| Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the greatest man who ever lived, the one man who gives meaning, purpose, and values to a more and more secular, materialistic lifestyle that has alienated children from their parents. Christmas is about children, too, and it will be a lonely time for some families. The children spend much of their childhood surfing the internet, playing video games, and entering dark digital forests where dangerous monsters lurk.
The internet can be a source of knowledge. Still, for many more, it is the source of mindless entertainment that estranges youth from family and friends and distracts them from engaging with society around them. Many are unable to understand the truth and the social realities of life. Few can talk openly heart-to-heart with their parents.
They exist in a world apart, silent and withdrawn. They can be negatively influenced, groomed for sexual abuse, or become victims of online abuse and sex-tortion. What young people need today is a blameless ideal superhero, a model they can believe in, one that performs miracles by helping humanity by doing good, standing for justice, teaching the truth, saving the children, and inspiring others to help and protect them, too. Spiderman or Superman lives in the imagination, but a human involved in direct action helping the poor or youth cope with the frustrations of life is a real hero.
That is a person doing good who believes with conviction that taking actions like speaking the truth to power will challenge the leaders to change. The hero stands for the truth and knows and believes that justice and goodness will conquer and overpower the forces of evil and oppression. We need more heroes to set people free from poverty, from jails, and from the oppressive controlling power of the ruling elite. They will be agents of change, and, like Jesus of Nazareth, they will change the world from darkness to light. We celebrate His birthday because his words, deeds, and life and death have revolutionized the world.
Christian parents, pastors, priests, teachers, and politicians must cast aside their apathy and usual lifestyles and learn to be superheroes and community leaders for their children and youth by giving positive examples and standing in solidarity with the poor. This Christmas, they could organize youth groups to do good, like visiting innocent children jailed like animals behind bars in the youth jails. They can sit together and write to the politicians demanding the children be freed unless they are proven guilty of some serious crime they may be accused of. Parents should show the way by good example and be heroes to their children.
There are so many dangerous influences in the world over the internet that can brainwash people and children into joining cults and allowing them to be enslaved, as happened in Surigao Del Norte. There are as many as a thousand children who were sexually abused and enslaved in so-called “child marriages,” now outlawed. They were sexually abused by leaders of a “cult” organization that had persuaded their parents to leave home and jobs and live in an enclave community in the remote hills of Surigao del Norte. If the parents had been empowered and inspired by Gospel values, they would never have been influenced to allow the criminals to capture their children and abuse many of them. We need leaders and people who will demand justice for these victims of abuse.
We have the free choice to choose to do good or do nothing to help suffering, abused children and adults. How do we show our love to the wounded, abused, and needy people? What choice will we make to help the needy this Christmas and the year ahead?”
The teaching of Jesus offers us happiness based on caring for each other and the poor, helping the exploited people and, lifting the downtrodden, saving the sexually abused and enslaved. He is the liberator we ought to imitate and follow. He is the bringer of enlightenment, and he challenges all of us to promote and call for a revolution of the heart and mind by all.
That’s a peaceful revolution that will change society from the inside. He invites us to share the most important values that will transform society and humankind through solidarity, compassion, empathy, and understanding for the poor. He calls us to be working for truth and justice. This makes a life of justice and peace, harmony and goodness. Humans can live a life of dignity, respecting human rights, and giving love and respect to our wounded neighbors like good Samaritans.
Indeed, youth and most people desire that in their inner hearts. They need to be inspired to reach out for such a life. His mission was to transform society from within, to have a revolution of mind and heart among the people. Every one of us has the potential and ability to challenge evil in society and to change it by having a conviction that we can win. We must believe with mind and heart that by standing for the truth and doing good, we will defeat evil. That is what Christmas should be all about.
He was so influential he persuaded many people to follow him, and he inspired people so much that it made him a significant person of influence and a threat to the status quo and leaders like King Herod and the elite rulers of Jerusalem. They executed Jesus as a dangerous rebel. He was dangerous because of his revolutionary talk, like when one day he stood a child in front of a crowd and said that the child was the most important of all in the family of God. . . if we accept and respect a child, then we respect and accept him. That was revolutionary. It was a direct challenge to the arrogant and the powerful elites. They couldn’t accept that kind of transformative thinking and acting. He demanded that child abusers be held accountable; they rejected his teaching.
This is what Christmas is really all about- accepting Jesus of Nazareth and his mission as our own, following him as our role model and wise teacher of values. Humans have the unique ability to think independently and know and understand good and evil. We have the free choice to choose to do good or do nothing to help suffering, abused children and adults. How do we show our love to the wounded, abused, and needy people? What choice will we make to help the needy this Christmas and the year ahead?
