Christmas is supposed to be a time of peace and goodwill, family celebrations and, for a few, religious observance.
Sadly, 2025 seems to be far from that for many people.
But maybe it’s not a very different world to the one in which baby Jesus was born – just different technology.
Baby Jesus grew up to be a prophet and teacher. So does he have anything to say to this world this Christmas?
“It’s no secret that our world is in darkness tonight”
U2, The Fly, 1991.
I wonder what would capture Jesus’ attention in this world?
Violence & bloodshed in Sydney
Last Sunday night here in Sydney, a father and son carrying several firearms, opened fire on a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on the famous Bondi Beach, killing 15 people (plus one of the gunmen dying) and injuring 42. We don’t yet know for sure the exact motives of the shooters, but there appears to be an Islamic State connection.
The attack has caused a lot of shock, grief, uncertainty, anger and blame, but also a coming together of disparate groups and a grateful recognition of the bravery and dedication of emergency services and some ordinary people. The fears of many Jewish people, many of whom don’t support israel’s actions in Gaza, have been terribly justified.
Last night we attended a prayer vigil to remember the victims, pray for all affected and be part of a peace process. In a suburb far removed from Bondi. People all over Sydney have been deeply affected but sadly not all responses have a peaceful basis.
Violence & bloodshed around the world
Anti Israel sentiment (and therefore, sadly, anti Jewish feelings as well) have been growing around the world because of the genocide in Gaza. Yes, the original Hamas attack two years ago was horrific, but so has been Israel’s response. This cycle of violence where Palestinian lives are taken in far greater numbers than Jewish lives are lost goes back to the 1948 partition of Palestine to provide a state of Israel again for the first time in almost two millennia.
It is rare for people groups to be given back land they have long since vacated – imagine the English, Spanish and Portugese colonists of North and South America giving back half their land to the original Native Americans! Nevertheless this was the grace offered to the Jewish people when half of Palestine was taken off the Palestinians who were living there, to establish the nation of Israel. Yet Israel seems to have not seen this as an amazing grace, but as an opportunity to take even more land over time – leading to the bloody cycle of senseless violence between Israel and Palestinian militants.
An awful feature of the Israel-Gaza conflict has been the prevalence of attacks on civilians, including children. Attacks on civilians have also been a feature of Russia’s vicious attempt to subdue and annex Ukraine, a war that has also claimed hundreds of thousands of Russian lives (a cost Russian President Vladimir Putin seems unconcerned about) and half as many Ukrainian losses, and in the civil war in Sudan, where 21 million people are facing famine.
Conflicts in Myanmar, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria and Latin America are also contributing to a bleak year for civilian and combatant deaths. Globally, terrorism continues to threaten civilan populations in scores of countries, though in smaller numbers than resulting from warfare.
War is always destructive, and 2024 and 2025 have been the deadliest for some years, with civilians, human rights defenders, journalists, women and children being increasingly targeted. The wars in Sudan and Gaza seem to have been the worst in this regard.
Jesus warned that those who draw the sword are in danger of dying by the sword (Matthew 26:52). Instead, his followers must love their enemeies (Matthew 5:44).
Inequality
Overall, the world is getting wealthier and the percentage of people living in poverty has fallen in recent decades. But the rich are gaining wealth faster than everyone else, so that the ultra-rich are increasing their share of global wealth (the richest 56,000 own three times as much as the poorest half of humanity, represented by 2.8 billion adults). As a result, global inequality (the gap between the rich and the poor) is increasing for two thirds of the world. This inequality causes suffering and death that could be alleviated with less inif inequality was reduced.
One of the worst forms of inequality is slavery and forced labour. Almost 50 million people now find themselves tricked, coerced, or forced into exploitative situations that they cannot refuse or leave. Modern slavery includes being forced into exploitative work, forced marriage, child soldiers, sexual exploitation and the sale and exploitation of children. all via human trafficking.
Jesus said that God looked very severely on those who ignore the plight of the poor (Matthew 25:41-46) and those who deliberately harm children (Mark 9:42).
The end of the world as we know it?
The world most of us grew up in is disappearing fast as several important factors bring about unprecedented change.
The world’s weather
Governments around the world continue to fiddle while the world burns. Climate change is already wreaking havoc – melting ice, loss of species, more severe droughts, storms and bushfires, damage to infrastructure and threats to food security. Fossil fuel companies aided by wealthy media have managed to cloud the issues for normal people and bluff governments into ineffective action, despite the increasingly verified predictions of dire consequences.
I must say it amazes me how so many educated people can allow themselves to be guided by distorted evidence and conspiracy theories while ignoring the vast array of strong scientific evidence. All this means the world of our grandchildren will be very different to the one we know now – and it could have been different.
Technology
Where would we be today without mobile phones? They make it so easy to keep in contact and stay connected, can be crucial in emergencies and allow us to have a camera and a database of information in our pockets. And yet …. studies are showing that they can have highly detrimental impacts on the mental health of teens (and younger), leading to suicidal thoughts, aggression and detachment from reality.
Psychologists say we in western countries have replaced a play-based childhood with a screen-based childhood. Phones can be a distraction, reduce attention spans, interfere with sleep and can be vehicles for bullying. Social media are often the vehicle for many of these outcomes, both good and bad.
Based in expert advice, Australia has just introduced a social media ban for those under 16, to try to combat some of the detrimental individual and social effects. We in Australia, and governments of other countries, wait to see if it will work.
And it seems the impacts on adults isn’t all that good either, via loss of time and attention (even when driving!) and “an increase in both physical and mental health issues including eye strain, neck pain, back pain, depression, loneliness, mood disorders, and sleep disturbances.”
Artificial intelligence is another tool which is benefiting us in many ways, and has great potential to transform many aspects of life. (Dario Amodei of Anthropic describes AI models as “machines of loving grace”.) Yet we know there is a dark side to AI – it can be used for inhumane targeting in warfare, for deepfake porn and for political conspiracy theories. It seems now that we cannot necessarily believe any video, any photo, and any sound bite, they could all be produced by AI.
When the internet, mobile phones, social media and AI are combined, the potential for both good and bad is enormous. The world won’t be the same, and is already very different from the world I grew up in.
Influence & control
Perhaps the most dangerous use of these technologies is in the influence and control powerful bad actors can now have over ordinary people.
Public opinion counts for a lot in most first world countries. Governments want to win votes. Advertisers want to sell products. Those with vested interests want to protect those interests. The rich and powerful want to stay that way, and the last thing they want is for the majority to vote to reduce inequality via taxation or legislation.
It has become clear that it is easier to retain power and position by demonising opponents and spreading misinformation, lies and conspiracy theories. People can be persuaded to vote against their best interests this way. Witness numbers of people who voted for Donald Trump because of misinformation, and are now feeling confused as prices rise because of tariffs and their social security is disappearing, while a smaller number of people, including the president, profit.
And so often, misinformation rules. For example, an organisation that worked for years to protect the tobacco industry (found in court to have engaged in a fifty-year conspiracy to defraud America and the world) is now promoting misinformation to protect the fossil fuel industry.
Christians seem to be particularly prone to being manipulated by misinformation. Those who want to manipulate us know how to do it – exaggerate or invent a problem, demonise opponents, tell us that God is against the viewpoint they’re against and our very faith is under threat, and so make us feel fearful. From there it’s easy. “Fear-based faith is incredibly easy to manipulate.”
And of course, the technology of social media and AI is a major factor in all this. And so politics and government may never be the same.
So it’s no secret that our world is in darkness tonight.
But Jesus said that he was the light of the world (John 8:12), truth was important (John 3:21) and he could make people free (John 8:36).
“Jesus, you make the darkness tremble”
Tremble, McManus, Figueroa, Fieldes & Bentley, Mosaic MSC.
Reflecting on this darkness makes Jesus’ teachings more relevant. We can start to understand that Christmas isn’t just a sweet story of a mother giving birth despite adversity, or even the birth of an important religious teacher.
Jesus said his mission was nothing less than to bring the benevolent rule of God to earth. And his mother, Mary, foresaw the outcomes of Jesus coming into the world (Luke 1:52-53):
“He knocked tyrants off their high horses,
pulled victims out of the mud.
The starving poor sat down to a banquet;
the callous rich were left out in the cold.”
Mary must have been a strong mother. Jesus picked up on her attitude, and gave severe warnings of the evils of wealth and materialism (Mark 10:23-25, Luke 6:24, Luke 12:13-21, Luke 16:19-31, etc). And his brother James did the same (James 5:1-6), predicting the downfall of those who exploit the poor.
Of course Jesus’ predictions and warnings haven’t been fulfilled yet.
Then and now
But Christian belief says it will happen one day, when God through Jesus will renew the world and how the earth is organised, and so put everything right and bring justice to all.
And that’s not all.
Jesus calls his people to follow him (Luke 9:23) in bringing the rule of God on earth now by fighting injustice, being peacemakers and caring for the poor and downtrodden. Jesus thought this was so important that he said our place in the age to come would be dependent on whether we cared for the poor and sick and oppressed (Matthew 25:31-46).
And in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5-7) he shows us how to live to achieve that, by forgiving others as we ask God to forgive us, by responding to evil with good and responding to hate with love.
At our best Christians have made the world a better place in many ways – through hospitals, schools, social welfare, peace-making, generosity and hospitality.
But often, sadly, Christians have been quite the opposite – seeking power, fighting wars and oppressing minorities.
The corruption of Christianity
Religion can be a powerful force. And the last thing the rich and powerful want is for that force to be used to bring about greater equality. And so the powerful have often tried, and succeeded, in corrupting this revolutionary zeal for justice.
The church has often been used by governments to lend legitimacy to war (despite Jesus’ teachings on non-violence) – it happened in Britain in World War 1; George W Bush claimed God’s support for his “war on terror”; and the Russian Orthodox Church supports the war against Ukraine.
These days, the church is in danger of being corrupted by the ultra-rich and fascist ideologies. If we are lured with the right bait, we can be manipulated to do things quite contrary to Jesus and the kingdom of God. To seek secular power over non-believers rather than establishing the kingdom of God the way Jesus tells us, by serving.
We see this in the US where many churches and Christians have been persuaded to not care for the poor, the outcast and the disadvantaged but to deny rights to those who are not part of their nationalistic movement.
Some Christian leaders openly distance themselves from Jesus’ teachings, saying governments need to be stronger and less caring – but still repeat at Christmas Isaiah’s prophecy that “the government will be upon his shoulders” (Isaiah 9:6).
“The light shines in the darkness”
John 1:5
But the light of Jesus’ teachings still shines like a beacon, and he calls us to join the movement, be part of the rule of God, and make a difference. It is a simple and free process to join.
The baby in the manger was born to “make the darkness tremble”, and those of us who are his followers are called to do the same.
“It is more blessed to give than receive” (Acts 20:35)
Instead of a Ho! Ho! Ho! Christmas we can resist consumerism with No! No! No! Those of us who are well off can give some more to those who aren’t.
Politics isn’t necessarily a dirty word
Instead of avoiding politial involvement because it isn’t spiritual, we can become engaged to support causes that Jesus would support – caring for the poor, the sick, the suffering and the marginalised. Maybe write a letter to, or visit, your local MP to talk about climate, or global slavery or First Nations justice.
Take a stand against misinformation
The Bible says hundreds of times not to fear. So let’s learn to recognise when someone wants to influence us by fear (“They’re trying to silence Christians and take away our freedoms” or “Immigrants are taking all our jobs – they must be stopped” or even “They’re eating the dogs!”) and let’s reject the fear.
Whenever we hear a claim that could affect the way we behave, we can calmly check with neutral sources (not just an echo chamber) if the claim is correct in any way (generally it will be exaggered) and if there is anyone behind it who stands to gain from making us fearful. And not repeat the claim until we have thoroughloy checked it.
Seeing who’s responsible
What if there is a conspiracy to rob Christians, but it is coming from a different source than we might first think?
hangeWhat if it’s true that the ultra rich and powerful got there because they know how to win, and how to manipulate public opinion with false conspiracy theories to get what they want?
It isn’t the only source of evil in the world, but maybe it is an important one. Perhaps Mary, Jesus and James got it right!?
Following Jesus
The kingdom of God – us doing things God’s good way – makes all the difference.
Jesus gives us an ethic (how to live), a motivation (to join him in making the world a better place) and the power (the Holy Spirit) to get out and do it.
Let’s do it!
Merry Christmas!
Graphic: Free Bible Images.
