Christmas (part i.)

in the great tradition of two-part thoughts..

on Christmas.

part i.: destructive

this evening I joined my family for a candlelight service at the church they've attended for the past two years. it's a place where I've always felt that something was awry - an intuitive reaction in my gut that something was wrong. and I mean a deeper sense of wrong than the involuntary wincing from the cliche four-chord 'praise songs' and 'three-bullet-point sermons.' tonight, I now know what the root of that sense was, for it was revealed with such gusto and enthusiasm that willful delusion is its only inhibitor.

or put another way, I have never felt a stronger urge to step up from a pew during 'worship,' walk toward the podium of a church, grab a microphone, and perform a small reenactment of Jesus-in-the-temple. truthfully, I wish I had.

or perhaps I am wrong. perhaps the proper way to honor the Christ for Whom we celebrate Christmas is by invoking the timeless, Jesus-first classics of "jingle bells" and "sleigh ride." perhaps the reason why Jesus Christ humbly came into His creation was to make us happy and 'shine light into our dark times.' perhaps the darkness He came to shine light into is really the doubt, distress, and disappointment inflicted on us by an unkind fate. perhaps Jesus Christ, the executed Lord of glory, is really nothing more than a tool for our benefit when we don't feel awesome. perhaps there is no place for fear in life, least of all towards the consuming-God-of-the-Angel-armies. perhaps the best way for the bride of Christ to honor her future Husband is by focusing on Him as little as possible, and when forced by pretense to speak of Him, to manipulate and transform her Saviour into a Rescuer-from-psychological-anxiety (for is this Jesus not more palatable to an unbelieving world?).

or as I should have learned from last week's service at another church, perhaps Christ came to earth to give us joy and help us to be thankful and kind to one another. perhaps that's the reason that mankind - US! - abused, tormented, despised, condemned, mocked, and unjustly executed the innocent and loving Son of the Living God. to help us to be thankful; to make our frustrating times a little happier.

have no doubt, my reader, that Christ accomplishes all of these things. but surely pagans recognize that this - the idea that He came, lived, suffered, died, and was resurrected primarily for these things alone - is a mockery and a foolishness beyond words! it is traitorous adultery, mindless delusion, and willful rejection of Christ as He is - for how else can we replace Him with a worthless idol/shadow of the true Christ? (or, as the men whose teaching I relate above suggest, a shadow of even a mere man! for what man would we, should he have given his life over to destruction for helping make people more thankful or brighter, not justly hold his goal as at most a sad pagan self-sacrifice, let alone an act worthy of worship? even an atheist sees this madness for what it is, in spite of his venom.)

in the theologically magnificent words of my younger sister: "what the hell?"

the one thing of Christianity, the only lesson it teaches (wherein it teaches all lessons to be taught) is the Gospel (to which the second part of this thought will be given). what was spoken tonight.. could not be legitimately called drivel. my dear reader, when you hear words about Jesus, when you hear Christians and non-Christians alike speak of Who He was and what He did, take heed. for many churches and many enemies of the church have said volumes about the Jesus-of-their-beliefs, rather than the Jesus who walked the Judean countryside two thousand years ago.

and it is that Jesus, the crucified, incarnate Logos of the immortal Father Who matters most - Jesus as He truly was, is, and will be.

God have mercy on us all.