One Meaning of Christmas
[Wishing a joyous Christmas to all the poets at Soup, and may all have a very happy, healthy and productive 2020!]
Christmas has sadly lost much of its significance. Yes, we pay lip service to it as a celebration of the birth of Jesus, but in reality most of us spend most of this holiday--well, hustling! Mobbing the malls, overloading the internet with orders to Amazon, clogging the highways and airports-- and we even start it about a month early, with the notorious Black Friday.
It really does seem the world is becoming ever more secular, i.e., Godless, in the sense of not seeming to need or seek out the Divine, the Eternal, the Perfect. This does not mean that people are happy or even just content. We may be getting more prosperous, but happiness [like love] is one of the few things money can't buy, as evidence by our high rates of mental illness, suicide, homicide, drug addiction, alcoholism, obesity. Another is 'meaning', far more important than the big house or luxury car. To live without God--and the sense of having a soul-- is to live without meaning--there really is no honest way around that [ as the most forthright atheists will admit]. This is because as sentient beings we are aware of time and death, yet we long, perhaps above all for continuity. How can you love others and think someday they'll be extinct without feeling a searing pain in your heart?
Our ancestors sought divinity in the form of various gods, like Isis, Jupiter, Thor, but the 'gods' always seemed arbitrary, unpredictable, often uncaring. In the Old Testament God is portrayed as being very personal: he walks in Eden, talks with Adam and Eve; gradually He becomes more remote, a burning bush to Moses. But with the birth of Jesus, something changes. Whether you see Jesus as the Son of God, as God incarnate, or as having the Holy Spirit within him, the reality is that for believers GOD HAS COME TO US-- sometimes we forget how extraordinary that is. [And I would ask nonbelievers, was there ever a person in recorded history as selfless, caring, and faultless as Jesus? Socrates, Ghandi, Lincoln, all Christ-like, yes, even to being also murdered; but being like something is not BEING the same thing.]
Like many believers, I'm often frustrated that God isn't more 'tangible', but if Divinity were easy to grasp, would it be God? Personally I suspect God has been trying to call out to us ever since we lived in caves, but with Jesus He made His message of love as clear as water.
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