A message for Christmas?

However, the birth and life, and indeed the death of Jesus Christ did set in place a movement among mankind which held great promise, at least if we look at the potential for good, for decency and for love that the Man Jesus Himself espoused.

But the same can be said of the Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhists and other “faiths” which mankind embraced, for mankind’s salvation and for the destruction of all other faiths. I do not know if there is a life-cycle for religions, where they have to pass through times of dreadful violence in the deity’s name, like we are seeing with Islam and have seen with Christianity’s name. But we need to accept that the two newest major faiths of mankind have brought and wrought the most dreadful hatred and bloodshed across the whole planet, in conquest, in God’s Name. Millions have been murdered, raped, enslaved, shipped to distant lands, had their customs, religions, languages, names and cultures stripped from their very memories.

And the perpetrators of these atrocities console themselves by claiming that “these poor devils have been saved” by being forced through millennia of atrocities so that they could mimic the rituals of “the faithful”.

I do not wish to be scornful of the potential for religion to put something significant into the lives of peoples, especially to Christians on Christmas Day. But as we look out at the world from wherever we sit—Christians and non-Christians alike, we need to ask what have God, gods, or at least religions, done for mankind? Certainly the most recent two “faiths” –Christianity and Islam—have histories dominated by wars, enslavements, genocides and the most repressive laws and cruel punishments imaginable. It seems that love and enlightenment is always trumped (take that!) by bigotry, hatred and violence in the name of peaceful gods? This Christmas Day, we look at life and living here in our own land, and wonder what is going to become of us. Our disgraceful inability to govern ourselves, far less to develop our society with the bounties which nature has bestowed upon us, puts us firmly into Failed State Category.

No serious person can deny that we teeter at the edge of an abyss yawning to consume us in violence, racial hatred and destruction of an infrastructure already cracking along its seams.

Our hopeful remedies to hold back the fires and the floods involve prayers: a day of prayer, a march of prayers, hymns and mantras. Shall we sing to Rudolph, his red nose to light a way for us? Are we so comfortable and irresponsible in our failures that we believe prayers will lift this society out of its morass of corruption, laziness and indiscipline? Heal this society, Dear Lord. Cure our neighbours of their cruelty and corruption. Heal us please Lord, no lectures about individual or societal duties, please just heal us all. A little war somewhere to jack up the price of oil and gas again, Oh Lord, in time for Carnival Oh Lord? That is all we ask--- again. Do you know what is the answer to your prayer, Oh T&T?: “Take up thy bed and walk”. Our malingering, our failure to even clean our premises— schools, offices, streets and parks, indeed our penchant for destruction and defilement rates us among the societal failures of the 21st Century.

If we stop by a clear stream to bathe and eat, we leave the place littered with debris which cannot even decompose.

The same for our beaches and our forest trails and wetlands; places which other societies, so less endowed than us, admire and preserve, and use as natural attractions to lift their spirits and their wealth.

Talk not of our once beautiful and historic towns and cities.

The homeless living and defecating on our pavements, assaulting pedestrians trying to step past; the pavements cluttered with market stalls, selling imported items to visitors hoping to find something local.

The failure of our governance, regardless of whom we put, failures enhanced by the disregard we have for everything beyond the immediate hustle as we rush over the edge of a precipice we do not even acknowledge is there, will manifest itself in violence soon. T he rest of the world, in case we have not been noticing, will not have time for our petty bloodshed, T&T.

We must take up our own beds and walk to our salvation.