Today is Christmas Day. On this day, ‘peace on earth, good will towards men’ is a refrain that men have sung for over two thousand years. However, as we glance at the news today this noble wish sounds increasingly more like a whimper in the face of the howling wind of inhumanity that rages in our world.
Thankfully, in Malaysia we are still spared from the outright barbarity that is visiting many countries where zealots perpetrate violence against each other – one side claims to be defending ‘freedom and democracy’ and the other, the name of God. I really do not have to give specific examples; there are just too many. Suffice to say that one only needs to take a quick look at the world news to note how remove men’s actions are from that noble seasonal wish. In the light of this, we can be forgiven for hanging our heads in despair as this Christmas greeting sounds rather hollow and more like mere wishful thinking.
Sometimes we wonder at the magnitude of man’s insanity and how he can countenance the sending weapons of destruction via unthinking robots of men and/or unfeeling machines of drones to wreak death on his perceived enemies. How have the creatures of God’s creation descended in to such depth of depravity?
The saying ‘Great oaks from little acorns grow’ is usually taken to be a motivational expression to mean great things can come from humble beginnings. Unfortunately, it is equally applicable to bad things as well as good things. The grave injustice and wrongdoings of the world too have their beginnings of small origin.
In any multi-racial country (come to think of it, which country in the world can now boast being of purely one race, one religion and one culture?) the early errant seed can be in the form of the paranoid attempt at preserving the purity of one’s culture which can lead to aversion of another’s culture that in turn can morph into intolerance and develop into full fledged bigotry. Once the evil genie of bigotry is let out of the bottle its action is one of destruction – in the form of the physical and tangible destruction brought about by conflicts and wars that we witness around the world. Grotesque and damaging as these cruel acts may be, what is even more damaging is the insidious erosion of the very milk of human kindness that resides in all of us. After all, aren’t we all children of God and created in his image? And God is the quintessence of goodness.
So, come to think of it, ‘peace on earth, good will to all men’ is more profound than first meet the eye. The world is a complex and complicated place. In the face of such complexity one can feel like a rudderless boat in a stormy sea. As the composer, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), wrote ‘Sometimes I feel like a motherless child’. However, if we all are guided by the simple principle of ‘good will to all men’ then our choice of action is simple. We should be able to face even the biggest challenge that life can throw at us.
This prayer ‘peace on earth, goodwill towards all men’ may be Christian in origin but it speaks to all men, irrespective of colour and creed.
So, whatever you leaning may be, let’s give it a try – ‘goodwill towards all men’ then surely we can have ‘peace on earth’.