A Festive, Seasonal Post

"We Live In A World That Hates Jesus"

I was writing about this in a book I'm writing, and I also encountered it again the other day, so I thought I'd say a few things about it. This commonly spoken sentiment: "We live in a world that hates Jesus."

  I was raised on this idea.  Every time a kid was mean to me in the playground, every time a science teacher mocked creationists for being superstitious idiots who didn't have the whole universe figured out, once and for all, like THEY did, it was because they 'hated Jesus.'

  I grew up on this.  Then, going out into "the world that hates Jesus" and meeting actual people who didn't go to my actual church, I found a bunch of stuff that didn't really support the idea.  For one thing, about a third of the population of the world actually wants people to view them as Christians (as compared to at most five percent who want to be viewed as atheists).  And practising, orthodox Muslims, of course, are taught by their imams to view Jesus of Nazareth as an important prophet of God.  They can't hate him without being infidels.  (Hating Christians is another story, of course.)  For another thing, many, many people who don't want to be called Christians still like some of the things Jesus taught, or think he was a good man, or something like that.  Can't really say they hate him. (I do think that if Jesus were alive in North America today, wasn't publicly claiming to be the Son of God, so people were simply responding to him as a guy with a YouTube channel or radio show which said fairly unconventional, unAmerican things, a WHOLE lot more people would hate him than do, currently.  A whole lot of right-wing Americans.)

The Secularization Of Western Culture

  One thing is certain: in my lifetime I have witnessed the growing secularization of Western culture.  And you know what?  That's never bothered me.  I was raised that the world hated Christ.  And raised on stories of people getting martyred for being Christian (Fox's Book of Martyrs), and with nods at any place in the world today where you can find Christians being discriminated against and oppressed (Looking at you, China).  And nothing that happens in North America looks like that, and I don't buy that it's getting like that, and that one day, I'll be put in jail for saying I'm a Christian or for what I teach my classes.  I know how to get along in secular settings.  And secular people have oppressed me far less than Christians have.  Atheists don't seem to care that I'm a Christian, nor how I am Christian.  Christians, on the other hand, are delighted to try to catch me "doing it wrong" so they can cause giant trouble of any kind they can concoct.  But things have gotten more secular.  And I don't care.  That's exactly as it should be.  Helps that I'm not under any illusion that my country should proudly proclaim that it, a country, is somehow a Christian.  You know what else?  I don't see this secularlization as"Christians losing their rights, one by one."  At all.

Back In The Day

There must have, logically, once been a time long ago when the number of people who identified themselves as Christians numbered less than even one hundred people.  Not like today when there are more Christians on earth than there were people on earth back when the bible was being written.  Under Jewish culture, itself in turn under Roman culture, Christianity was an underground movement.  It was oppressed.  People got martyred for being Christians, every bit as much as Jesus, an observant Jews, was himself martyred for what he said and did.  At this point in time, with Christians an oppressed minority fringe group, the New Testament was written.  That's the whole backdrop against which it takes place.  Christianity being hated by the cultures around.  Death being meted out to Christians.  So if you read the New Testament today, that's how it reads.  "Us" trying to not die, and get the word out to a world which has never heard of Jesus Christ.  Now my church ponys up the money to sent people to cities in Africa which are nominally Christian now and have been since before there was an America, a Canada or a Mexico, and tries to poach converts from the Baptists, Presbyterians and Anglicans.

Christianity Goes Mainstream

  Because that all changed.  Christianity changed, relatively quickly, from something the government might torture and execute you for doing at all in any way, to something they might torture and execute you for NOT doing, and eventually would torture and execute you for not doing "right."  At that point, the New Testament starts to read kind of funny.  All of the assumptions about the world/society Christians are in "hating Jesus" and "hating Christians" has been, somewhat turned on its head. The world/society/the government now insists on being viewed as the main (or only) agent of Christianity in the entire world.  It would be accurate to say, at this point, that the establishment demands to be acknowledged as not only Christian (loving Jesus the Christ) but also the only ones doing it right, and haters of all people who aren't Christians.  So now it's "Christians running a world they hate."

   In many ways, everything has turned sour at this point.  Corrupt power people run the governments and churches.  A global power which thinks of itself as The Church (or the Catholic (universal and only) Church) has literal armies (military forces) and untold wealth.  It has the right to oppress and torture and kill nonChristians.  And it does.  And not just for a week or two.  And it loves to kill Jews and Muslims.  And it loves more than anything to kill any kind of Christian who dots i's and crosses t's in a slightly different way, when reading the bible.  Or who translates the bible into their own language.  Or who prays to the same God, but again, in their own language.  Christian governments execute people for smuggling bibles.  Christians living in a world in which they are hated.  By other Christians. Who are running everything.

Today

  Sloppily glossing over to the present day, we have an America which bizarrely claims to be a Christian country, and a Canada, France and England etc. which claim that many of the foundational aspects of our cultures and traditions came from people who called themselves Christian, but that we no longer want to be in any way viewed as only Christian, and excluding of other people, for instance, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and agnostics.  

  So, we've got Christmas happening this month.  You've got the establishment claiming it as its own, with its Santa Coke and parades and elves and flying reindeer, talking snowmen and other things clearly not really coming in any meaningful way from Christian tradition.  You have sacred cows like anyone teaching children there is no Santa Claus in school.  (you could get away with teaching six year olds the fact that many people believe there is no God, including you, their teacher, but could not get away with teaching them the fact that many people believe there is no Santa Claus, including you, their teacher).

  And then you've got churches with Christmas songs about the birth of the baby Jesus.  They want to claim Christmas is their thing.  Last Christmas, I sang at the school's Christmas Assembly (which we called that, and no one shot us, and we're not a Christian school or anything).  I sang an atheist Christmas hymn and a Christian one.  They were both beautiful.  I was doing, I think, what my job is.  I wasn't telling the kids to choose one.  I was showing them that both were beautiful.  

  John Lennon wrote "So This Is Christmas" and two random guys wrote first the poem (in French), then the music, for "O Holy Night,"  one hundred years earlier than Mr. Lennon's song.  No one had one objection to me singing either song.  In fact a lot of people were terribly appreciative and pretty much everyone sang along.  Lighters were held aloft.  I don't envision a time when anyone, in a high school, would object strongly to this kind of thing.  Because I was entertaining, educational, thought-provoking and not shilling for either side of the God/No God issue.

"Prayer" In Schools vs. Prayer In Schools

  When I was a kid, they stopped making kids listen to the Lord's Prayer every morning along with the national anthem before classes started.  I didn't like hearing that canned Lord's prayer.  I don't like still listening to the national anthem nowadays either.  Mine is one of the very few jobs in which I, an adult, have to stand and listen to a saccharine, shitty version of canned national anthem get piped in five times a week, and make sure kids take their hats off and aren't disrespectful as a Christina Aguilera sound-alike sings our national anthem in Charlie Brown Christmas style, all year long.
  But there is prayer in schools in our world.  People pray inside their heads whenever they want.  I can do that in my school.  No one cares.  And anyone who requests permission to use a room for group prayer at school, whether it be Muslim prayer, Christian prayer or whatever, is going to get one.  Us standing while a tinny speaker on the wall played a disembodied voice reciting the Lord's "How To" prayer wasn't students praying.  It just wasn't.  We weren't praying.  (Any more than our standing while a cassette of Christiana Gagnon-Poutine singing O Canada is us singing.)  We were waiting.

  But I've worked in nonChristian schools in which students had a Christian club or prayer room or whatever.  Muslim people are given facilities at their workplaces or schools to go pray as their religion dictates they must, including the handwashing and kneeling and facing East stuff.

  So my answer to "We used to have prayer in schools" is "We've always had prayer in schools and still do" with a healthy dose of "And students who are present while the P.A. system is used to read a prayer to them quite clearly aren't praying."
  I am one of those people, obviously, who would rather nothing, than have an empty, fake imitation of a real thing.  I think the empty fake stuff obscures the reality.  I don't feel safe about empty fake stuff being claimed and it muddying the waters when we need to see clearly. I'd rather we face what is, more baldly.

Hobby Horse Issues

  And there are such hobby horse (pet) issues.  Gay marriage is a fashionable one right now.  Along with abortion, it seems to be the only way Christians are measuring the health of their country, along with money.
   I mean, many Christians believe that gay sex isn't exactly what God intended.  But most would strongly oppose any attempt to actually stop said gay sex from happening.  Voting has shown, and I think it is the reality, that if a politician said "We're going to declare a War On Gay Sex in this country.  We've formed a taskforce which is going to raid gay clubs, roadside rest stops, wine bars and Ikea, and we're going to break up any conversations between gay people that might lead to gay sex, we're going to require proof of heterosexuality before purchasing condoms, and we're going to deny AIDS treatment to homosexuals" that that politician would definitely have no career, and would be ridden out of town on a rail.  Call me naive if it entertains you so to do.
  Yet things change, all of a sudden, when we go the other way and say "These people who are having gay sex want to be married."  Suddenly a panic.

  It is astounding to me that people confidently claim that, if they themselves are married, that allowing a gay couple to get marriage paperwork is going to somehow clearly infringe on their rights.  "They're trying to take away my rights as a heterosexual and as a Christian" they will claim.  Because they're upset.  Do they even know what they're actually upset about?

  I'm quite certain it isn't that gay people are having orgasms.  Quite certain that's not really, actually it.  I'm quite certain the  majority of these people wouldn't lift a finger to put a stop to a single gay orgasm.  I think it's that they want to, as a country, as with marijuana, teen sex and illegal betting, have it around and not oppose it, but not be seen as condoning it either.  I think it's not the gay sex that they feel the bible would have them oppose that is fuelling their outrage at all.  Because theye're not doing one thing to put a stop to the actual gay sex.  I think it's anything that could be construed as legitimizing it.
  And they have their self-image wrapped up in their country and its legal system just as if all of that were real and as advertised, and just as if the New Testament was written by people who felt the same way about their own country.  Do you think Paul the apostle was campaigning against Romans or Greeks legitimizing homosexuality? Because he himself was a Roman citizen and didn't want HIS empire to do that? I think he had other, quite different and quite pressing concerns than annoying gay people who wanted to get marriage paperwork.

  But these people will, quite confidently, tell me as a high school history and Civics teacher, what I would never get away with teaching.  It does no good to tell them what I can and actually do teach.  I can teach whatever I want, if it's a fact, and it's on topic.  I can tell them how many people vote how, and what laws say, and what the arguments for and against gay marriage are.  I can tell them what the laws say.  I can tell them what politicians and the leaders of political groups say.  I can require students to frame arguments for and against gay marriage, and require them to use logic and an understanding of the legal system and historical precedent in so doing. (I can tell you that my colleagues are good and sick of asking kids to study both sides of issues, and having kids try to get out of work by claiming, flying in the face of reality, that there aren't two possible sides, and that they also can't be required to back up any of their strongly held views with anything, including any knowledge of the bible, nor should I teach them that there are other views out there in the world, let alone what those views are.  It is so clearly our job to do all of that, and their job to demonstrate competence for us to assess.)

  I have homeschool parents tell me they don't want their kids to know that gay people get married.  Or they want to teach that no gay couple has ever been married, because this is a contradiction in terms.  I also have them tell me what I, as a mainstream professional teacher, could NEVER teach kids what the bible says about homosexuality.  Of course I can.  It's a key part of the picture, isn't it?  And presented as part of a complex interplay between people and parties with differing opinions and stances and approaches, the only people complaining are always going to be the "right-est" of fundamentalists.
  I've never had, nor have my local colleagues ever had, a Muslim parent complain about their kids learning that there is a controversy, that there are people on both sides, and that questions like this are often viewed as complex, rather than simple or black and white.  May happen one day.  Right now it's just Christians.  Because they want to feel they are the establishment, and they want to run the country.  And they quote bible verses from a time when Christians were an oppressed minority, like the clock's going to turn back and we'll all be getting stoned to death for smuggling bibles.
  But the anti-gay marriage ones with the loudest voices aren't church-goers with a knowledge of the bible.  More often, it's just grassroots rednecks whose kids can't be made to stop calling random other kids "faggots" and "queers" and "That Thing" and so get in trouble at the office for disrupting class with that behaviour, and then their parents come in and demand respect for the fact that they have a right to raise their kid to talk that way in a public school, and that their kid has a right to express his or her opinion as to the faggotyness of his or her fellow students and how traumatic he or she finds both having to go to school with gay people, and the fact that the school is infringing upon his or her rights by not letting him or her call them queers, which is what they are, isn't it?
  When all you're trying to get them to do is provide clear evidence that they can read. Or that they know who Hitler was. Or how laws and bills of rights work.

Do You Know What The Bible Says?  No, Not One Thing. The Whole Thing.

There is a simple test I like to use with people like that.  They always say "It's just wrong.  End of conversation."  You can't really argue with that.  (Even if you're their teacher, and you're teaching about homosexuality being legalized in the 60s.)  It's something anyone can say about anything, and it's also a refusal to back up an opinion, rather than being an opinion itself.  But if anyone says "the bible says," I am well aware that there are parts of the bible which are useful in hating on gay people.  There are also "How To Do Slavery Right" parts.  And "How To Take Sex Slaves In An Orthodox Jewish Manner" bit.  Thing is, if people aren't within handy googling distance of the Internet, they pretty much never know those bible verses they are claiming exist.  They're just believing what someone else told them, because it appeals to them. And if they do know a verse or two, it's almost always an older person, and one who ONLY seems to know those precise verses.  And they've had them printed on a t-shirt or bumper sticker.  It's their email signature.  You try to talk about anything else the bible says, and they're suddenly out of their comfort zone.  For them, the whole bible was written to them, to tell them that all faggottry needs to be stamped out by Jesus-loving Christians everywhere.  Because it's infringing on their rights. 

  But Christians will say "We're losing more and more rights."  I then ask "Can you tell me one right I have lost so I can miss it?"  And they always come up empty.  Well, I've lost rights I would have once had to discriminate against others.  But I don't miss those rights.  Now that the sixties are over, I can no longer call black students "niggers," nor gay kids "faggots."  And I have lost the right to bar them from our school.
  Or  any number of people, nominally Christian or otherwise will say "You can't say Merry Christmas or use the word Christmas or have certain Christmas carols in your school."  And I'll point to simple facts.  That I say Merry Christmas as often as I like (which isn't very often.  I don't actually care if people are merry at the best of times, and I also believe that the pressure to "need" to be able to conjure merriment every December, during which month Christ was not born, is responsible for the sharp rise in suicides and traditional indulgences in substance abuse which occur at this time of year).  I can tell them I sing and play Christmas carols about Bethlehem as often as I like (which isn't, admittedly, very often.  But I do do it. And I can. I haven't lost those rights).

Life In Canada
But I live in Canada. This means if anyone claims to be offended about anything, we freak out.  So if I offend anyone in any way, I may have a conversation to have with my principal.  Mostly that's just going to mean doing the same thing in a way with more finesse.  Yes, there are teenage kids who want to sing "O Little Town of Bethlehem" or something in their school, and whether or not they are going to be allowed to do that will depend entirely on who the school administrator is and how slick and how timid he or she is.  So, if you have a dick administrator, or a coward administrator or whatever, the whole school will suffer from that, and not just at Christmas.  So when I hear that some kid couldn't sing a Christmas song at Christmas, it makes me mad.  Because that's largely the administrator being scared.
  Shortly before we "got rid" of the P.A. Lord's Prayer in the mornings, our school board at first went in the opposite way.  They'd read the Lord's Prayer each morning as usual, but then they'd also read a native prayer or something Hindu.  You know what?  Someone somewhere made the choice to go the other way.  To decide that we weren't having any of anyone else's culture, and we'd graciously remove all the parts of our culture that we feared would overwhelm others and make them feel inadequate.  I thought that was terribly condescending.  (I do not use the word "patronizing" unless I get to call women "matronizing" when they act the same way, and generally I feel that I do not get to do that.)  So I'm annoyed about administrators who nix the songs about a baby being born, but keep the flying reindeer and singing snowmen.  But I don't think it's because the world hates Jesus.I think it's because we're being condescending and pandering to the first person who claims to be offended by anything.  I blame it on us trying not to look like ideological bullies.

Newsflash: I Am A Heterosexual

It's true.  I am a heterosexual.  I know gay people who are married.  I know Christian gay people who are married.  I have blocked people on Facebook because I'm sick of their continued postings stating confidently that if you're gay, you can't be a Christian.  That being gay is a choice (and nothing else.  And that being gay is not about genetics, not about being born that way, not about past abuse or psychological baggage) and that it's a choice to hate Jesus.  Because who am I, who am not gay, to decide I know all about what it is to be gay, and why people are gay and so on? 
  The only thing that seems to come to mind for me is that, in the most anti-gay bible verses, it clearly says that God will inflict homosexuality upon Himless societies.  Will give people over to it like He used to give people over to Assyria.  Makes me think if someone's gay, it's not terribly fun, and that God made them that way without asking them or their parents first, and that they have much choice in the matter as people living in Jerusalem once did when Syria came knocking.

  I don't think the world hates Jesus or is even "full of people who hate Jesus."  I think there are a WHOLE lot more people who hate Christians.  And sometimes I want to join them. Because they/we are such assholes sometimes.  Vindictive, arbitrary, bigoted, selfish, hypocritical, scripture-ignorant, love-challenged assholes. Judgmental, too (irony intended).  But I am a Christian.  So my only choice is to only be an asshole if I think it's in one of the ways Jesus wants me to be one.  If I'm being opinionated, rude or upsetting, I think I ought to make sure it's for a reason.  Merry Christmas.