Christmas with the Anti-Christ

It’s Christmas day and I wish you all peace and joy with your friends and family.

In the midst of the secular holiday Christmas has become for so many of us, as we feast and celerate with our loved ones, exchange presents, enjoy the festive decorations, and enact our seasonal rituals and traditions, some may forget just why we are doing all this: celebrating the traditional birthdate of the unique character and example of the Biblical Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I’m not going to make an extended argument comparing Jesus Christ and Donald Trump in behavior and character to conclude Trump is the exact opposite of Jesus Christ; that subject is extensively debated by people more qualified than I, and generally concludes (even by some of his defenders!) that he is objectively an anti-Christ in every way that matters. Trump even fulfulls many of the scriptual depictions and character and prophecy of the anti-Christ according to some Biblical scholars.

I’m simply taking it as given that an anti-Christ inhabits the highest office in America with the power and potential to bring us all, and everything we value and love, to ruin. This fact prompts questions for which I haven’t any firm answers: sorry, if you hoped I would offer any.

What should we say to our loved ones still under the deranging influence of this anti-Christ at this time during which so many of us – even the anti-Christ-deluded – are celebrating the birth and life of Jesus Christ?

How can we genuinely celebrate the advent of Jesus Christ when his polar opposite has such tremendous power in our lives and our nation and continues to outrage the world and an increasing percentage of Americans, possibly for years to come?

What should those who admire and/or worship Jesus Christ do AFTER this Christmas about an anti-Christ being our nation’s leader? What is our duty to resist and speak out and organize? How much must we risk of our personal security and peace to do so?

These are deep moral and ethical questions that go to very heart of eternal questions underpinning our status as both individuals with moral sentiments and social creatures profoundly dependent on each other and the systems of social order we have built to guide and order our collective lives. There aren’t any easy answers, only hard ones.

This moment in history is a challenge to our self-conception as moral actors, and to the fairness and viability of the social systems we have build to govern our vastly complex society, given that we find ourselves having voluntarily given such power and influence to a seemingly mad, degenerate, and declining anti-Christ.

I don’t have any answers for anyone else, but I believe – even though I am not a believer in the divinity of Christ – that part of those answers may lie in the demonstrated character and values at the heart of the Biblical story of the life of Jesus Christ, nonetheless.

The radical power in the example of the life and acts of Jesus Christ remains compelling – yet never fully realized on earth – two thousand years on: love your fellow humans unconditionally; treat the stranger – and even your enemies – with love and compassion; serve others – especially the least among us – before yourself; greed and lust for temporal power are the roots of all evil in the world; God is love, and we act most in accord with heaven when we love each other.

These seem like some good foundations for honoring the Christ inside all of us children of God, and for fighting the temporal, and temporary, power of the anti-Christ we have loosed into our lives. Perhaps most importantly, don’t let the anti-Christ make Christmas all about him. Christmas isn’t just about our cozy traditions, it’s about acknowledging a true and continuing spiritual battle, with the anti-Christ spirit always present to tempt and distract us, and ever seeking to “steal” the Christ-centered meaning of the holiday. Why do you think Trump has been so busy keeping himself in the headlines this Christmas season, and even TODAY‽

I invite you to contemplate the radical message of Jesus Christ, even as the anti-Christ’s nattering and hateful lies flood our media, and twist our government into the Beast. Be faithful to your conception of God and goodness. Endeavor to be Christ-like. Reject the anti-Christ’s summons to the Beast inside all of us.

Seems like some reasonably good advice to me. Merry Christmas and Hopeful New Year.