When I was a kid, there was a rather strange couple that taught a few of the Sunday school classes at the church that I went to. Their family adhered to a very strict orthodoxy, which included a few extra and unusual stipulations that they had thrown in themselves for good measure. For one thing, they didn't believe in owning a TV, as they considered the idiot box to be inherently sinful regardless of what channel it was tuned to. Furthermore, they didn't really celebrate Christmas. I mean, being Christians, they naturally believed and observed Christmas, but they didn't celebrate it in the traditional manner. In other words, they didn't give gifts.
I can still recall that woman's syrupy, pious voice, and all the countless times she explained it to us. "Christmas is Jesus' birthday.", she told us. "How would you like it if everyone else except you was getting presents on your birthday?" Seriously. She said that. I can almost imagine a certain sanctimonious wink accompanying this pronouncement. They thought they were awfully clever. They were going to celebrate Christmas the right way. They didn't buy each other gifts. They didn't buy gifts for their kids. No fruit basket for the neighbors. No token of appreciation for the mailman; not even a card. They didn't even buy a special treat for the dog, but then again, I don't think they had a dog. They probably considered having pets to be some form of pagan animal worship. They could probably show you the chapter and verse to back it up too.
But hold up a minute. Let's think about this. It's not like you could ever get Jesus a tangible, physical gift. What are you going to do? Buy him a pair of socks? Get him a sweater that says "World's Greatest Savior", or a coffee mug that says "#1 Begotten Son"? I mean, what exactly do you get the omnipotent Lord of time and space that literally has everything? Well, what if people presented a gift that could only be offered through their own free will? Something like, say....oh...I don't know, maybe peace on Earth and goodwill towards men. Yeah, that has a nice little ring to it. Oh, and hey! Maybe they could demonstrate this gesture of peace and goodwill by giving each other gifts and generally trying to be decent human beings to each other. Crazy idea. I know.
Of course, when I was a kid I was just appalled at what this woman was suggesting and the whole notion of not getting toys on Christmas. I was horrified when my mother even seemed to give it a few seconds of serious thought. But now that I'm older I see that the matter goes beyond Christmas. These people were an extreme case, but I grew up around quite a number of these "Super Christians" who never missed a church service, prayed before every meal, made sure that the boys' hair wasn't too long and the girls' dresses weren't too short, who could quote you an endless stream of Bible verses for any occasion, and yet they didn't have the slightest clue what their own religion was all about.
Christianity isn't about not owning a TV, or trying to turn your life into an ascetic monument to your own self-righteousness. Christianity is about accepting that you're never going to be able to mold yourself into this perfect person "worthy of God's love", and yet realizing that God, in His grace, loves you anyway. It's about opening your heart to that love, and showing that love in return to your fellow human beings. It sounds like a trite notion, older than the dirt itself, and it's certainly been devalued over the ages by people paying lip service to the words without really embracing the spirit. It's definitely a case of easier said than done.
Take the present example, this family that I've been talking about. Part of me clearly harbors a certain anger towards them. I'm annoyed by their smug "holiness" in the service of such misguided ignorance. I'm angry that their kids never got to enjoy a proper Christmas, and I'm angry that for a split-second they almost ruined my own Christmas. And yet, there's another part of me, like a quiet calm whisper out beyond all that, a part of me that realizes that these people were just trying to do what they thought was right. Christianity is about embracing that feeling, and letting everything else go, the anger and the hostility, because it doesn't do me or them any good. But it isn't easy. And this isn't even a difficult case! There are definitely things that are much harder to forgive. But beyond all the noise and anger that quiet whisper is always out there, reminding me that we are all lost and confused children in this world, trying to get by the best we can.
Jesus brought an idea to the world, so enchantingly simple and yet so difficult to practice. He told people that the vicious cycle of vengeance and retribution could end with them. They just had to lay down their arms, turn the other cheek, let go of their suspicions and their resentments, sincerely open their hearts, and have faith that their friends and enemies alike would do the same. It's a risky proposition and few people have been fool enough to commit to it fully, but the stakes are plain to see. Peace on Earth is at our fingertips, anytime we want it, and whenever we're ready for it. It's completely up to us. It's up to us as the whole human race, and it's up to each of us individually. That's where it has to start.
I may be fuzzy on the details; I may have my own spiritual and metaphysical doubts from time to time, but I believe in the idea. And the idea here goes beyond a matter of religion, beyond the question of whether there's a bearded man in the sky or whether there's a cloud and a harp with your name on it somewhere. It's about what we make of life here on Earth. Jesus has had two thousand and eleven birthdays, and we've had two thousand and eleven chances to get it right, and we keep handing in the same badly wrapped gift with most of the pieces missing and all scuffed up here and there with our wars and the pain we constantly cause each other. Hopefully one of these days we'll get it right.
(Note: This post is an entry is yet another one of Rachel Hoyt's Sociology Studies. I could have mentioned that at the top, but I didn't want to break my rhetorical momentum ;D )
Maybe money was tight for them and they needed an excuse for being tightwads. I always pitied kids like theirs. I mean, it is bad enough that they have to stand out in society being kids of holy rollers but do you need to make them be more Christian than all the other Christians?? Seems like a strange competition to me.
ReplyDeleteAMEN!
ReplyDelete@Asha: "Holy Roller" Now there's a term I haven't heard in many a moon. These people took it to a whole 'nother lever. They took it took to the most self-devouring extreme where they were too Christian to celebrate Christmas. It boggles the mind.
ReplyDelete@Mouse: Hallelujah! ;)
If you want, the next time I see her I'll tell her she is a stinkiehead.
ReplyDeleteThanks Doug.
ReplyDeleteI've said it before and I'll say it again... if you were leading a bible study, I would go. I loved the say you put this, "Christianity isn't about not owning a TV, or trying to turn your life into an ascetic monument to your own self-righteousness. Christianity is about accepting that you're never going to be able to mold yourself into this perfect person "worthy of God's love", and yet realizing that God, in His grace, loves you anyway. It's about opening your heart to that love, and showing that love in return to your fellow human beings. " We all seem to get caught up in the details and forget about the core message. Thanks so much for linking this into the Smiley Sociology Study. :)
ReplyDeleteHappy as always to help, especially since I had this one planned already and it fit in so nicely with your study.
ReplyDeletemade a few changes to last paragraph
ReplyDeleteNow I understand why you reacted so violently against Straw Dogs. Right? You’ve reduced me to silence. A first.
ReplyDeleteWow. That is a first.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I'll be happy to hear anything you have to say after you gotten over it.
ReplyDeleteI know that I've always come across as the staunch atheist and the anti-religion nazi. It's not that I have anything against religion per se, it's what people do with it that I detest. Like those smarmy people you mentioned. "I love Gawd in a perfect way and everything you do is wrong so you are going to hell."
ReplyDeleteFrankly, if heaven is populated by hypocrites like that, then I'm glad I'm not going. Actually, that would be my version of hell. A beautiful relaxing place populated with mealy mouthed swine telling me that everything I do is wrong with that smug smile on their faces.
Oh, I absolutely agree. I grew up surrounded by such people. It soured me on the whole thing for a long time.
ReplyDeleteBryan, is it too late to come back on this, now that I’ve “gotten over it”? It’s been more of a gestation period, helped by a midwife in the form of Andrew Marr’s intellectual discussion programme, Start the Week, with a seasonal Christmassy theme.
ReplyDeleteIn this programme, Susan Hill (I think it was) protests that the Christian premiss (that evil can be conquered) goes against human nature as encapsulated in the popular conception of Darwin’s theory, which insists that we are hard-wired to look after our own - obeying the dictates of the selfish gene.
I’m not siding one way or the other in such a well-worn debate, you’ll be glad to hear. But I had a sudden moment of illumination---about how we in the Western world deal with this mismatch between ideas and actuality.
Every year, we set aside a short season in which we can allow ourselves to believe in the possibility of a transformation into a better world, where Ebenezer Scrooge becomes the most generous of jolly gentlemen; where Santa Claus shows love to all children everywhere; where Tinkerbell and Peter Pan lead Wendy to the wondrous land of Lost Boys; and biggest of all, where the Christ-child is born in the meanest of circumstances, unknown to most of the world, hunted down by Herod, but immediately recognised by representatives of the rich and wise, and also by poor unsophisticated shepherds.
Christmas doesn’t require that we become religious, but it does allow us to extract from Christianity what we admire most, and let ourselves believe it for the time being. And thus it is that as Christmas Day approaches, and the commercial activity reaches its peak and then sags and subsides late on Christmas Eve, we feel a rush of goodwill to all and especially the poor vendors, for whom these days are the most important to their livelihood. And then we see that we are all in this together, and rejoice in the blessings wished upon us and wished by us on others. And it is never complete without the sad consciousness that when we are connected to joy, there are others who are missing out on this same precious commodity. And—so long as we are not overly religious like your Sunday School teachers—we never forget the connection between joy and material comfort, for that too is embedded in our Western tradition. The idea of feeding the hungry, giving warmth to the cold and homeless gains a special focus at Christmas, though the needs are there every day of the year.
So when you say “Jesus brought an idea into the world, so enchantingly simple and yet difficult to practise” we compromise, and in his honour make some gesture to practise it for a day or two, in the specially favourable circumstances of the Christmas season. At the New Year we make resolutions, perhaps to go on practising the same idea through the bleak days of January and February (bleak in much of the Northern Hemisphere, anyhow).
So let it be said of us, as “it was always said of him [Scrooge], that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!”
"Every year, we set aside a short season in which we can allow ourselves to believe in the possibility of a transformation into a better world, where Ebenezer Scrooge becomes the most generous of jolly gentlemen"
ReplyDelete"Christmas doesn’t require that we become religious, but it does allow us to extract from Christianity what we admire most, and let ourselves believe it for the time being."
"The idea of feeding the hungry, giving warmth to the cold and homeless gains a special focus at Christmas, though the needs are there every day of the year."
Precisely!
It's funny too that, although Christmas has become a somewhat hollow, commercialized, affair for many people, we still almost instinctively have this sense that cases of desperation, loneliness, brutality, and man's general inhumanity to man are all that much worse when they happen during the Christmas season. It's one thing for a family to be robbed of everything they own; it's another thing for them to be robbed of everything on Christmas. There's an unspoken understanding that there's a difference, a greater tragedy, which I believe is accounted for by what you're saying. There's an agreement, a kind of armistice or truce with petty cruelty, that we feel has been violated.
Hi there I grew up in a surrounding of orthodox protestantism and know a lot of those kind of people too. What always struck me was that they so often missed following their own rules like taking her best friends boyfriend or abusing their kids or stuff like that. Besides that ~ I am working in a Supermarket and Christmas time is just one great big mad house. Still I love it. Not especially because it is a Christian thing (which was invented anyway to get rid of the pagan winter solstice no one knows really when Jesus was born). I like his ideas and I think he got it right but what we do with it is entirely up to us. "Embracing Spirit" has not only one face. It looks different for all of us and I would love it if we would give each other this freedom as I think Jesus had intended it as well. Love your post and I agree with Rachel: I would attend your bible study :-)
ReplyDeleteYes, quite right about the pagan solstice. In fact, I believe the same can said of Easter. Or at least be said of elements of the holiday, if not the date, which might be accurate...maybe. I guess it depends on how it coincides with Passover. Of course, it couldn't always be on a Sunday if it were on a certain date...hmmm...what were we talking about?
ReplyDelete