Religion is one of the most dangerous forces on earth.
If you’ve ever encountered true fundamentalists, you know why. When you combine eternal stakes with absolute certainty, it produces the kind of people who are happy to be cruel in the name of God.
In fact, they can view their cruelty as a form of kindness. If they treat you with decency, doesn’t that make you comfortable in your sin? It’s important for them to take opportunities to confront people when you can — in other words, to tell people that they’re wrong, often in the most strident of ways. How else will they understand the gravity of their own sin?
To the fundamentalist, disagreement is proof of apostasy. But it can be even worse than that — if you’re wrong, then you might lead other people into error, and that makes you dangerous.
That’s one reason fundamentalists of all stripes are often such zealous censors. A fundamentalist can see every person who’s wrong as a kind of Patient Zero in a potential pandemic of paganism. And don’t think for a moment that fellow believers are spared the fundamentalists’ ire. They’re a chief target. They have no excuse for their errors, and they receive the most vitriol of all.
The same principle can be applied to secular fundamentalists. Perhaps you’ve met them — the people who define themselves through their individual politics, who show a kind of sneering contempt for dissent, and are very, very concerned with who is platformed and who is not.
Nothing I’m saying is original. I’m relaying an observation that’s been true since the first spark of faith in the human heart. There is a quiet, dark voice that whispers: “You are right. They are wrong. It is best for everyone if you rule.”
Now let’s talk about the Christmas story. Every year, like clockwork, a series of debates breaks out in Christian America. When Jesus was born in a manger, did that mean he was homeless? When Jesus fled with his family to Egypt to escape King Herod’s order to kill all baby boys in the region of Bethlehem, did that mean he was a refugee? And when his family entered and lived in Egypt until Herod died, did that mean he was an immigrant?
You can see why the debate matters, whether or not you are a believer. If the man Christians believe is the Messiah, part of the Trinity, the maker of heaven and earth wasn’t just human, but also a human of low social status in the ancient world — and never elevated himself to any position of power on the earth — then that has immense implications for believers who want to imitate Christ.
If you can somehow distinguish the facts of Jesus’ birth from the realities of the modern world, however, then you can push it away — it becomes merely an ancient origin story, a matter more of academic interest than anything else.
I tend to think it’s a waste of time to debate whether Jesus fits into any specific modern legal or cultural category. For what it’s worth, I don’t think he was homeless (his family was on a trip, and there is no indication they had no home at all), but I do think he was a refugee by any fair definition of that term since his family was fleeing religious persecution. It’s a bit strange, however, to call him an immigrant when he fled to a different part of the same empire.
My conclusions don’t matter, though. The core truth of Christ’s birth is that when God became man, he entered the world in a posture of extreme humility and extreme vulnerability, and that posture never changed.
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Jesus, God made flesh, spent his life as a carpenter and an itinerant preacher. He proved so vulnerable that he was easily executed by the Roman Empire, with only the tiniest band of followers still clinging to their faith.
And if we who call ourselves Christians are to truly imitate Christ, then shouldn’t we also place little regard on our own worldly status? Jesus told us to take up our own cross, not to nail others to that terrible tree.
My former pastor often used a phrase that has always stuck in my mind — “the upside-down kingdom of God.” I use it all the time as well. Yes, Christ is King, but of a very different kind of kingdom, where the first are last, where you love your enemies, where you bless those who persecute you, and where you sacrifice to serve your neighbor.
And Jesus established the upside-down nature of his kingdom from his very first moments on earth.
When I think of the contrast between Jesus’ life and ministry and the will to power that has consumed so many Christians, I’m reminded of the words usually attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
That’s a fair critique. And by that metric, every single one of us will fail. Who among us is truly like Christ? But Gandhi’s critique contains a potential fallacy. There is an unspoken implication that people would actually like Christians if we behaved more like Christ.
But no. That’s demonstrably wrong. It’s true that people want to receive love and compassion, and that when they encounter Christians who love them and serve them, they tend to like them.
Many people do not, however, appreciate it when a Christian loves and serves their enemies. They absolutely do not like it when a Christian refuses to join their political crusade.
That’s what happened to Jesus. He healed the sick. He caused the lame to walk and the blind to see. But that wasn’t enough — a true Messiah was supposed to lead the people to political triumph.
When he did not, the religious people cast him aside. When the fateful choice was put before them, the religious people chose Barabbas, an insurrectionist, over Jesus.
But Christ did not endear himself to Rome, either. The secular authorities crucified him under a mocking sign, calling him “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”
In the upside-down kingdom of God, religion is still dangerous, but the danger has flipped. Fundamentalist faiths make religion dangerous to others, the nonbelievers and heretics who must be made to yield.
But Christianity properly lived is dangerous to Christians. It’s dangerous to people who refuse to hate those they are told to hate, to people who refuse to oppress, to conquer, to exploit — even when they’re told to conquer in the name of God.
It was Christ’s humble birth that set the stage. It was the first lesson in a series: to oppress others is to oppress Christ, to hate others is to hate Christ, and to love your enemies can be the most dangerous and revolutionary act of them all.
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