Will the real Christmas please stand up?

I loved this Christmas video today. I got a little dizzy as the camera almost sped around the speaker, but I listened and agreed. And I don't usually like rap-style communication!

Maybe you will like it as well.

Or maybe you have already chosen to disregard the stooper. I hope not. I hope you listen with both ears, and with the ears of your heart.

It can't hurt, you know?

Here's the video from the UK:

Then please, tell me, or better yet, tell someone else about your beliefs about Santa or about the Messiah. Which is the real Christmas? Will the real Christmas please stand up?

Mosques, Christian warriors and tolerance: What is OWRT?

My friend Owen sent me this link:  "Interstate Christian activists on board of Canberra group fighting mosque in Gungahlin"

And Owen asked me a question which is a good one. Could I "please elaborate on the concept of #OneWayReligiousTolerance as you use it."

 In other words, knowing that I'm very keen to notice the misuse of religion in the gamery of public action, isn't this just another one of those actions and thus intolerance in a multi-cultural society?

You see, in the article, some Christians are trying to prevent some Muslims from opening a mosque in Canberra.  And in fact, some of those listed as preventers are running for parliament in the next election.

One of the opponents is Mr Adrian Van Der Byl - who said he opposed "the advancing Islamisation of Australia" - and he also confirmed he planned to run as the CDP candidate in the seat of Goulburn, which borders the north of the ACT, at the coming NSW state election.

Realistically I have no problem with people using their inalienable and incontrovertible rights to access public opinion or try to persuade government to accomplish their moral convictions.  In a democracy, we have political means to our own ends and those are right to use. They may be wrong; they may be bigoted; they may be misinformed, but this is not the same as other examples of #OneWayReligiousTolerance. 

Maybe I should define that hashtag.

#OneWayReligiousTolerance describes the attempt by those who follow Islam to demand non-Muslims to allow (aspects of) sharia law in a free society, but not to allow other religions and cultures to influence them. It is related to the idea of intolerance, but is more specific. If you will, the door only opens in one direction. This is both my definition and my hashtag creation.

Read more here Canberra

In another story out of the UK, tolerance, the new religion of the 21st Century, has reared its uncompromising and ignorant head in a case involving both Jewish and Christian private schools. Seems that A successful Christian school has been warned it is to be downgraded by inspectors and could even face closure after failing to invite a leader from another religion, such as an imam, to lead assemblies. Even attending a mosque is not enough to warrant such downgrading.

A Jewish school was warned it had to have conversation about sexuality, especially lesbianism, and learning about babies and biology to maintain its ranking.

UK schools demotion

So Owen's question remains. Is all intolerance #OWRT?  Not at all. Whatever tolerance really is, it's currently leaning toward madness, especially in the UK. Another recent article from there highlights this madness. Anyone who criticizes gay marriage is legally equated with hate-mongers and true terrorists like ISIS. Does that smack of idiocy? Or something as 'tolerant' as 'via media' being the only way.

Extremists and hate speech

So when a Christian few try to stop a mosque in Canberra from finishing construction or a legal expert tries to shut down gay marriage critics, it's not #OneWayReligiousTolerance; it's simply tolerance or intolerance gone awry. The Christians in Canberra are not saying Muslims should not exist. They are not threatening deportation. They are not burning other previously built mosques. On the other hand, if a country like Saudi Arabia will allow people to own Christian Bibles, or Iraq will stop destroying churches, then I will stop citing them with #OneWayReligiousTolerance. Until then, they are the classic examples of such.

Still Life: A movie of hope

Eddie Marsan plays a tough guy, but soft on the inside, on the TV series Ray Donovan. He showed me a very different side of his acting ability in the movie my wife and I saw on Sunday night, Still Life. I chose this photo to represent the flick as Eddie's character, Mr John May, is ever looking up, not to God as one might expect in a religious blog, but up to life. He seems to be querying it regularly.

He does most things regularly. He eats the same meal on return from his consistent work at an office in a local Council in South London. He is a quiet man, unassuming and yearns to bring honor and dignity to others, even when no one else will do that.  And he doesn't seem worried to gain anything by this action either. For over two decades he has worked basically alone in a small office, and keeps meticulous records with almost-OCD fidelity. But something else is driving him to do this work, and the word for it is OPTIMISM.

He is looking up. His job is to bring to final rest people who seem to have no living relatives. But he wants to find family members of deceased people and bring them to a bit of conclusion. John works with the local police as a detective for the coroner, trying to bring closure, coordinating funerals, burials, disposal of ashes, and wants to bring dignity and a bit of life in the face of death.

No one really seems to care; no one seems to notice him. I kept considering allusions to Alan Arkin in his 1968 role of John Singer in "The Heart is a lonely Hunter." He was brilliant (Academy Award nomination) as the deaf-mute who helped all kinds of people who always seemed to be troubled and troubling. Arkin's Singer back then reminded me of Richard Cory, from the poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson. Maybe it was only their endings, but Cory's dignity (forget that he was wealthy) along with Singer and here John May all spoke of a quiet fortitude and observable honor they brought to their worlds.

Cory: "And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked."

And maybe it's that 'humanness' which is ever hoping for something better than an uncaring industrial dumping of cremated ashes. John May kept a scrapbook of the abandoned lonely souls for whom relatives had no time. They were his own family. And some cases remained open long after the funerals, so that his optimism could honestly be fruitfully concluded.

Hope brings great energy. And John May keeps his energy inside his dignified frame, and only towards the end does he begin to explore it, tasting new tastes, considering his own possibilities of life. Hope does that. It lets us look up. It lets us consider things beyond ourselves and our current experiences. Hope allows us to launch out, because we have an anchor that keeps us safely assured while we launch.

The Bible says, "hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us." (Romans 5.5) And it's that optimism, that hope, which John May characterizes. Uberto Pasolini has created a beauty of a film in his native England. 

Let me ask you-- where do you find hope? What gives you something for which you get up each morning? The humanness of John May and that which he wanted to give his clients is noble beyond the new administrator in the local council. But I don't think it's beyond the desire of the Lord of life. In fact, I think the optimism of John May is right for us all. For you and for me. I was challenged; maybe you will be challenged also. 

Then reach out, look up, for hope is available for us all, in the person of Yeshua, the Messiah of Israel and Light of the World. He brings dignity to each of us. He longs to be in relationship with each of us. 

Of everyone ever, 'he was always human when he talked.' Listen to what He says of you, of Himself, of our need for Him. And you will find life. It's better that you find it now than at the end of your own movie.