The Perfect Gift

Introduction: The subject of the column today is already stated. It seems expedient that a comment or so is made before we delve into that topic. Those who are abreast to the recent happenings involving the movement to restructure the Calhoun City government know the issue has been at the forefront of discussions in the City Council meetings and on the pages of the Calhoun Times. This writer has contributed to the discussion with commentary and opinion. The issue will not disappear with the Council’s overriding of Mayor Jimmy Palmer’s veto of the act to make pronounced changes in the structure of various aspects of the governance of the City of Calhoun.

Someone asked when the issue would be put to rest. My answer is that as long as this writer lives and is allowed to write and discuss issues relevant to our community, the issue will stay alive. Also an insistence for public hearings and a relating of sufficient facts will be set forth. There seem to have been actions and information less than transparent to the general public. Time and investigation will tell.

As a matter of record, if you have not already done so, may I encourage all to read our Managing Editor, Brandi Owczarz’s frontpage masterpiece on this issue in Wednesday’s ( December 21) Calhoun Times. Without a doubt the spirit of the Christmas Holiday is marked by an attitude so different from any other time of the year. Without a detailed discussion of the religious aspects of Christmas, I will again note that there is no religious significance assigned to the day on the part of this writer. That position does not in any way reflect upon the wonderful attributes that seem to characterize nearly everyone in everyday interaction. The season is full of the spirit of friendliness, of well- wishing and good deeds. In outward display, we manifest it with the giving of gifts.

It needs to be noted here that while most of the religious world does associate December 25 with the birth of Jesus, that except for the singing of songs and not function toward the value and richness of life.

The perfect gift is not one which only increases the number of items owned in a given category which are largely unused but might be needed by some person in life. Several years ago I explored the sentiments of a song titled “It’s a sin” in which the overabundance of things owned ( clothes, coats, shoes etc.) beyond personal needs. It is a sin if we allow others to “pass by” without sufficient clothing in cold weather while we “store” items hardly or never used.

The perfect gift is not one that excites the heart or produces joy for a little while and then vanishes.

It is difficult to determine exactly what the perfect gift for any given person might be. I have already mentioned the birth of Jesus. Not too long ago, I heard a preacher on the radio tell how few verses in the Bible describe or refer to the birth of Jesus. At the same time, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is emphasized over and over again. It seems practical here to emphasize that the Resurrection of Jesus is the fundamental fact of the Christian religion. The resurrection is the foundation upon which the Christian religion rests.

That leads to the description of the Perfect Gift. The perfect gift is the gift God gave the world when he sent His Son to live and die among lost humanity. The provisions made in that gift for life after this one is the perfect gift. This gift is for all humanity; those of every race; those of every nationality; for the rich and for the poor.

It is possible to give a perfect gift to our fellow humans. It might be a meal to the hungry; it might be a ride to the tired and disabled; it might be a time spent with someone alone and neglected; or it might be an encouraging word to the discouraged or depressed.

In conclusion: We all need to remember that it was Jesus who said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” By Jay Ambrose , Tribune News Service

They’re called the New Atheists and are people like Sam Harris, a neuroscientist who should have stuck with studying the brain instead of taxing his own with philosophical contrivances surely embarrassing to old atheists.

Like Richard Dawkins and others in the group, he’s also a loudmouth atheist, writing books, publishing articles, inundating the internet with Sam, Sam, Sam, as in his list of myths about atheists.

His first one has to strike some of us who once wandered in his wilderness as odd. It’s a myth, he says, that atheists believe life is meaningless.

“On the contrary,” he says, “religious people often worry that life is meaningless and imagine that it can only be redeemed by the promise of eternal happiness beyond the grave. Atheists tend to be quite sure that life is precious. Life is imbued with meaning by being really and fully lived. Our relationships with those we love are meaningful now; they need not last forever to be made so. Atheists tend to find this fear of meaninglessness, well, meaningless.”

All he has missed in this assertion is deluges of serious thinking by some of history’s top minds, including atheists, about the excruciating emptiness resulting from the diminution of religion in the modern age.

Consider, for instance, the writings of Matthew Arnold, a great 19th century literary critic and poet who himself felt religion no longer alive in his heart. He wrote a famous poem, “Dover Beach,” in which he talks about the “melancholy, long withdrawing roar” of the “Sea of Faith,” leaving the world with “neither joy, nor love, nor light.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, also of the 19th century, famously pronounced God dead because of a widespread disbelief he shared. Less well known is what he believed the consequence of irreligion would be: attempts to find meaning in such fraudulent substitutes as nationalism and socialism helping to prompt 20th century wars that would be the most ravaging ever witnessed.

The loss of God, he had a fictional character say in a noted passage, was akin to the earth being unchained from the sun so that people no longer knew up from down, felt darkness always closing in on them, and kept getting colder and colder.

Nietzsche is considered a progenitor of a once powerfully influential and mostly godless school of philosophy: existentialism. It said this human life of ours is meaningless to the point of absurdity and that you have to invent your own meaning. The famous French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre did so by attaching himself to the pseudoscientific, evil-perpetuating doctrine of Marxism on the ground that, even though it was not provably true and contradicted his existentialist enthusiasms, it gave him a feeling of worthy, humane contribution. Talk about absurdity.

Also of the 20th century and easily as much an atheist as Harris, Bertrand Russell was many times the philosopher. While approving any retreat from religion, he did not kid himself about consequences.

He talked in a much-quoted passage about how the origins, growth, hopes, fears, loves and beliefs of humanity are the result of nothing more than an accidental juxtaposition of atoms. And the destiny of all our heroism, genius, devotion and inspiration? It will be “extinction in the vast death of the solar system” and burial “beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.” This is near certain, he said, and philosophy has to accept as much because only on “the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”

Unyielding despair is right, at least for those atheists who face up to the implications of their beliefs. Russell argues there can still be ways to stare down negatives with rewarding results, but Harris faces up to little, blithely telling us how bubbly he is. Maybe that’s because he self-deceptively manipulates large questions in much the way he thinks religious people are relieved from anxiety because they subscribe to hocus pocus.

What many really do, I believe, is submit to a rationally sustainable, universally available, even beckoning sense of loving purpose that can then prove transformative

Merry Christmas to everyone, including Sam.