Largely taken from my good friend Jim, who volunteers with the Student Environmental Action Coalition:
Christmas is awesome, but not for gifts or religious orthodoxy. Christmas is the time when many people celebrate the birth of Jesus. Am I that religious? Not in the traditional sense – I don’t know if Jesus even existed, and I don’t think he was God the Father, Son, or the Holy Spirit, but I can celebrate his birth.
Jesus hated religious hypocrisy. He said, let ye without sin cast the first stone, let the poor in spirit have Heaven, because the poor of money shall take the earth. Jesus said, let’s turn the other cheek to the Romans. – their own laws say that if they hit us with their right hands, we can hit back without legal action, let them fight us as equals, or not at all.
Jesus hung out with prostitutes and beggars. He was poor, born in a stable. Jesus was a bastard, the love child of an unmarried woman. He had long, wooly hair and brown skin. He was short, yet stood up to the Roman Empire. So today I celebrate people power, and I celebrate Jesus, the radical of Nazareth.
From the Evangelical Environmental Network:
“Addressing global warming is a new way to love our neighbors, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, to protect and care for ‘the least of these’ as if they were Jesus Christ himself.”
As my friend Isaac says, “not quite factual, but very close to being true”.