Christmas 2015: A Time For the Introspection Our Society Desperately Needs

Again, I can't stress enough to my readers the importance of this magazine.

Christmas 2015 comes at a time when we need the kind of introspection and consideration of what is really important in life which it provides. Christmas, of course, is many things. It is a season of celebration and family reunion, a season of merriment and good cheer. More than this, however, it is a time for contemplation of the meaning of life—and of our own lives—and of seeking our answer to the question of what God expects of us.

Even many who proclaim themselves to be Christian seem not to understand that the views of man and the world set forth by Jesus—and the one which dominates in the modern world—are contradictory.

This point was made in the book Jesus Rediscovered, published in 1969, by Malcolm Muggeridge, the respected British author and editor. Muggeridge, who had a religious conversion  while preparing a BBC documentary about the life of Christ, pointed out that the desire for power and riches in the world—a desire to which so many are committed—is the opposite of what Jesus commanded. Indeed. Jesus was tempted by the Devil with the very worldly powers many of us so eagerly seek:

"Finally, the Devil showed Christ all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said: 'All this power I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will give it.' All Christ had to do in return was to worship the donor instead of God—which, of course, he could not do. How interesting, though, that power should be at the Devil's disposal, and only attainable through an understanding with him! Many have thought otherwise, and sought power in the belief that by its exercise they could lead men to brotherhood and happiness and peace—invariably with disastrous consequences. Always, in the end, the bargain with the Devil has to be fulfilled—as any Stalin or Napolean or Cromwell must testify. 'I am the light of the world,' Christ said, 'power belongs to darkness.'"

Speaking of our own time, Muggeridge notes, "The parts of the world where the means of happiness in material and sensual terms are the most plentiful—like California and Scandinavia—are also the places where despair, mental sickness and other twentieth century ills are most in evidence. Sex, fanned by public erotica, underpinned by the birth-control pill and legalized abortion, is a primrose path leading to satiety or disgust; the rich are usually either wretched or mad, the successful plod relentlessly on to prove to the world and to themselves that their success is worth having; violence, collective and individual, bids fair to destroy us all and what remains of our human situation . . . as Pascal points out, it is part of the irony of our human situation that we ardently pursue ends which we know to be worthless."

The Western world was once motivated by religious values, although it often acted in violation of those values, and a view of a God-centered universe. Now, it has turned its attention to other things. Malcolm Muggeridge lamented, "I firmly believe that our civilization began with the Christian religion, and has been sustained and fortified by the values of the Christian religion, by which the greatest of them have tried to live. The Christian religion and these values no longer prevail, they no longer mean anything to ordinary people. Some suppose you can have a Christian civilization without Christian values. I disbelieve this. I think that the basis of order is a moral order; if there is no moral order there will be no political or social order, and we see this happening. This is how civilizations end."