8 Pound 6 Ounce Baby Jesus

In yesterday's post, Ross wrote about how Christmas itself is wonderful. "It meets our longings. It fills our needs. It invades the dead of our winter, bringing light to the darkness and warmth to the cold."

How incredible! Christmas ITSELF is wonderful. So wonderful in fact, that many people love to celebrate it without really even understanding what they are doing. How many people do you know who have Christmas trees, hang stockings, or light up their front lawns every December and yet may never have stepped foot in a church or opened a Bible to hear the story of how Jesus came into the world over 2000 years ago? You don't really have to be a Christian at all to celebrate Christmas. How ironic!

It seems that many people share the sentiments of Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights when he prays to little baby Jesus "in his golden fleece diapers with his tiny, little fat balled up fists... don't even know a word yet, just a little infant, so cuddly, but still omnipotent." Ricky admits...

Look, I like the Christmas Jesus best, and I'm saying grace. When you say grace you can say it to Grownup Jesus or Teenage Jesus or Bearded Jesus or whoever you want!

I can't help but wonder why?! Why do so many of us celebrate this season without even knowing what we're doing? Why does Ricky Bobby like the Christmas Jesus Best?

Harry and the gang even celebrate Christmas at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. For crying out loud! Has Baby Jesus infiltrated the Wizarding world too?

The answer is emphatically yes!! Perhaps in our heart of hearts there is a deeper longing for Christmas than even our minds can comprehend.  Perhaps, without even knowing it, we are acknowledging our need and our hope for something or someone to come from the outside and save us. And perhaps, without even realizing it, we are announcing and celebrating Him, even in the most common Christmas carols:

"Christ the Savior is bo--rn,
Chri--st the Savior is born."

Maybe the Christmas Jesus is so many people's favorite because without even knowing it, at Christmas time they acknowledge that Christ is real... simply by participating in CHRISTmas.

You see, Christmas itself is so wonderful because CHRIST is wonderful!!! This actually is a season of hope, even if we don't really understand what that means. Ricky Bobby and Harry Potter may just be characters in movies but their sentiments resonate deep within each of us. We need Christmas! We need a season of hope, hope that one day all that is wrong will be made right. And as Christians, we know that hope has come in the form of 8 pound 6 ounce baby Jesus.

Why Believe In A God...Atheism, Santa Claus, & Being Good

If you go to D.C. any time this holiday season, you may very well come across this ad (pictured left) on the public buses, paid for by the American Humanist Association. Of course, it has already caused quite a stirring across the country. People are ticked. Bill O'Reilly actually brought a spokesman for the group on to his show the other night and chewed him out saying something to the effect of, "How dare you use Santa Claus. He represents a Christian saint!" Now, I think Bill O'Reilly is a pretty smart guy, but I'm not entirely sure that's a helpful argument. If we can't have a sense of humor about Santa Claus, what can we have a sense of humor about? Personally, I found the ad to be pretty thought provoking. Plus, I haven't heard of any conversions to Christianity through a church marquis or one of those giant black billboard messages from "God," and I don't think we'll be hearing about any converts to atheism through this ad. But...

Just maybe it could have the opposite effect that is desired. Like I said, it's kind of a thought provoking ad. Stop and actually think about it. Why believe in a god? I think the implication from the humanist perspective is that people only believe in a God because they're afraid there would be no morals without one. And they're saying, "You don't need a God to tell you to be good. Why not just be good for goodness' sake?" Well, why not? I'd love to know your thoughts.

And while you're gathering those thoughts, I've got some as well. I think the ad's reasoning may be problematic in a couple of ways:

1) Most believers I know do not believe in God because they're afraid that the world will drift into moral disaster without His commands. On the contrary, they're looking at a world where His commands and moral disaster coexist. And it's been that way since Moses. In fact, if there is any obvious theme in the Old Testament, it is that the people of God, who received directly His commands to be "good," and even faced hardship, exile, and devastation when they were not "good," nonetheless persisted in giving Him and "goodness" the middle finger to the bitter end. And aside from what the Bible says, if we've ever watched five minutes of the local news or tried for even a single day to keep tabs on our own moral performance (that is thought, word, and deed), we know that the Ten Commandments in and of themselves aren't actually all that effective in making us better, much less making us good. Not at all actually. 94% of the people in this country believe in God and still 100% of those people are helplessly contributing to the current moral disaster that is our existence on this earth. So whether you write on a bus, "Be good for goodness' sake," or you write, "Be good for God's sake," we don't care. Either way, it doesn't work.

2) Well, maybe we care a little. Because, to be honest, "Just be good for goodness' sake" doesn't actually mean anything, unless "good" means something in particular. And where are we to get that definition? You either believe the world has an underlying order to it, or you don't. If you don't, then "good" can mean whatever you want it to mean. It will likely be utilitarian. What's good to you might be to conquer, kill, steal, and rape, while good to someone else might be to serve, help, give, and love. How can we say which is "better" if there is no standard? And if you do believe there is some underlying order, that some things are inherently good and some things inherently evil, yet still insist that you do not believe in a god, ask yourself, "Where am I getting this standard?"

3) Now, back to the original question: "Why believe in a god?" A question that may perhaps, ironically, turn us to Christianity rather than humanism. If it is not simply to keep moral order in the world, then why? Well, first, because He is real. And what I mean by that is, of course, if He is real, we should believe in Him. If He is not, then of course I stand by St. Paul, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud in stating that we are to be pitied for believing in such a massive illusion. But if He is real, and He is as good as the New Testament joyfully proclaims that He is...if the God who, out of Love, gave Himself up for a world that completely rejected Him, the God who took away humanity's eternal curse by taking it all at once upon Himself, who planned from the beginning to adopt us as sons and daughters and to make us heirs to his eternal kingdom where those who are poor will be rich, those who are hungry will be fed, and those who weep will laugh...If He is the God who promises to make us perfect forever who once spit in his face and nailed him to a cross if we would only believe that He is all that He claims to be...if that God is real, well then I want to know! And if I cannot know, then at the very least I want to bet everything on the chance that He is. Because I'm desperate. And I'm not the only one. Most of us have been slowly bleeding chips on bad bets our entire lives, and bankruptcy is just around the corner. What if He is it? Actual hope for me and for the world.