"Peace on Earth" Christmas-musings from Patrick Mason

In a guest post for Rational Faiths, Board Member Patrick Mason says “My favorite Christmas TV special is A Charlie Brown Christmas. The best part, which invariably reduces me to tears, is when Linus steps out on stage, the spotlight fixes on him, the children hush, and he narrates the familiar passages from Luke 2:

And the angel said unto them [the shepherds], Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. . . .
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Millions of Mormons and a billion-plus Christians around the world will read or hear or act out these verses in the coming days. They have done so for millennia, and will continue to do so as long as there are believers in Jesus.
Then, for the other 364 days of the year, we will do our utmost to prove that the angels were wrong. This past month alone has provided plenty of evidence that the birth of Jesus did not bring peace on earth. Arguments that religion is responsible for most of the world’s violence are fallacious, but it is undeniably true that Christians have failed to solve the problem, and often contributed to it. Many, including a few members of the LDS Church who played a role in authorizing the torture of foreign detainees, apparently fail to even see a disjuncture between their resort to violence and their worship of the Prince of Peace.
It’s pretty obvious that most Mormons are not pacifists. But if we are in fact going to worship Jesus, and not just make a dumb idol out of the Babe of Bethlehem, then we should think long and hard about it.”
Click in to read “Peace on Earth” to read more.