RELIGION AND THE NEW MILLENNIUM

Everybody knows, or do they? that the New Millennium is a religious concept, celebrating the 2.000^th birthday of Jesus Christ, the Founder of the Christian religion. So a good question to ask is,

After all, it could be argued that religious zeal and bigotry has shed more blood than any other single cause during the last 1,000 years ? Karl Marx and many other Socialistic thinkers and leaders certainly thought that all religion was a curse and a hindrance to political, economic and social progress. Stalin sought to eliminate the very thought of religion from the minds and hearts of the Russian people.

Unsurprisingly Stalin failed and eventually the Communist system collapsed in Russia. In fact, totalitarian states of both the right and the left have shed more blood and brought about more destruction in the last 100 years than religion in the other 900 years of the last millennium.

However it must be conceded that in many of the current conflicts e.g. Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Southern Sudan, Middle East, Northern Ireland there is a strong dimension of past and present religious conflict.

Ideally, religion should make for a degree of harmony and peace amongst peoples and cultivate a reverence for life within the created order. Fanatical sects apart, most major religions would subscribe to the so-called Golden Rule Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Incidentally Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew puts a distinctive slant upon this common saying which will be mentioned later.

I must lay my cards upon the table by saying that I subscribe to the Christian religion and have, by comparison, only a slim knowledge and experience of other religions.

But I know this that the religious instinct in humankind cannot be eliminated, whatever form it takes and no matter how corrupt its manifestations may have been from time to time in the long story of our stay upon this earth. This may be some form of existential argument for the existence of God, or it may simply be symptomatic of human vulnerability in the face of a hostile universe.

For my part by upbringing and by conviction I believe that the orthodox Christian explanation of things is the most convincing and not only, or primarily intellectually, but also in terms of human experience. I believe that the scandals and failures of Christianity, past and present, result from the frailty of Christians and not the inadequacy of Christ or of his teachings.

Of all religions it is the least mystical and esoteric - is also the least unworldly and the most dependent upon the free and open choice of its adherents. Many other religions carry a strong ethical message and exhibit a deep tradition of devotion but none make as clear a claim for the love of God entering into and sacrificing itself for the redemption of humankind.

In Christianity the victory over sin and death is clearly God's victory wrought through Christ and then offered to all who will believe. The rule of God for Christians isn't just that of His sovereignty as Creator, but the rule of His love over our hearts and minds and lives. It is inward and spiritual but determinative of our lives in every part. This rule of God's love is described in the Bible as The Kingdom of Heaven or The Kingdom of God.

When Jesus quotes the saying, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, He is using a bit of worldly wisdom to emphasise the fact that whether, to put it crudely, we play the game with God or not, He will always play the game with us. That should not be interpreted to mean that we can get away with anything, but if we are willing to turn to God sorry for our wrong-doing and willing to trust Him, then He will be there for us.

As in some religions we don't have to placate an angry deity, or try to please such a deity with constant oblations or specific good works - we don't have to lay meals or presents to material representations of deity in sacred sites or temples. We don't necessarily have to observe particular dietary laws or fastidiously observe cleansing rituals or ablutions. This is not to disparage other religions whose followers may find much meaning in these activities

The world is very different from that into which Christ came - we speak of the global village where economic, political and military interdendability exist and where distances are 'shortened ' by mass media and communication. A world in which poverty, human rights and international justice are live issues and where United Nations and European Union often over-ride national sovereignties. It must be accepted that so powerful a force as religious belief must show tolerance, exercise mutual understanding and be willing to co-operate.

But the pluralistic notion that all religions must be willing to undergo some kind of melt-down into a universal faith is ill-founded. Perhaps the old liberal view that all reputable religions possess some section of universal truth has some validity, but for me, and for many more people, the way that God has shown in Jesus Christ by the power of God's Holy Spirit is the way forward into the New Millennium. In spite of much evidence at times, to the contrary, we believe that the only hope for this world lies in the God who, we believe, made his clearest revelation of himself 2,000 years ago in Christ and that ultimately the Kingdom of God, of which all believing Christians receive a foretaste, will embrace all creation, banishing all evil and will set forth God's love in all its glory and perfection.