For years, I’ve been troubled by Christianity.   Not the Body of Christ, but the institution of Christianity.

I was raised in a good, upper middle class Southern Baptist home.  We were in church often, usually five times a week, sometimes the whole week if there was a revival or Vacation Bible School.  We did it all, sometimes begrudgingly or sleepy eyed, but we were there. 

I became a bonafide member of the institution of Christianity by walking to the front of an actual tent revival service and declaring myself for Christ in 1957.  I was very moved.  At nine I was ritually inducted into the Southern Baptist division of the organization by baptism in a small church in Forest Park, Georgia.

But the older I got, the more I saw, the more I read … the more I thought, the more restless I became.  Some things didn’t jive.  Something was wrong!

How could Christian Crusaders to torture and slaughter so many non-believers in the name of Christ?

How could Christian Inquisitors torture and slaughter so many people in Spain?

How could one branch of Christianity kill thousands from other branches of Christianity, for years, in the name of Christ?

How could Americans use Christian values as justification for slavery with all of its horrors, during all those centuries the institution was legal?

How could upstanding Christian men, politicians or soldiers, use their faiths to justify the wholesale oppression of almost all of our Native American tribes, sometimes resulting in the massacre of many Indian old folk, women and children?  Ultimately, when quite a few tribes were completely wiped out, many Christians said, “Good riddance.”  How can that be?

How could a Christian nation such as Germany set in motion the horrors of those two world wars?  The Holocaust?  Germany - many centuries a Christian nation before European America was even established as a collection of English, French, Spanish and Russian colonies.  Germany - the home of Martin Luther and the birthplace of the protestant movement.

Closer to home, if the preacher we had was called by God, why was the Pastor more interested in the expansion of his personal wealth and community popularity than the needs of his congregation?  He was eventually “called” to a bigger, more resplendent church with a better paycheck “so he could help more people.”  Why were our church’s leaders (the same ones who, after much prayer, had sought him out) relieved?

If God had actually been consulted on the invitation for a certain very popular evangelist to be brought to our church, why did that man have sex with unwary young boys from our congregation?  He was a very skilled public speaker.  The revival he led was considered a great success.  Later, it was quietly divulged he was in trouble with the police.  How can that be?

How is it Ok for some women, wives, and teenage daughters to come to church dressed seductively?  Is that exposed cleavage, short skirt or see-through blouse meant to glorify Christ?  Where’s the concerned preacher, husband or parent? 

How could Jim Jones convince a thousand people to kill themselves (or each other) in the name of Christ?  This is not the dark ages!

How can so many televangelists swindle so many people for so much money, and still have followers in the name of Christ?  Some retain Christian followers and receive financial support while they’re still in jail!

How could Christian Phalangist massacre Palestinian refugees in Lebanon?

How could Christian Serbs massacre Muslims in Bosnia?

How can there be so many Christian priests who are child molesters and have been for years?  And where are the concerned Bishops and Cardinals?  Why are so many of them taking no meaningful actions against the offending Christian leaders?  Why is their branch of the institution of Christianity paying huge settlements to keep this repugnant, criminal problem out of the criminal court system?  And isn’t the hush money they’re spending drawn from funds other Christians offered to God?

How can there be bad Christians?  And how can good people, Christians, provide so much support for those doing wrong?

What’s going on in Christianity?

Well, you might say (and many have),”there are lots of good Christians and they’ve done a lot of good things.”   There certainly have been many people who, actually following Christ and his teachings, did many beautiful, loving things.  They’re key members in the Body of Christ, whether they were institutionally affiliated or not.  Or you could say (and many have), “No one’s perfect.  After all, we’re only human.  That’s why we have Christian churches, because we are sinners.”  It’s very neat, circular logic … and everybody’s covered.

But I was not satisfied with this status quo, not for the Body of my Christ.  So I’ve searched to find the root causes, the deeper answers to these problems that have plagued Christianity for two millennia.   How could something ordained by God and operated in the name of Christ do so much evil?

What I found was Christianity’s Anti-Christ Movement!

There are few places where its impact is more evident than the Christmas season.  So I’ll just touch (only briefly for now) on some of the other areas the movement has been successful in countering our Christ, finally focusing on Christmas.

1. Our Christ was born in a Jew’s body.  He most likely had dark hair, eyes and “olive” or swarthy skin.  He was neither a blued eyed, blonde haired Caucasian nor a kinky hared, chocolate colored Negro. There’ve been too many artists through the ages down to the present who care less about the real Christ than they do about creating him in their image.

2.Mary was not the “Mother of God.”  She was a proper young woman who bore the Son of God – as the “Son of Man” in his briefly occupied, physical form - as a direct result of the Holy Spirit’s influence on her body.

3. The Sabbath is from sun down on Friday to sun down on Saturday.  The Romans named the days of the week based on the celestial deities they could see easiest with the most prominent, Sol, being first.  The first day of the week was designated as the day to honor their most important God in the heavens, the sun.  In 321, Emperor Constantine made the sun’s day a holiday and a day of rest to honor Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun.

4. Do you think Christ turned down Satan’s offer for worldly power and dominion so that the church named after him could then pursue it for a thousand years?

5. When Christ spoke of how very difficult it will be for a wealthy person to find his way into heaven did he foresee that all the wealthy Christians of the future would be exceptions to the rule?

6.When Christ told us, over and over again, not to judge and condemn each other, did he know his words wouldn’t apply to many generations of socially prominent Christians who “would be called” to judge people in His name?

7.  Do you really think when Christ drank wine, and produced high quality wine which was pleasing to the palette of the experienced drinkers at the wedding at Cana, that he in fact was drinking and making grape juice?

8. Christ, the “Son of Man” was the Son of God.  He never made himself to be God.  He differentiated between himself and God in many different ways, trying to make sure there was no confusion.  If the Trinity travesty were true then Christ found himself praying to himself, many times and in his own name. 

9. Christ was crucified between 3 o’clock and 6 o’clock on Wednesday of the pass over week.  He rose 72 hours later, between 3 o’clock and 6 o’clock on Saturday, in the closing hours of the weekending Sabbath.  Do you think when He said we’ll know what He has said was true by the sign of Jonah - that He’ll spend three full days in the earth, he actually meant that late Friday afternoon til Sunday morning would be close enough?

10. Since Sun rise services have been used for thousands of years by various pagan religions to honor their sun gods, and the Romans set aside a day each week to honor their sun god, Christ should be honored by this pagan tradition being practiced in his name every Easter?

11.  What about celebrating Christ’s resurrection by continuing the ancient pagan practices of using rabbits and colored eggs used to please the fertility goddess, what was her name, Ishtar, Astarte, Eostre … Easter?  Do you think Christ would find these darling little practices too cute to be objectionable? 

I’ve touched on these briefly because Christmas, the meaning of Christmas, is my primary subject at this time.  What we have inherited as our most important Christian holiday of the year.

On the one hand, we have the actual birth of Christ.  Using all biblical, astronomical, meteorological and shepherding clues presently at our disposal, it appears likely to me that our Christ was born on Yom Kippur, the Hebrew Day of Atonement, 5 B.C.E.   It fell somewhere between mid-September and mid-October that year.

He was named Yehoshua Bar Yosef, nicknamed Yeshu.

His birth heralded a new age, a renewal.  People would look to God with a greater, more personalized understanding of His love and compassion.  They would be offered peace, good will, hope and the possibility of fulfillment without the old trappings of greed, lust, pride … selfishness.  God cared so much for us that he sent his own Son to rescue us.

On the other hand, we have Christmas.  Jesus is not the reason for the season.  Political accommodation and theological amalgamation were two of the original reasons for this winter solstice season.

When the first “Christian” Roman Emperor, Constantine, started empowering one denomination of Christian leaders in his day, nine tenths of the Roman world was pagan.  So was he.  So the challenge was to build a new state religion that offended few of his powerful pagan followers or the masses, yet allied him with this new, apparently powerful God.  The result?  A new institutionalized Christianity was created, a conglomerate of various religious beliefs and practices, mostly pagan, which was sanctioned and encouraged by the state.  Eventually it would become the state religion for the western world.

The process was evolutionary.  One of the most important days for those who worshiped the sun was the winter solstice.  For them it signifies the rebirth of their god.  The 25^th of December had already been set aside as the birthday for Sol Invictus and a couple of weeks around that date was already being celebrated with partying amidst lots of lights and gifts which they called Saturnalia.

Over the years, other pagan trappings and practices were added until you have (in one of its most current forms) fir tree, Yule log and holly bedecked homes all over the western world, a month out of every year.

And so you might say (and many have), “What’s the big deal.  It’s color and lights in the gloomiest part of the year.  Let people have their fun.  We all need some festivity in our lives now and then.”

So what is the problem?

It’s all a lie … and a very well crafted lie.  If one must tell a very credible lie one must incorporate as much truth as possible in it and enlist as many good people as one can to propagate it.

We have a holiday that’s the mercantile watershed event of each year!  At no other time is materialism so facilitated, anticipated and pursued as the Christmas season.  Greed, in the name of Christ, is good for the economy.  Borrowing irresponsibly to buy more and more is even better.  Have your child stand in long lines so she can tell the actor pretending to be the Santa Clause god that she’s been good and can she have this and this and this….

We tell our young children each year this false god is real.  “Santa knows if you’ve been naughty or nice.”  “Look what Santa brought you!”

Since Santa has achieved false god status, some artists are now generating black Santas so that African Americans can relate more closely to him.  And it represents new marketing schemes on very old themes.

But Santa’s not the only false god associated with Christmas.  When the kid on the movie “Home Alone Two” is lost in New York without any hope, since it’s Christmas to whom does he turn for salvation?  He prays to the huge Christmas tree for help!  It’s enough to make a Druid proud.

So you might say (and many have), “What’s the harm?  They’ll learn about life’s hard realities soon enough.  Leave their Santa Clause, Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny alone.”

It’s the season for one of our highest suicide rates and crime rates.  It’s the time many people ruin their finances.  It’s a time for heart-rending loneliness and disillusionment for many disappointed people.

And what have we taught our young?  They can count what they got or how much was spent on them compared to someone else in the house, the neighborhood or the school, and feel superior or cheated.  They can wade through rooms full of toys to try and find happiness or love.  They learn that lying about Santa while facilitating and encouraging all this greed is our way of celebrating Christ!  “Jesus is the reason for the season.”

When in reality, it is all a very successful ruse on the part of the Anti-Christ Movement in Christianity.