By Bernard Rowan
2023 was a year of many developments for South Korea and elsewhere. The country and her people continue to forge various productive ties internationally. This benefits South Koreans, the region and the world. Domestic matters are less happy. North Korea again plays a version of nationalist games for incremental gains and the ruler’s ego. The Ukraine war continues. A new war in Gaza unfolds. The continued mania of Donald Trump enthralls too many.
Amid it all, Christmas arrived at midnight. Just as it has for over 2000 years. Just as it shall do forever more until the end of Earth and beyond. What is Christmas, and why should we care?
Jesus’s birth heralds the message of his law, which is love. The précis for Christ’s meaning, emerging in generous and unremitting light this day, is that we are to love God above all else and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We should understand these as pieces of a unity, not a typical one-two punch or hierarchy. The Bible’s depiction of Christ’s example, which we should follow through lived faith, resembles the teachings of other great religions. However, those of us who are Christian declare there is no better brother than Jesus Christ, no better teacher and no other savior.
Today, we can celebrate the promise of everlasting life for those who believe and walk in his path. The four weeks before Christmas, known as Advent, were a time of preparation. They look to the Passion and Resurrection of Easter through acts of reconciliation and service. Advent also involves preparing for a feast day, a festival of happiness, with all the acts, traditions, and rituals of God’s people on Earth, with infinite variety. Those celebrations will continue for the next several weeks, including for Epiphany.
Christmas is not the most important event in the life of Jesus Christ. That would be His death and Resurrection, celebrated at Easter. However, no birth, no Resurrection. Properly, the Birth of Jesus wants looking forward to Easter and looking backward to humanity’s condemnation under the old law and with Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden. Recall their sin was to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Humanity is blessed and cursed to have this mark. Jesus frees us from the limits of mortal knowledge, even aided by the holy scriptures we can be. He restores to us the equivalent of that other tree in the garden, the tree of everlasting life.
Jesus frees us from the trap of sin and humanity, to which we are subject. Love of Christ shows us the path on which to walk. It is a path of joy, suffering, learning, redemption and life beyond the death that comes to us all on this earth. It is the path of enduring peace. To love others as we love ourselves is a version of the Confucian prohibition on common scapegoating. To live with the spirit of Christ’s love is the best frame for self-development.
I hope you tell the people who love you and whom you love that you do love them. I hope the circle of love widens to infinity in 2024 and beyond. I hope we take seriously the call to end the technologies of death that abound. There is no love without life, and our lives should be lived testimonies to love, not to death and the means of violence. Whatever one’s Church, and indeed whatever one’s faith, or without religious faith, the technology of the Living God, Jesus Christ, is for you, as he is for us all.
My prayer for the people of Korea, my friends in learning, and for us all is a joyous and mindful Christmas. May God bless you, now and always.
Bernard Rowan (browan10@yahoo.com) is associate provost for contract administration and academic services and professor of political science at Chicago State University. He is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University.
Blessed, happy Christmas
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24.12.2023
By Bernard Rowan 2023 was a year of many developments for South Korea and elsewhere. The country and her people continue to forge various productive ties internationally. This benefits South Koreans, the region and the world. Domestic matters are less happy. North Korea again plays a version of nationalist games for incremental gains and the ruler’s ego. The Ukraine war continues. A new war in Gaza unfolds. The continued mania of Donald Trump enthralls too many.
Amid it all, Christmas arrived at midnight. Just as it has for over 2000 years. Just as it shall do forever more until the end of Earth and beyond. What is Christmas, and why should we care?
Jesus’s birth heralds the message of his law, which is love. The précis for Christ’s meaning, emerging in generous and unremitting light this day, is that we are to love God above all else and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We should understand these as pieces of a unity, not a........
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