Would you ban Christmas

Christmas is meant to be a celebration of Christ’s birth and his teachings. To respond to human need through love and service. To transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence and to pursue peace and reconciliation. To safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth. To teach these things to others. To love one another.

Why would anyone want to ban that?

What is has become is not what it should be, but banning isn’t the answer, in my opinion.

Arise said:

Christmas is meant to be a celebration of Christ’s birth and his teachings. 

There are 2 issues I see around this statement.

1 - the bible (ie the source of stories about Christ) was mostly written between 50 and 90 years after he died.

Even if the eyewitnesses were 20 at the time he died, then they would be between 70 and 110 years old when their memories were written down. Do you think people of this age bracket are likely to have an accurate and unbiassed account of events?

When I speak with elderly aquantancies then they tend to give a very selective edit of events from their side that tells it how they want it to come across. I highly doubt there is much accuracy in these tales.

2 - the stories have been edited by committee countless times over the millenia. Lots of problematic parts have been edited out through the years (see the King James edits for an idea of how much was modified to suit the agenda of the time) and much of the earlier fire and brimstone prose has been softened by the church to make it more appealing.

While the values preached are noble in intent, I think they are much better taken in a non-denomenational context and the religion removed completely.

And that’s of course entirely up to you, which is kind of the point. Tolerance. None of us have to follow a religion to appreciate the wisdom of Christ’s teachings. I think all the major religions have, at their core, some fundamentally wise teachings. I don’t have to follow the religion to follow the message. 

I know a few Bible scholars who would take issue with your comments about the Bible’s authorship. I won’t start an argument about veracity because I agree that since those accounts were written down, it’s been messed around with over the centuries by Kings and translators and subverted as a tool to manage the masses during less scientifically enlightened times. Even without the tampering, it’s a hard read full of stories that use phraseology of the time, some of which convey different or no meaning today. Many, taken literally today, sound ridiculous. But the book doesn’t need to be a manual for life for it to still have value, nor does its history weaken the central message and wisdom of that faith, in my opinion. 

I think that trying to separate the teaching from the teacher would be a bad idea. Without a movement, some kind of label or name, no one would pay attention to those teachings. I take your point though: precious few pay any attention anyway. 

Arise said:

But the book doesn’t need to be a manual for life for it to still have value, nor does its history weaken the central message and wisdom of that faith, in my opinion. 

I wholeheartedly agree with this point and would like to add my tuppence as below;

A typical Bible translation runs to roughly 800,000 words.

The number of "typical Bible translations" runs into the dozens and some vary greatly in their inclusions, exclusions, interpretations and particular wording.

Based on these two facts alone, I am always surprised and confused by folk who suggest that either;

a) "The" Bible is a manual.  [My opinion = no useful manual can be 800,000 words long and I can't understand the conceptual basis of saying "The" before the word Bible in that context.]

b)  Minuscule extracts are used (invariably, no more than a few hundred words - ie 0.003%(ish)) to suggest that ALL of the words (and their purpose or meaning) are somehow fairly represented by that surgically selected and minuscule percentage.

The sheer volume of words, surely, preclude simple proclamations of "this or that."

Just my opinions - and hopefully not too contentious for any school of thought on these matters?

Arise said:

But the book doesn’t need to be a manual for life for it to still have value, nor does its history weaken the central message and wisdom of that faith, in my opinion. 

I wholeheartedly agree with this point and would like to add my tuppence as below;

A typical Bible translation runs to roughly 800,000 words.

The number of "typical Bible translations" runs into the dozens and some vary greatly in their inclusions, exclusions, interpretations and particular wording.

Based on these two facts alone, I am always surprised and confused by folk who suggest that either;

a) "The" Bible is a manual.  [My opinion = no useful manual can be 800,000 words long and I can't understand the conceptual basis of saying "The" before the word Bible in that context.]

b)  Minuscule extracts are used (invariably, no more than a few hundred words - ie 0.003%(ish)) to suggest that ALL of the words (and their purpose or meaning) are somehow fairly represented by that surgically selected and minuscule percentage.

The sheer volume of words, surely, preclude simple proclamations of "this or that."

Just my opinions - and hopefully not too contentious for any school of thought on these matters?