Next time, let’s put the true Christ back into Christmas

jembendell

How was your Christmas? I had a lovely day walking the dog and recording a video of the amount of colourful trash “decorating” some of the trees here in Indonesia. We are in a majority Muslim country, which happily celebrates Christmas. That might be something to tell any grumpy neighbours who fear a Muslim “invasion” of where you live. Maybe they told you it’s time to put Christ back into Christmas, exhibiting a new religiosity with few prior symptoms (such as care for the poor or foreign). Reflecting on such declarations of the need to remember Jesus, this year I decided they have a point. Here’s why… 

Every December, as the tills jingle and the Christmas songs play, we are invited to celebrate the birth of a man who asked us to stop worshipping money and start paying attention to what was going on inside our own hearts. Naturally, we mark this by maxing out our credit cards as we imagine what random stuff might pass as thoughtful presents. But if we are to be serious about “putting Christ back into Christmas,” we could begin by putting the actual Christ back into view.

First, there’s the money. Jesus was not subtle on this point. “You cannot serve God and Mammon,” he said (Matthew 6:24), Mammon being the ancient Aramaic term for wealth and accumulation. When a rich man asked how to inherit eternal life, Jesus replied: “Sell what you own, and give the money to the poor” (Matthew 19:21). That’s not a line of scripture found embroidered on festive stockings. It might even be considered blasphemy amongst followers of “prosperity Christianity” and their profit-happy pastors. 

Second, there’s care for the meek. Jesus’s concern for the poor was not a decorative flourish; it was the point. He identifies himself not with the powerful but with the vulnerable: “I was hungry and you gave me food… just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:35–40). Supporting charity, mutual aid, and genuine care for those at the sharp end of economic systems is not a weak interpretation of Christianity; it is the spine of it. So if we put the true Christ back into Christmas, we’d be sharing ideas of how to help the poor and disadvantaged, not where to go for a slap-up dinner on Boxing Day. 

The third way we could get some Christ back into the celebration of his birth could involve a laugh about those who want to regulate the way we mark this holiday. Jesus showed little interest in government or the machinery of power. When questioned by Pilate, he stated plainly: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). And when asked about paying taxes, he refused to be drafted into partisan alignment: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21). This was not quietism; it was a refusal to confuse spiritual authority with coercive power. Jesus was executed by the state, not elected to run it. And following his teachings and example should never be tinged with revenge, or insecurity, through enforcing one’s beliefs on others.

Then there is the small matter of what Jesus looked like. The historical Jesus was a homeless first-century Jew from Roman-occupied Palestine. So he would have had dark hair, brown skin, and features typical of the eastern Mediterranean. He was not pale, blue-eyed, or in need of a Scandinavian skincare routine. The centuries-long tradition of depicting Jesus as white says far more about European power than about the historical figure. Restoring the true Christ to Christmas would mean restoring his true image. And if it is unsettling for some that the ‘Son of God’ might not look like them, then, err, um… let’s remember to forgive them.

All of this makes the annual culture war over Christmas particularly ironic. The man whose birth we mark rejected wealth, distrusted status, identified with the poor, and kept his distance from political power. Yet in recent years he is wheeled out to bless white nationalism, consumer excess, and some repackaged pagan rituals. One suspects he would again reach for the whip — not at a secular holiday party, but at the market stalls people have set up in his name.

So what might it really involve to put Christ back into Christmas? It would be to remember and reflect on his own teachings. Perhaps it would be to aspire to more ‘Christ consciousness’ — of universal unconditional love — within each others’ lives? For Jesus did not promise ‘salvation’ via a donation to a church or support for a political party. He said that “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). Scholars debate whether the Greek means “within you” or “among you,” but either way it rules out Amazon Prime as the delivery mechanism. And it undermines any authoritarian politics based on a blatantly biased and selectively ‘motivated literalism’ towards Biblical text. Instead we can confidently explain our appreciation of Jesus’ teaching is that it was experiential and immediate: transformation of the heart here and now, not performative piety or political hostility. 

Putting that true Christ back into my Christmas was why I looked into the meaning of the Christian chant ‘Kyrie Eleison’ and included it in the song circles I co-led over the festive period. But re-centering the Jesus we learn about from his own teachings in the Gospels could involve deeper reflection and action. It could involve less spending and more giving, less excess and more recess, less outrage and more introspection, fewer slogans and more compassion. It could mean redoubling our efforts to see peace and justice in the land of that incredible carpenter from Palestine. The fact that so many Christian Nationalists’ seem to care little about any of that is an indicator that theirs’ is a project of distraction from the ongoing greed of elites. 

But you knew all of this without me writing about it here… I just think it’s time we spoke out more against the nonsense being sent our way by the lackeys of the transnational capitalist class. If this is a topic you are interested in, then I recommend a brilliant new video on the subject by “Jimmy the Giant.’

Taking time to reflect, remember, and recommit – year end thoughts

jembendell

The following notes are my end-of-year reflections, which I sent to people who subscribed to receive that from me. I think they may be useful for prompting your own reflections, ahead of the next Metacrisis Meeting, so am posting them here as well. Wishing you bright times in the year ahead, no matter the darker stuff that surrounds . Thx! Jem

When I look back on a year I don’t just consider what I experienced, contributed and accomplished. I always wonder what I have learned, and how I want to apply that in future. I had that in mind recently when I was interviewed by the e-zine Grist. One of their journalists is aware that the creeping collapse of societies has become a more credible framing amongst both experts and members of the public. She was interested in what can happen from such an awareness. So she asked how that awareness has shaped me over the years, and what’s been changing. I realised my own journey might help you with your own reflections, so I wrote them up for this personal newsletter that I send out twice a year… 

Becoming collapse-aware doesn’t mean the process of collapse suddenly concludes around us. Like me, most of you reading these words are fortunate enough not to be living in destitution. We live in the society as we find it, with our identities, assets, skills, networks, responsibilities and desires — which have built up over time within that society. So with collapse awareness, or even collapse acceptance, there are many types of response.

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Reclaiming “Kyrie Eleison” this Christmas

jembendell
by chiyo hiraoka

From a plea for pardon to an invitation to heal within a universe of unconditional love. 

Across centuries of liturgy, the solemn chant “Kyrie Eleison”, often translated as “Lord, have mercy,” has echoed through churches and cathedrals. It is one of the most recited phrases by congregations of Christians around the world, and can convey the idea that believers are penitent persons before an omnipotent judge. I heard it regularly during my childhood, in Anglican, Catholic and Evangelical contexts. After I stopped going to church, for decades I didn’t think about the meaning of the phrase. Not until I was in a field in Thailand, with two hundred people from different faiths, as we sang and moved in prayer. That set me on a journey into the meaning of the phrase “Kyrie Eleison”, and a discovery about the loss of Jesus’s original message, as quoted in the Gospels. This realisation is opening up the possibility to reconnect with my roots in a new way, through a Christianity more mystical than the institutions of religion convey. 

To understand the true meaning of the phrase “Kyrie Eleison”, it helps to journey back before the Gospels. It had been a common Greek plea, where “Kyrie” invoked a divine power. They had many to consider, from Asclepius to Zeus. The word “eleison” had a poetic meaning, because it was not only the verb “to forgive”. Our dance leader in Thailand explained it sounded similar to ‘elaion’, which meant oil. In ancient Greece, as in modern times, oils were used for various forms of healing, including wounds and aches. Thus, “eleison” meant something other than a cry for forgiveness from a sinning or guilty person. Instead, it was a plea, or an invitation, to “anoint me, soothe me, and heal me.” It is important to remember that the worldview at the time, across many cultures, regarded illness as a symptom of spiritual or relational disorder, rather than a random physical misfortune. To cry out “Kyrie Eleison” was to ask the divine to restore a person’s wholeness.  

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Let’s not become attached to collapse

jembendell

There are moments when life confronts us with such undeniable pain that our hearts split open. For many people I know, that moment came with the realisation that our civilization is unravelling – that the seas are rising, the forests are dying, and the systems built to sustain our comfort are breaking. In that shock, there can be a strange grace. For a time, we awaken from the trance of consumption, routine and ambition. We see more clearly the suffering of the Earth and of each other. That often inspires compassion, and a yearning to live differently. It is a process I’ve often described in my past writings. It is why I encourage people to talk about societal collapse more openly, including our desires to reduce harm. Which is why, when I founded the Deep Adaptation Forum in 2019, I proposed that its ethos would be to “embody and enable loving responses to our predicament, so that we reduce suffering while saving more of society and the natural world.” Over the years I have witnessed people of all races, creeds, and economic classes, find their own ways to pursue that noble goal. It’s something I celebrate in the newly released video of Chapter 12 from my book. However, I have had to accept that something quite different can happen when we awaken to collapse, which might suppress presence, service and creativity. I wonder if that happened in me and others who participate in communities formed around an awareness or acceptance of collapse. If you are in such a community, I hope the following reflections on not becoming attached to narratives about collapse will be useful. 

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Bedtime Doom

jembendell

Lying in bed, I was too tired to read but not yet asleep. “Can you read me a bedtime story,” I said, half jokingly. “Sure,” my partner replied, and began to read aloud. Drifting off to sleep, I suddenly heard a word I never hear in normal life — relinquishment. “Huh, nobody uses that word.” My partner laughed, as if it was really funny. “Is this a Deep Adaptation story?” Rolling over, I looked towards her phone, and saw the text on the screen, which looked like the output of a chatbot. “What was your prompt?” She scrolled back up to show me: “Write a short story that Professor Jem Bendell would enjoy.” 

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Blinded by The Light (newspaper)

jembendell

As with many countries in the Western world, the UK has seen a rise of ethno-nationalist politics in recent years. One politician who led the Brexit agenda to leave the EU, is Nigel Farage. Not being able to blame the Eurocrats anymore, the lie took hold that Britain’s ills could be blamed on poor immigrants rather than greedy elites. Recently, Farage has come under fire for his alleged expressions of antisemitism. Although that focused on his childhood, his appearances on the podcast of alt-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was also discussed. During an appearance, Farage claimed that ‘globalists’ are trying to override national sovereignty by creating one world government. Some critics have claimed that it was ‘dogwhistling’ about threats from Jewish elites. The concern arises because Jones and Farage claim there are evil cabals of people, rather than members of a transnational capitalist class, who are serving the extractive demands of international capital. They don’t discuss capitalism in an intelligent way, because then they would be criticising their friends, funders, and the system that has promoted their views to huge audiences. Discussions in the mass media about who ‘globalists’ are and whether we should be concerned about them (and the structures of capital they serve) could be welcomed, if those discussions go beyond the lazy and nasty tropes of antisemitism. Unfortunately, such discussions seem difficult to have in the UK and elsewhere, as political discussion is often febrile and superficial. I was reminded of that recently in the town of Stroud, where one independent newspaper seems to have generated new debates and fractures between people who previously worked together for social change. In this essay, I want to share what I noticed from reading that newspaper and from experiencing the community fractures that emerge around its arguments. If the mass media weren’t so badly misinforming people in order to protect elites, perhaps this situation would not be so difficult. But in such a poor information system, there is work to get people talking about what can be done together at community level as life gets increasingly difficult for so many.  

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After the Alarm: Artificial Intelligence, metacrisis, and societal collapse.

jembendell

The breakneck acceleration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has moved the discourse on its benefits and perils from science fiction to boardroom and government-level concern. In the last few months there has been a series of articles by the BBC about AI trends and potential dystopias. One article was about how some leaders in AI are anticipating societal collapse and getting their bunkers ready. We also read that some ‘tech bros’ even want such a collapse, as their technotopian futures involve a break with life as we know it. One BBC article mentioned that the ‘AI Futures Project’ predicts AI may achieve ‘super intelligence’ by 2027 and then human extinction, or something like it, will occur within 5 years, via an AI deliberately engineering superbugs. Supposedly, it would do that after deciding that humans are a major problem without a remedy other than mass murder. I haven’t seen the authors of that study receive the kind of aggro I got since 2018 from predicting societal collapse due to climate change. Maybe that’s because we are used to sci-fi dramas where robots kill nearly everyone. But their prediction might be part of a ‘wake up call’ for wider societal engagement and responses to AI, so we might head off the worst scenarios. Maybe I’m naive, but these dystopias certainly woke me up a bit, and so here I am writing about AI and collapse. After the jolt, I read into the nature and scale of some risks, with the aim of exploring how people who want to behave well in these times of societal disruption and collapse — including myself — could use AI responsibly. That exploration is still ongoing. 

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A Personal Message on Covid-19

jembendell

I was surprised recently that someone close to me likely had Covid-19 again less than 3 months after her previous infection. She didn’t take a test for it either time, but the symptoms suggested it wasn’t the flu. Fever, headache, lethargy, loss of smell, but no sneezing or phlegm. As the initial symptoms didn’t put her in bed, sick, we didn’t take it too seriously. But this second infection has lingered, and created recurring lethargy and insomnia, while also bringing back some old health problems. That encouraged me to look into the latest information on Covid-19. What I found concerned me. I am sharing about it here for the same reasons I did so in the past. Since looking into it more closely in 2021, I have thought that the policy orthodoxy on Covid-19 has been counterproductive. Additionally, I have been concerned that most commentators in the environmental field are aligned with the orthodoxy and thereby turning many people away from the environmental cause. Thirdly, pandemics have often played a key role in societal breakdowns and transformations in the past, and so the risks of the Covid-19 pandemic, and future ones, is within my field of analysis and comment. Looking back, one sad aspect of speaking out over the last four years has been that many people assumed that questioning the orthodoxy means caring less about this disease, or public health in general. Such prejudice was produced by Big Pharma and their supporters in politics, the medical establishment, and mass media. In sharing on Covid-19 now, I don’t expect to have much influence, but if some of you, my readers, take the following ideas seriously enough to check them out for yourself, then at least a few of you might benefit. 

My past essays on the topic were always well referenced, and I provided links to credible sources, such as official data sets or peer-reviewed papers. I wanted to be as factual and precise as possible, and avoid the misleading spin from various commentators. This post will not be like that. I write not to influence agendas but to nudge those of you who follow my blog to act to be healthier than you might otherwise be… that’s if you look into the information for yourself and agree. You could use an AI chatbot to check some of my statements that will follow and look for relevant data. I think if we don’t do our own checking then we don’t convince ourselves enough to change behaviours. 

Anyway, here goes, with my personal message on Covid-19…

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