Fear Not

“And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” -Luke 2:34

Is fear the most common and prevalent of human emotions? If you had said as much, I would be hard put to argue with you. It has long been a companion of mine, anyway. I remember as a pre-schooler watching a house burn in full ferocity and sensing the fear of fire in my young soul and, indeed, in all those around me. I later learned to fear trips to the doctor and sharp needles. Much later, I learned the fear of predatory peers and any kind of public exposure. And no matter what stage of life I found myself, I discovered that I had outgrown one set of fears only to discover another. The fear of marriage gave way to the fear of sudden injuries to my children which in turn gave way to the fear of injured grandchildren. We are riddled with fears of both life and death, success and failure, want or prosperity. Fear haunts all of us either high or low, rich or poor, strong or weak in some way or another. It is part of our frayed humanity that knows that in the end we do not control our own fates.

What better picture of mankind and its fears could we find than that of the shepherds sitting around their small fire, alone in the night, guarding a hard won existence against the unknown beasts of the wild. Man has always found himself gathering together in small clans trying to eke out his living among the hostile elements. And in a sea of darkness that surround them, men cling close to the small fires of hope in cheap gods or false ideologies.

But along comes pure light that splits the night of the shepherds’ blissful ignorance wide open. It is almost more than they can bear. And the very first words of the heavenly heralds of the Christ, the Son of God in the world, are first and foremost, “Fear not.” It is as if God knows and remembers how terrifying it can be living outside the gates of Eden. And truly, these words come at a most terrible time and place in history when Israel lies under the heel of a Roman army and a collaborating ego-maniac of a King. We could say more about the lack of health care, dental science, or any social safety net. It was a hard time to be alive by any chronological standard. But into that human meat-grinder of an age, God shouts His coming with, “Fear not.” Was God mocking our condition or sending a powerful message? I think the latter.

I can identify with poor shepherds living somewhere on the edge of a meager existence against a backdrop of a night of a thousand fears. The fears are real, not imagined. I still need God to break through my dimly lit world and say, “Fear not.” Somehow He is greater than any Caesar, cancerous disease, deranged shooter, or crushing beast of the unknown. Somehow He makes all the difference just by His coming and His presence and breaks the very power of fear. It was good news then. It is good news now. God came into our stable and straw lives and soon put into words the hope He raised: “He that would save his life shall lose it, and he that loses his life for my sake shall find it.” In so doing, He raised our lives to a level of existence that no fear, real or imagined, can touch.

Most folks love Christmas for its beauty and charm. I am finding I need Christmas. It calms my fears and gives me hope. May it do so afresh for you and yours.

Adult Fairy Tales and Christmas

“This child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel;
and for a sign which shall be spoken against.” Luke 2:34

Somewhere we will hear the alarm sounded about the efforts of retailers and civic officials to cleanse Christmas 2012 of any reference to its Christian roots. Holiday trees replace Christmas trees and the controversy is off and running in a blaze of yule log fervor. Pastors preach and politicians rail and the editorials grow vicious with counter accusations thrown up in reply. Is this just a recycled version of the old and traditional debates about ‘the real meaning of Christmas’? I am going to wade into the fray and say simply, “I don’t think so.” What we are witnessing is a conscious and deliberate effort to take a uniquely Christian holiday and sanitize it to make it conform to a new age in which no one should be remotely confronted with anything Christian. It is part of the culture wars and the overall effort to remove all religious voices from the public square. But herein lies the fairy tale.

I have heard Darwin’s theory of evolution described as simply a fairy tale for adults who want to determine their own sexual mores. We are seeing the birth of a new fairy tale. This is for those adults who want to believe that we can enjoy and maintain all the trappings of democratic forms and freedoms complete with the optimism and spirit of the religious impulse without the religion that gave birth to these very ideas. We can now believe that all men are equal without having any base for this bold assumption. Never mind the reformation and the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer or the Biblical assertion that all men are created in the image of God. Likewise, we can now believe that love and the spirit of giving can just spring up naturally this time of year apart from the unmerited and overwhelming gift of God to the world in the advent of Christ. It just springs magically from holly and mistletoe and mugs of hot chocolate.

The myth of a truly secular democracy or a secular Christmas is like a tent without poles. Yes, tent poles are, after all, restrictive to one’s freedom, cumbersome, and offer rigid obstructions to those seeking new forms and directions. But remove them and the tent settles slowly to the ground as the air steadily escapes. This new fairy tale is a story of a magical tent that stays erect and proud and keeps the elements at bay without any poles at all; no more restrictions, no difficult assembly, no rigid limits.

Do we protest? It has its place. Do we abandon the world and leave it to its own devices? There is nowhere to run and start again. Do we weep for the delusions that bind and blind? Always appropriate. But where can we fight this insidious fairy tale best? Is it not within our own homes with our own children? Let us not be afraid to link Christ’s coming with all that is glorious and good in life. The old carols say it best. With majestic imagery they describe how ‘the soul felt its worth.’ What a foundation for a civics lesson. ‘He comes to make His blessings flow, far as the curse is found.’ What a chance to talk about original sin and redemption. ‘The wrong shall fail, the right prevail.’ What a basis for hope and a future. This is the stuff on which our very way of life hangs. Now is not the time for timidity or embarrassment. Christmas is still the greatest story ever told. And the competition has nothing that even comes close to matching it. So feel the freedom to raise a voice and carry this story forth into the void of atheistic nothingness. It is still good news.

Seven Day Solutions

“Thus says the LORD, “Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength,” Jer. 17:5

Two of my grandchildren went venture capitalist this week. Their quest to go into business had been burning all summer but finally their mother concurred and gave them time and substance to embark. One of these fine afternoons we’ve been having, they set up a stand in their front yard after school and marketed lemonade and fresh baked chocolate chip cookies to the world. The excitement was Titanic as they rehearsed their lines (“Order up!”) and engaged the general public. The ambition of a five and eight year old to enter the marketplace is mostly just too cute for words but also laudable. Any impulse toward creative effort, work, and service deserves to be praised. From what I hear, there is an epidemic of twenty-somethings that could learn a thing or two from my Isabelle and Grayson.

“But on the other hand” (as our Fiddler friend Tevia is so famously wont to say), I can easily work up a case of pity for what I call “seven day people.” These are the folk that are either driven to the point of exhaustion by blind and furious ambition or else they are folks trapped in a cycle of endless labor trying to escape the wolves of indebtedness and poverty. You can find these “seven day people” living in both hovels and mansions. In either case, they are severely focused on either getting ahead or just surviving both of which entail seven days per week of constant toil and labor. While we can easily digress into broad questions of poverty, politics, and pride, I would simply like to point out that there are limits to man’s ability to fix his own dilemmas or accomplish his own dreams. There are other factors at play in our quest for prosperity and success that can be equally vital as any work ethic. Believers should know this well, but we can easily forget.

This week a new plan has been rolled out in five different states in another attempt to “fix” our problems in education. You will be proud to know that Tennessee is one of them. I find it dangerously close to being what I call a “seven day” solution. It is the mindset that says what we have been doing is just not working. Therefore, let’s do more of it. Starting in 2013, our state will join Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut in adding some 300 hours of instructional time to some pilot school programs. They will either lengthen the school day or the school year or both. We will call it an “expanded-learning program” and it will all be promoted in the name of “educational reform.” What is truly scary is that there are some radical voices out there who suggest that the only true fix for our educational woes is for our schools to be open six or seven days per week for eleven or twelve months out of the year. One of them just happens to be Arne Duncan, our national Secretary of Education. For some reason, I suddenly get this image of a “quarry slave at night, scourged to his dungeon”1 and see a dispirited child trapped in the chains of endless curriculum as day after day he claws at the rocks of calculus, chemistry, and a secular catechism.

We all confess that the only way to save some children is to just take them away from their parents. But theft is unethical. And to what end? To make our nation more competitive in the world? Are we to make our children the servants of national ambition? And just what is the good life? No one wants to talk about that. And so we have “seven day solutions” chasing phantom ends resulting in a treadmill existence.

Our school’s namesake chapter, Jeremiah 17, speaks to, nay, hammers at the issues of work, rest, poverty, and prosperity (read it slowly and often). Sin and a lack of trust in the living God can banish one to a stony waste in the wilderness as surely as any lack of a good education. And God instituted the Sabbath as His way of advocating for “six day solutions;” never seven. May we be resolute “six day” people in our “seven day” world.

Mercy and Truth, Mr. Moe 1Thanatopsis, William Cullen Bryant