creatures. They were out “planting their tree,” as Luther once famously answered about what he wanted to be found doing when the end of the world came.

Can’t we be courageous too?

We Christians have the promise of eternal life from the lips of the Living God Himself. We have the Holy Spirit to lead us too. Certainly, can we not say to this evil driving us to lock ourselves fearfully behind doors and to push others there too: Enough is enough.

Have we, at long last, no sense of decency left?

In our quest to save our lives or at least save ourselves from the public shaming of supposedly “not wanting to hurt others,” can we not, at least, let the children play in the park unmolested?

Who did they harm?

Who do they want to harm?

Do we have to sacrifice the emotional well-being and happiness of our children too upon the altar of the god of the almighty coronavirus?

Is not our life and times in God’s hands?

The Bible indicates to me that Jesus might have been the most happy in His earthly life when He played with the children. I think I am too. I would gladly, instantly, give my physical life up right now just so the children can be happy and play in the park. That is how God intended His creation, and His children, to be, and that’s worth giving up my life to strive for in my humble opinion.

I know many of us went along with all this, as did I, to be good neighbors, good citizens, good Christians, good pastors. Good intentions all around. Many of you are also “higher risk.” I get that too – I have many aliments from miltary service, like asthma, that put me in that category with you. I am not particularly fond of the thought of impending physical death either, having never experienced that of course.

As Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians 15:26, death is the final enemy to be defeated. Christ hasn’t taken me through that yet. So I am sympathetic to the concern for one’s own well-being and other’s concerns for the well-being of other people and loved ones too.

That is certainly also a legitimate human impulse, that is genuinely of the Spirit, heartfelt and sincere. Nobody wants people hurt or killed needlessly or certainly doesn’t want to be the catalyst for that, but, unfortunately, we don’t get the luxury in a fallen world of “no-risk” only “reward” solutions to complex or life-threatening problems.

There is a cost to all our choices, individually and collectively, as participants in civil society. So as Christians, we must ask as Paul admonishes in Romans 13:10 to determine: “What are the costs?” We don’t have a perfect solution in a sinful world. We can only hope to reason our way to the one which minimizes most the effects – short & long term – of sin.

All I am saying is that we have gone too far in one direction in striving to protect people from this virus. We are drifting beyond even long-term harm, into something, as I see it, that is evil and that soon will be a genie we can’t “put back into the bottle” so to speak.

I also understand that writing what I am writing may come off as an accusation of wrongdoing to some people, which isn’t my personal intent, but I truthfully acknowledge, it might end up being. It can’t help but be this way, because we are dealing with a matter of the law, not the Gospel. We are all placed by Christ back into a world governed and run by law – moral laws, laws of nature, government laws, social laws, and on and on – and the law in all forms always accuses us.

But I do sincerely want to say, I am trying to the best of my fallen, limited, sinful ability to keep in mind that good intentions certainly abounded from almost all folks in this situation. Definitely, this was the case I think as this was billed as something of a temporary inconvenience or sacrifice, but has now morphed into an open-ended solitary confinement prison sentence for billions of people around the world.

None of you wanted to cause harm or death to others nor I think ruin businesses or our Constitutional rights. But this “lock-down” is now a monster that appears, to me, to be “eating its young,” as the saying goes. There is far too much “collateral damage” well beyond the daily “confirmed cases and deaths” going on in this war on the hidden virus for me to stomach any further. So my heart compels me to say:

This has got to stop now. Not tomorrow. Not a week from now. Certainly not months from now, because this is not living, it’s dying while alive.

I know saying this right now is a risk, a big risk because many of you may judge that I am going too far “out of my lane” as a Pastor, as this probably is not a very popular message with you, nor most of the wider world these days. Email is like a virus you know. It’s contagious – you can send this anywhere – and thus potentially deadly, in certain ways for me, for daring to espouse contrary opinions to the popular narrative out there.

So, it could cost me dearly for publicly writing things like this right now. It could cost me a lot. It could cost me my call to our congregation. It could cost me my home in this community. It could cost me my freedom. It could cost me my family. It could cost me my physical life. Who knows? It might sound crazy to you to say this. But a few weeks ago, if I told you that you would be locked in your homes as a virtual prisoner in fear of a virus, you would have thought me quite mad. So anything is possible these days now, in regard to the consequences of freely speaking what is on one’s mind or heart now…..

But, I must confess too, that I believe that Christ died, gave up His own life in love for us, so we can really, for the first time, actually live in freedom, not fear – so we do not have to live in uncertainty anymore, because we now definitively know that God is for us, not against us. We can now dare be human again and leave the business of bringing in the eternal future to God.

So we can play like children in the park and enjoy the love and company of one another once more in the image of God – in peace with our Creator and one another – certain that even if bad things happen, God will be there to pick us up again and return us to living – even from our graves. So I am going to shove down my fear and say what my heart tells me to say, pray to God, turn it over to Him and rest in the promise of my Baptism that whatever may come my way in this old world, Christ is with me and has my life safely in His ever-loving arms, will carry me into His new creation where these things, which bring suffering, pain, and death will trouble me no more. And I know Christ has said this very same Baptismal promise is also for you.

So please pray that our Lord returns soon…..He is, in the end, our only hope!

v/r

Pastor Rich

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Can God Speak to Us?

Posted by M. C. on December 24, 2019

http://fgfbooks.com/Sobran-Joe/2019/Sobran191223.html

A classic by Joe Sobran
Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation

Not to be outdone, Time assures us this week that “constantly evolving scholarship” casts doubt on the Gospel narratives. So what else is new? Scholarly attempts to diminish Christ through the “higher criticism” go way back. Thomas Jefferson simply edited all the miracles out of the New Testament and thought he’d produced Gospels that were fully factual.

Some more recent scholars, if that’s what they are, aren’t satisfied with getting rid of Jesus’ deeds; they also want to eliminate many of his words — the ones that don’t fit in with the Latest Thinking. It seems he wasn’t the Son of God, but a progressive-minded Unitarian.

Countless early Christians set off a huge chain reaction of martyrdom, converting even many of their torturers, who were immensely moved and impressed by this superhuman courage.

For some reason, Christ’s first disciples, the ones on the scene at the time, got it all wrong. He didn’t do all the things they thought they saw him doing, or say all the things they thought they heard him say. The truth isn’t to be found in the Scriptures, but in the inferences of modern experts, otherwise known as Constantly Evolving Scholarship.

But so certain were those disciples that countless early Christians bore witness to the truth of the Gospels by suffering the most excruciating martyrdoms imaginable. They set off a huge chain reaction of martyrdom, converting even many of their torturers, who were immensely moved and impressed by this superhuman courage.

Long before the printing press, the radio, movies, and television, the martyrs spread the good news of the risen Christ.

Even before the Gospels were written, the martyrs were God’s media, so to speak, for bringing men to Christ. Long before the printing press, the radio, movies, and television, the martyrs spread the good news of the risen Christ.

Some still reject that news, and one strategy of rejection is to water it down, mixing it with enough skepticism to make the Gospels seem archaic and alien. Once we reject the miracles because belief in the miraculous now seems “outdated,” it becomes easy to reject the message as outdated too. But G.K. Chesterton had the best answer to this: “Whatever else is true, it is emphatically not true that the ideas of Jesus of Nazareth were suitable to his time, but are no longer suitable to our time. Exactly how suitable they were to his time is perhaps suggested in the end of his story.”

Jesus remains the most hated as well as the best-loved man in human history. And as he predicted, his followers have been hated and persecuted too.

The resistance to his ideas, which got him crucified, has continued ever since. Jesus remains the most hated as well as the best-loved man in human history. And as he predicted, his followers have been hated and persecuted too.

Secularists use the mantra of “separation of church and state” as an excuse for keeping God’s word out of our public life. We are allowed to worship privately, but we mustn’t act collectively as if God has spoken to us. We are to act as agnostics, which means as virtual atheists.

Secularists use the mantra of “separation of church and state” as an excuse for keeping God’s word out of our public life. We are allowed to worship privately, but we mustn’t act collectively as if God has spoken to us.

There are two kinds of agnostics. One says modestly, “I don’t know.” The other says belligerently, “Nobody can know.” The first is understandable; nearly everyone has doubts at times. But the second is asserting a strange dogma.

To say that nobody can know whether God exists is to say something self-contradictory. God is by definition the omnipotent creator and ruler of the universe, the source of our being. It’s nonsense to say that this omnipotent being could exist without being able to communicate with his own creatures!

He does speak to us, and just as wonderfully, He listens to us — maybe a bit more keenly than we listen to Him, judging by the state of the world.

He can, he did, and he does. Plain atheism makes more sense than the arrogant agnostic’s “maybe, but we can never know,” which reduces God to a divine deaf-mute. He does speak to us, and just as wonderfully, he listens to us — maybe a bit more keenly than we listen to him, judging by the state of the world.

Are our souls open to Him, or are we tuning Him out?

The more modest sort of agnostic should ask not whether someone called “God” exists at all, but whether he has revealed himself to us, and whether we’ve been paying enough attention to hear him. Are our souls open to him, or are we tuning him out?

The deepest questions must be answered by each of us personally, not by scholars or even journalists. Our minds can save us from errors, but in the end only our hearts can recognize the Truth.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Putting the ‘Christ’ Back in Christmas | The American Spectator

Posted by M. C. on December 14, 2019

A little later, Scrooge’s poor clerk Bob Cratchit desperately praises his invalid son, Tiny Tim: “He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember, upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.” But it is Tiny Tim himself, and Dickens, who speak for all during this wonderful holy season, clear enough for even Hollywood to hear, “God bless us, every one!”

https://spectator.org/putting-the-christ-back-in-christmas/

by

President Donald Trump added a radical twist to the annual National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony last Friday by invoking the divinity of Jesus Christ. You would think revering the season’s central figure would be expected, but you’d be wrong. Although his predecessor, Barack Obama, mentioned the Nativity in general terms as “the story of a child born far from home … who’d ultimately spread a message that has endured for more than 2,000 years,” the more direct Trump went right to the sacred heart of the matter.

“As the Bible tells us, when the wise men had come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary, his mother, and fell down and worshipped him. Christians give thanks that the Son of God came down to save humanity,” Trump said. In fulfilling his promise to renormalize the greeting “Merry Christmas” away from the deliberately vague “happy holidays,” Trump venerated the Yuletide’s raison d’être. Hollywood didn’t get the memo, though. That’s no surprise; the industry has long had a problem with religiosity.

Last week, ABC re-broadcast the perennial classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas, on its 54th network run. By now almost everybody has seen the Peanuts holiday special, along with its show-stopping climax. Right after Charlie Brown, depressed by the commerciality of his Christmas, cries, “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?,” Linus calmly responds, “Sure, Charlie Brown, I can tell you what Christmas is all about.” He climbs onto the school stage, gets spotlighted, and proclaims the Gospel according to Luke, King James Version, verbatim on national television:

And there were, in the same country, shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them. The glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, “Fear not, for behold I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” And suddenly there were with the angel a multitude of Heavenly hosts praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace and goodwill toward men.”

This scene would be anathema to any contemporary Hollywood production, and it was controversial even in 1965. Rookie animation producer Lee Mendelson and director Bill Melendez actually argued against it, afraid it would kill their big break. They were already on thin ice for two revolutionary decisions on a kids’ show: the adult jazz score by little-known composer Vince Guaraldi, and having child non-actors voice the dialogue. A literal deus ex machina ending was suicidal, they thought. “There’s never been any animation that I know of from the Bible,” said Mendelson. “It’s kind of risky.” But the third man on the team disagreed and demanded they use it — Charles Schulz, the Peanuts creator. “If we’re going to do a Christmas special, we’ve really got to do it the right way and talk about what Christmas is all about,” said Schulz, a Sunday school teacher. “If we don’t do it, who will?”

When CBS executives saw the finished product, they balked. “You can’t read from the Bible on network television,” one of them declared. But they had an unbreakable commitment to the show’s sponsor, Coca-Cola, so the special aired on schedule, December 9, 1965. That night, A Charlie Brown Christmas drew 15 million viewers and a 45 percent share, coming in second for the week behind Bonanza. It has been an annual ratings winner every year since, and its overt Christian message has been welcomed the world over. I remember sitting in fifth grade at Little Flower Catholic School outside of Washington, D.C., the day after one showing, when old Sister Gabriel gushed about the Luke reading to my class. We kids accepted the Linus recitation as perfectly normal. Yet to the Hollywood powers that be, it remains an unfathomable enigma.

As late as 1977, the same CBS network ran one of the greatest films ever made, Ben Hur, minus its brilliant, beautiful pre-credits sequence — a depiction of the Nativity story. It starts with Joseph and Mary’s passage into Bethlehem, followed by a series of masterful painting-like shots. To a glorious score by Miklós Rózsa, we see a star-filled night sky, with one bright star traveling the screen left to right. It moves over Bethlehem, watched silently by villagers, by the three eastern kings on their camels, and then by shepherds in the field. The star flies past the city, stops, and shines a beam of light on a simple stable. More villagers stand, curious, outside the stable looking in, and they make room for the three kings bearing gifts. The royals kneel down in adoration before the inauspicious Joseph and Mary and her baby. One of the villagers steps back from the rest and blows a horn, signaling the occurrence of something momentous. Then the credits roll — which is where the CBS broadcast began. This must have been an easy decision for the network suits, deeming the sequence too time-wasting. Why should they have cared that the full title of the original book — the bestselling American novel of the 19th century — is Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ?

I just reread an even older novel, the most famous Christmas-themed fictional work of all time, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The timeless tale of a bitter misanthrope’s Yuletide-prompted redemption avoids overt religiosity while stressing the unique goodness of Christmas. It has non-clerical charity workers and spirits rather than angels. Yet Christianity permeates the work. Early in it, the accursed Marley’s ghost moans, “Why did I walk through crowds of fellow beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode?” A little later, Scrooge’s poor clerk Bob Cratchit desperately praises his invalid son, Tiny Tim: “He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember, upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.” But it is Tiny Tim himself, and Dickens, who speak for all during this wonderful holy season, clear enough for even Hollywood to hear, “God bless us, every one!”

Be seeing you

 

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »