by Jason Miller

"What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?"

---Jesus Christ

Humanity's "beacon of hope" is unraveling at its moral seams faster than George Bush can say nucular. 230 years ago, disciples of the Enlightenment shattered the shackles of colonial oppression and inaugurated their conception of a haven for humanity. While tainted by patriarchy and racism, the founding of the United States was arguably the pinnacle of social and political evolution. Tragically, the descendents of those who ascended to that zenith are racing to the bottom at a dizzying velocity.

In a collective sense, the soul of the United States is writhing in the agony of spiritual asphyxiation. Trapped in an overflowing cesspool of its own making, the nation's élan vital desperately needs freedom and an infusion of spiritual oxygen. Sans significant change, its odds for survival equal those of an under-sized fish carelessly tossed ashore by a heartless angler.

Countless words of condemnation have been heaped upon George W. Bush and his hard-Right regime – a crescendo growing louder by the day, with voices from across the political spectrum. But the most devastating repudiation of the Regime's foul ethos was actually delivered almost 2,000 years ago by the man whose birth is celebrated at this season of the year.

We speak, of course, of Jesus of Nazareth, whose Sermon on the Mount, as reported in the Gospels, called for a revolutionary transformation of human nature – a complete overthrow of our natural instincts for greed, aggression, and self-aggrandizement. This radical vision – erupting in the turbulent backwater of a brutal world empire – is the true miracle of Jesus' life, not the clusmy fables about virgin births, magic tricks and corpses rising from the dead. The vision's living force sears through dogma, casts down the pomp of church and state, and gives the lie to every hypocrite who evokes the name of Jesus in pursuit of earthly power.