As last i left you, the faithful reader, i had just announced my 2 points:
1) Christmas should be about our selfishness
2) Christmas should be about our inability to grasp God.
Today we discuss point numero uno.
Christmas should be about our selfishness.
What Christian in their right mind would even begin to agree to this statement? (What Christian in their right mind would volunteer to be crucified upside down? We, as a people, have a very peculiar way of classifying our sanity.) To answer the first question: not many. Not many people would dare say that Christmas, the time when we celebrate the birth of our savior, should be about our selfishness.
But think about it. What better time to be reminded of why we need the very one we are supposed to be celebrating. Remembering the one who died for our sins would seem a little less blasé (to me) if, for a season, we (Christians) honestly realized how fallen we still are. How selfish. How fully ruined and evil.
Now this isn’t to say that this is our Mardi Gras (no offense to Catholics, but lets be honest, we know what goes down in New Orleans). This is not an encouragement to celebrate our wickedness.
No, it is simply a time to look past our blinders of self righteousness, which, as a people, (and I mean the Church this time) we have a tendency to wear quite often. What if Christmas was not a time to pretend how much love, remember, and honor our savior, but a time to remember just how much we still need him. No matter how long we’ve been a Christian. No matter what position of leadership we hold in our local church. No matter what good deeds we do, or how many times we’ve prayed for forgiveness. No matter how much we remind people that, for us, Christmas isn’t about the presents.
So this is exactly why Christmas should be about our selfishness. It is the very reason that a savior was sent to us. If ever we achieved some kind of homeostasis with in the laws of good and evil, would we still not be tainted?
As the church one of the biggest issues we face is how to overcome a “holier than thou” opinion that many people have of us. What better way to confront this issue than by openly admitting our depravity.
For at least a few days a year, we would honestly and openly say to the world, “You know what, we aren’t perfect. We don’t even come close. We have addictions, vices, and dirty secrets that we just can’t shake. We are no better than anyone else. Some of us are meth addicts. Some of us are addicted to pornography. Some of us can’t help but lie. Some of us are even attracted to the same sex.” Gasp. Not that this would describe anyone in our churches (I hope you picked up on the sarcasm). “And that is why we are celebrating. Because we, like everyone else, needed a savior. And he came. He came for every lying, cheating, stealing, lusting, last one of us. As a church we are as imperfect as any other group of humanity. That is why we are clinging to the birth of a baby 2000 years ago.”
And that is why years from now, as a greater self-realization washes over the child who, at the age of 6, huddled under blankets with anticipation of giant transforming robots awaiting him in the living room, a Jewish baby will start to take precedence over the great Optimus Prime.
And now i leave you with a wonderful quote by the great Fyodor Dostoevsky from his book Notes from Underground:
Tell me this: why was it that, as if by design, in those same, yes, in those very same moments when I was most capable of being conscious of all the refinements of “everything beautiful and lofty,”3 as we once used to say, it happened that instead of being conscious I did such unseemly deeds, such deeds as. . . well, in short, as everyone does, perhaps, but which with me occurred, as if by design, precisely when I was most conscious that I ought not to be doing them at all? The more conscious I was of the good and of all this “beautiful and lofty,” the deeper I kept sinking into my mire, and the more capable I was of getting completely stuck in it. But the main feature was that this was all in me not as if by chance, but as if it had o be so. As if it were my most normal condition and in no way a sickness or a blight, so that finally I lost any wish to struggle against this blight. I ended up almost believing (and maybe indeed believing) that this perhaps was my normal condition.
Peace.
1 comment:
You know, my first reaction was to introduce my size 13 boot to your nether regions. Fortunately i bothered to read on. Good work.
Roman 3:19-26
19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; 22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: 23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; 24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; 26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
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