Christmas

Chasing the Spirit

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This will be a short post–probably. You all are aware of my proclivity to wax verbose.

Christmastime is my favorite time of the year. Or, that’s what I think every time it rolls around, even though I tend to think that springtime is my favorite time of year every Spring. The combination of nostalgia for past Christmases, the emotional response to the meaning of the season (even if we probably celebrate it in the wrong time of the year and all of that), the chance to see and spend time with family, and the chance to put work aside for a short while and just enjoy being human for a change all hits a sweet spot in my soul. But every year, I seem to complain that I haven’t been able to “get into the Christmas spirit.” At least not fully.

This may simply be the “can’t complain, probably still will,” mentality that tends to grip me in my curmudgeonliness (at least I recognize that, I suppose), but I feel that this year, I’m at least partly to blame. Yes, this has been a busy and hectic time. K is serving her first Christmas as a commissioned pastor in a new position (she put on a wonderful children’s Christmas service yesterday!)–which means, of course, she’s working crazy hours; we’ve got the kiddos to prepare Christmas for, and then there’s all that work to do, which has been busier than usual this December. There just hasn’t been that much time for enjoying Christmas.

But there’s been some, and when there has been, I haven’t availed myself of it unless forced to. I took Hawkwood to yesterday’s children’s service because of my husbandly obligation to attend and my fatherly duty to take my three-year-old. I found the service to be moving and to be one of the most enjoyable Christmas services I’ve attended in a long while, so I was exceedingly glad to have gone. But had I not felt obligated, I probably would’ve skipped it in favor of trying to catch some aseasonal relaxation–video games, writing, working on Frostgrave and RPG projects, watching the rest of the Witcher, etc.

I’m wrestling with that. Honestly, my attendance in church is something I regularly struggle with, and that’s just writ large at Christmastime. I always am glad to have gone to a church service–it helps center me, returns me to a remembrance of what is important, reminds me of how grateful I ought to be for the many blessings I’ve received. But it’s not the place where I feel closest to God. Church music is fine, but it doesn’t fill and inspire me like it does for others. I am fascinated by the ritual and liturgy of a church service, but not particularly moved by it. The sermon is typically the part of a service I enjoy most, but it’s not what I need from church attendance. I spend plenty of time reveling in the intellectualism and mystery of theology–it’s the emotional connection and the existential, mystic experience I don’t get enough of.

There’s the crux of it, I suppose. I’m not putting the effort into really seeking that elusive Christmas feeling, but lamenting not having it all the same. Maybe you feel the same way. If so, you’re in luck–there’s still time and grace for both of us.

Reflections

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(This is the 5th of seventeen remaining posts in my 200 for 200 goal. If you like what I do on this blog, please tell your friends and invite them to “follow.” Your interest helps me to keep writing!)

It’s the last day of 2018. I’ve spent much of December lying low, or nose-to-the-grindstone with work, and the Christmas season flew by. This despite my saying that I would intentionally slow down and make time to really get into the mood and the idea of the season–something at which I failed dismally. I have, however, managed to take some downtime between Christmas and the New Year without work, enjoying time with friends and my wife, writing and pursuing other hobbies, and doing some reflecting on the past year and Christmas itself. I’ve read a number of excellent blog posts about Christmastime and thought, “as an aspiring theologian, I really ought to post something, too.”

But, in this strange season (for me, at least) of trying to relax and simultaneously being angsty that I’m “not being productive enough,” I just don’t have a deep intellectual theological point to make on the subject (though what I hope to be deep theological and intellectual points on some other important issues will soon be forthcoming). If there’s anything I’ve learned from trying to be “a writer” (if I’ve truly learnt anything at all), it’s that you can’t force a subject and achieve something you’re truly proud of as a result.

So, instead, I’m going to merely share some of the things that have been roaming through my head in the past few weeks in the hope that somebody somewhere finds some meaning in some part of it. Here we go:

Christmas

Christmas is a hectic time for me and K. As a worker in church ministry, this is K’s
“busy season” (to borrow an accountant’s term); she affectionately calls Christmas Eve a “non-stop Jesus party”–I believe our church held four different services this year.

On top of that, we are blessed that all of our parents live within close proximity. Of course, that also means that we have three Christmasses to make between Christmas Eve and Christmas day, which typically means less-time-than-desired spent with each family member, more road-time than we’d prefer, and a level of exhaustion at the end of things that makes it more difficult to enjoy what a blessing it is to be able to spend time with family in this part of the year.

As is appropriate, I suppose, this has me thinking about the Incarnation. The meaning of Christmas, to me, is relatively simple but profound. God loves us so much that God personally came to Earth to be with us, accepting suffering alongside us (and for us) just to be present with us. It’s one thing to write that, but let it really sink in. Think about what God volunteered to do when no force or power can make God do anything God doesn’t will to do. Think about the eternal profundity of that choice. I’m not often one to let my emotions get the best of me, but this single thought strikes me to the core every time I contemplate it.

This basic truth about God’s will, choices and desire for us is the source of all hope we have, the foundation of that peace which cannot be marred by temporal events, the all-encompassing love that inspires love in all touched by it. Jesus Christ’s birth into the world is the very core element of Christianity (as is fitting).

Yes, Jesus’ self-sacrifice on the cross for us is also foundational, as is the Resurrection. But, at the end of the day, these are true mysteries of the faith that we will never fully understand. Whether you ascribe to Christus Victor theory, Penal Substitutionary Atonement theory, or one of the various other proffered explanations for the mechanism of our salvation, it’s a topic that will always elude our complete grasp. But the meaning of Christmas needs no great intellect for one to understand how it changes everything. The meaning of Christmas is existential, and therefore intuitive.

We may cloud that realization with commercialization, with stress about pleasing others and properly performing traditions, or angst about failing to adequately take time to “get into the Christmas Spirit,” but it is always there for us, waiting to be discovered anew.

New Year’s Resolutions

I haven’t made New Year’s Resolutions for several years. It strikes me as a silly thing, really. Why should an arbitrary marker of time provide some special impetus for us achieving the things we want to all year round (but fail to summon the discipline or will to truly work toward)? I want to be in better shape all the time, but there’s no reason to think that I will have some additional amount of drive to follow through on the desire tomorrow than I do today.

Instead, I’ve simply made goals for myself for each season of my life, reflecting on and thinking about those things that I want to prioritize for myself in the choices that I make moving forward.

But this year, I’ve decided to make a resolution anyway. It is, in many ways, a sub-goal for my life season goals. At present, the life goal on which I am most focused is to become a professional writer, to be published. That doesn’t mean that I expect to be able to be a full-time writer, I understand how rare a thing that that actually is, and there’s a part of me that would very much like to keep money out of my writing as much as possible (though I understand what the Apothecary means when he says, “My poverty but not my will consents.”).

That resolution is to write for at least one hour every day. It’s not necessarily about content generation (as I said above, such things cannot be forced). Instead, it’s about building stronger writing habits. I may write on the novel I’m working on, or the half-finished theology book manuscript currently gathering dust, or a short-story, or something gaming-related, or this blog, or what ultimately amounts to unusable nonsense. The point is to erode those barriers that all-too-commonly lead me to say, “I feel like I should be writing right now, but…” To write for the sake of writing, because I acknowledge that as a core personal need I have–writing, regardless of result or achievement, is part of who I am.

Maybe while I’m at it, I’ll get myself to the gym more often. But I’m not holding my breath.

The God Who Chooses Us

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It’s Advent, and I’ve been thinking about the Incarnation (no surprise there).  I am less concerned with the “how” of the Incarnation and more concerned with the “why.” My faith in the sovereignty of God means that I believe that God could have invented all manner of possible solutions to the problem of sin (not that we humans have intellect sufficient to speculate very effectively about what those infinite possibilities might be).

Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the Incarnation tells us something about the nature, purpose and personality of God. What I find in exploring these issues is one of the most profound aspects of my faith, one I’d like to share with you.

Let’s begin with the question of God’s “passibility.” This is often defined as “the ability of God to suffer,” but this is not entirely correct. The truer definition of passibility is “the ability of God to be affected by some force or influence external to God’s self.” In plainer terms: can something make God be or feel a certain thing or do a certain thing?

The question is important because it presupposes a problem: If God is “passible” there is something in the universe that is more powerful than God because it can overcome God in some way, challenging God’s sovereignty. On the other hand, if God is “impassible” and cannot be affected by any external thing, can God feel sympathy with us? Does God “feel” anything, since feelings are responses caused (at least sometimes) by external forces?

This is perhaps the most fundamental question of theology–can God be both sovereign and good? If the answer is yes, then the basic nature of existence should be one of hope. If not, despair. All aspects of theology are influenced by the answer to this question. In theodicy, the question of evil only exists in such a troublesome state if God is both good and all-powerful. If not, we have an easy explanation for the existence of evil. The meaning of scripture, of the working out of salvation, of the Incarnation, all of these turn on this answer.

Let me propose that there actually is no problem in the question of passibility, though what the solution tells us is nothing short of amazing in its furtherance of the understanding of our God. We affirm that God is sovereign over all things and cannot be unwillingly affected by something external to God’s self. But if God cannot allow God’s self to be affected by some external factor, than God would not be sovereign, for God could not overcome God’s self. The God who cannot self determine is not impassible.

So, it does not follow that the all-powerful God is not good or cannot feel–God has chosen to be good and God has chosen to feel, to be affected by God’s Creation. To be in active and meaningful relationship with all of Creation.

The theologian Thomas Jay Oord has very convincingly argued exactly this–that God is impassible but has affirmatively chosen to suffer with us. For me, though, the realization of this came from G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy:

“Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator…But in the terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.’ No; but the Lord the God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden, Satan tempted man; and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manenr through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God….”

The Incarnation and the crucifixion represent God’s choice about so many aspects of existence. Much has been written about its meaning as God’s choice to redeem humanity (I, personally, favor Karl Barth for this investigation and discussion), but I think that far too little has been put to paper (or screen as the case may be) about what the Incarnation says about God’s justice.

In the Incarnation we see God’s choice of (semi-)passibility as one of the few answers to the problem of evil that we humans can actually understand: No matter what suffering God has allowed to befall humanity, no matter why this suffering has been allowed (which we are ultimately incapable of explaining), God is so just as to not allow God’s creation to suffer anything that God will not suffer with us in the most personal and intimate of ways.

In Christ’s birth, we see God’s choice to be with us, not just physically, but existentially. How amazing is it that the God of all Creation willingly suffers with us for us. God is all-powerful; God has chosen to be good to infinite extents we cannot possibly imagine.

I invite you to keep this in your heart as we await the Christ child.