Weakening Xmas spirit should be re-energised

We are in the grip of yet another festive season, specifically Christmas that is due tomorrow, and which bears great significance to Christians, because it is the birthday of their saviour, Jesus Christ.

With the passage of time spanning over two thousand years, however, the significance of Jesus’ teachings, his crucifixion, death and resurrection has been progressively eroded. Jesus Christ, as son of God, is one of the constituents of the Holy Trinity – the others being the Father and the Holy Spirit – that highlights the baptism of Christians.

Christmas, therefore, should be a season of serious spiritual soul-searching and a chance for adherents to the faith to readjust themselves from sin to righteousness. The trend has been though, that, the season is characterised more by fanciful dressing, feasting, picnicking, and alcohol-indulgence sprees.

It is also an occasion for reunions of long-geographically separated relatives and friends; which is fine, only that, for most part, the re-unions represent crowds of merry-makers rather than seekers of positive spiritual revolution.

It is a trend that is worrying clerics and concerned worshippers, who are alarmed that, worldly life in which the quest for money, material possessions, and economic show-off, have been elevated to virtues, while the real virtues, such as leading simple lives, modesty, compassion and honesty, are being disregarded.

Worrying, too, is the proliferation of evangelical denominations whose focus is economic prosperity rather than advancement of Christian faith. But not all is well in mainstream churches, some of which are rocked by leadership wrangles, factionalism amongst worshippers, and the wayward tendencies of clerics and lay operatives in Church administrative establishments who should be role models but are bad example setters instead.

It is apparent, then, that, much clean-up has to be done, to whip stray Christian flock back onto the right path, for those whose faith has weakened to strengthen it, and, above all, for clerics to be paragons of spiritual virtue, since, after all, they are shepherds tasked to provide Jesus Christ-like guidance.

That will enrich the Christmas season. 

source:the Citizen