Who's celebrating?

Happy fourth Sunday of Advent! And down the stretch we go!

Anyway: I was walking along, minding my own business, when I passed a Protestant church with a Christmas tree out front. Nothing weird about that, not in December; it would be a little odd in August. Anyway, this church eschewed all the usual decorations to instead cover the tree with flags of the world.

So who's celebrating with us, according to the flags?

The United States, still a majority Christian country, as is Canada, and Chile above them, and Jamaica, and -- Israel? Well, okay, Judeo-Christian heritage and all that...

And here's the flag of Communist Cuba, about which the CIA World Factbook says it is more than 59% Christian. Yet as an official Communist state wherein the Communist party is the only legal political party, we know that they have an official position of atheism -- or at least, their only official religion is the religion of the state. 

And there's good ol' Communist China, hanging out with good ol' Socialist Venezuela. I'm sure they'll have a merry Christmas. 

Look, I get it -- Christ is supposed to have come to save all of us, not just Western people, not even people who go to church and make a big deal of faith. We have no idea who is saved and who is not, actually, and we may be surprised. And maybe we need to pray hardest for those nations that not only are anti-religious but actively persecute Christians. But displaying the flags of those nations on the Christmas tree seems less like wishful thinking and more like wanton foolishness, like turning a blind eye to the evils of the governments of this world. 

We can work and pray and strive and hope for world peace, but we should not be stupid. This is kind of stupid to me. It's not like they have every nation in the world up on the tree; there are 195 countries on planet Earth and there are nowhere near 195 flags on this tree. Perhaps the flags represent areas in which this denomination has opened offices or sent missionaries. That might make sense. But I still think it's just brotherhood-of-man stuff, or I guess we need to say personhood-of-persons. 

Having seen what I think is the pastor's house next door, I suspect that reverend personage believes Trump is the single largest cause of all the trouble in the world right now anyway, based on a myriad of signs and bumper stickers.

It's the kind of thinking that believes we are all naturally brothers unless some evil force turns us against one another, which is as naïve as anything can be. Naturally, those in America who subscribe to such notions immediately blame America as that evil force.  

All I can say is, if this minister has seen his congregation in action, he knows that people don't automatically get along all the time out of love, and should be able to understand why nations fight too. We all suffer from a condition called human nature. Our problems are bred in the bone, and don't go away from wishful thinking, or willful blindness. If all of us strove to live a Christian life, I think it would bring the fighting way down, but as long as humans are humans it's never going to be paradise on earth, and attempts to make it so usually go to hell fast.