The Christmas season, leading up to the day itself; can be a wonder-full experience - it can (and usually does) induce a state of wonder - more than this: a grateful wonder.
Christians (me included) sometimes get so keen to explain how reasonable is their faith - how it makes sense, how it answers to both need and reason - that it gets neglected that the whole business is so wonderful that (when understood) it cannot help but evoke a response of "But that's unbelievable!".
The Christmas story sometimes (and, for me, pretty reliably) has that effect, and maybe that is part of why it is so potent in attaining and sustaining faith?
The "basic facts" of Christianity will always have a quality of "too good to be true" about them; and the "evidence" - whether presented as history, or as logical inference - will never be solid or clear enough to convince us solidly of such a strange and marvellous thing.
The more we realize how marvellous were the claims of Jesus Christ, the stranger the whole thing seems to be!
So the better we grasp the reality of resurrection and Heaven - the less convincing seems any possible "evidence" brought out to support it!
The only way that this can "work" (it seems to me) is when we grasp the-whole-thing all-at-once... when, or if, we understand what it is that Jesus did, and its wonder and strangeness, and simultaneously experience a deep conviction of its reality.
That's probably what is meant by "faith" - not so much choosing to believe the extraordinary; as that we need to "get it" and "want it" at the same moment: by the same inner act.
Put like that, it sounds impossibly complicated - because I have pulled the experience apart in order to explain what is inside it - and then tried to piece it all back together.
And this doesn't really work, because (in trying to explain) I had artificially chopped the experience into pieces by a destructive act of division.
So the act of explanation is rather like attempting to revive a living being that I had just dissected.
Of itself, taken alone; such analysis can't work.
In other words; the experience itself is its own proof.
And what validates that proof is Love - the experience only seems to happen if we not only know, but also love, Jesus; which includes loving what he offers.
So I am never surprised that (it seems) not everybody can or does experience this wonderful strangeness and also desire it for themselves, forever...
Because (it seems) not everybody has a loving nature.
Also, even among those who have a loving nature, and who can and do experience the whole thing, all-at-once - including the conviction of truth; we are free to reject it, and to prefer... something else.
That's where something like gratitude comes-in.
Our Christmas is also about presents - about giving and receiving presents - and presents only do their work when there is gratitude.
Jesus has given us the chance of something wonderful and strange - but for it to happen we must be grateful for it, or else why would we want and accept such a gift?
So I would add that this sense of "gratitude" is also an element of the whole and undivided Christmas experience.
We get a picture of something wonderful and true - and are simultaneously grateful that such a strange thing really happened, when it might not have happened; and that we personally might not have wanted it.
But it did, and we do.
No comments:
Post a Comment