Christmas in July

I wonder what it would take to get good news enough to shake us out of "been there, done that," and into sheer amazement. How about a flock of angels bursting into song on a dark night? That would do it for me.

It may not be Christmas, but I'm thinking about Luke 2, about the reality that the Hebrew people, despite their best efforts, couldn't get themselves into the space where they became a blessing to the whole world as Genesis 12:3 had promised. So suppose you were God and you wanted to do something dramatic to restore the people who had abandoned you and messed themselves up. Suppose you didn't want to use force on them, but you knew they'd never connnect with you unless they'd seen you and known you.

Maybe you'd go down into the world, take on a human body, and show them how much you wanted them back, how much you hated the idea of them just fumbling along on their own, hurting one another, hurting themselves.

That was what the angels announced to a bunch of simple shepherds:

"Don't be afraid! I bring you good news of great joy for everyone! The Savior--yes, the Messiah, the Lord--has been born tonight in Bethlehem, the city of David! And this is how you will recognize him: You will find a baby lying in a manger, wrapped snugly in strips of cloth!"
(Luke 2)

We've all heard of the baby Jesus. Have you heard though, that he carried the hope of all humanity with him? Have you heard that he was God entering our world to bring us the only good news that's worth anything?

Not Abandoned

Genesis 12 is often used to point out how the Jewish people became a chosen nation (though the Arabs also claim descent from Abraham). But it's about a whole lot more than that. God calls Abraham to be the founder of his chosen nation, to be sure, but the plan, according to verse 3. is that through Abraham all the nations of the earth will receive God's blessing.

It was supposed to work like this, according to a later piece of writing in the Hebrew Scriptures - Psalm 67:

May God be merciful and bless us. May his face shine with favor upon us...
Yes, God will bless us, and people all over the world will fear him.

The only reason God made Abraham's descendents his chosen people was to demonstrate to the world that he had not abandoned the world just because the world had abandoned him. Israel, under God's care, was supposed to be a showpiece so that the rest of the world would "fear" God.

Fear him? It's not as nasty as you think. It simply means that the peoples of the world would come back and recognize the One who made them.

When life is crazy and despair is normal, what else could make a difference?

Everything Messed Up

Awhile back I suggested that you could tour the Bible in an hour or so (July 3, 2005). For the past couple of posts, I've walked you through the first of the Bible passages I suggested. Now we come to Genesis 3.

Wow, forbidden fruit and a deceitful serpent. The mythology of the whole thing is really powerful. But the message is interesting. God told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit, but the serpent persuaded them that God was just trying to prevent them from being all they could be, from being truly free. So they ate the forbidden fruit, experienced guilt and shame, blamed it on anyone but themselves, and fell under God's judgment.

The whole thing seems so alien to here and now, but it does answer one question: If God, indeed, is responsible for us being here, and we are royally messed up, then either God isn't very good at the creation thing or something happened to our initial perfection.

We are royally messed up, you know. I'm writing this not even 24 hours since those malicious lunatics bombed London. We can get all self-righteous and distance ourselves from terrorists, but I don't see any of us acing this living thing. We fight with one another, look out for number one, get lonely, get bitter, get whatever (you fill in the blanks). How did we turn into this? The Bible says we decided to separate ourselves from God and, left to our own devices, we messed everything up.

I hope you don't mind this dismal little tome. I'm feeling a little jaded as I look at a photo of one of those terrific double decked London buses ripped open like a tin can.

Creation from another angle

With Genesis 2 you get another take on creation. Now you learn that humanity doesn't really bear a connection to the animal kingdom but is specially made. Bravo for us, though it may tend to confirm the notion that we think too much of ourselves. The point is that we still have the alternative of seeing ourselves as the product of chance meetings of cells or finding ourselves the unique result of the work of a Maker.

So God puts this human into his environment, gives him a mandate to take care of it as a careful steward, then determines that the man is lonely. Out of the man he makes woman, thus establishing society, connectedness, community.

In return, he asks only one thing - that these people not forget where they came from and who steers the course of their lives. This is not the kind of Maker who brings everything into being, then walks away and leaves the world to its own devices. This is a Maker who sets conditions on his relationship with the humans he formed - they can live in paradise, but they have to take note that he's in charge. Some people would call that a bummer. Maybe. Maybe not.

What do you think?

Creation

Genesis 1 has been called our essential mythology. A God who thinks, speaks, maybe even feels - A God who was already there before anything else - this God makes the world. He takes a formless mass of mud and shapes our world, the sun, the stars, the plants, the animals...the humans.

We, of course, live in the age of evolution, which, though apparently scientific, says we are an accident of history (or prehistory). We could have ended up looking like elephants or starfish, but all the mistakes of genetics made us what we are.

The existenialists - Sartre, Camus, and so on - took the whole thing to its logical end. If we are an accident, then life has no purpose and everything is a joke. Sad joke, to be sure, but a joke anyway. So we carry on day after day because...

1. We're curious.
2. We've got instincts that drive us to preserve ourselves.
3. We believe that being, even without meaning, is better than not being.
4. Life does have its compensations - pleasure, love, whatever.
5. We can make our own meaning by creating our own mythologies that tell us that life is worth it.

People are surprisingly optimistic, so they must be finding something to compensate for the scientific reality that we are simply fleeting organisms within the earthly ecosystem.

Strangely enough, most of us believe in God. Most of us think that this God is somehow responsible for our existence. If that's true, then this God defines our meaning. Problem is, we're not sure how to contact him.

Genesis 1 says that God was here before we were, and that he made us. The alternative is that nothing made us but the blind energy of evolution.

Pick one.

How to Read the Bible in an Hour or Less

You can't actually read the whole Bible in an hour, but here's a guide to getting the essence really fast.

First, connect to http://www.biblegateway.com/ (do it in a new window by right clicking and selecting "Open link in new window"). If you want to change the Bible version, click on the drop-down box to the right. A very readable version is the New Living Translation.

Next, copy and paste the first of the following Bible references, into the box above "Search the Bible" then do the search and read the section of the Bible that opens. Repeat this with all the references.

Genesis 1
Genesis 2
Genesis 3
Genesis 12:1-9
Luke 2
Mark 1
Luke 22
Luke 23
Luke 24
Acts 1
Acts 2
Romans 10:1-13
Revelation 21

There are gaps, to be sure, but the overall message of the Bible isn't nearly as hard to grasp as a lot of people think it is. Over the next few blogs, I'll walk you through it.

Enjoy.