Christmas in the New Year

30 12 2011

While Christmas decorations are starting to come down and the world’s attention is turned to the celebration of the new year, I am still immersed in Christmas. Many people where we live try to observe the entire Christmas season—all twelve days of it—as a time of celebration, feasting, and reflection.  Amid all the figurines and pictures of Baby Jesus and Santa, the Christmas trees and lights, and the banners reading “Joy to the World” and “Peace on Earth” that continue to surround us, it is easy to think of Christmas as a holiday of babies and presents, a holiday for sentimental families and little children too young to realize that Santa isn’t real. Perhaps this is why so many people in so many places quickly turn their attention to New Years and its more adult concerns, its personal resolutions for being thinner, fitter and better people in the new year…and of course to more adult celebrations involving libations and general merriment.

But New Years and Christmas are integral to each other in ways that we frequently miss as we turn our attention to the Harbour Bridge, Big Ben or Times Square. The central message of Christmas is the initiation of a new order, a new kingdom in the world: the kingdom of God characterized by peace but also by justice. Peace—suggested by images of cuddly lions and lambs snuggled together—makes a nice Hallmark card but justice is more difficult. In fact, peace without justice is not peace at all—it is merely silencing the abused for the comfort of those in power.

In Mary’s celebratory hymn announcing the birth of her son, she declares the revolutionary new order that begins with her son’s life…and it isn’t just a spiritual kingdom. Mary declares that the character of the new kingdom which God initiates through her son is one of justice for the poor. In her hymn God scatters the proud and mighty but exalts the humble and meek. He “fills the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:46-55). This message of freedom and justice echoes Isaiah’s earlier proclamations that the messiah will shatter the “yoke that burdens” Israel and the “rod of their oppressor,” reminding us of Israel’s slavery in Egypt and, consequently, that justice is a physical, material reality and not just a nice idea (Isaiah 9:4). This language of justice, of setting right the relationships between the rich and poor, the mighty and the weak, the powerful and the oppressed permeates the traditional Christmas readings, reminding us that the lovely thoughts of “peace on earth” and “goodwill toward men” are only possible because God’s kingdom is characterized by justice.

As we move into the New Year and take stock of the world in 2011, making our resolutions to be thinner, fitter, better people, the most important New Year’s resolution we can make is to remember the message of justice that shapes the Christmas story and to resolve anew to participate in the work of God’s kingdom, striving for justice and peace in our still imperfect world.

Jessica Hughes


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New Year Resolutions?

28 12 2011

New Year’s resolutions: to make them or not to make them? The dilemma of this annual ritual, at least for me, remembers the glories and follies of hope. New Year is a moment of looking forward, of imagining things anew, of committing ourselves to a grander vision of life. It is also a time of weariness and cynicism, at least for those of us who made resolutions in the past and forgot or failed them. “A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other,” quips Oscar Wilde. Mark Twain adds, “New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, friendly calls and humbug resolutions.”

If statistics tell us that 97 percent of New Year’s resolutions are never fulfilled, my cynical side tells me not to bother with them.[1] I’ve made resolutions in years past already, earnestly and thoughtfully, but by mid-January I had forgotten them already. The grander plans and hoped-for breakthroughs felt distant in the trenches of routine life. Pressing urges got my attention, even if I now don’t remember those either, and I lost sight of my year-long vision.

There is just one single element that prompts me to return to the notepad with something for 2011. I know there is someone who will keep his resolutions this year. Remarkably, and without fail. Right on target. Right on time. All of it. He has not failed for a long time. He was there when I needed to open my heart and receive hope. He was there to hear my confession of sin. He was there also with the party cake ready when a good friend embraced grace for the first time. He kept his resolutions, down from last January and indeed from the beginning of time, and I have all certainty that in 2012 he will do the same.

So, even though I may forget any good intention or plan, and may be tempted not to bother, God’s resolutions give me hope. I will forget and mess up and get lost and despair this year, and surely January expectations will not carry me through. But if God will be faithful by April 4th and will remain so on August 29th, and also on the late hours of December 2nd,  and if I will be a recipient of this steady faithfulness, maybe this year can be better than the last, and my resolutions may amount to something. Maybe I can grow a bit kinder, a bit holier, a bit steadier. Maybe I can be lifted up when at the point of despair, when I see God marching forward with the vigour of January optimism. Maybe when I remember God I can be refreshed like by a New Year party, full of fireworks and friends and countdowns, for God will be ever fresh, ever youthful and hopeful, and I get a chance to start anew, even late on in the year.

René Breuel


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A tale of murder and woe…or something

26 12 2011

I’d like to take this time to draw all of your attention to a tragedy that happens every day right before our eyes: verbicide, “the murder of a word.”[1] Each day, thousands of words are cut down thoughtlessly in a number of ways.

Inflation is one of the commonest; those who taught us to say awfully for ‘very’, tremendous for ‘great’, sadism for ‘cruelty’, and unthinkable for ‘undesirable’ were verbicides.… But the greatest cause of verbicide is the fact that most people are obviously far more anxious to express their approval and disapproval of things than to describe them.”[2]

To Lewis’ list of verbicides, today we could add the whole i.m.-dialect (brb, lol, wtf), which is in my opinion the death of the English language. However, the most poignant point is, I think, the one about approval and disapproval.

My wife recently heard a man tell a story in which he got into a discussion with someone over what a family is. Our protagonist remarked, “It quickly became clear that we did not see eye to eye on the matter.” He went on to claim that he supported what he saw as the bible’s definition of a “family” as “a husband and wife and their children.” I think it is good that my wife didn’t have any heavy objects to hand or his story might have ended more abruptly.

Why the ire, you ask? Perhaps it’s partially hormones…she is eight months pregnant, after all. But I think the dominant cause for her anger is the fact that such a definition is deliberately exclusive, and as such, potentially harmful to those who do not fit this man’s “family mold.”

In the first place, that simply is not the definition of a family anywhere in the Bible. In fact, if someone can find a definition of “family” in the Bible, they’ll win a prize. (Not really. I’m not giving out prizes.) Furthermore, such a definition of family is patently inaccurate. If that man were (God forbid) to die in a car wreck, leaving his wife as a single mother, surely he would not hesitate to call them a family. Or, what if he and his wife both passed away and his children went to live with their grandparents or an aunt or uncle? What would they be if not a family? How does such a narrow definition relate his wife to his parents or him to his in-laws? Are they not family? How do adopted children fit into this scenario? What if a single parent adopts a child? His definition is certainly not the operable definition with which most people work on a daily basis. At least, I don’t think so. All this and we haven’t even considered this from the angle of non-western cultures without the myopic focus on the nuclear family.

To explain such an obviously deficient definition, we would do well to turn to Lewis again.

“The phenomenon ceases to be puzzling only when we realize that it is a tactical definition. The pretty word [in our case, family] has to be narrowed ad hoc so as to exclude something he dislikes.” [3]

When a person bothers to define a common word,

“The fact that they define it at all is itself a ground for scepticism. Unless we are writing a dictionary, or a text-book of some technical subject, we define our words only because we are in some measure departing from their real current sense, otherwise there would be no purpose in doing so.”[4]

Interestingly, although he considered himself a defender of ‘the Bible’s definition of family’, this man’s definition also excludes Jesus and his “family.” According to the New Testament Gospels, Jesus was born to an unwed, teenage girl and entrusted to the care of a man with no blood relation at all. I think that’s a bit ironic.

In close, I simply want to say that we, from whatever walk of life we may come, need to be very careful in the way that we define our words. Defining words to show approval and disapproval does not aid in effective communication (in any sense of the word) and, further, can have consequences far beyond what we intend. As Lewis, again, said, “We cannot stop the verbicides. The most we can do is not to imitate them.” [5]

Ben Edsall
________________
[1] C.S. Lewis, Studies in Words, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 7.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid, 19.
[4] Ibid, 18.
[5] Ibid, 132.


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God Sucking a Nipple

23 12 2011

August was world breastfeeding month, which meant that breastfeeding―and controversies surrounding feeding (especially in public) helped fill the slow, late-summer news cycles. But the stories have continued into the fall. Melbourne photographer Christopher Rimmer’s shots of African women nursing once again raised questions regarding Facebook’s censoring of breastfeeding photos as “obscene;” also the recent “nurse-in” in west Auckland once again drew attention to the question of breastfeeding in public.

Public breastfeeding has confronted me with a scandal―but not the scandal of seeing a bit of nipple (which really shouldn’t be scandalous but applauded―after all breastfeeding challenges the idea that a woman’s body is built for the sexual gratification of men by putting breasts to nutritive use. So I say, let women feed their babies in public and demand that the rest of the public grow-up and quit thinking of “boobies” as sex toys!). However, breastfeeding has confronted me with a very old scandal involving God and creation.

Have you ever watched a baby breastfeed, especially a newborn? Most learn very quickly what the breast is and what it is for, their little eyes and mouths opening wide in anticipation when brought to the breast to nurse. Once latched, it is not unusual for an infant to throw his (or her) little arms around the breast, clutching it, holding it, as if to say, “please don’t take it away!” Upon finishing, they come off the breast in a milk-drunk daze, relaxed, happy, wobbly. Given the opportunity, a newborn might unlatch and―rosebud lips slightly parted and eyes closed―rest its head on the breast as if it were a giant, warm pillow. In those early weeks of life, the breast is a baby’s entire universe.

At Christmas, Christians celebrate the Incarnation―that the God who spoke the entire universe into being, and (as Isaiah poetically puts it) who holds creation in the palm of his hand, illingly reduced himself to a baby whose entire world was Mary’s breast. It is one thing to think of God becoming Man―a man who could build furniture, survive in the desert, teach the scholars and the masses, give his life for others. It is quite another thing to think of God becoming an infant. Seriously imagine that a baby at the breast― oblivious to everything except the flow of milk and perhaps hidden under a receiving blanket (if the mother is self-conscious about feeding in public)―is the one who created the universe. This is not a Victorian sentimentalization of babies: it is downright frightening!  God is not only incredibly vulnerable, he is also pretty pathetic. Worst of all, God is ordinary. God, in the person of Jesus, has become exactly like every other human in history―his entire universe has become Mary’s breast.

As shocking as this image of God-become-baby is, it is also thrilling. YouTube videos of flash mobs performing Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” in shopping malls perhaps help us unravel the scandal of God-the-Son, Jesus, sucking away at Mary’s breast. Amid absolutely ordinary food-court fare and the stressful mundanity of the shopping mall, through the mouths of apparently ordinary mall-goers, comes Handel. It is shocking, incongruous, and…wonderful. The children eating their Hot-Dog-on-a-Stick or Sbarro’s Pizza are mesmerized by the extraordinary voices breaking into a plastic-knives-and-forks, mustard-and-ketchup-ringed-lips lunch. The fash-mob is effective because it is not what is expected: it is out of place and inappropriate to the shopping mall. It challenges our cultural sensibilities that say classical music is for the well-off and educated in the concert hall, not for the masses in the shopping mall.

In a way, the flash mob is a bit like God breastfeeding. Once we get past our intellectual snobbery that says it is demeaning for God to suck a nipple, we begin to see the arm-tingling reality that Christmas celebrates: into the stressful mundanity of history in the apparently ordinary form of a baby, comes God…and not just for those educated enough or affluent enough to appreciate him, but for the shopping, hot-dog and pizza-eating masses. It is a wonderful surprise, if we are willing to hear it.

Jessica Hughes


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Categories : The Heart of Faith

Faith and Reason

21 12 2011

Imagine you’re sitting around the dinner table over the holidays and someone in your family says, “Why do you spend all this time studying religion? Religion is all about faith, and reason is all about facts.” How would you respond? Would you agree?

The idea that faith and reason don’t mix well has been around at least since the Enlightenment. Today, many people continue to hold on to this idea, either seeing the two as entirely incompatible or emphasizing one to the neglect of the other. Faith, it seems, involves the heart, our emotions, and believing things without sufficient evidence, whereas reason involves our head, pure rationality, and believing cold, hard facts.

Despite these assumptions, I’d argue that faith and reason can have a much more harmonious relationship than is generally thought. Even though faith often has religious connotations, it is not exclusively a religious term. People act on faith all the time during the course of their daily lives. If they didn’t, think of all the bewildering, paralyzing questions one would have to ask before doing anything. How do I know that the food I’m about to eat is not poisoned? Should I have it tested it in a lab first? And how do I know someone won’t rob me while I’m sleeping? Should I stay awake all night and keep watch over my things just in case? In all these cases, some degree of faith must be enacted to achieve the desired end of eating or sleeping, and such actions are perfectly justified every day around the world for many, many people.

For Christians through the centuries, faith and reason have worked in much the same way. Take Justin Martyr, for example.  Born around 100 AD, Justin was a first-rate philosopher who was mostly unimpressed by his Stoic, Aristotelian, and Pythagorean colleagues. Martyr converted to Christianity because he felt that its reasons had more explanatory power than any of its rivals and then set out to show that faith made the most sense.[1] In the Catholic tradition, one need look no further than St. Thomas Aquinas, whose massive Summa Theologica set out to demonstrate in a systematic fashion the compatibility of faith and reason. In our own time, take a look at the works of Notre Dame’s preeminent analytical philosopher Alvin Plantinga, Oxford’s former scientist-theologian Alister McGrath, or Wondering Fair’s very own John Stackhouse.

What you’ll find, I suspect, is that these thinkers and many Christians like them see reason and faith as copartners in the search for Truth. Faith is not pitted against knowledge; it is a condition for it. By acting faithfully we learn more about the reality we experience, and in the process let us make sure we have good reasons for acting in faith. And so, as the prophet Isaiah wrote long ago, “Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord.”[2]

Paul McClure

[1] Hill, Jonathan. The History of Christian Thought (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2003), 16-23.

[2] Isaiah 1:18


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The Birth of the Old Baby

19 12 2011

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a story in the 1920s, which was recently made into a movie, about a baby who is born old. Benjamin Button was born wrinkled, with weak bones and weak sight, to the point his father was disgusted and left him at someone’s doorstep. But then Benjamin grows in a way opposite to everyone around him: he gets younger, stronger, more youthful as the time passed. In the movie, he gets to know a little girl back when he was very old, they play hide and seek together, and as she grows older, he grows younger, until eventually they meet halfway and fall in love.

It is a moving story, centered on the benefits of aging backwards – growing stronger with time, entering university with the life experience of a 50-years-old man – but also on the incongruities Benjamin is forced to face. The woman he loves ages as Benjamin grows younger, and their relationship passes from a friendship between an old man and a little girl, to a romantic encounter, to finally an aged woman caring for a little boy. It seems fascinating to age backwards and be ever younger at first, but as the story develops, incongruities accumulate, and Benjamin’s gift reveals itself more and more complicated.

I don’t know where Fitzgerald got his inspiration for this story, but it got me thinking about another baby who was born old. Actually, he was born way old: the maker of the heavens and the earth made into a small little boy; the fullness of God embodied in human form; the wisdom of the ages now giggling and talking. At Christmas Christian celebrate the birth of the old baby, of the divine and eternal baby, of God incarnating himself into a person, and like Fitzgerald’s plot, it is a story both tragic and comic. Jesus must have faced a good number of incongruities growing up – the desire to make toys fly to impress other kids, the knowledge of his painful destiny and the temptation to walk away from it. Yet people celebrate this odd birth because of the good news it brings: God visiting us, divinity taking humanity into itself, the arrival of the hoped-for Savior at last. At Christmas we approach the manger in wonder (in perpetual surprise?), asking ourselves how could this story be possibly true, how would we feel if this baby was born in our families, and we had to change God’s diapers. Paradoxes abound, incongruities accumulate, like Augustine revels:

He became man, he who made man;
He was born of a woman he created;
He was cared by hands he shaped;
He sucked a breast he filled;
The Verb without which human eloquence is muted cried in the mange
Like a baby who can’t yet talk. [1]

It is puzzling to think how such a divine old life could take shape in a baby, yet… well, it did, and we can rejoice and celebrate in it. I’m kinda glad my sons are young and human, but I’m more than glad that Jesus was born, and that he can offer God’s hospitality to strangers like us, God’s salvation to sinners like us, God’s presence to humans like us. It is a strange and curious birth, but one worthy of family gatherings and partying all around the globe, year after year,  for this birth was different, and it incarnates hope for us all.

René Breuel

[1] Augustine, Sermon 188, 2,2-3,2.


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Categories : The Heart of Faith

Mother Mary

16 12 2011

When I was pregnant with my first child, I was living in Vancouver and managed somehow to get myself around that big city on a bicycle until I reached 36 weeks’ gestation, or four weeks before my due date.  It wasn’t comfortable, it certainly wasn’t pretty, but recalling it gets me thinking about Mary, Mary the mother of Jesus.

Christmas is coming.  It’s just a week away.  Most of us know the routine by now:  a party or two, buying gifts, sending cards…  If you’re anything like me it’ll all feel like a mad rush until Boxing Day.  If, however, you have a little time to contemplate the first Christmas, the time of Christ’s birth, then this Christmas I encourage you to think about Mary, Mary the mother.

I can’t imagine that riding a donkey when heavily pregnant is much more comfortable than riding a bike, yet Mary had to travel some distance to reach Bethlehem with Joseph, her betrothed, at full term, in order to take part in a census.  While most mothers-to-be are busy ‘nesting’ in the weeks before their child’s birth, getting things ready, practising their breathing, resting their swollen ankles and trying not to go out too much, Mary had to contend with travel, crowds and congestion, with the prospect of a safe place to deliver her child very much uncertain.  Wherever it was she called home was far behind her as she traveled to Bethlehem, and the census brought in every other woman, man and child who originated from the region, which of course put tremendous pressure on the town in terms of accommodation and food.

We are told that when Mary gave birth she placed Jesus in a manger, a feeding trough for livestock, because there was no guest room available for them.  What we are not told is whether the feeding trough was indoors or out, or how many nights they were without a room.  We can’t even presume that they were fortunate enough to have privacy for the child’s birth.  Given that Bethlehem was bustling with people trying to register for the census, it’s unlikely that Mary and Joseph were alone in being unable to find a room.  Yet this is the place and these are the circumstances into which Jesus, Mary’s child, was born.

What does this tell us about Mary?  What does this tell us about Jesus?  And if Jesus is God in the flesh, what does this tell us about God?

The nativity story is, of course, just the beginning.  Luke 3:23 tells us that it was thirty years before Jesus began his ministry.  Thirty years of growing up.  Thirty years under his mother’s eye.

Christmas is a good time to reflect on all sorts of things.  This Christmas I intend to give Mary more thought.  That God subjected himself to be born is something.  That God subjected himself to be parented is another.  But that a teenage girl would subject herself to give birth to and parent him is ponderous indeed.

Madi Simpson


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Last Words Approaching the Afterlife

14 12 2011

“What do you think happens when you die?”

“That’s a strange question!” your average university student might reply. “When you die, you die. The plug’s pulled out, and the lights go out, that’s it: the eternal void. If there was something more, we would have discovered it by now. There would be proof, right?”[1]

Discussion over. And with that she heads back to party. But of course! For if death really is the end, then as the apostle Paul said, “Let’s eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!”

Well, what of the afterlife? The future looks fuzzy at best—extinction, reincarnation, Valhalla, harp concerts in the sky … who knows? But in a world where death is more certain than taxes, do we have the courage to face up to ‘strange questions’ that define human life?

As I see it, most people respond in one of three ways to the afterlife: we ignore it, we deplore it, or we explore it. Which are you?

Maybe you ignore the afterlife. Your theme song is “Forever young”. Like Edward from the Twilight saga, you’re blessed with immortality. Or is it ‘amortality’? As sociologist Catherine Mayer dubs them, ‘Amortals’ “seek to arrive at the best time of their lives, and then linger there indefinitely, with the help of vitamins, plastic surgery, Botox, gym workouts, and of course Viagra.[2] (Think Australian cricketing legend Shane Warne, sporting Liz Hurley as his latest trophy. He’s tight like a tiger, but the clock is ticking.)

Even for Amortals, death is hard to ignore. Every second roughly two people around the world die—that’s 150,000 per day, 55 million per year. And contrary to popular opinion, they don’t disappear, pass away, fall asleep, or retire. They die. It’s not someone else’s problem. I will die. You will die. We could party hard and desperately grasp onto what life is left, but our last words may be tragic like whiskey merchant Jack Daniels. As he died from a blood infection, all he could say was “One last drink, please.”

Well, maybe you deplore the afterlife. Who knows what lies beyond? Heaven is a distraction, so make the most of now. Death is as natural as birth, so just accept it. As the Epicureans had engraved on their tombstones, N.F.F.N.S.N.C. (non fui, fui, non sum, non curo): “I wasn’t, I was, I am not, I don’t care.”[3]

Like Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple. Jobs battled with cancer even back at his Stanford University Commencement address of 2005. Equivalent to an epitaph, he remarked:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Almost everything just falls away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

When he died this October at the age of 56, everyone spoke of his success and legacy. His accomplishments were admirable.

But let’s get real. Apple will continue on with or without his vision. Jobs won’t be there to appreciate it, and within a couple of generations his name will be a footnote in a design textbook. I have to agree with Woody Allen, who quipped, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen. I would rather live on in my apartment.”

When death knocks on our door, all our ‘immortality projects’ are meaningless. As the writer of Ecclesiastes said, “All our strivings under the sun are but chasing the wind—utter vanity.”

Okay, I recognize this is depressing, especially during the festive season! But it is a virtue to number our days aright—to face life as it really is. So you can ignore the afterlife, or deplore the afterlife. But can I suggest a third option. Will you explore the afterlife?

What if? What if there is an afterlife? It falls short of mathematical proof, but there are rumours of transcendence that have defined entire cultures across history, from the ancient Egyptians embalming the dead to African Americans singing gospel tunes around an open casket. They could be right or wrong, but the question of the afterlife is anything but irrelevant.

Philosophers and luminaries across history have spoken about hope in the face of death. But only one pointed to himself as the source of this hope. Jesus of Nazareth claimed “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though they die” (John 11:25). His last words came with confidence from a crucifix: “It is finished.”

What is finished? Apparently death as we know it. This wasn’t resigned acceptance. Jesus saw his death as mission accomplished.

Well, do we believe this? Should we believe this? It’s hard to know what ‘proof’ would satisfy a sceptic.[4] As I mused with one such university student, we’d only discover what lay beyond our last words if someone were to truly die and come back to tell the tale.

“True” she laughed, “if only, hey!”

If only.

Dave Benson

[1] Dialogue adapted from director Clint Eastwood’s movie, “Hereafter” (2010).

[2] Simon Smart, “Living like tomorrow never ends”, 15 October 2011, Sydney Morning Herald.

[3] N.T. Wright, “Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins,” http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Jesus_Resurrection.htm.

[4] To further explore this topic of “Afterlife: Christian hope in the face of death”, see here or watch the full length talk here.


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Categories : On Anything and Everything, Spirituality for the Rest of Us, Tough Questions

Newness

12 12 2011

A few years ago, our Christmas holidays were spent enjoying the BBC’s wildly popular nature series, Planet Earth.  These films are quite simply a magnificent window into life on our planet. They are spectacularly shot, well narrated, and offer some truly rare glimpses into the lives of animals and their environments.

One thing that strikes me, however, whenever I watch Planet Earth is the limited nature of life on earth for non-human species. Despite the overwhelming beauty and marvelous abilities of, say, the snow leopard, the wild bactrian camel, or the hammerhead shark, their entire lives seem to be comprised of a struggle to accomplish two tasks: securing food and mating.

These creatures’ entire existence seems to be dictated to them in advance. There are no “new” options open to, for example, the Walia ibex whose lives consist of struggling for food in the African mountains, avoiding predators, and mating. The beauty of the wildlife portrayed in Planet Earth was sometimes, at least for me, tempered by the harsh and unforgiving nature of the lives of so many of these creatures.

Perhaps bare survival is enough for non-human species. It seems doubtful that too many of these animals spend their wandering days ruminating upon the limited options available to them, or lamenting the biological “determinedness” of their lives.

On one level, of course, our lives are not much different from the animals seen in Planet Earth. Our days are spent securing the resources necessary for survival, and we, too, have an instinct for passing our genes on to the next generation. Just like the animals, our bodies will wear down and, eventually, cease functioning. In many ways we are no different from the wonderful variety of species we share this planet with.

But we are also gloriously different. We have the ability to introduce novelty to the cosmos—to create, to imagine and work toward better futures for ourselves and those who will follow us. Our decisions and actions, individually and collectively, can make a qualitative difference in and for this planet. The New Year’s resolution may be among the most hopeless and poorly grounded of gestures, but the fact remains that we can make changes; we can decide to live better, more human and humane lives. We can do our part to improve the quality of our relationships, we can become more responsible stewards of the time and the gifts that God has given us, we can venture out and take risks, explore previously untried opportunities.

In all of these endeavors failure is, of course, a real possibility but this does not detract from the uniquely human potential for newness. Human beings, like no other creatures on the planet, have a unique God-given ability to freely decide to contribute (or not) to the flourishing of all that God has made.

And this ability, Christians believe, can be even expanded when we come to see  Jesus Christ, God Incarnate who, in the ultimate expression of new possibilities, entered the human condition, began its transformation, and promises to continue to “make all things new” (Rev. 21:5). From a Christian perspective, “Happy New Year” can and ought to be more than a hollow wish for a vaguely benign next 365 days; it can be a profound expression of hope and trust in the God who creates, recreates, and allows those who bear his image to participate in the newness.

Ryan Dueck


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What’s on your Christmas list?

9 12 2011

Q. Isn’t making out a Christmas list kind of crass? Shouldn’t we be more concerned to give than to get at Christmastime?

A. I agree that “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” But I also quite like to receive, don’t you? And other people who love me want to know what to get me, so I help them by composing a Christmas list. Plus it’s fun to finally just put right down there what I really, really want.

I once heard my colleague, Cambridge-trained professor of Old Testament Iain Provan, lecture on the story of Jacob. That’s not a typical Advent story, of course, but it’s interesting–which is to say, startlingly confrontational–to consider it in this context.

Dr. Provan noted that when Jacob rests one night while running from his vengeful brother Esau, God reiterates the promise he once gave to Jacob’s grandfather Abraham during Jacob’s famous dream of a ladder reaching to heaven: “The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring” (Genesis 28).

But when Jacob responds to God’s extravagant promise, he mentions nothing about gaining an entire land, or having numberless offspring, or being a blessing to the whole world. He says nothing at all on that stupendous scale.

Here’s what he says instead: “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God.”

Provan points out the shocking disjunction between what Jacob wants and what God offers. And as I listened to this story, I was suddenly struck by the embarrassing disjunction between my own paltry desires and God’s great promises.

I confess that I want the usual items on the modern middle-class list: economic security, a spacious home, a nice car, a pleasant vacation each year, career success, and a few high-quality toys. Oh, yes: and good health, and peaceful sleep, and a happy family.

But God offers the following instead: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23).

Well, now, I think, that’s very kind of God to offer me those pleasant things. But how about a Pioneer Elite 60-inch HDTV with a McIntosh home theatre surround sound audio system? That would be cool!

And God promises to transform me into the very image of his Son (Rom. 8:29).

Well, I’m happy to say thank-you to God for this lovely prospect. But then I quickly reply, When will I be able to trade in my banged-up minivan for the Maserati or Aston Martin I’d much, much prefer?

And God tells me that he has prepared a place for me in the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21).

Well, I’m willing to sing a little song of praise to God about all that, because it does sound nice . . . and then I wonder when I can finally move into that half-timber-plus-fieldstone waterfront mansion I’ve always thought would be such a good home base from which I could serve the Lord so much better. You know: the one with the private airstrip and Gulfstream.

And God gently asks if I am completely insane, utterly lacking in perspective, preferring the relatively trivial and ephemeral to the absolutely wonderful and eternal.

This time, I stop and think. And I shamefacedly acknowledge in a murmur that my aspirations are pathetically low. And I realize that my appreciation for what really counts is preposterously small. I am, it is evident, clearly deranged.

What I want so badly to get is just so much less than what God wants to give.

It’s time to make a new, different, better Christmas list, one that beautifully combines getting and giving. You know, the kind of list God would compose for us….

John Stackhouse


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