Today we are as full of religion as we are empty of love. When religion substitutes love, it relocates itself in the marketplace.
Jesus came as a child, the child of God. As a Child his mission was to invite us all to return to being children. To raise a child one has to be a child. Children continue to be born but they lead lonely lives or are beaten into early adulthood on the anvil of adult ambition. Man, thus distorted, becomes a killer of children, like King Herod who ordered the massacre of thousands of children to secure his throne.
The way of Jesus though difficult, is laughably clear - it is the way of children. Children have little use for religion. All they need is love. This week is a good time to stop and think exactly what the One for whom we celebrate the festival wanted us to remember.
One of the most important message of Jesus was "Love one another even as I have loved you." Love! Children need our care and attention every day of the year not just on Christmas morning.
Today we are as full of religion as we are empty of love. When religion substitutes love, it relocates itself in the marketplace. Looking through his prophetic telescope thousands of years before today's expression of December joy, Jeremiah said (10: 2-4) that peoples' customs are false; that a day would come when men would cut down and craft trees and use hammers and nails on wood before decking it with silver and gold. Can we make every day Christmas instead of offering a decorated tree as a symbol of our belief on one day of the year?
India knows of another Babe who was born in a strange place (a prison) and went through comparable woes in infancy - Bhagavan Sri Krishna. Sri Krishna's message of bhakti rooted in love, is expressed in His leelas with the gopis and tells us that that is important - not intrigues that lurk behind masks of power. "Leela", play, is the hallmark of the child and ahimsa his alphabet.
To embrace this art of life one has - to borrow the words of Christ - "turn back and become like children." That is what Christmas is: God's parable on our spiritual need to become children.
Festivals enable us to slot - and so distance ourselves from - foundational truths that the way of life we have chosen do not permit us to live by. Let us not remake sacred events in our own image and likeness.
How much will our Christmas day have to do with the Holy Child of Bethlehem?
Jesus came as a child, the child of God. As a Child his mission was to invite us all to return to being children. To raise a child one has to be a child. Children continue to be born but they lead lonely lives or are beaten into early adulthood on the anvil of adult ambition. Man, thus distorted, becomes a killer of children, like King Herod who ordered the massacre of thousands of children to secure his throne.
