What if Jesus had never been born? Many people believe the world would be a much better place.
And what if this Christmas, they got their way?
It’s not just “freedom of religion” or “freedom from religion” many people want. Some wish for a world where they’ll never be bothered to witness another person’s religiosity in public.
They say they’re tolerant of all religions, but that’s not true. In the town where I lived just a couple of years ago, the ACLU stopped a high school choir from performing in a local church. The choir had sung there for years because of the great acoustics, but somehow just letting those kids breathe the “rarified holy air” of the church stepped over the line of “separation of church and state”.
Oh, please.
True tolerance wouldn’t keep kids from walking in a church, synagogue or mosque of another faith. Most parents have no problem with a respectful chaperoned visit to someone else’s place of worship. But what many want now is complete “religious quarantine” in public places – absolutely no exposure to God. Especially the Judeo-Christian God.
To the religiously intolerant today, church houses are the new “houses of ill-repute” from which they must hide their children’s eyes. “Faith” is their new four-letter word. Their end game is to ban God completely from the public square, using intimidation and a boat-load of lawyers.
For them, religion is the new Ebola.
If you’re one of these people, may I ask you one question?
Do you really want religion out of public life? Have you really thought this thing through? Well, George Bailey, be careful what you ask for. If the angel Clarence really allowed you to see a world where religion never existed this holiday season, not even Scrooge would like the results.
You see, each Christmas you witness a ton of “good” done in Jesus’ name. This week, homeless shelters nationwide will ladle out rivers of gravy on mountains of mashed potatoes, and millions of martyred turkeys will be consumed.
By the way, this food will be donated and served mostly by people of faith.
Atheists counter that for Thanksgiving dinner, they’d pass on the religion, and focus on meeting people’s “real world needs” instead. Pop intellectuals like Neil deGrasse Tyson promote the preferred philosophy of “lessening the suffering of others”. They say you don’t have to be religious to do good deeds.
That all sounds like common sense…until you look at the facts.
Religious people don’t just talk about helping others, they are the vast majority who’re doing it. In 2006, the average church-going adult contributed $1500 to charity, as compared to $200 by people of no faith (Barna Group research study). Even if you subtracted church-based giving, church folks would still give twice as much as atheists and agnostics combined.
Both ABC News and Harvard professor Robert Putnam’s research reflects similar findings. Putnam adds that 40% of church attenders volunteer to help the poor and elderly as compared to 15% of those who never go. That also goes for volunteering at non-religious schools, youth programs, civic groups, and health care providers.
My irreligious friends often argue that their giving is more noble, because religious people give out of “fear of hell-fire”. But a pollster from the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada found religious people twice as likely to respond that “forgiveness, patience, generosity and a concern for others are ‘very important’” to them than atheists did. So the real motive for giving by the religious seems to be quite simple: they see a need, feel compassion, and respond.
Sorry, but “hell fire” isn’t even part of the equation.
Can you imagine how the national cost of serving the poor would skyrocket if all the money from religious people went away tomorrow, not to mention the innumerable church service programs they fund as well?
Don’t even try to think about things like our public education system, which was begun by a nice church program started in the 1800s. Ever hear of Sunday School? That institution was begun to teach poor children to read, using the Bible as their first text book.
So without Sunday School, today we wouldn’t have public schools. Amazing when you consider how unwelcomed Jesus is in many of our kid’s classes now.
Additionally, most of our greatest institutions of higher learning, like Harvard and Yale, were begun as schools of Divinity to train ministers.
Ever wonder why so many hospitals have names like Mercy, St Josephs, or St Jude? It was because Christians felt it was their religious duty to heal the suffering of those around them.
Imagine a society where “love your neighbor as yourself” and “do unto others” are no longer believed and practiced by the majority. Imagine the crime, the suffering, and quite possibly the anarchy that would result.
Still think the world would be better off without God?
The collective good done by Christians during this holiday season is one of the only things keeping our world from turning into a hell on earth.
Would the world be better if Jesus had never been born? Really, Old Man Potter! That’s just a bunch of stuffing.
