A CHRISTMAS THOUGHT The modern push to secure a salvation that is essentially human in nature - from crisis to solution - demands that Jesus be anything but God and man. If he is God at all, he lays claim to the totality of each one of our lives. If he is not, we are free to do as we please and remain the masters of our own politics, preferences, and destinies. It is this common, serpent-like course of all historic, practical gnosticisms that is confronted by the Incarnation. Immanuel postures himself as either the worlds greatest fallacy - or the worlds essential remedy. There is no middle ground. Christmas declares the human cure is found in a saving Christ, who then fuels our great acts of human discovery, creativity, justice, enterprise, and philanthropy with Spirit, and meaning, and context. Those same great acts, expressed without explicit connection to this Christmas cosmology, are full of merit - yet remain proclamations that we can ultimately cheat death and rampant evil ourselves if we just work hard enough. History proves that our flaws, and the arrogant claims that amplify them, continually prove fatal. It is Jesus, the Christ, who must be Immanuel - for us to saved and for every generation to taste the sweetness of God. Our daily salvation is not found in simply applying the healing principles of forgiveness, generosity, kindness, and goodness to our fellow human beings. Those alone will never deliver the drug addict for a lifetime, restore an estranged father to his children, alter family lines for generations to come, or lift a suicidal soul into the ecstasies of divinely bestowed love. Only the God of Christmas does that. Only the Lord who becomes man does that. Only Jesus, Immanuel, God with us, is the salvation we all ultimately need. Christmas is the declaration that such an eternally penetrating, permeating, and prolific salvation has come - for you, for me, and for the world as we know it. #christmasthoughts
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 13:31:13 +0000
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