Tuesday, December 26, 2017
580 - Go Ahead and Live It, Part 4
Spirituality Column #580
December 26, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon
Commentary
Go Ahead and Live It,
Part 4
By Bob Walters
"How many observe Christ's birth-day! How few, his precepts. O! 'tis easier to keep Holidays than Commandments." - Ben Franklin (1743)
With Christmas now ever-so-slightly in the rear-view mirror, what shall we do?
With Christmas now ever-so-slightly in the rear-view mirror, what shall we do?
Drive away at high speed from the
joy and repentance proper to celebrating the incarnation of God, or do the
right thing and load Jesus in the car with us?
Just let’s not pack away Jesus with
the rest of the seasonal ornaments. The
fun of Christmas – the “lights and cookies, gifts and guests” way we celebrate
it, I mean – frankly would get boring if it happened all the time. By the end of December I’m ready to have the
house back to normal, the schedule slowed down, and for life to go on.
But whether we see Him or not,
invite Him into our lives or not, or accept his gifts or not, Jesus is right
here with us. And not just as a
perpetual, corrective, behavior-monitoring “Elf on a Shelf.” No, the hunt is on and Jesus – seeking us –
invites all to join His divine safari of salvation, love of God, and love of
others.
Too many folks have it stuck in
their heads that those “Commandments” Mr. Franklin mentions are a litany of
fun-killing, life-throttling rules enforced by a wrathful God who is grumpily
waiting for us to stumble so He can punish us and send us to Hell. The “Holidays” – the Christmas we cheerily celebrate
– provide a comforting notion of loving warmth and home, certainly lacking the
same terrifying, mortal-combat aesthetic of much Christian “Commandment” enforcement. What’s truly terrifying and mortal isn’t God’s
Commandments; it is Satan’s attempted claim on our souls. God invites us to share His glory; Satan
endeavors to kill it.
Sure, history is pock-marked with
awful things Christians have done, mostly to other Christians. When legalism, sin, fear, and punishment
control the enforcement of faith, great damage is done to humanity. Once the Romans were done killing the early
Christians, many martyrs for the faith since then have died at the hands of
Christians.
Properly understood, God’s commandments
to humanity exist not to trip us up but to help us get along. It was Pharisaical legalism that Jesus sought
to undo, and that same off-point legalism has been a dispiriting, ugly, and
sadly constant component of Christian religion.
Loosely masked as “Commandments,” they are more accurately described as man-made
points of false, judgmental, and controlling legalistic doctrine.
Of
course any light, merry holiday is better than that mess. Satan has infected both the “Holidays” and “Commandments”
with deceptions not of God’s design but of mankind’s pride. Take Christ out of Christmas and love out of
God’s Commandments and it is easy to see why folks pack-up religious Jesus with
the lights and ornaments.
But what if we “keep” Jesus out,
and love him with all our strength, hearts, souls, and minds all year
long? And love our neighbors? And humbly repent of our sins?
We’ll discover that, thanks to
Jesus, humanity is united to God forever, that divine love cannot be destroyed,
that Christ is in every member of our bodies, that no joy matches the joy of
God’s forgiveness, and that heaven’s bond of love is indissoluble.
That would be much bigger than a
“birth-day”; that would be a life worth living.
Walters
(rlwcom@aol.com) believes God is serious about His image,
i.e., us.