We every Christmas night, at the end of this year the words that carry the longing for peace through all time will echo in churches around the globe. With millennia-old words from a Jewish prophet, a new beginning is invoked through a divine sign: A young woman will give birth to a son who, as ruler, will know how to choose good and abhor evil.
But whether spoken or sung – these words are unlikely to come easily from anyone's lips at the end of this year. Some people might even get them stuck in their throats. And this is probably not because the aura of the longed-for Messiah is described with pairs of words that sound like a fairy tale from ancient times: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father and Prince of Peace. It is more likely the name that the prophet Isaiah gave to the bringer of salvation: Immanuel, i.e. “God with us”.
As melodious as the names are, the contrast is bitter with a world whose obviously hopeless condition has not changed since the prophet's prophecies. What's more: hasn't Immanuel himself become a cipher for the absolute evil in the world when people torture, torture and murder in the name of God? God with us – not with the others!
This could have been the case back then, in the days of Isaiah. Back then, on a narrow land bridge between a river and the sea, a small people fought for their survival between rival powers to the south and east. Isn't it the same again today, if not even more dramatic, because the spheres of claim of three monotheistic religions overlap in a disastrous way?
God with who?
The Babylonians destroyed the first Jewish temple and the Romans destroyed the second. Arab conquerors built the Dome of the Rock on the same site. The recapture of Jerusalem by Christian crusaders (“God willing”) did not last. After the Shoah, the survivors of the Jewish diaspora returned to “eretz Israel”. Since then, attempts to wipe the young state from the face of the earth have failed three times. These days, thousands upon thousands of Palestinians are dying after their own kind murdered more than a thousand Jewish civilians and abducted hundreds. God with who?
It's not enough that religiously charged claims to power have been unleashed for thousands of years where geography and history form an ominous melange. No religion is immune from being used by secular powers in the struggle for political and cultural hegemony. This applies no less to the Muslim-dominated area between the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean than to the Christian West.
However, its hour came more recently. For the first millennium after the birth of the one in which Christians recognized the promised Messiah, they survived in the far west of the Eurasian landmass. European expansion in the late Middle Ages was initially characterized by the search for new paths that led to earthly treasures. The spread of Christianity only came into play once conquerors and settlers had established facts.
“God with us” only made a career as a Christian battle cry in modern times. The Prussian kings adopted it from the Protestant Swedes as their motto, which was intended to mobilize German believers in the fight against Napoleon. Even in the wars of the 20th century, millions of soldiers went into battle with either the imperial crown or the NSDAP party eagle with a swastika emblazoned on their belt buckles. One thing remained the same: “God with us.”
A seductive thought
In the face of such a history, is there not cause for optimism when the hope of civilizing religions is replaced by more and more civilizations in which the sphere of religion is strictly separated from that of the state and society? Where there are no longer any Christian patriarchs who bless weapons, no mullahs who call for genocide, no imams who pretend to be hate preachers?
The idea sounds tempting, but the bet doesn't work out. Shouldn't it be skeptical that despots have always feared nothing as much as the power of religions? May they prove to be ever so Janus-faced and corruptible in history and the present – whether a world would be a better one in which, in the midst of all the darkness of life, people no longer believe in a God who can be born in every child so that it Choosing good and abhorring evil still remains to be seen.
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