I Always Knew That Santa Was in Cahoots with the Humanists

There's a new ad campaign courtesy of the American Humanist Association which is aiming at taking the Christ out of Christmas, or at least even more than it already has been.   "Why believe in a god?  Just be good for goodness' sake" is the tagline, and is meant to, according to a spokesman for the AHA, to build community for atheists and agnostics who feel isolated and lonely during the holidays because of the association with religion.  I have this picture in my mind of humanists in red sweaters with cups of ciders and fruitcake singing humanists carols, while reading passages from Dawkins' and Hutchens' books.

This doesn't really upset me as much as sadden me. At the risk of sounding condescending, I have a great deal of compassion for people who feel isolated and lonely because they do not or will not appreciate the miracle of the incarnation, and it saddens me that they don't connect the dots in terms of their angst at all being symptomatic of the absence of God.  It's much like the deaf person who may never appreciate the layered beauty of a Bach concerto, or a blind person who cannot fully grasp the wonder of a canyon expanse.  For those who do believe, it's incumbent upon us to always remember that the ability to appreciate and believe in what God has done through Christ is a gift of grace.

In the meantime, the rest of us theists will continue to get high on the opiate of the masses, as Karl Marx would say.