Saturday 22 December 2012

Christmas: On Getting Stuck in

Christianity isn’t about stopping the world and getting off, however tempting the prospect, but the exact opposite. At times I would gladly shoot whoever invented the world “Secular.” It seems to be the catch-all term to enable religious people to sidestep, if not condemn, anything they want a God-shaped excuse to opt out of. This fuels the kind of terribly important Dreamworks that enabled the Levite and the Priest in Jesus’ parable to step over a heap of bloody rags in the road and walk on by. They weren’t nasty, or the faintest bit ignorant about the law of love in the Hebrew Scriptures — they just had better things to do. God isn’t an excuse to opt out. If we get the logic of the Incarnation, he’s our reason to get stuck in.

On a Day some say the world was going to end, this seemed a reasonable message for Radio Christmas. It’s a great project run by Dunc Dyason every two years in Amersham, that brings together young people to run their own radio station at Christmas, in aid of Street Kids in Guatamala; and this is what I said:

3 comments:

Chelliah Laity said...

Your comment about opting out took me back to the Occupy fiasco when the the church did not want to get involved. There are still shades of looking the other way that lurks within our church.

Ann said...

Yep incarnation means no opting out - the reign of God is here and now. But next time hope you don't use "gladly shoot" someone - we have too much of that going on here in the US.

Bishop Alan Wilson said...

oops. Sorry, Ann. Makes me a realise how living in a country with only a very small number of guns changes perspectives.

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