Christmas and Communism

Merry Christmas.


Today we celebrate the arrival of the baby boy Jesus, the King of the Jews. We celebrate God living amongst humanity and the new creation and freedom that he brought.

We remember the stories of his birth, where King Herod the Great is threatened by the birth of this rival King. As a man Jesus is crucified as the King of the Jews, and then later proclaimed by Paul as LORD, as rival to the emperor, in Rome itself.

Throughout the Old Testament, one thing that comes up again and again is the importance of the quality of the King and his government. Which makes one try ask "Where is God" when it comes to governments of today.

Most attempts to understand current political events are distorted, horrible and speculative. One writer who I like for the sense he brings is Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham. In a recent lecture, he addresses the issue of "Where is God in the 'War on Terror'" (See article on the bottom right).

But having read today of one event that happened today in history, I just have to show the way spin can be given to this event. And it keeps on spinning for a long long time.

I find very interesting how the previous Pope, John Paul II, took on communism. And won. There is a lot of room for tellng the story this way. The Polish Pope visited his homeland in 1979 and spoke in front of a crowd of 2 million people. He showed his fellow countrymen their inner strength and gave them hope and inspired the Polish drive to end communism. The final leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev once said that the collapse of the Iron Curtain would have been impossible without him.

In 1981 Pope John Paul II was shot and wounded in an assassination attempt by the Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Ağca. In 2006 an Italian Parliamentary Commision concluded that this attempt was backed by the Soviet Union.

I write this today because it was on the 25th of December 1991 that the Soviet Union was dissolved.


Merry Christmas.