Christmas Too Close To See

I know it's late, but I thought it was worth posting anyway:
_____________________________________________________________

G.K. Chesterton tells a story about a young boy who goes out to sit on a hill to draw with pieces of chalk on a scrap of brown paper. The boy is initially excited, but then frustrated upon realizing he has forgotten the piece he thinks most important—the white chalk. He mulls in frustration for a short time, then erupts into laughter as it dawns upon him that the hill he sits on is itself made entirely of white chalk. I see a profound picture of Christmas in Chesterton’s story.

It’s easy to forget in the midst of Christmas festivities that, for many, Christmas will not be so festive this year. For a lot of people, this will be the first Christmas after losing a spouse or child. Others will experience Christmas as spectators, watching the world around them celebrate, as they would love to do if only they still had, or just once could have, the wealth necessary for a Christmas celebration. For some, every holiday song, every advertisement and decoration only serves as an amplifier of pain: “There’ll be no need to go across town to his favorite store this year,” so the Christmas-sale ad seems to say to the widow. “This is how most people (except you) enjoy Christmas shopping,” says the mall commercial to the minimum-wage-earning, single mom of three. What a heart-stab every mention of Christmas toys must be to those who have lost a child? There are many—very many—who watch all of Christmas as orphans watch through the orphanage window as families play across the street.

From this it is extremely tempting to give up our cheer and take a view that is more “mature,” a level-headed view that pulls our head out of the clouds, one that sobers us with the “real world,” and prevents us from getting caught up in all the childish Christmas hype. But such a view is short-sighted to say the least.

Before I go any further, please don’t take this as some muddle-headed attempt to counter deep pain with trite Bible clichés. Make no mistake; pain hurts. But one can either hurt in hope or hurt in despair, all depending on the level of insight and faith.

I said to lose cheer is tempting but short-sighted, because to do so is to stop and turn around within sight of the finish line. As dark as many situations may seem, the light is ironically close. The remedy to the pain evoked in so many by Christmas celebrations can only be had in looking past the celebrations to their source. If shiny tinsel and lights and family dinners are really all Christmas is about, hurting, lonely people have little hope. But what (rather who) lies at the very bedrock of all the Christmas cheer? It is the Father, the Lover, the one who ultimately defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow. The great irony is, in many people, loneliness and pain is intensified by the celebration of the coming of the only One who can cure our loneliness and pain. Those whose pain is aggravated by Christmas are in a situation much like a man stranded on a desert island who is irritated when the island’s silence is broken by the foghorn of a rescue ship. With Chesterton’s story in mind, Christmas makes us aware that no matter how bad we are hurting, we sit on a hill of white chalk.

MM

Further Thoughts on Non-Christians, Hell and John Piper

The part of the John Piper article cited in the previous post that I thought was nonsense was this: "Unless Muslims - and all others who deny Christ's deity - hear and embrace the good news that 'the fullness of deity' dwells in Jesus (Colossians 2:9), they will be without eternal hope."

The Christian Missionary Alliance has a point in their statement of faith that says something to the effect of, "We believe that those who never hear the Gospel are condemned no differently than those who hear it and reject it." This seems to be very consistent with the quote above.

One non-negotiable fact of the New Testament is that there is no possible way to be reconciled to God except through Christ. This is not in question. What is in question is how that looks in the lives of people. We know what a right relationship with Christ should look like in the lives of sane, healthy people who have access to the Bible. But it seems to me rather arrogant to assume we know exactly what the process of going "through Christ" must look like in the life of every person on earth. Who's to say God doesn't have some way of making the Gospel available to a Buddhist in the jungles of Malaysia as he lies on his death bed. We can say that this is not the ideal, but can we also say that it is impossible, and therefore the person has no "eternal hope"?

I know one issue that comes up is that this thinking undermines mission and evangelism. This is an important concern (I would certainly be as vulnerable as anyone to falling prey to such sin of neglect and disobedience), but the fact that God may work in mysterious ways in reaching those who've never heard the message does not mean that we have any less a responsibility to obey the Christian mandate for evangelism. A servant should not need to be fully certain of the implications and results of a command from his Master to obey it.

One underlying thing that troubles me about the approach Piper and others seem to take on the Bible (though I must qualify this by saying I need to read more of him to be certain) is what I like to call a false sense of Biblical omniscience. By this I mean the idea that there is absolutely no ambiguity and mystery in the Bible, and that once one comes to a working knowledge of the Scripture he then knows with full certainty the exhaustive meaning of every verse and the exact eternal implications for every person on earth--AKA "Fundamentalism."

Two problems with this type of thinking are 1) It fails to recognize the complexity, richness, and power of the Bible, and 2) It is a philosophy that is never practiced with complete consistency. Most Fundamentalists (and I don't know if Piper would accurately fit in that category or not) would argue something like the following when faced with implications of an interpretation of a verse that seems to be immoral or even unChristian: "Well, it may not be popular or easy to swallow, but it's what the Word of God says, and I stand by the Word of God." But what about verses like 1 Timothy 1:15, "But women will be saved through childbearing--if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety." Even the boldest Fundamentalist would not say that all infertile women will be damned for eternity. But, if one accepts the typical Fundamentalist line he would have to say, "It may not be popular, but it's what the Word says." It's obvious from everything else Paul writes about how we are to be saved that the verse simply can't mean what the face value of the verse seems to say. Though the essentials are abundantly clear, we must admit that some of the ultimate implications of Scriptural truth--particularly regarding who will and won't be saved--is something we can't always know. Let's allow God to be God.

Of course, all true Christians "stand by the Word of God." That's part of what it means to be a Christian to begin with. But if we are going to be obedient to Christ, we must also be honest, thoughtful and discerning in our study of His Word.

MM