Gongol.com Archives: December 2023
December 25, 2023
The carol "We Three Kings" finds its way into circulation with ease every Christmas season, but it is based upon the truly dismaying account in the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew's version of events says that King Herod ordered the murder of every boy in Bethlehem under two years of age. ■ Whether it was a credible historical event or just an allegorical device, the tale ought to be distressing. And every time the story of the magi is told, whether in religious celebration or just in the singing of Christmas carols, it ought to serve as a reminder that the world we occupy today remains one in which governments clash with freedom of conscience. Sometimes it's out of jealousy, sometimes it's out of other sinister motives. ■ The Pew Research Center conducts an ongoing assessment of religious restrictions in the world, and the chronic problem since the start of their reporting has been that the majority of the world's population lives under high levels of government restrictions on the exercise of religious faith. ■ China, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan are all included in that bracket, making for four of the five largest countries in the world by population. That quite obviously tilts the balance, but it also illustrates the gravity of the problem. ■ Freedom of conscience is supposed to be a component of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but we're clearly a long way away from putting that declaration into universal practice. Coming around to a fundamental belief in the goodness of that freedom takes something of a conversion in its own right -- sometimes people like to see all religions restricted (see: the Communist Party of China), while others want all religions restricted except their own (see: any number of theocratic states today). ■ But for that freedom to be any good and for it to have any real meaning, it has to apply to all -- so long as their exercise of that freedom doesn't infringe on the well-being of others, whether they do or do not share the belief being exercised. Two millennia have passed since the events told by Matthew. It's a shame on humanity that state power, violence, and religion remain so awfully intertwined in so much of the world today.
