This is my third of three editorials on the ‘Season of Giving’. In two previous editorials I’ve shared about the different historical, cultural and religious influences which collaborate to bring about the way we celebrate this today. I have deliberately left the central Christian celebration of Christmas until now, so it would find itself in the month in which it occurs. The true historical account of Christmas is found in reading the Bible. If you don’t have one, it is the number one bestseller in history, so you could easily get one for Christmas as a gift for yourself or others. Just do an online search, or even better ask a local pastor about it, or a friend who is a Christian. It is why the commemoration is called “Christ-mas”, or in Greek ‘X-mas’ (the X being the first letter in the Greek word Χριστός, which means ‘Christ’). It is a gathering of gratefulness to our tremendous God, who came to us in the form of a little child, in order to live a life like us, so we would know He related to our struggles, and we could identify with Him.
If one was to look at the reasons behind this ‘Season of Giving’, as I shared in my previous editorials, you can see that the problems people were trying to address through their yearly observances, were never permanently resolved. The yearly rituals were needed to appease the temperamental nature of their deities. These beliefs would basically extort sacrifices from the fear-ridden minds of people, time after time. Never permanently removing the irrational impulses of fear, coldness of heart and such. Nevertheless, in order to remove those very impulses, Christ sought us, so now in gratefulness; we celebrate His life of Love, and pay it forward at this time of year. Christ could be a sacrifice of unlimited value, because of the nature of His life being God Himself, Jesus acted as His own supplier of the vessel to contain the power of guilt, fear, anger and the like, which was in our inner life. That vessel was Himself. He died in a chosen act of Love, through the method of the cross, taking from within us and transferring to Himself the spiritual substance of sin, so we could be preserved and free from its influence permanently. Then He experienced the protective anger of God at the brutal effects of sin on us, and the pain of separation that went along with it, while winning peace for us with the source of Life, God. So this child, once grown, acted protectively on mass, as an immune system which has to kill a virus, but that virus was too strong for us to beat, so it needed to be transferred to another host, in this case Himself, then His immune system could destroy the virus of sin. Once the immunities were unleashed and the virus destroyed, the inoculation was prepared, and drawn from his own blood. All that remains is for us to ask for the inoculation of Jesus himself, from God. It’s good science, if you’ll see it, it has been left up to us what we will do with the offer of a healthy spiritual immune system. The fact that it remains in the world around, is due to our lack of acceptance of His effects in our hearts on a personal basis. Like any disease, it is cured one cell at a time, as the vaccination spreads through the body. If we accept the life of this child, born in the darkest time of the year, to provide Life; the warmth of connection through our mutual association with Him; and the rule of Love in our hearts, Gods gift of substitution could then individually destroy what harms us inside, and collectively, there may be a little more “Peace on Earth and Good will toward men” all year round. Merry X-mas, ya’ll!