Return to Sender

                Despite what I think of Christmas (see previous post), I’ll admit, it does present an excellent opportunity to evangelize, being the one time of year when friends and relatives, rosy with home-made eggnog, might be willing to listen.

                Unfortunately, the venue Christians usually choose for this mission is the mass-mailing of  Christian greeting cards depicting the “traditional manger scene.” We have all seen (or sent) some variation of these:  the evening is blue, The Star is in the sky; The Three Kings approach on camels from the left (or the right).  In the center of the composition lay the Lit-tle Lord Jesus asleep in a hay-filled box just his size, as if he were the littlest of the Three Bears, while an adoring Mary kneels next to him, calm, clean, and dry, as if she hasn’t given birth any time recently.  On the periphery, usually behind them, apparently irrelevant but needed for artistic balance, stands Joseph, peering down at Jesus over Mary’s shoulder.  An array of un-smelly barn animals surrounds the three, all gazing upon the haloed babe, all smiling.  Even the animals are smiling.  Above the scene, in glittering letters, floats some standard exclamation: “The Miracle of Christmas!” or, “A Savior is Born!” or, not uncommonly enough, this inanity:  “Softly, ever so gently, He comes.” 

                And you wonder why your unbelieving friends remain damned?  

                Tradition, like formaldehyde, preserves the outward appearance of something formerly living, so that the inanimate semblance of the thing comes to substitute the thing itself, only in distorted form.  (This is why wakes are so weird: you gather around to gaze upon the body of your loved one in the coffin, all stuffed and put back together and made up, nestled in a white satin-lined box, like – well, come to think of it, like some dark parody of a manger scene.  For heaven’s sake, shut the lid.)

                (But I digress.)

                The event of Yeshua’s birth, thanks to Christmas, has, sadly, devolved into a tradition.  By elevating it above its scriptural context and preserving it in isolation, it now hangs suspended in a seasonal specimen jar.  The “manger scene” has become a graven image, an idol to be annually worshipped at the winter festival, a stage-set to be spot-lighted on lawns at night alongside the eerily-lit inflatable Santas, and then put back in the closet come January.  (No?  Did you ever hear a sermon on Luke 2 in August?)

               The message of these cards, stated or implied, that the birth was a “miracle,” is erroneous anyway.  The “miracle” was not in the birth, but in the conception;  the Word had been flesh for 9 months by the time Mary and Joseph got to Bethlehem.  Yeshua’s exit from the womb was in fact quite ordinary, happening in the usual way, and there was a reason for that:  it was the first visible event in a thoroughly human life that was almost exaggerated in its fleshly experience -- as if to emphasize the point that his connection with us was intimate.  Born into the filth and smell of a barn, with nothing remotely like the amenities of our modern hospitals – or even of our modern barns – Yeshua (Jesus) grew up working with his hands for a living and traversing the rocky countryside of Israel on foot, to finally suffer a vicious and wholly unjust death by physical torture.  This – the bloody death, the Great Substitute for you and me –  was the purpose of his human incarnation, not so that he could be resurrected annually as a cute baby.   Does the unbeliever get that from these cards, the revelation that he’s saved by the blood?  Do they even HINT at anything un-cozy?

                Don’t get me wrong, Christmas cards, like the rest of the season, are an industry, and I’m all for free enterprise.  I am happy that people in this country are free to express themselves in what they choose to buy and send, even if confused or inaccurate or plain ridiculous.  Manger scenes are not the only idol.  Taking its cue from Christianity, secular culture has leaped on the lucrative seasonal bandwagon by sales-pitching its own idols and obscure promises.  We have all seen the illustrations of a glittering globe with a flying dove and the single word, “Peace,” etched somewhere in the composition.  The source of the “peace” is nowhere hinted at, nor is there any suggestion of how it is to be achieved.  It is just a mindlessly suspended, free-form “thought,” serving no other purpose than to make the sender feel warmly superior for expressing such a beautiful ideal.  Practical meaning is unimportant. 

                That’s why Christian Christmas cards irritate me so.  In the Luke chapter 2 account, there is a gold mine of practical meaning, all of which has become encrypted in manger-worship.  If “A Savior is Born!” what is a Savior?  It is God – YHWH –  come in the flesh in order to bleed to death for the sins of the people.  Christians might make that connection when looking at a picture of a donkey smiling at a baby, but does anyone outside of the club?

                I realize Christians don’t want to hear this.  I never did at first, either.  Tradition is a beloved habit, and habit is a choke-hold.  Breaking a habit is a fearful thing –  ask any alcoholic.  But think: if you are defending against the scriptural particulars of salvation because of its threat to the cherished traditions of man, what is your message to the unbeliever going to be but one of watered-down confusion?  (Question: who in the spiritual realm would love that?)  Consider that more unbelievers see the origins of the season more clearly than Christians do – because Christians just get angry when the subject comes up and refuse to see it, as if their whole faith would crumble and disappear if the holiday were proven a fraud. 

                But Christian, take heart:  Yeshua can overcome anything, even bad art and sappy sayings!   It is not a matter of what you have to lose by facing the truth, but by what you have to gain, and by what you’ll then have to give away that is of eternal, rather than mere seasonal, significance.

Full Circle

                Well, jolly-o, it’s that time again.  Time for the hideous yard displays of bloated snowmen, bobbing on lawns like drowned monsters snagged on something at the bottom of the lake.  Such fitting symbols of the degeneration of society these are, of the death of taste, the degradation of man.  Is it even comprehensible that someone – a grown person – would get into his car and drive to a store in search of such an item, pay money for it-- money that he worked for -- and then go home and erect it on his property, watching it inflate to the machine-gun drill of an air compressor, finally gazing up at the towering horror as at some revered idol?  At least the idols of ancient times were constructed with imagination and skill, crafted as things of beauty, in gold, fine wood, precious stones.  Who would ever have thought that such idols, false though they were, would devolve into cheapened vinyl bags filled with air? 

                But despite the ubiquitous visual assaults of the season, and the many despairing conclusions that can be drawn from them about the demise of civilization and the end of history, this time of year does have its humorous side.  I am always amused, for example, by the indignation of Christians at the “secularization” of Christmas, ranting that society has “forgotten” the truth and turned aside to fables.  The Christian anchorman could be standing in front of the snowman display, reporting darkly as if at the scene of some heinous crime.  He would be right, for aesthetic reasons, but as for truth…well.

                It is a fact – voluminously documented, though painful for some -- that Christmas is a contrived holiday anyway, not a scriptural one.  Yes, the Messiah’s birth was a Biblical event, but no one in the New Testament ever celebrated its anniversary as a holy day.  The holiday that grew up in honor of it was a post-Biblical hybrid of the scriptural accounts and Roman paganism.

                “So what does it matter,” asks the Christian, irked, “as long as our focus is on ‘the right thing,’  as long as we quote scripture and denounce Santa?  What’s the harm in decorations!  We don’t worship the Christmas tree; it’s what it stands for that we celebrate!”  And so on.

                Well, it does matter, for a very simple reason.  Throughout scripture, we are warned not to mingle the worship of YHWH with other gods.  In fact, it is a commandment, one of the Big Ten:  “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”  This doesn’t mean that you move YHWH to the front of the line, and let all the other gods line up after him.  In fact, I think a more exact understanding might be, “You shall have no other gods before my face,” meaning, “in my sight.”  Since YHWH sees everything, that means no other gods: period.  (Exodus 20:3, Deuteronomy 5:7).    Keeping the Christmas holiday necessarily places competing gods in the picture, because, whatever scriptural justification may have been grafted on later, the celebration springs from the deeper, more ancient roots of pagan winter festivals.

                This discussion angers Christians, as any perceived “attack” on tradition will, but interestingly, many of these same Christians would readily oppose Christian participation in Hallowe’en.  Throughout October,  they will stand armed on the front lines, their “swords of the spirit” poised to slash at anyone who dares describe the holiday as just a fun time for children to dress up and get candy.  These warriors contend, correctly, that Hallowe’en is rooted in paganism, and pagan gods are simply another name for demons.  Of course, the people taking part in the fun have no intention of worshipping demons, but the Christian responds, it doesn’t matter.  What matters is the root. 

                Bingo. 

                 Incomprehensibly, these same Christians, so passionately outspoken about the evils of Hallowe’en, will display the most lavish Christmas decorations and sport the most meticulously tinseled evergreen tree for a holiday they know full well to be rooted in Saturnalia.   

                Even more mind-bending, in light of their anti-demon purity, is their accusation that “the world” – i.e., those sinners over there –  have taken Christ out of Christmas.  Ask yourself, after mulling all of the above: should Christ ever have been IN Christmas?  If pagan gods are really demons, can you “Christianize” demons?

                It is always in mingling truth with error – because of the attractiveness of the error –  that you end up with deception.  A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.  “Some” truth means a weakened truth, a diluted truth, an obscured reality.  “Truth” that is not absolute – if there can be such a thing – is necessarily wide open to any addition, or subtraction, or distortion, or combination thereof, that human imagination can contrive.  In other words, one can take or leave whatever he likes, and what’s to ensure that he’s going to take or leave “the right thing?”

                Which brings us full circle back to paragraph one.  Under the heading of “taking the log out of one’s own eye,” here is an absolute truth: 

                CHRISTIANITY IS ULTIMATELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF THE HIDEOUS VINYL SNOWMEN.

                If that doesn’t bring you to your knees in repentance, I don’t know what will.

Roll 'em

                I’ve noticed that Christianity, more than any other faith, seems to inspire a disproportionate amount of eyeball-rolling from critics of “religion.”  If confession is made to being a Buddhist, or a Jew, or a Mormon, or a Wiccan, or an Atheist, reactions tend to range from polite muteness to lukewarm “ah!’s” of false interest; but announce your Christianity, and there go the eyeballs, in full sweep around the sockets.

                Why is that?

                One reason, certainly, is our portrayal by a secular media salivating for any opportunity to feast on Christian hypocrisy and scandal; another is the fact that we keep feeding them.  That such disgraces are disproportionate to the reality does not generally occur to the flat-lining masses eating popcorn on the couch in front of their television sets.  

               Combine this with the mass ignorance of what Christianity is, the almost unanimous inability to distinguish the Biblical Christ from the hijacked version of the Western church, and it’s hard to keep a straight face.

                Eyeball-rolling is avoidance.  It is a facial gesture that exclaims, “Oh, how lame!,” that can barely stand the imbecility of the utterance, that cannot waste its breath on condescending to reply.

                That’s where it gets interesting.  It is easy to roll the eyes, or curl the lip, or to make fake retching sounds…whatever.  But when the eyes return to level, look into them and ask the person if they can tell you what it is they hate – what, exactly. 

                An honest person will rip into you about the hypocrisy and ignorance of Christians, how they’re always telling everybody else what to do, how they act worse than other people, that they’re all anti-progressive, against women’s rights, racist, and whatever else he’s learned on the couch with his popcorn.  Like any stereotyping, his own ignorance is founded on some truth.  He defines Christianity by the glaring exceptions, or by the one Christian he talked to, once,  or by the Crusades, for instance.  In his eyes, our failed perfection proves Christianity’s falseness.  

                A polite person will try to ward you off with something vague and hopefully acceptable:  he believes in God, “but,” he points out (since you haven’t thought of this), “God means different things to different people.” Or, he believes in loving everyone equally (like his mother, and the mass murderer).  He simply refuses to think too closely about anything.  In his eyes, nothing is false because nothing is true, or maybe everything is.  It doesn’t matter.  Now please go away.

                There are other classes of objectors, but those seem to be the most common.  Christians are responsible for much of this ignorance.  We engage in arguments about “Christianity,” trying, stupidly, to defend our “religion” against the ridiculing onslaught, when what we are really defending is our own injured egos.  If we are about “Christianity,” we are missing the point.

                Most religions are safely “organizations” in which nice, like-minded people get together to do like-minded things, such as eat and hold rummage sales.  Christianity is very adamantly about a very particular historical person, with a very particular mission:  to bleed to death for the sins of the people.

                I think most people join a religion or a religious group to fulfill some psychological need – for community,  for forgiveness and understanding, friendships, “spirituality” (whatever that is) – all of which masks a deeper, visceral need for justification, which they will never find outside of Christ. 

                This is the only argument.  You can NEVER hope to prove the rightness of a religion by the example of its people without sounding like an idiot and losing.  You can only point to the rightness of it by the righteousness derived from the blood of God himself.

                Buddha, Mohammed, Moses, Confucius, the Popes, and so on, all imparted their own brand of wisdom and law, made tremendous marks on the societies that grew around them, and made long-term contributions to humanity (for good or ill). Yes, God means different things to different people.  But nobody except Jesus died for you.  

                I wonder, during the brief pause in which I follow the eyeballs around, if maybe this is not what really irks them.  As an unbeliever, I did the same thing, although usually with a fouler gesture, and not confined to the face.  Is that what bothered me, maybe in a way too deep to grasp, or did I just miss the obvious because I was too focused on spewing what I imagined were clever offenses?  I don’t know. 

                I do know that the “religion” of Christianity has done much to destroy the message of Christ, perhaps more than any other single factor in history, and the responses to it seem to bear that out.  Going straight to the issue will still incur derision, maybe even more of it, but at least the focus will be where it belongs.  It is one thing to ridicule Christianity, which can save no one anyway; it is another entirely to ridicule Christ, who is the only one who can.

LPM

Suffer!

             When someone asks me, “If there’s a God, and he’s good, why does he allow so much suffering in the world?” it is usually as a challenge, a “gotcha!” question that they expect has never occurred to my simple Christian brain.  The question often comes from a person who, if asked, believes that man is basically good and can redeem himself through some vaguely defined evolution to social maturity.

            That is not to dismiss the question, which is a very good one.  But if coming from a person who believes in the essential goodness of man, then there is a question which naturally precedes it, which is, “If there is only man, and he is good, why does he allow so much suffering in the world?”

            Because the fact is, aside from natural catastrophes (which are generally “catastrophic” because people build in areas prone to catastrophe), man is the cause of the majority of human suffering.  From the obvious examples of victimization – murder, rape, armed robbery, eminent domain, etc. – to the more ubiquitous manifestations seen in the quiet hostilities daily played out between family members or office staff, man is central to the generation of his own woes.  Despite the cacophony of false prophets who proclaim man’s evolution to an increasingly higher moral stature, any simpleton with eyes in his head can see society plunging headlong down the toilet.

            Which brings us back to the original question since “evolving” man needs someone to blame for this:  “Why does God allow so much suffering in the world?” 

            Well, suppose he didn’t?

            What if he just steered us around by remote control, holding our arms to our sides when we wanted to swing, forcing happy words from our mouths, making the world like one big, never-ending Barney marathon.   Is that what we really want, to have our every word and movement forced into conformation with his will – against our own?  Unfortunately, that’s what it would take.

            God allows suffering because he allows us to choose the behaviors that lead to it.  It is the dark side of our free will -- the collision of myriad individual wills, resisting the unity of his. 

            But not to over-simplify a very troubling subject.  Why, for instance, if God has the power, does he not rescue the helpless child from the hands of a brutal predator?  Why not heal the cancer-ridden young mother?  Why allow an entire society to starve and go homeless because of the criminal excesses of its government?  What about terrible accidents?  And so on.

            I can only speculate, but maybe the answer is that he doesn’t intervene so that we will be continually reminded of what we are:  weak and infinitely fallible, imperiled by our own evil; helpless to control anyone or anything but ourselves – and sometimes, not even that. 

            Outrage and terror, grief and frustration, these are motivators.  They motivate us to ask the original question, “Why, God?,” but it is a pointless question unless the asker is willing to meditate on the breadth and depth of the answer.

            The scripture says that “all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).  If we define “good” as what makes us feel good, or safe, then few things in life will work together towards that end, especially since we all die after a very short existence in which there is too little time to clean up our messes.  But if we carry the definition of “good” through the second half of that verse – for those who love God and are called according to his purpose – it becomes clearer that the nature of true “good” is only ever within the ultimate purposes of God, and specifically for those who love him.  The ultimate purpose is rarely the immediate purpose, but rather, that which will manifest itself in some wider context of time and events. 

            It is interesting that the evolutionist has no problem believing that life and perfection evolve over billions of years from random gases swirling in space; but when it comes to the proposition that all things work over the course of history according to the plan of God toward an ultimate good end -- which may not be manifested during his own brief life -- he responds with sneers and ridicule.  He is usually the one most bitter at the course of unfortunate events.

            The apostle Peter, writing about the end of days, said “[God] is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).  If suffering leads to repentance for what we have done and what we have become through our own devices, then his “allowing” it is for the higher purpose of leading us to a revelation of his salvation.   What then grows (or should) from that seedbed of loss and redemption is compassion, patience, self-control, and so on – the fruits of the spirit, the “life” that is promised to those who look to the Messiah for restoration through his sacrifice – those very qualities that, if practiced individually, make for the peaceable co-existence of a citizenry and a nation. 

            In the last several generations, we have witnessed the gradual dismissal of Biblical precepts from government, an absence which has manifested itself in schools, the media and the family by disunity and moral disintegration.  By turning the job of establishing morality and salvation over to ourselves, determining that God is not an external being, but existent only within the imagination of unenlightened humanity, we have (predictably) found ourselves in moral chaos:  “Every man for himself!”  Interestingly, now that our enlightenment has pushed us to the precipice of a new dark age, that of  Islamic oppression, we have a growing surge of American outrage – aimed at those who uphold the Bible as the standard of morality and government.  Could it be that, despite our rebellion against the allegedly non-existent God, there is a fresh anger directed at him, for “allowing” our impending destruction? 

            Why, indeed, does he allow suffering.  Go look in the mirror.  Then get on your knees.