In the midst of an increasingly secularized world and the widespread practice of money-driven politics, our minds need to migrate for a while from the realm of pure rationality to the domain of spirituality in order to build more compassionate politics. From the very beginning of its existence, Indonesia has claimed to be a religious nation and religion has a highly respected position in our constitution and legislations.

Society is even becoming a more conservative political entity. Our parliamentarians tend to assume that the regimentation of human behavior through the enactment of conservative legislation will automatically eradicate deeply rooted social ills.

As a matter of fact there is no correlation between the increasing amount of conservative legislation and the spread of good morality. Even in the most conservative regions we still find a high incidence of sexual abuse, sexually transmitted diseases and domestic violence against women.

In the political arena money has become an indispensable factor in the construction of political leaders' images. Something has been lost in the normal process of building a genuine political leadership. With a huge amount of money spent on a highly frequent display of television advertisements, some party leaders have tried to bury their past crimes by portraying themselves as today's heroes in poverty alleviation and corruption eradication.

They do not realize that a good reputation is not constructed by the artificiality of the modern media but is a final product of oft-repeated exemplary behavior worthy of emulation by all members of society.

As our politics have lost the element of compassion and become more monetized, people turn to religion as a source of inspiration in order to restore the noble goals of politics. They realize that if politics are an instrument to achieve the common good, people should rise above the inadequacy of the human rationality of power.

There is a need to add a spiritual dimension so that whoever is called to carry out the profession as a politician should oblige himself or herself to serve other people with love and compassion.

It is at this juncture that religion could play a constructive role. Every religion teaches us to love one another regardless of our ethnic or religious background and that is the only way to maintain our togetherness.

Unfortunately, formal or institutional religions are also playing their own version of secular politics by making religion an end in itself. Instead of strengthening the spirituality of their congregations, some religious authorities end up wasting their time and energy by perpetuating their clerical and feudalistic privileges and keep an effective control over their subjects at the expense of the sacred mission of religion itself.

Notwithstanding the decline of public morality in our politics and the instrumentalization of religion for secular purposes, the celebration of Christmas may restore our hope for a better world.

As we reflect on the sorry condition of our society today, there are at least two important Christmas messages for our nation. The first is the message of humility. Even though Jesus Christ claims to be the King of kings, for the sake of his compassionate love for humankind he was willing to be born in a manger. It is often said that a great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little, fellow human beings.

In the midst of the global financial crisis that has already hit our economy, the leaders should have that spirit of humility and acknowledge that they have not done enough to reduce the people's suffering. In the lead-up to the 2009 elections let us abandon the habit of false humility by which politicians suddenly have more compassion for the poor and the needy. They trade away their integrity for the artificiality of popularity in a democracy that has become an end in itself.

The second is the message of personal spirituality. With the degradation of the authority of formal religions people now tend to believe that a personal relationship with God is more important than a blind subjection to the formalism of religion.

The unexpected and rapid failure of the market economy as a great product of human rationality has led us to realize that we as mortal beings cannot control everything in our life. Let us not exaggerate the notion of sovereignty of man in front of the omnipotent Creator.

With the combination of strong spirituality and compassionate politics on the part of our political leaders we will succeed in passing through yet another turbulent episode in the history of our nation. Let the joy of Christmas fill our hearts as we go hand in hand in building our bright future.

The writer is a university professor living in Bandung.

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