The Christmas Prayer

Here is my contribution to my church's Advent Devotional for 2006:

Scripture: John 1:1-14

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. . . . There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

I grew up with church being a very large part of my life. Sunday services, Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, youth fellowship, and church family campouts were all part of the world in which I lived. Unfortunately, it was not until many years later that I understood that spiritual world to have been just as processed and sugar-coated as the breakfast cereals of the time. The offense of the cross and all the "divisive" doctrines of classical Christianity were largely absent from my education. The parables and moral lessons of Jesus were to be preferred, and we literally sang Kum-Ba-Ya around the campfire.

In spite of my spiritually deficient diet, I was still compelled by this Jesus, and if I would fail to pray on any other night of the year I would always break from my Christmas Eve anticipation to give thanks for Jesus. But what was I thankful for? I did not really know myself. All I really knew was that Jesus was somehow God's man. He was a great moral teacher and He had in some way "saved" the world. Being a citizen of the "world" I assumed I was covered, like everyone else, and for that I was grateful. The cross was simply a show of how much God loved me. God was "love" and not much more than that.

The more I grew and the more I discovered the distractions of the world the more attractive this picture of Jesus seemed to me. It certainly gave me no cause for restraint and caution in doing my own thing. After all, didn't God accept me just the way I was? Wasn't God all love and mercy? Didn't Jesus have my back covered? But still I prayed on Christmas Eve — my conscience convicted that I must fit Jesus into my world; my self-will determined to make it a custom fit.

It wasn't until many years later as an adult that I finally broke down and read the whole Bible for myself. While it didn't all make sense at once, it at least became clear that I had heard only part of the story. I saw that Jesus was indeed a moral teacher, but He had far higher standards than I imagined; and He cared even about my words and thoughts! I saw Him speak of God's love, but I noticed that He spoke just as much of repentance and judgment. I saw that He was certainly a man, but I saw Him command nature, forgive sin, and proclaim truth like a God. I saw the building blocks of doctrines that I had never been taught, or that only the stuffy "fundamentalists" believed — things like the bodily resurrection of the dead, the second-coming of Jesus, hell, and the Trinity.

I had been praying to a stranger.

It took some further years (which included exposure to the intellectual side of historic Christianity) for all the pieces to come together and to begin my journey in light of these truths, but I can now say that I know to whom I pray and I well know why I should be thankful for the coming of Jesus. Jesus Christ: The long awaited and prophesied Messiah; the second Adam, come to live the perfectly obedient life on our behalf; the bearer of sin for all those who would believe; judge of those who stand in their own righteousness; Lord and redeemer of those who trust and serve Him; Second Person of the Trinity; the incarnate eternal God, born into this world on Christmas Eve.

Activity:

Read the following and consider how they support the deity of Christ:

Matthew 26:63,64; 13:41
Luke 5:20-25
John 8:23,24; 8:56-59; 14:23; 20:26-28

Prayer:

Lord Jesus, forgive us for making You into what we most want You to be. Forgive us for failing to take advantage of the revelation of Yourself that You have gifted to the world. Thank You for not leaving us to our own idle imagination about You. Thank You for coming to this world and doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Please give us the desire to know You better, and the power to follow You more faithfully. And it is in Your name that we dare to pray, Amen.

Caesar or Christ?

Caesar Augustus (originally Octavian) was the first formally recognized emperor of the Roman Empire. In the history of this remarkable empire, even his story is outstanding. At the time he began to assume power there had been nearly 100 years of chaos and civil war and challenges to the empire's overextended boundaries. Augustus' rise was a glorious ride to ultimate power in an empire that has not been matched in extent even in modern times. Augustus brought unity to the government, stability to the provinces, and further expansion of the borders. He instigated a sound currency system, extended the highway system, developed a postal system, and fostered a free trade system among the provinces. He was loved by the people and eventually came to be worshipped as deity by many. His very name, "Augustus," granted to him by the state, means "the exalted."

It is indeed an irony, which only God could orchestrate on the stage of history, that in the shadow of the greatest glory of humanity its heavenly King should arrive in poverty — Jesus, the son of commoners, from an insignificant town, and born in a stable no less. The contrast could not be more pronounced between the kingdom of man and the kingdom of God. This is not at all what the Jews had in mind when they pictured the prophesied Messiah. They were thinking more of royal trappings and military power, more along the lines of a "Caesar." But they misunderstood the very scriptures that they were charged to bear.

It is not about the ways of this world: power, wealth, image, and carnal pleasures. These are things which only satisfy in surface ways, and only for a season — things which Satan would sell us as counterfeit to an eternal inheritance from God. Since Jesus' kingdom is not of this world it is only natural that He begin His incarnation here in the absence of those things that are most prized by that world. Jesus' life was lived out without the trappings of those things which would make Him most attractive to foolish men. "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him." (Isaiah 53:2) All who would come to love Him would do so based on His character, His message, His wisdom, and His work alone. Jesus is like the prince who comes in common disguise to his maiden so that he might lure her by her heart and not by his holdings.

Augustus has passed away as has his kingdom, being broken by barbarian invaders and swallowed up by the advancing Church. As with every great hero and gleaming city built by the hands of men, the flame must eventually die. Greed, selfishness, and pride must eventually tarnish every bright hope that human imagination can invent. But on one lonely night, over the humble town of Bethlehem, God shone forth a light that was to burn only brighter over the course of history. "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." (2 Corinthians 4:6)

Heavenly Father, help us to see past the distractions and cheap glamour of this world. Grant us wisdom to understand that the world's treasures are hollow and gold plated idols, while following Your way has lasting value on earth and lays up for us treasure in heaven. Give us the strength and courage to live a life pleasing to You even when it may put us at odds with those around us. Help us always to remember that as Christians we are citizens of Your Kingdom even while we reside in a foreign land. Thank You for sending the Son to save us from ourselves, and for adopting us into that Kingdom.

Season of Skepticism

Here is my submission for this year to my church's locally authored Advent Devotional. I suppose it's more apologetic than devotional, but that's no surprise considering the source.

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught. —Luke 1:1-4

It's Christmas season again, and with it comes the inevitable garland, plastic Santas, and holiday sales. Judging by the TV programming, the public school music selections, and the lawns of most of my neighbors, it would seem to be a fully secularized holiday. The One whose birthday we once celebrated has become a non-value-added tradition of an unenlightened era.

But (faithful Christians aside) is Jesus fully absent from public attention? Not by a long shot! As "tolerant" and "inclusive" as this culture claims to be, Christmas seems to be the season of slander and skepticism. Perhaps you've caught one of the annual TV specials or news exposés on the "real" Jesus, where the media is very eager to "correct" our simplistic, "faith-based" view of the biblical stories. As Christians committed to the Truths that Luke and the other authors of Scripture have carefully and earnestly commended to us, such contrary claims should be cause for confusion, irritation, or outright anger. As one who has studied apologetics extensively, I've learned to smell a rat, and these spurious attacks on the historical claims of Christianity are particularly frustrating for me, since I know that people are being needlessly influenced by them.

I wish I had the space to deal with all of the modern accusations and criticisms against the Jesus of the Bible, but perhaps this is a case where teaching men to fish is more beneficial than just passing them out.

The first thing to notice is that this kind of scrutiny and criticism is reserved almost exclusively for Christianity. When have you ever seen an ABC special on the "real" Muhammad, or an interview with a New Age celebrity that asked hardball questions, or a Hollywood depiction of the early church in contrast to the excesses of paganism, or a news exposé on Christian martyrdom in the Sudan or China? My daughter once told me that she would believe Christianity to be true if for no other reason than for how it is singled out for persecution. Methinks they doeth protest too much.

Another thing to notice is that the complaints and alternate stories offered by the skeptics change with the seasons. What was in vogue to claim against Christianity one century or decade is passé the next. For instance, in the early 1900's some scholars attempted to argue that Jesus never actually existed as a historical character, but in light of the various extra-biblical Jewish and Roman documents found that reference Him, this theory has lost credibility. And it was once claimed that the New Testament was written one or two hundred years after Christ's death, thus giving quarter to myth and inaccuracy, but now even the most critical scholars accept that the documents were written in the lifetime of the apostles. Even the very first accusation against the followers of Jesus — that the body had been stolen — has fallen on hard times. If the skeptics could manage to find a criticism that worked, and stick with that, then it might be easier to take them seriously.

Archaeology is often brought to bear against various points of Scripture in what has not yet been found or what seems to be found to the contrary. For example, there was a time when the Hittite nation, the Davidic kingdom, and even Pontius Pilate were thought to be mythical. Later excavations of cities, tablets, and inscriptions have affirmed these and other points of biblical history. Because of the messianic prophecies in the Old Testament, and the fact that our earliest Old Testament copies dated from a thousand years after Christ, there was once speculation that it was partially authored or tampered with by the early church fathers. But the unearthing of the Dead Sea Scrolls (which date before the birth of Christ) in the 1940's put this theory to bed. Even though there are still a few open historical questions, it should be remembered that the archaeological trend is toward confirmation of the Bible.

Many of the objections to Scripture are merely based on the presuppositions of the skeptic. For instance, one of the "Christian" scholars that is regularly interviewed for these Jesus exposés is John Dominic Crossan. This fellow has gone on record as saying that he does not believe that God interferes with His creation. Consequently, he begins his analysis of the Bible with the assumption that the miracles must be mythical or allegorical, and he then sees the task of theology to peel away these "fictional" layers to get at the underlying "reality." These kinds of critics end up "discovering" a Jesus in Scripture that is made in their own image.

Conspiracy theories make up a good deal of skeptical thinking, and some of these are real doozies. It has actually been proposed that Jesus was a space alien, or the leader of a hallucinogenic mushroom cult. Only slightly more respectable are the ideas that Jesus had a secret twin brother who showed up just in time to be crucified, or that He didn't really die on the cross, He revived in the tomb and reappeared to the disciples who mistook Him for the first fruits of the resurrection. (Need I refute the idea that a scourged and crucified body could be mistaken for the "Lord of life?") Perhaps the latest theory is the re-popularized notion that the resurrection appearances were the product of mass hallucination on the part of the disciples. Now these are all interestingly imaginative theories, but unless we are given some sort of tangible evidence to the contrary, which never seems to be forthcoming, then we are justified in sticking with the unanimous testimony of those writers who had the most direct access to the facts (i.e., the authors of the Bible).

Another common ploy is to bring up meaningless associations and observations. For example, it is often noted that the story of Jesus has various similarities to other pagan mythology, or that some of the sayings of Jesus, like the golden rule, are similar to the saying of Buddha or other spiritual figures. Sometimes critics will imply that people are believers based merely on psychological "need" or because they grew up in a Christian nation. Or perhaps they will point out the numerous denominational divisions or examples of hypocrisy in the church. The world is big and history is diverse, and there are plenty of (apparent) connections to be made. But even if we grant the critics each of their observations, it is all immaterial to the point of whether or not Jesus was a historical figure who actually did those things recorded in the Scriptures.

It is probably not by force of reason that you became a believer, and without the work of the Holy Spirit even a bullet-proof case for Christianity will win no converts, but we should at least take confidence and comfort in knowing that God has not left us to the wolves unarmed.

Prayer:

Lord Jesus, thank You that You have given us such an abundant record of Your deeds and words among mankind. Thank You that we are not left to rely on our own speculations about heavenly things, and we delight that our God is a God who is sovereign over history and the men used to pen Your truths. Thank You for giving us Your Spirit to open our eyes to this truth and to hold us fast during times of trial and doubt. Thank you that we are not left unarmed to defend our conviction, but that Your words and ways have the power of truth and that history is ripe with the knowledge of it. Amen.