It’s getting close to Christmas and I’m sure that many of you are attending to last-minute details in your hectic schedules to hopefully prepare for the celebration of the birth of our Saviour. Would you admit that it’s hard to keep our focus on this truth as we are impacted with blur of activity comes upon us during this season? And that sometimes non-Christian views about Christianity and Christmas inhibit you from keeping your focus on God sending His Son to earth? Most everything you read and see during this season points to fulfilling a need for something that might soon become unneeded in a culture that teaches that we have a right to almost everything we want. We need help to keep our faith alive.
It’s awesome to find people who publicly and boldly speak the truth about the Christmas season in our consumer driven culture. Michael Coren did just that in a column he wrote called, Have a Little Faith, (view source) which my wife cut out for me this morning. Perhaps it will help you allow Faith to boldly Grow on your journey toward Christmas.
My last column before Christmas, so I thought I’d give the fanatical Christian-bashers a reason to rush to their keyboards.
But spare me those childish arguments that Jesus probably wasn’t born in December, that it’s really a pagan holiday and that he didn’t exist in the first place.
It possibly wasn’t in December and the first people to admit this are serious Christians. We know too much about first-century Palestine, about astronomical conditions and about the work of shepherds in winter to fully embrace the date. As for the pagan argument, in fact pagans may have taken the date from Christians. It doesn’t really matter.
That Jesus existed does matter. And there is not a credible thinker, expert and author — including militant atheists — who deny this. What is disputed is whether he was and is the son of God.
There is plenty of evidence, but in the final analysis the choice is open to the individual. That is what love and freedom are about.
You see, if God had made himself so obvious that nobody could fail to recognize him, we — his creatures — would have no freedom of choice and God would be a controlling brute rather than a loving father.
He is abundantly findable if we want to do so, but in his ultimate love he gives us the choice to reject him and spend eternity without him. This is called hell and it’s not God but we who send ourselves there.
But, people argue, why does the all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing God allow bad things to happen to us? Actually bad things happening to good people is a problem for atheists, not Christians. We believe that real life has not started yet and that our 70 or 80 years on Earth are a mere preparation for the world beyond. God doesn’t guarantee a good life, but a perfect eternity.
Awful things do indeed happen to lovely people. This is in spite of and not because of God and, as Christians, we know that reward will be given to some and punishment to others. Ask the non-believer why children suffer and saints are slaughtered.
But, critics argue, there are other religions that also claim to have the truth.
Yes, but so what? I don’t hear liberals, for example, arguing that they can’t really be liberal because conservatives also claim to be right. They assume that their rivals are wrong. Similarly with faith. I may respect other religions, but I can also believe them to be flawed.
Many of them do, in fact, contain elements of truth because the ripples of God’s message influence them. But the full, total answer is in God’s final plea to humanity in the giving of his beloved son, Christ Jesus.
Yes, but there are abusive clergy and bad Christians. Of course there are. And abusive hockey coaches and bad parents. It doesn’t mean that hockey is evil and parenting invalid. We are fallen and broken and do terrible things. All the more reason for why we need salvation and God.
Just a start, but one worth thinking about this Christmas. Have a good one and, perhaps, one that is worth the name.
May we all keep our Faith in our Saviour at the center of our celebration.
Bruce Archer
Bernd Heyde
I was in Sobeys Beaumont the other day, listening to the Christmas music and singing quietly with the songs, and as I turned down one isle – two ladies were – well one lady definetly was telling the other how much she hates Christmas for all the demands her kids put on her for gifts and parties etc. I so wanted to stop right there and ask her what her idea of Christmas was and why she didn’t have control. But since I didn’t know her and she was very angry, I just decided that I would silently pray for her. She has been on my mind several times since then and I have said a prayer not only for her but for others to stop, sit back and relax in the beauty and wonder of this season. We are in control of our schedules and in how we present this season to our families. If you have taken a wrong turn, take this time to make a right turn and take a plate of cookies over to that neighbor who hasn’t made the time to enjoy Christ’s birth and strike up a conversation, and if they are never home – pray for them. One minute makes all the difference in the world. Have a Christ filled Christmas!