Posted on 12/24/2006 4:11:13 AM PST by goldstategop
Suppose for a moment that the birth in Bethlehem that Christians celebrate this week never happened --that it is, as the secularists would have it, mere mumbo jumbo, superstition, a myth. In other words, consider it not as an event but as a narrative. You want to launch a big new global movement from scratch. So what do you use? The birth of a child.
If Christianity is just a myth, then it is, so to speak, an immaculately conceived one. On the one hand, what could be more powerless than a newborn babe? On the other, without a newborn babe, man is ultimately powerless. For, without new life, there can be no civilization, no society, no nothing.
"The world has collapsed," announces a BBC newsman in a new movie. "Only Britain soldiers on." Europe in 1940? No, 2027. Adapted from P.D. James' dystopian novel, Children Of Men is set on a planet in which humanity is barren. That's to say, it can no longer reproduce. And you'd be amazed at how much else collapses with the fertility rate.
You might have a hard time finding ''Children Of Men'' at your local multiplex. It's a more pertinent Christmas movie this holiday season than ''Bad Santa 3'' or ''The Santa Clause 8,'' but Universal seems to have got cold feet and all but killed the picture. In an enthusiastic review in Seattle Weekly, J. Hoberman observed: "Universal may have deemed 'Children' too grim for Christmas, but it is premised on a reverence for life that some might term religious." Granted, he's in the godless precincts of Seattle, that last bit of the sentence -- "some might" -- seems a tad qualified. Obviously, Christianity has a "reverence for life." So too does Judaism: all that begetting the eyes glaze over at in the Old Testament, going right back to God's injunction to be fruitful and multiply.
Christmas is a good time not just for Christians to ponder the central proposition of their faith -- the baby in the manger -- but for post-Christian secularists to ponder the central proposition of theirs: that religion is a lot of goofy voodoo nonsense and that any truly rational person will give it the bum's rush. The problem with this view is that "rationalism" is looking less and less rational with each passing year. Here are three headlines from the last couple of weeks:
"Mohammed Overtakes George In List Of Most Popular Names" (Daily Telegraph, London)
"Japan's Population 'Set To Plummet' " (BBC News)
"Islam Thrives As Russia's Population Falls" (Toronto Star)
By comparison with America, those three societies are very secular. Indeed, Russia spent three-quarters of a century under the most militantly secularist regime of all: Under Communism, the state was itself a religion, but, alas, only an ersatz one, a present-tense chimera. As a result, Russians more or less gave up begetting: Slavs are in steep population decline, and, on present trends, Russia will be majority Muslim by 2050. And the Russian army will be majority Muslim by 2015. In western Europe, societal suicide isn't quite so advanced, but the symbolism is still poignant: "George" isn't just the name of America's reviled cowboy president, but of England's patron saint; the national flag is the Cross of St. George, under which Englishmen sallied forth to smite the Mohammedans in those long-ago Crusades. Now the Mohammedans have managed to smite the Georgians big time, not by conquest but simply by outbreeding. Mohammed is also the most popular boy's name in Brussels, Amsterdam and other Continental cities.
But forget Islam: In Europe, they're inheriting by default. There are no Muslims or any other significant group of immigrants in Japan and yet the Japanese are engaging in a remorseless auto-genocide. Already in net population decline and the most geriatric society on earth, their descent down the death spiral is only going to accelerate. As the BBC reported, "The imbalance is threatening future economic growth and raising fears over whether the government will be able to fund pensions. But Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki said: 'It's impossible for the pension system to collapse due to the declining birth rate because we will adjust the amount of money put into it.' "
Oh, OK then. But, just as a matter of interest, when you "adjust" the amount of money you put into the pension system, whose pockets are you going to "adjust" it out of? Japanese and European societies are trying to secure the future on upside-down family trees in which four grandparents have one grandchild. No matter how frantically you "adjust," that's unsustainable.
What's the answer? Cloning? Artificial intelligence? Well, here's another story you may have missed in recent days. Sir David King, the British government's chief scientific adviser, has turned in a bunch of reports on issues likely to arise in the next 50 years. Among them is a study on "robot rights." In a nutshell, if robots advance to some form of consciousness, they'd be entitled to welfare. The state would be obliged to provide "robo-healthcare," as the report puts it, plus no doubt robo-pensions and all the rest.
These are four stories you may not even have seen, what with all the really important stuff happening in the world, like Miss USA not being fired by Donald Trump, and Matt Damon dissing Dick Cheney. I'm a big 24/7 demographics bore, as readers of my new doomsday book will know, but even I'm a little taken aback at the way its thesis is confirmed every day by some item from some part of the map. These stories are all one story, the biggest story of our time: the self-extinction of most of the developed world.
The Virgin Mary's pregnancy is not the only one in the Gospels. There's another that prefigures it, in Luke 1:13:
"But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John."
Zacharias is surprised to discover his impending fatherhood -- "for I am an old man and my wife well stricken in years." If you read Luke, the virgin birth seems a logical extension of the earlier miracle -- the pregnancy of Mary's elderly cousin. For Matthew, Jesus' birth is the miracle. Luke, a physician, leaves you with the impression that all birth -- all life -- is to a degree miraculous and God-given, if only because without it there can be no world. The obligation to have children may be a lot of repressive theocratic hooey, but it's less irrational than the secular self-absorption of a barren Russia, Japan and Europe. And, if Christianity is a fairy tale, it's a perfectly constructed one, beginning with the decision to establish Christ's divinity in the miracle of His birth: As the song says, "And man will live forevermore because of Christmas Day."
Fascinating; thank you for an interesting post. But, well... in my experience there's much prophecy of relevance to recent history and, indeed, future history in the Bible.
For example, tell me what you flash on with these two verses:
Revelation 15:2: And I saw what looked like a sea of glass mixed with fire and, standing beside the sea, those who had been victorious over the beast and his image and over the number of his name.
Revelation 20:4: I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God.
I was afraid that would happen. I saw previews for it a couple of months ago, but when I went to check on it for its supposed Christmas release date, I found that the number of places in which I would be released had been dropped to, basically, NYC and LA, with a couple of other major regional cities getting a ONE-DAY release the next day. I bet a lot of pressure was put on Universal.
True, but actually, it's about socialism and hedonism. That's what is unsustainable without more and more people.
Most solid and caring families have the ability and desire to take care of their elderly members. It just might not be convenient or much fun. And there's the rub and why socialism is a requirement for the selfish.
For an example, look no further than two years ago when the French went to the beach in a terrible heat wave and left their grandparents to swelter and die by the tens of thousands in state institutions while they frolicked on vacation - figuring it was not their responsibility.
I couldn't do that, because nothing you allege is true, except more company prosecutions. Suggest you research the state of INS on 9/11 and the changes that have been made. It is true that illegal workers have had a lower priority than terrorists until now.
I seriously question that statistic. If they are including Aspergers, maybe so. People diagnosed with Aspergers are generally pretty normally functioning and do marry and have children.
Too often we humans tend to think of ourselves in isolation from the rest of the natural world. Big mistake. Huge. The interaction among ourselves and the planet is infinitely complex, and regardless of our level of technology, social development, or species arrogance, we remain an integral part of it. The planet could literally extinquish us tomorrow and not even notice we had been here. I try to remind myself of that daily.
"Suppose for a moment that the birth in Bethlehem that Christians celebrate this week never happened --that it is, as the secularists would have it, mere mumbo jumbo, superstition, a myth."
Mark's straw man is stunning. Secularists don't necessarily dispute the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth. It's shocking to see him base a column on such a blatant error.
It's the aspects of divinity that are seen as myth. Stay with politics and theater, Mark, if this is what happens when you leave the reservation.
In Revelation 15, John sees a scene in Heaven; ergo, I take John 15:2 as referring to Saints of the Church standing in Heaven before the Sea of Glass (cf. Revelation 4:6), singing triumphally of the Days of Vengeance which the Lord is visiting upon the Great Whore of Babylon, Anti-Christian Old Jerusalem.
Revelation 20:4: I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God.
Revelation 20:1-6 refers to the Church Age following the Incarnation, Resurrection, and the Judgment upon the Great Whore of Babylon, Anti-Christian Old Jerusalem, the "thousand years" or long period of time during which the Church despoils the "strong man's house" and converts many Gentiles to salvation in preparation for Christ's second coming.
btt
Agreed. They're also adopting children that others reject. They are the west's demographic lock box. (With apologies to Al Gore)
The notion that even the wealthy ought not have more than two children is generally accepted. Down here in the metroplex, houses with 6,000 square feet or more typically have only a few bedrooms. I met a man at a church function who has twelve kids. His biggest problem was finding a house with enough bedrooms so that the older kids could have at least some privacy.
"Speaking of" Do you remember the old movie with Clifton Webb: "Cheaper by the Dozen?" I like it better than the Steve Martin one.
No - not disagreeing with you. I was just pointing out that the skyrocketing rate of "austism" may due more to diagnosing bias. People with Aspergers ARE functional (think engineer-types). Including those diagnoses into "autism" can make it seem a much more serious problem than it is.
Amnestia, no machine is illegal! We only do the jobs humans are too slow to do. Halliburton taken over by office PCs! Reporting for du-u-u-u...reporting for du-u...{We're sorry, but your government has encountered a problem and needs to close.}
Steyn cuts to the chase...
Is that quote from you? Sure has a ring of truth to it.
Later reading.
Romans 1:25-26
Secularists are the ones who are narrow minded.
Steyn brilliantly makes the point that birth is part of the divinity. Jesus could have been identified at any point in the chronology of life but he is identified pre birth.
The preservation of baby Jesus against genocidal slaughter is also indicative of life''s value.
Secularists are a weird lot that think they can read texts and pick out metaphysics and non metaphysics.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.