The Christian’s Secret to a Happy Christmas

“the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” (Acts 20:35b)

When shopping for gifts at Christmastime, we encounter tricky questions. What is it they really wanted? What will make the kids eyes light up? What do you get for the person that has everything?

Actually this last question is interesting because the only person it could apply to literally is God. Could there be wisdom in exploring an answer to that question?

God is the greatest giver of all time. The presence of Christmas on the calendar is the result of the most wonderful act of gift-giving in history. Jesus is the greatest gift imaginable–grace for life, peace with God, salvation. Jesus is not only a gift to be received–to fill the longings of our hearts. More than that, He is a gift that compels a response: Giving our hearts and lives to him. So, what do we get the One who “has everything”? What does he want? What God wants for Christmas is you.

Here are a few tangible ways to give ourselves to him. We certainly cannot repay him for the gift of salvation, but we can get caught up in His spirit of giving. What would you add to this list?

Ideas for God’s Christmas Wish List:

• Our Stewardship. Give, but resist the temptation to go into debt if that is a temptation for you.
• Generosity to the Poor. Give generously, especially to those who have little. Gifts through our Angel Tree at church and through Christian organizations like the United Methodist Committee on Relief (www.umcor.org) and World Vision (www.worldvisiongifts.org) serve the poor and help advance the gospel.
• Our Relationships. I read a good piece of advice on child-raising recently that applies well to Christmas: “Spend twice the time and half the money.” Make lasting memories with family and friends.

Rich Stearns on “The Kind of Christianity the World Responds To”

Rich Stearns left a successful corporate career to lead the Evangelical Christian mission organization, World Vision. He offers an excellent word to the church in a recent piece on the Huffington Post’s religion page.

The essay is here.

Here’s a highlight:

While symbols can be important, we have focused perhaps too much on them instead of the underlying reality they reflect. Instead, we need to go back to the basics of living as disciples of Christ, living missionally for Christ and demonstrating the Gospel in tangible ways within our schools, workplaces and communities. While I would be happy to see the Ten Commandments back on the courthouse wall, the fight over symbolic issues is backfiring, alienating people from the truths of the gospel rather than attracting them to it. The kind of Christianity the world responds to is the authentic “love your neighbor” kind. Its appeal can’t be legislated through court battles and neither can courts stop its spread.

Go check out the rest. His book is The Hole in Our Gospel.

Also, World Vision puts out a Christmas catalog each year. Get the catalog and consider making it a part of your Christmas giving. I can’t think of many gifts Jesus would enjoy more!

Hope in the Midst of Pain 2

Yesterday, I started a three-part series on posts based on my sermon last Sunday.

The first post is here. In it, I shared three ways to understand why things happen in the world.

First, deism, which believes in a god who created the universe and laws to govern it, but does not intervene. Second, determinism, which believes that everything that happens has been predetermined. For atheists, there is scientific determinism, which is rooted in physics and chemistry. For Christians (and other religious persons who believe this way), everything has been predetermined by God. God orchestrates events to occur as they do without exception.

Each of these is not without an important insight. But each of these has problems that lead me not to accept it.

A Third Way

The third way is that God allows evil and injustice, as well as natural tragedies—and the pain and grief associated with them. But he does not cause or orchestrate them. The biblical witness shows that God hates evil and injustice, therefore it is problematic to suggest that he causes those sorts of acts.

To say that God allows evil or injustice or pain is still troubling, however. It is a belief that acknowledges that God values something as good enough to justify refraining from intervention as much as we would like. Those two somethings are human free will and predictability in the natural world (including our physical bodies).

Those are two good things. We might take exception with their worth when someone’s free will is misused or when natural laws and processes run their course in a way that brings harm and pain close to us. That is a natural response.

Yet, love isn’t love if it isn’t given freely. Obedience doesn’t involved self-surrender and sacrifice doesn’t involve self-giving unless we have free will.

And the same natural laws that have the potential to take life also sustain it. Gravity keeps us from flying into the atmosphere, but it will also pull us to the ground no matter the distance from which we fall. Water is life-giving and deadly. But their predictability allows for scientific discovery as we know it. An obvious example is medical research, which allows for treatments and cures to be discovered and implemented in ways that bless many.

I heard an explanation several years ago that has helped me put this together. Perhaps it can help you. At least it will give you food for thought as you work through your own thinking on these matters.

Three Dials

Imagine three dials. Each goes from one to ten. The first is labeled “physical reality.” The second is labeled “human resiliency,” and the third is labeled “mystery.”

For any event that occurs, all three of these are in play. There are physical realities, that is, the laws and properties of the natural world. There is human resiliency, which is an incredible capacity that cannot be underestimated. And there is mystery. I’m labeling it “mystery” for everyone’s sake. People of faith would speak about God or prayer or faith or the like. Secular persons might speak of it as luck, chance, or fortune. But almost everyone seems to account for some element of mystery. For Christians, even though we acknowledge God, most of us would still admit that how God works is quite often mysterious.

Sometimes bad things happen because of our bad choices, or the bad choices of others that happen to have consequences for us and those near to us. But sometimes bad things happen simply because the dial labeled “physical reality” is turned up to high and/or too fast for any human resiliency to kick in and mitigate its effects. Yes, God could intervene (or “luck” could have occurred), but that didn’t happen, at least not in a way that prevents the outcome we really wanted.

This doesn’t sound very spiritual. I understand that. But I believe that this is how much of what we experience in life is best explained. I do believe that miracles sometimes happen (in that mystery/God category), but a miracle by definition is relatively rare. Plus, sometimes we are too quick to assign divine providence to our own delivery from tragedy while neglecting thoughtfulness and empathy concerning someone whose life is not spared the grief or pain that ours was.

Yes, this means that I don’t believe that “everything happens for a reason” that God has orchestrated. However, while I don’t believe everything that happens is God’s will, I do believe (to paraphrase Leslie Weatherhead) that there is a will of God within every circumstance. That is, God doesn’t cause everything to happen, but he does have a will for how we are to respond (caring for those who are hurting, supporting those who are grieving, working on behalf of those who are downtrodden). And I believe that God takes evil, injustice, pain, and suffering and commandeers them to advance his will for the human race and for his creation.

So, what is the Christian hope? Where is God in the midst of pain? I’ve given one of my answers in the last paragraph—that God commandeers evil and pain and ultimately uses them for the cause of good. But I’ve got two more thoughts to add to that in the next post.

Some recommended resources (more tomorrow):
The Problem of Pain, by CS Lewis
A Grief Observed, by CS Lewis
Disappointment with God, by Philip Yancey
Why?, by Adam Hamilton
The Will of God, by Leslie Weatherhead

Hope in the Midst of Pain 1

On Sunday, I spoke about the difficulty of discerning where God is in the midst of pain, grief, and suffering. Said a little differently, how do we answer the questions that leap to our mind: “Why? How could this happen? I don’t understand.”

I’d like to share here, in three posts, most of what I shared on Sunday in case it can be helpful. Also, I’ll list some additional resources (and link them when appropriate).

In this post, I’d like to share three views on “how the world works” (aka “why things happen the way that they do”). In my reading, I found that Adam Hamilton nicely captured the way I understand it too, so I’m borrowing and leaning on the way he discusses it in a really good resource, chapter 14, “Where is God When Bad Things Happen?”, in his book Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White.

Deism

This view says that a god exists who designed the universe and set in place laws to govern the processes of nature. Then that god stepped back from creation in order to let it unfold according to the laws that govern it, never to intervene in its affairs. The classic analogy is of a clockmaker who designs the timepiece, winds it up, then lets it run on its own while observing it at a distance.

A strength of this view is that it takes seriously the natural laws and processes than govern the world/universe. Therefore, it seeks to discover and understand those laws and processes in order to apply knowledge of them to important concerns (medical research is an example).

But this view is not a Christian one, because there is no room whatsoever for divine intervention in the form of miracles or divine revelation.

Determinism

This view says that everything that will occur has been planned and scripted. For Christians who believe in determinism, God is the one who has planned and scripted every event in our lives, in human history, and in the history of the natural world.

Perhaps you’ve said one or both of the following at some point: “Everything happens for a reason” or “It’s all part of God’s will/plan.” Even if you have said them (to yourself or to someone else), you may have wondered if you really believed them. Both of those statements, said assuming that God predetermines everything, mean something like that God caused or orchestrated that event, or the chain of events that led to that occurrence, and that he had a good reason and purpose to do so even if we don’t understand it.

A strength of this view is its dogged insistence that God is still present in our circumstances regardless or what we are going through. I appreciate that attitude, it’s definitely a Christian one.

Still, I think there are problems with determinism.

As Leslie Weatherhead illustrated years ago (in his little book, The Will of God), if we found out that there was someone behind the person who committed an evil act or an injustice, someone who planned and orchestrated the whole affair, we would hold them responsible and blameworthy too!

Further, if God plans and orchestrates—determines—everything that happens, then even calling something evil, cruel, wrong, and unjust seems like nonsense. If God is good and also determines everything that happens, then we can’t call anything wrong. We would have to admit that it must also be good even if we can’t see how (since it occurs as a part of God’s will). But Scripture clearly teaches God’s hatred of evil and injustice, so this seems problematic.

Another option

A different approach says that God allows, though he does not orchestrate (or cause), everything that happens in our world. This approach embraces that God has created the universe with laws that govern it, but also embraces that God does intervene with revelation and with some miracles. But events are not predetermined, as the determinist believes.

I embrace this third option. I’ll take these thoughts further in the next post.