love thy neighbour

When a friend of mine asked me to write something about Christmas in China, my first reaction was how I should write. Do I have any special feelings about the day? If there is no such a request, this Christmas might be passed as usual, just like a holiday in which people naturally do traditional things, such as family gathering, exchanging gifts, enjoying the festive time of the year end.

Probably it's also the time to ruminate something special about the past year and to plan something new for the coming year. At least the first idea appeared in my mind about the writing was about a kind annual review of current affairs, so when I was told of some strange commercial promotions appeared in this Christmas season in Beijing, such as decorating a Christmas tree with a Mini Cooper car model as a kind of advertisement, I realized it's the problem of commercializing Christmas.

Looking around, one might find an awful lot of evidences that Christmas in China, especially in the cities like Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou, has been largely commercialized. Shopping centers, coffee shops, and book stores are full of joyful Christmas atmosphere. Indeed, a lot of young people are simply seeking fun and pleasure in this festive season, as the Christmas day probably is just an excuse in their daily life, to enjoy, or even to indulge a bit in some extravaganza, like having a luxurious dinner, or a wild party.

But some friends have also told me that a lot of church-goers are seriously treating it as a religious holiday, and they may seek the peace of mind by attending activities in various churches or at their homes.

So, basically we have two kinds of celebrators for this special day, one is the pleasure seeker, and another is the soul searcher. In between, there are a lot of people go neither side of the spectrum, just passing it by as an usual day.

I'm not a Christian, and I once enjoyed Christmas abroad with some foreign friends. The celebration seems to me more like a family gathering, where we shared and enjoyed pleasant time. Fleeting and impermanent as it might be at the superficial level, the sweetness and lightness of those moments has entered into my memory, which in turn reminds me of their existence each year in this season, so does the people I have encountered, acquainted and befriended in my life.

Yesterday, when I mentioned to a friend of mine in my greetings that I was to do some small giving job on the Christmas day, he said it's very Christian. I understand perfectly why he thought so, even though I'm not a Christian. Probably it's because of the date. But does it matter, to be Christian or not in this sense? Isn't the true spirit in being a Christian means 'love your neighbour', which one can easily find the similar sayings in other religions.

Can we say that as long as one's act embodies such a spirit, it doesn't matter whether one is called a Christian, a Muslim, or a Buddhist? Tolerance has been promoted in the secular multiculturalism. Perhaps it's time to promote toleration in various beliefs and religious practices, as long as the central spiritual pillar - ' love your neighbour' is identified in various religious practices.

In an interview with Spiegel, Rabbi Yona Metzger mentioned that his dream is to create an United Religious Nations, which will not only include Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, but also Hinduism and Buddhism. Grand plan indeed, and it's not difficult to understand his benevolent intention. This idea of the holy unity binding together various religions and the totality of the spirit of all human beings are very attractive, and perhaps it is the highest level of the human being's evolution.

As Rabbi Yona Metzger says, religious people speaks the same language. This same language, if one thinks about it, probably is more or less centred around 'love-your-neighbour', with which religious concord might be achieved. Such an ideal has been held by more and more people; but nowadays, its prospect of being realized is still located somewhere beyond the horizon of human being.

To be religious does not necessarily mean that one has to believe in a certain kind of religion, since belonging to a group of people unavoidably raises up the problem of 'Self' and 'Other', therefore it can cause all sorts of conflicts, discrimination, prejudice, and identity politics, which will hinder the formation of total spirit of all human kind - the communion that which would only emerge from the real religious concord. In this sense, humanity as a word can be treated as the signifier for the religious concord as well, so long as it reflects the spirit of 'love-your-neighbour'.

Excessive commercialization of Christmas has been considered by some observers as a vile symptom of contemporary society. Perhaps there is no more typical resentment against such a commercial mood of Christmas than the one made by atheist Richard Dawkins. In a review appeared two years ago in NYT, regarding his book the God Delusion and his attitude toward Christmas, Dawkins stated that,

'Christmas has long since ceased to be a religious festival. I participate for family reasons, with a reluctance that owes more to aesthetics than atheistics. I detest Jingle Bells, White Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and the obscene spending bonanza that nowadays seems to occupy not just December, but November and much of October, too. So divorced has Christmas become from religion that I find no necessity to bother with euphemisms such as happy holiday season. In the same way as many of my friends call themselves Jewish atheists, I acknowledge that I come from Christian cultural roots. I am a post-Christian atheist. So, understanding full well that the phrase retains zero religious significance, I unhesitatingly wish everyone a Merry Christmas.'

Very fine reasoning. I have no doubt that Dawkins has been enlightened as an excellent rational intellectual, and I still remember how I enjoyed reading his Selfish Gene several years ago to defend my atheistic standpoint. Its scientific reasoning is so powerful, that any fantasies of social benevolence might be traversed as a kind of self-gratification.

However, I have started to doubt whether or not such a pure reasoning can answer all needs of human being? There are some historical lessons regarding the promise of the Enlightenment in the period of Romanticism, from which one can tell that the notion of the general individuality of various societies or various states are still partial and the sacrifice of particular individuality thus called for in the name of the general individuality is problematic.

After nearly 200 years, and with so many bloody lessons we have learned, this problem of human being is still there and hasn't been solved. The interdisciplinary study of neuroscience and religious practices has tried its best to decipher the myth of individual enlightenment in a brave new world, but the result is also unclear. For this reason we have to accept the fact that the promise of the Enlightenment is yet to be fulfilled, largely because its initial emphasis on the autonomy of an individual as a rational being is partial, and the fact that in human nature people also has blind passion for communion at various levels can not be ignored.

There is a suggestion that such an irrational aspect of human nature can only be completely civilized if one dedicates oneself to a religious life. So the problem is how such a dedication of personal choice can co-habit peacefully with the secularized social norm. If it's externalized in the public sphere prematurely without the establishment of the religious concord, conflicts between different groups are quite likely to occur.

Therefore, the first principle, I think, for the realization of such a religious concord is that any voluntary religious organizations should not interfere with the issues that which belong to the secularised society, such as obtaining and executing the governing power of people, and any activities of those organizations should follow the principle of the rule of law in a secularised society. Under such a condition, religious people should have their own rights and freedom to enjoy their religious life, no matter what kind of form it is.

In another words, religious organizations under the unifying band of 'love you neighbour' should be always on guard against any temptation of stepping into the power struggle in the secularized society since any form of power struggle unavoidably manifests the Self, which will contaminate the spirit of 'love your neighbour'.

Theoretically, such a self-negation is a must to achieve the spiritual totality of human being, but in reality it is basically impossible to realize since that element of blind passion in human nature can not be eliminated completely, and the history has already manifested how disastrous and tragic the life could be if there is an exterior force to impose such a mandate to the ordinary people in the name of God, or some unfathomable higher orders.

One might argue that it will make a religious person extremely weak. Yes, paradoxically and individually it seems to be so, and it underlies the very meaning of the sacrifice and of being religious, that is, the true belief in 'love your neighbour'. But if every religious person holds this principle dearly, the spirit thus formed in their communion will be very powerful in-its-self.

This choicelessly formed spiritual power shall be the true manifestation of the holy unity of human kind.