Demolishing a Christmas Fixation

I admit it. I've indulged in the annual clerical ritual: I've used the holiday to lament America's spiritual decay and rampant materialism. Ecclesiastical moaning has become part of the Christmas tradition, bundled in the same package as the eggnog, tree-trimmings and Uncle Sal's weird presents ("Thanks, Sal. I love it. One question: What is it?"). Cue the condemning sermon, look somber, then breathe a sigh of relief and pass the mashed potatoes.

I'll break the ritual and ponder the full, personal brunt of the Christmas message. How has it touched me?

My thoughts turn to God, who chose to live as a human being, beginning as a baby. God did not merely appear human or become similar to a human. God was human, stripped of divinity's power. The baby howls at night. He needs food. Mary must change his clothes. Joseph stumbles out of bed in the morning, a bleary-eyed craftsman wishing his son didn't wake him at 3 A.M. My thoughts turn to me: I too was a howling baby who woke up my parents. Our God could empathize with me even then: The Cosmic Being had once been an infant.

My thoughts turn again to that Being: God grew up as a boy, experiencing a childhood so normal that the Gospel writers barely mention it. My thoughts turn to me once more and my own childhood memories, and then I remember myself as a quivering adolescent, confronted with the reality that I had been a self-pitying ball of mush. But instead of enduring God's wrath, I found empathetic love: God had been an adolescent -- not an adolescent like me, for Jesus was sinless -- but he had been an adolescent nonetheless. Divine love enveloped me and prompted me to hand my life to Christ. Unlike many, I can pinpoint the date I was "born from above:" July 6, 1973.

I remember my subsequent spiritual growth; I remember becoming trapped in a nowhere career; I remember my loving God releasing the trap. God was always present, nurturing me with the love of someone who had been there. I remember the joys of meeting my future wife. I remember confronting a potentially fatal illness and the possibility of leaving my new bride a widow. God was with me then; he knew the travails of deep suffering when Jesus was nailed to the cross. God's unremitting empathy has remained through the years. I felt it in my joy at the birth of our son; I felt it when we wept at the loss of a child through an ectopic pregnancy. God laughed. God empathized. God wept.

We do not worship a God who is merely all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving. Our God is all those things and more: The Almighty has experienced human joy, human pain, human suffering and human victory. Baffling as it seems, God not only possesses divinity; God possesses humanity.

I'm sure Mary cooed and sung lullabies to Jesus. What were her intuitions as she suckled him? Were there moments when she looked into her baby's eyes and saw the eons staring back at her? I'm sure she was too struck with awe to lament society's spiritual decay.

 

Follow Charles Redfern on Twitter: www.twitter.com/credfernjr

Comments

[Pyrrhus]

08:42 PM on 12/26/2011

The problem with g*d is that he forgot he was supposed to be a metaphor.

[nikanj]

06:02 PM on 12/26/2011

Am I the only one posting here who sees the 'eons staring back at me'
when looking into the eyes of my fully human friends and neighbors ?

I sincerely hope not.

[methodman]

06:00 PM on 12/26/2011

I think you misunderstand divinity. It is not Divine Right fifedom Republican Theology. As a non-evangelical and a anti baptist and a withdrawn catholic. The bagger Jesus Christ of biological endowment will never convince me to stop my non attendance of church. Divinity is coming to use the exposure to the world around you to snap grid to the humanity and educational experiences you find out about. The whole Every one is born as a bunch of pre-made God did my studying for me so I don't have to learn to build my modules doesn't make sense. I hate the footprints poem "where one set of foot prints are that is where God carried me. mocks the concept of Divinity Substitution as a civilizing force only works when my lectures are in one language and my problem sets are a completely different language and the attempts to link the two bring out the divinity to extend and myself prepare a personality based from modules. The christians poo poo people's spiritual attempts to understand People make themselves by working along with thoughtful attempts. I hate Divine Right Evangelicalism.

[credfernjr]

10:28 PM on 12/26/2011

I'm not a Republican.

[umbriago]

01:35 PM on 12/25/2011

I never understood the Christ being a sinless human being thing. Isn't sinning part of being human? That's what we're taught, that we are all sinners. Or at least we struggle with temptation, trying not to sin.

I have wondered what Christ's puberty was like. Was he not tempted, as is every human child who experiences this very natural transformation from boy to man? Or did he go through puberty without feeling anything? If so, was he then truly human?

[mulehead]

08:05 AM on 12/25/2011

Your article is not consistent with traditional Baptist doctrine. In paragraph 3 you say that God was "human stripped of divinity's power." Traditional Baptist teaching, as well as most of mainstream Christian teaching, is that God was fully human as well as fully divine. To say he was stripped of divinity implies that he was no longer divine. In the next to the last paragraph you say that God possesses both divinity and humanity. To "possess" something implies that the something is not a part of one's self. Again, your position is contrary to traditional Baptist doctrine which maintains that God did not simply "possess" divinity and humanity, rather, God, in Jesus was both divine and human. You attempt to put into words a concept that is impossible to comprehend. In doing so you make yourself vulnerable to those replies by others who use the Bible to deny either the divinity or the humanity of Jesus.

[credfernjr]

08:12 AM on 12/25/2011

@Mulehead: Notice the careful wording. I did not say that he was stripped of divinity; I said he was stripped of divinity's power. See Philippians 2.

[mulehead]

09:40 AM on 12/25/2011

I did notice the "careful wording." So, are you saying Jesus can still be divine even though he has no "divine" power? How is that different than simply being human? Does not being divine mean having powers that are extraordinary to humanity? Do you believe that Jesus is at a level of "being" some where in between being human and being divine? If so, does that not mean that Jesus is some how different than the rest of humanity? Would that not negate all you have said about god "identifying" with humanity which seems to be the intent of the article? Also, you did not address Jesus "possessing" divinity and humanity.

[TheFriendlyAtheist]

10:53 AM on 12/25/2011

Good points mulehead. To be all-powerful and all-knowing is the essential nature of God, and he could no more strip himself of his power than he could strip himself of his knowledge; and therein lies the unbridgeable dichotomy of the incarnation: that it is impossible for one being to have two essential natures, that Jesus cannot be both God and man. Thousands of men over thousands of years have tried to bridge this gap and all have failed. All the theories about two natures and two minds are all incoherent and illogical and fail to reconcile the impossible situation of one being possessing two essential natures. Neither can the idea that Jesus had a human being for a mother and God as his father be reconciled with idea that he was fully human when to be fully human he would have to have two human parents, not one.

[mulehead]

10:44 AM on 12/26/2011

Yes. What intrigues me about those who make these assertions is the contortions and distortions they use to support their views. In my experience, they claim to know the "truth" because they believe it is the truth. They believe it is the truth because the Bible says it is true. They believe the Bible is true because they have had a "personal" experience with God, etc., etc. The only truthful response I have ever heard is that it is a question beyond reason and must be accepted by faith. Obviously I can't argue with that position. A person either believes it or doesn't. I just wish that people would be honest that their beliefs are not supportable by any known rationale.

[sandc411]

04:56 PM on 12/26/2011

finally... we have the truth, and it's all there for us to read in one paragraph. thank you.

[PATOISJAM]

06:51 AM on 12/25/2011

Jesus, God's son was born as human. Not God.

Luke 1: 32:

"This one will be great and will be called SON OF THE MOST HIGH, AND GOD will give him the throne of David his father."

If you are going to minister, minister to the truth.

[iLdoRight]

02:03 PM on 12/24/2011

To imply that Jesus was "God" the Creator is to imply that Jesus spoke dishonestly when he said, "There are things that neither I nor the angles know, that only God Knows" and "It is not mine to give, but for whom My Father has prepared it", and "The name of My God" Jesus stating His "Father was in Heaven" while He was on Earth, two different entities not one. One in the sense that He did only what His Father wanted, similar to if one spoke to the highest representative of an insurance company who knew all the rules and allowances he could say "When you have got a ruling from me you have got a ruling from the company, I function as one with the company policy, you cannot go any higher to reverse my decisions"."Mark 13:32, Matthew 20:23, Revelation 3:12, Matthew 7:21

[ILoveTheUSofA]

05:34 PM on 12/24/2011

But both the Nicene Creed, and the Apostles' Creed agree in affirming the concept of the Trinity, which you are questioning. Nearly all Christian denominations, as far as know, take one of these creeds as their basic tenets. No matter how obvious it may seem that Jesus wouldn't have claimed to be God, it is useless to try convince Christians of this. They know very well what they are supposed to believe!

[PATOISJAM]

06:52 AM on 12/25/2011

And therefore very well deserving of the consequences their choices.

[iLdoRight]

07:00 AM on 12/25/2011

In Matthew 7:22; Did Jesus indicate (A) "Just a few" or (B) "Many" would call him Lord, and to whom He would say something like "Go away, I never knew you, you did and said what you wanted rather than what I wanted you to do"? Matthew 7:23 Could this be considered part of the internal proof of the Bibles authentici­ty, after all, can you imagine Jesus predicting, “In the distant future there will be many people who will know who I am and will do all sorts of things claiming to be My followers, but most of them will not know what I want, but they will be doing what I don't want done, they won't be on the narrow way that I am telling you will lead to salvation but they will be on the broad and spacious road that leads to disapproval ? Matthew 7:13,14

[phal4875]

03:37 PM on 12/26/2011

Jesus did not see himself as identical to other parts of the "Trinity." He said that those who fail to treat him right can be forgiven, but no one who insults the Holy Spirit can ever be forgiven (Matthew 12:31-32): "31 And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32 Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come."

[iLdoRight]

11:58 PM on 12/28/2011

If you want to get a better understanding of what "Blasphemy Against The Holy Spirit" is, look up every place in the Holy Scriptures where there is a passage that uses any of the terms. "spirit, holy spirit, "wind", "breath", and "breathed" and listen to all the Bible, pay particular attention to all the things that a person can be destroyed for or have their name blotted out of the "Book of Life".

[ILoveTheUSofA]

01:34 PM on 12/24/2011

Redfern says that God is "all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving." It would be absurd to question this, since evidently it was confirmed by God himself on July 6, 1973.

But Redfern also seems to think - though he doesn't want to harp on it - that society is afflicted with "spiritual decay."

Well if God is "all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving," why did God let our "spiritual decay" occur in the first place?

If we want to do something about the "decay" in the world, maybe we should start by taking the world for what it is, instead of indulging in nonsensical make-believe about the super-heroes in ancient books.

[Whitehorse3]

02:06 PM on 12/24/2011

Why did he permit "spiritual decay"? Because we are not robots. To love requires a free will, and that is precisely what God has given you, a free will. And with it you may enjoy and return His love, or you may reject and mock or ignore Him.

You may also choose to cheat on your taxes, or your wife.
The glory of Man is choice.
What are you choosing?

[credfernjr]

02:56 PM on 12/24/2011

Couldna said it better myself, Whitehorse3.

[ILoveTheUSofA]

04:10 PM on 12/24/2011

But you see, if God cannot control our "free will," then God is not "all-powerful," is he?

[OtayPanky]

02:43 PM on 12/24/2011

ilovetheusofa: Redfern says that God is "all-power­ful, all-knowin­g, and all-loving­." It would be absurd to question this, since evidently it was confirmed by God himself on July 6, 1973.

---

You know, I can't for the life of me remember this. Maybe I was on vacation at the time.

Do you have a link you can share?

[ILoveTheUSofA]

04:07 PM on 12/24/2011

I was merely referring to Redfern's own statement, "Divine love enveloped me and prompted me to hand my life to Christ. Unlike many, I can pinpoint the date I was 'born from above:' July 6, 1973."

[oldwarhorse]

11:01 AM on 12/24/2011

Thanks for the article. Helps me remember how much God loves us and that Jesus came to earth to be a saviour. The Son of God and the Son of man. Merry Christmas Please pray for our service members and their families. So many are still in harms way.

[fairwitness]

09:54 AM on 12/24/2011

"My thoughts turn to God, who chose to live as a human being, beginning as a baby. God did not merely appear human or become similar to a human. God was human, stripped of divinity's power."

God has chosen to live as EVERY human being, not just one.

[SophroniaAdrian]

10:44 AM on 12/24/2011

I think that is true, too.

[jamie96]

03:29 PM on 12/25/2011

Wow. This is an interesting perspective. So the next time I get pissy with my husband and he objects, I can just tell him that God's mad at him and he should shut up? Of course, this would be saying that God's mad at God. So then my husband could answer, "No, God tells YOU to shut up!"

There ARE places where you hear that kind of conversation ... Our house hasn't been one to date ... We figure that to be pissy is human, to be perfect is divine, and while we may have been created in God's image, we fall far short. That's why we worship God, don't worship each other, and believe Jesus was the only human in whom God lived fully on this earth.