"With the right amount of coordination, perhaps Christians – and in particular, Christian women – could garner support for a movement of their own, making demands around issues such as abortion and transgender rights, which Donnelly opposes.
. . . “Maybe it’s the school board, maybe it’s city council. Maybe you’re going to go to the library and start booking some story reading hours,” said Donnelly. “We’ve got to get on offense and have our voices carried all over America.”*
I see no other way to interpret the above quote as anything other than an agenda, or a mission. The strategy couldn't be any clearer: Infiltrate public places that are meant to serve the public and deliver a message contrary to loving one's neighbor in these arenas. Said another way, during this season of "good will towards all" one could easily interpret the message as a smear campaign against the true Christmas Spirit. Is this a stretch? Perhaps, but no more so than the "holy war" being waged across the country, in this case by women. These women who call themselves "Mama Bears" are organized. They are smart. They are educated. They are well-to-do. What they hope to do, and have successfully begun to do, is use their collective voice to convince as many people as possible that supporting anyone unlike oneself is contrary to Christianity, as they define it. Let's pause here and remember where this whole story began.
The Christian story begins in the humblest way with a tiny baby born in a stable surrounded by beasts. Today's sanitized nativity scene does not show how desperate this homeless couple was on the night a young woman goes into labor with her first-born child. I wonder how her new husband handled the birth with only lowing cows looking on? Everyone survived the messiness of the moment as the story recounts each and every Christmas Eve around the world.
The little family of three then journeyed onward on the backs of camels. Like everyone, they had to deal with issues of the day under an oppressive government. Like any next door neighbor, they faced all the struggles of raising a family. The Temple played a big role in their lives where the education of the young son began. He became a scholar before his time, so to speak. The message this young Jesus brings to the elders and into the public square is non-judgemental and full of expecations.
He openly holds up the oppressed as equally deserving of love. He befriends women of all "reputations", as defined by others. He won't abide those who call them by derogatory names. He reminds his friends, called followers, that they ought to do the same. He wants them to; He expects them to carry this message of love to everyone, but especially to the lamest of the lame, the sickest of the sick, the poorest of the poor, the lowly of the low. No matter what. There is no room in this message for condemnation of any other person. No matter who. In the meantime, what was happening with his own Mama Bear?
Mary, as the story goes, understood that the message her son delivered in the public square was unpopular with the powerful rulers. She did not stop him. She watched her son being challenged by the authorities and arrested for his words of good will towards all, not some, but one and all. She knew what was ahead for her son, Jesus. She knew better than anyone about the threats against him by those who disagreed with the concepts and precepts of loving one another.
Since the first, there was no place in this story, this Christmas story, the story where Christianity itself originates that accepts or advocates for treating anyone as less than; No place where the story deviates from the truth that love of neighbor, all neighbors, was THE agenda two millenia ago. To try today to change that story to fulfill a very different agenda is a smear against the story itself, i.e., a smear against the 2,000 year-old Christmas story!
Any agenda or mission to alter, and re-write it cannot be based in the truth that love was and continues to be the only message contained in the Christ-mas story.
Like Jesus himself, some scholars today say:
Ultimately, the intent of these celebrations is to emphasize the importance of Jesus’ birth and how Christians are expected to follow the example of Jesus as one who proclaimed love, peace and justice in line with the great prophets of the Jewish faith.**
This Christmas like all that have come, and will come, is not intended for any other agenda than the one that began in a stable one night long, long ago.
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