Christianity and Humanism

Since the 1940s I have been a student of change in the public treatment of great issues like the meaning: of persons and family orientation for the individual and society; of business and money with benefits and failures in the public good; of government and freedom under social contract and pluralism in society; of education and meaning to individual and social life; of even cataloguing knowledge in the old Dewey-Decimal system to the emerging dominance of the approved electronic Catalogue; of theism and conflicts with various entities including both atheism and religious differences expressed within faith groupings; and, there are more, but I want to address this last one for this Page.  My reference point is in the context of what we learn from Scripture about Jesus Christ – from the manger birth to his ascension, but especially related to the celebration of Christmas and Easter.  The internet for 2013 made reference to the almost universal observation of Christmas in the world even if the observations varied from place to place in more than a hundred countries.  The effort of Christian missionaries during 2,000 years, and the impact of art and literature have made Christmas an identifying factor for Christian culture everywhere.  It is readily admitted that some features of the context are contradictory, and not found in the text of Jesus’ life. 

For some reason the various electronic reports in 2013 included respondents from the general public who did not really help in addressing the American emergence of atheistic/agnostic persons and groups who are increasingly resisting public references to Jesus as violation of Church and State.  There is something needed in the communications, from any side of an issue, when the language byte must be kept to few words and focus to meet a gargantuan context touching the world’s interests.  Many of the reported negative responses were in scurrilous words, some crude, and many from persons who simply didn’t know what they were talking or writing about.  In this fast moving world, sub-liminal approaches are causing persons to believe and do what they might not do if given time and discussion in a learning spirit.

Serious review begins with an attitude, hopefully objective, of the individual for or against the issue (question of concern).  If the attitude is affirmative toward finding the good and the ill, or the unknown, there is likely advance in human problem solving that gains democratic belief and conduct.  If rightly applied it develops relationships, tolerance, good-will, problem solving, and progress.  I was pleasantly impressed by the statement of a Jewish gentleman who said that he was an atheist, but admired Christmas because he saw nothing but positives in it.  The only thing he could not believe was the assertion by biblical Christians that Jesus was a person of Deity as well as humanity.  He took the humanity of Jesus, with the rest of Christmas.  For him the affirmations were great, the negation was small.  He held the same human values that Christians did, and that the enjoyment and publicity for Christmas was worth support in joy, in gift-giving, in peace and love, in human fraternity focusing on the better side of the contexts of mankind.  Scripture accents the concept that this child stood for peace among persons of good-will.  The King James Version translators may have clouded the meaning when they wrote: good will toward men.

When our deliberations come out of peace among persons of good-will, we are likely planning well.  Even if we don’t include God, God includes us.  In common grace the same thing applies for the atheist as applies for the theist.  Whether the creation came from the plan of God, or generated from the forces of nature acting alone in some statistical (time oriented) program, the ideals of the natural system are the same.  We all want honesty, integrity, work to do, recreation to engage, families to cultivate, decency from all sides, acceptance in peace, the life of love for others, and the like.  Anything that advances those objectives is honored of God, and ought to be honored by all humanity.  The Christian thanks God for what is experienced of the ideal.  The atheist is thankful to mankind for progress in the direction of the ideal.  He or she is thankful within the self, even if the thankful spirit does not have God as the object of appreciation. It seems like persons of good-will could and should accept that pattern for earth.  God does not permit our opinion of him to interfere with our responsibility to self and humanity on earth.  Right is righteous.