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: beliefs for living

A Christmas Reflection

“O COME LET US ADORE HIM”...WHY?

The “why” is not a cynical or doubting “why”, but a truly questing “why” that seeks to explore in light of today’s world what our worship of the “Christ Child” is really about. The Christian traditions surrounding Jesus are very important. As Christians they are our story and they communicate a truth that we need to have in our world. But it is also crucial in our day and time that we come to understand what those stories really mean to our personal lives and to our world so that we do not disregard them because of the language and ancient concepts.

The best way to get at this issue is to come to see that the language of scripture is metaphor and myth. That does not mean that the language is not “true” or that there is not some history behind it. It simply means that it is language that must be understood for what is “means” to our lives not in terms of its literal historicity.

It is very easy to want to throw out the whole story and quit singing the hymns because of the concepts we find there. Some will want to reject “adoring the Christ Child” as our “new King” because we cannot abide by the concepts of monarchy and all that that conveys. But in its day it was a radical, revolutionary affirmation. To say that Jesus or God, for that matter, was the only King was to fly in the face of the prevailing culture and claim that one was following a different way of living than the one forced upon them by the ruling powers.

We must come, I believe, to see the affirmations and stories about Jesus as truly affirmations and stories about the nature of God. That is what the scriptures are really about! They are not simply trying to put forth the person Jesus. The New Testament is seeking to put forth for the people of their time a statement about the nature of God that they believed must be spoken. It was a radically different word that need to be heard in their day. That word was that God was a God of unconditional love and that love, not physical might or political or religious status, was the answer to the needs of the world. And that word is so needed in our world today! And the way we understand the birth and life and death of Jesus is a witness to that central truth about life--that is all it is about, but that is all we need for it to be about.

We must stop our quarrels over the concepts we find in the scriptures and as Marcus Borg advises, begin to talk about what we believe they mean for our lives and share that with others. The world is in too much need for Christians to be fighting each other over meaningless issues and saying that the Christian beliefs are the only way to salvation with God. We must simply seek to be a blessing to the world by being loving and the way to be able to do that in the midst of such a difficult time is to truly know how much God loves us and all people. To adore the Christ Child is to say that we adore, we hold of highest value, that message that God loves us so much. To say that the Christ Child was born for all, to bring peace is to say that God loves us all, whoever we are and what ever we have done, and we must all live together in that Peace that God provides.

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