Two Babies at Christmas

 This year expect the ACLU (Anti-Civil Liberties Union) and other secular activist groups to go after Christmas crèches and other manifestations of the birthday of Christ. Their rationale is to keep religion and government separated but their goal is to eliminate Christianity totally from the public arena. And why do they want that? Because as Christ was an obstacle to persons in love with their sins or the status quo in his day, so now are followers of Christ obstacles to the goals of godless secularists.

 The hostility of the secularists to Christmas should not be surprising.  The contrasts between the secular and Christian worldviews could not be sharper. Look at the examples below.

 As to the place of religion in society secularists say that religious expression should be banished from the public arena in order to create a neutral society. Hence their jihad against symbols of Christmas. Christianity by contrast requires respect for the consciences of all including atheists. Religious expression must be allowed public expression if religious freedom is to have any meaning. The marketplace does not become neutral when religion is banished from it; rather, it becomes biased toward atheism and against religion.

 Secularists assert that secular humanism should be the American religion. Traditional religion including Christianity has been the source of conflicts in the world. Whatever strife has been introduced into the world by Christianity (by those who typically abandon Christian principles) pales into insignificance compared to that introduced by secularists. Secularism in one of its guises, Communism, has unleashed an anti-human holocaust of planetary dimensions. From the killing fields of Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot, Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il, and Fidel Castro there flow unending rivers of human blood.

 The moral systems of secularism and Christianity differ. Secularism says that there are no fixed moral norms and that societies determine what is good or evil. This kind of moral system leaves no principled way of condemning Nazism and Communism or any practice that societies decide are good. Thus if the Nazi society decided that elimination of Jews was good it would be acting in line with the guidance of secular morality.

 The value placed on humanity differs strikingly in secularism and Christianity. For Christians all human beings are precious because they are made to the image and the likeness of God. For secularists earthworms are more valuable than people and killing chickens can be likened to a human holocaust. Certain humans are “weeds” (Margaret Sanger) and their reproduction should be stopped by means of contraception, abortion, and sterilization. Human beings have no more value than slugs. (Earth First! Editor John Daily). “To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem.” (Yale professor Lamont Cole) “In Guyana, within two years it [DDT, now an outlawed insecticide] had almost eliminated malaria…my chief quarrel with DDT...is that it has greatly added to the population problem.” (Dr. Sam Keen, Gorbachev Conference in San Francisco)

 Secularists tell us that proper use of sexual activity, the tool for the reproduction of human life, can be scientifically ascertained by studying the sexual habits of sexual deviants (Rex King) and the imprisoned (Alfred Kinsey). For Christians sexual activity is a blessing from God designed to pass the image and likeness of God from one generation to the next. It has no place outside marriage. For secularists any form of consensual sex is permissible. Pornography should be unlimited and should be available even to children. NAMBLA whose purpose seems to be to teach others how to abuse children and escape legal penalties should be protected. Homosexual activity should never be outlawed and homosexual unions should be given the status of marriage. For Christians sex is reserved for marriage so that the children born of the sexual union will have a mother and father in their upbringing. The secular formula for sex has ignited a worldwide conflagration of STDs and AIDS. The secular response to this plague is irrational. In the face of mounting death totals (468,000 dead from AIDS since 1981, why do secularists promote those very behaviors that they know are the cause of death? The CDC (2002) reports that 16,000 deaths from AIDS occur annually. Another 40,000 new cases of infection occur within the same time frame. There are 1 million cases of HIV, 31-50 million cases of herpes simplex, 24 million of HPV, and 1 million cases of chronic hepatitis B. Add to these numbers the 486 million surgically and chemically induced abortions and one can logically conclude that the secular sexual revolution is really a revolt against humanity.

 The great sacrament of secularism is abortion. Maintaining that human life begins at conception, say secularists, is imposing a religious principle on the rest of society. They fail to see that it is also a religious position as well as an unscientific one to hold that human life begins only at birth. Why should that religious position be the only one that is imposed on the society? Secularists maintain that unwanted pregnancies can be terminated at any time and for any reason. Christians say that all human life is a gift from God reflecting his image and likeness and must always be respected. Parents should be allowed to eliminate their children up to 28 days after birth. (Peter Singer) Killing a newborn is equivalent to killing a snail. The Netherlands have accepted this idea and Belgium is toying with the notion of adopting it. Secularists campaign for the right of minor girls to get abortions without permission or even the knowledge of their parents. In addition to killing innocent human beings this provision undercuts parental authority. Secularists seem to recognize parental authority in other areas such as ear piercing, tattoos, and the dispensing of medicines to minors, but not when there is a question of killing unborn human life. Secularists not only want abortion to be permissible but to be funded by tax dollars. Christians counter that taxpayers should not be forced to cooperate in the destruction of innocent human life.

 Secularists disrespect human life at the end of the lifespan. The comatose who have no hope of regaining consciousness should not be allowed to linger until natural death, but have their lives terminated. For Christians life is a gift from God and normal medical care should be given to all, even the comatose, until natural death.

 There are many other contrasts between secularism and Christianity but these few demonstrate that the bulk of secularism is about death, decreases in the number of humans, and practices that result in premature death. It is a culture of pessimism and death. Christianity is a culture of optimism and life. A totally appropriate metaphor for the secularist value system is a bloodied, aborted fetus. Since Christianity is preoccupied with life which Christ came to bring us to the full the Babe in the manger is its appropriate symbol. Following his teachings offers not only eternal life but also longer physical life. The annual Christmas fight between secularists and Christianity is not just a battle over trivial symbols but about the survival of two incompatible ideologies. The one that controls the marketplace wins. The Bible urges us to choose life. We must always keep the Christ child in the marketplace and in our hearts.

(Printed December, 2005)