Few verses are more popular at Christmas than Luke 2:14: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward man.”

It’s a heart-warming verse that Christmas cards have simplified to mean “Peace on Earth.”

It’s also what Linus quoted in “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (1965) in his classic drop-the-mic moment during a speech after Charlie Brown yelled, in frustration: “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?!” Charlie was decrying Scrooge-like commercialism.

Boy, were those the good old days when commercialism was all we had to worry about.

In today’s chaotic world, you don’t think much about commercialism destroying the “true meaning of Christmas” for being too busy trying to keep Islamists, Marxists and political psychopaths from destroying the country.

The chaos has created an ambient sense of alarm – a constant ear buzz that warns us that something’s way out of whack.

We’re feeling like Asaph, who wrote in Psalm 82.5: “All the foundations of the earth are unstable.”

When institutions that we thought were unshakable start to shift too much – and for too long – it leaves no choice but to let go of the stuff that’s crumbling and to cling to immoveable things.

“Peace on Earth” is one of those crumbling things. Given the times, it rings a bit hollow. And it’s OK to let it go because Jesus never really said it. You don’t have to look it up in the Bible. Just look at the Earth.

The kind of peace Jesus brought was a personal reconciliation between God and man, not necessarily peace between man and man.

In fact,........

© Townhall