Christmas Eve- What if Jesus was never born?
Merry Christmas!
One of the classic Christmas movies of all time is “It’s a Wonderful Life”. George Bailey contemplates ending his life as he faces false charges that could result in him going to prison, but an angel is assigned to save him so that he can earn his wings. George wishes he had never been born, and his angel shows him what effect that would have on his town and the people in his life. For example, once he had prevented the pharmacist from accidentally poisoning a child’s prescription, but the alternative reality where George wasn’t born showed that the pharmacist was charged with manslaughter and was imprisoned for poisoning the child. As children, George had also saved his brother when he fell through the ice, which left him with hearing loss in one ear. In the alternative reality, his brother had died because he didn’t exist to save him, which means that his brother was never able to join the Navy as a pilot, where he saved numerous soldiers from a Kamikaze pilot heading for a troop transport. … There are multiple other ways in which his world was affected by him never having been born, and after George sees this reality and how his family, friends, and neighbours are negatively affected, he begs the angel to give him his life back. When he gets back, the false accusation is resolved by the hard work of his loved ones. … It is a classic, much-loved, Christmas movie.
George’s wish that he had never been born proposes an alternative reality. … At Christmas, we celebrate the birth of Jesus. And it left me wondering, what if Jesus had never been born? What would reality look like? What would a world that didn’t know Jesus look like?
This is speculation, of course, which is always dangerous and impossible to do accurately, but maybe we can indulge in a few thoughts about an alternative reality where Jesus was never born. … What would our world be like if Jesus was never born? …
In the modern world, Christianity is often believed to be the source of much that is bad in our world, but I would argue that even our categories for evaluating good and bad are heavily influenced by Jesus and his followers. We don’t often realize how many of our assumptions and values have their roots in the teachings of Jesus. Even the most secular and anti-Christian of our neighbours hold to values that can be traced back to Jesus and his followers.
A world in which Jesus was not born would probably show much less care for the hungry, the stranger, the sick, and the destitute. Jesus was not born in a palace- he was born and placed in a manger- a feeding trough for animals. It is an unquestioned assumption for most of us that vulnerable people should be given our attention and should be cared for in an elevated way. … This was not an assumption that was common in the ancient world. … Within Judaism there was an emphasis on caring for the widow and orphan, but it was the followers of Jesus who spread that teaching widely.
Jesus taught,
“Then the righteous will answer [the Son of Man], ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matt 25:37-40).
… The followers of Jesus believed that serving the poor was serving Christ. This was not something the worshippers of Zeus or Thor did. In fact, many ancient religions didn’t necessarily draw a connection between their worship and moral behaviour. They didn’t want to offend their gods with their behaviour, but that had more to do with honour. Their gods were not all that moral- as anyone who had read their stories knows.
Most of us would be shocked if we saw the brutality of the ancient world. The gladiatorial contests and the actual killing of people in arenas for blood-thirsty crowds was a part of Roman high-society for hundreds of years. … It was common in the Greco-Roman world to practice infanticide, where unwanted babies would be killed without shame. Around the world, people practiced human sacrifice, which sometimes included children. … Care for the poor and the destitute was not a value for the ancient Romans or Greeks. We value soup kitchens and homeless shelters in a way that the ancients didn’t. It was a basic assumption of most ancient peoples that some people were better than others. The followers of Jesus spread the teaching from Genesis that all people are made in this image of God, and therefore had inherent worth. This led them to remain in plague ridden areas to care for the sick, when most others fled, which meant putting themselves at risk. This instinct led to them developing hospitals to care for the sick. To care for them, was a form of devotion to Christ. This same devotion led them to establish orphanages, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, relief organizations and medical missions that worked to give aid to the suffering all over the world. The historian and theologian David Bentley Hart has said,
“the quality of charitable aid in the world today supplied and sustained by Christian churches continues to be almost unimaginably vast. A world from which the gospel had been banished would surely be one in which millions more of our fellows would go unfed, un-nursed, unsheltered, and uneducated” (Atheist Delusions, p15).This care for the vulnerable likely is at the root of the belief in Human Rights. They don’t seem to be a necessary consequence of the survival of the fittest. Many of our unquestioned moral assumptions have their roots in the teachings of Jesus and his followers, even if those origins are forgotten. … The belief that the inherent image of God gave each person profound dignity, led people like William Wilberforce to work to end the slave trade in the British empire. It led Quakers to release their slaves well before the law demanded it, even giving compensation to former slaves for their years of service.
Gregory of Nyssa, who was a bishop in the area we know as Turkey in the 300’s, in a sermon in the year 379, condemned slavery as an institution. He doesn’t talk about masters being kind to their slaves, which was the more common stance. He condemns his listeners for imagining they have the right to own a human being. He says slavery is to deprive another of the freedom granted to all human beings by God. Gregory asks what price should be put on the image of God. The institution of slavery wasn’t ended at that point, and slavery was practiced all over the world by many peoples. Gregory was noticing a seed that was planted that would eventually end the institution of slavery.
Jesus and his followers also planted many seeds that would lead towards equality between genders, and between different ethnic groups. As a follower of Christ, Paul worked towards healing the divide between Jews and Gentiles writing,
“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:28-29).
These teachings did not change the world overnight, but they planted seeds. Christianity is the most ethnically diverse religion in the world, probably because o this teaching. … In the early Church women were baptized and instructed along with men, and took communion with them. In the early Church, adultery was something the husband could be guilty of as well as the wife. Outside the church’s influence, this was not the case. Within the church, it was possible for a woman to reject a male suitor, and to inherit property. A woman was also considered to have religious freedom and wasn’t directed to accept the husband’s gods.… Jesus violated the customs of his day to do things like talk to the Samaritan woman by the well (an act that violated the customs between genders and ethnic groups). Without these cultural violations on the part of Jesus that reach over the gender divide, It is questionable whether we would see equality between genders or ethnic groups as something that is even desirable.
We assume economic and social justice are good things- why do we think that? Why should the poor and vulnerable be given any attention at all? Before the influence of the teachings of Jesus and his followers, many of our moral assumptions would have seemed very strange to Western cultures. Many of our moral assumptions, our highest goods, are grounded in the teaching that God is love (1 Jn 4:8)- that serving the vulnerable is serving Christ- and that we should wash one another’s feet in service and humility.
So, what would our world look like if Jesus was never born? It is probably not one in which Ebeneezer Scrooge would be moved to care for Tiny Tim. … If an angel came to us, the way an angel came to George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life”, and showed us a world in which Jesus was never born, I suspect we would see a world filled with more cruelty. It would likely be one in which life is valued less- especially children, the sick, and the vulnerable. It is one in which inequality between genders and ethnic groups would not be questioned- Pointing it out would probably be met with a “so what?”. It is very possible that slavery would have remained a widespread practice without the seeds planted by Jesus and his followers. … So, yes, let’s celebrate the birth of Christ, in spite of the imperfect Christians throughout time, and in spite of the deaf societies that claimed the label of “Christian” and continued cruel, barbaric practices. In spite of the imperfections of the many followers of Jesus, a world in which Jesus was born is a much better place. AMEN
Want to learn more?
The Triumph of Christianity
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