Love, respect, and common ground would be a Christmas miracle
Washington Examiner
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Belief in God and participation in regular religious gatherings have reached an all-time low in recent years. The share of people lacking a church or religious affiliation fell below 50% during the pandemic era. Although most people still believe in God, the number overall who do not has reached 21%.
Church attendance has not recovered from the pandemic, when many state and local governments actively chose to disfavor it. The younger generations are the most likely not to believe in God, including 34% of Generation Z, 29% of Millenials, and 25% of Generation X.
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This loss of faith is a bad thing for the country in many ways. One effect is that it has dampened and destroyed the sense of community that once held people together. Churches and other houses of worship used to form the backbone of communities.
The fact that this loss of belief coincides with an increasingly polarized and caustic national political conversation is more than just circumstance. In many people, religion has given way to a woke ideology, a form of religion itself, that encourages resentment and hatred of others for their wealth, their race, and their religious or political beliefs.
This replacement of traditional religion with a much darker religion — that excludes redemption — means people are no longer having a real political conversation. Discussions are no longer about policy because too many people now reject what were basic shared values less than a decade ago. For example, it is now debated whether it is OK to mutilate or sexualize children in the name of an ideology.
It is a feature not a bug of toxic ideologies that their adherents seek to exacerbate racial tensions rather than ameliorate them; to get in people’s faces, drive them out of restaurants, give them no peace and no quarter until they submit. This tactic of relentless politicization, because it appears to be effective in the short term, has been adopted more broadly on both sides of the political divide. This has made civility rare.
For all the damage that unbelief does to society’s fabric, God’s existence does not depend upon anyone’s belief in him. It shines through in the objective truths to which every human heart has access, particularly regarding what is right and wrong in the treatment of other people. So the basis for common ground is always there, but the voluntary dimming of so many consciences makes it increasingly difficult for the light to shine through.
Even in its most diluted form, devoid of religious content, Christmas is supposed to generate feelings of respect and kindness for others — the impulse to treat others as they would wish to be treated. Indeed, this impulse is one originating in the Golden Rule that Jesus later propounded as an adult. Where the world says to treat friends well and enemies poorly, and to take revenge on those who have wronged you, the child born on this day taught that vengeance belongs only to God. You, on the other hand, are born for something better: to love your enemies, to forgive offenses from the bottom of your heart, to bless those who curse you, and to love others not just as you love yourself but as he loves you.
A return to shared ideals and the possibility of civility in disagreement — this is the miracle Americans are left looking for on this Christmas Day.
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