Dignity I

Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner partook of the same; ASV Heb. 2:14

For all you word fans out there, Christmas is a time where we celebrate the Incarnation; God with us. Like no other, our God chose to come near and inhabit our world with us in human form. Incarnation literally means “in flesh.” It derives from the Latin word, caro, from which we derive all sorts of words such as carnal, carnivorous, and even carnival which harks back to the celebrations that would take place before the “doing away with meat” during Lent. The Incarnation of Christ in our world has been the source of much holiday meditation of mine and is a concept that both appalls me and thrills me.

On the appalling side, I can get quite queasy when I dwell on the weaknesses of the flesh. I could never be a doctor or especially a surgeon. Once the body is opened up, I am easily sickened by the sights of quivering, bloody tissue. I prefer to picture each of you as freshly washed and groomed persons in your Sunday best beaming smiles from your Christmas pictures. That you are spirits wrapped in flesh that is subject to a thousand corruptions and quite capable of emanating the foulest of substances is a fact I choose not to dwell upon. And our Lord stooped to take on this mantle of weakness? It is hard for me to imagine a more bizarre scenario. How could he do this?

On the thrilling side, the very fact that Christ did take on the form of human flesh with all its concomitant weaknesses and frailties is incredibly ennobling. Christmas forever puts a stamp of extreme value upon all human flesh as God himself chooses to take it on for the purpose of redeeming all humanity. He shares in our universal weakness, our suffering, and our pain to accomplish His plan of salvation for a broken and lost creation. But not for all, not for the plants, the animals; just for man alone. All creation stands as a mere backdrop for this drama of redemption for people such as you and I.

This is what changes everything when we look at creation and all the world. Mankind has a dignity and worth because of the price tag God put upon it. This idea has previously infected all of western civilization through the ages but now is in grave danger. Our modern world is attempting to maintain the old values regarding the dignity of man apart from the underpinnings of Christian faith. Pity on those who try for it is hard to do. Many hang their hopes on focusing on the rationality of man and his free will to choose. This is a threadbare hope at best and one which will wither away, but surely it will never resist the onslaught of a determined attack. Even now there are those who talk about defending new born life only when a certain “viability” is attained. “Choice” is, in fact, championed as a supreme act of the free will in terminating the unborn. And the loss of rationality is becoming dangerously close to justify the ending of “unmeaningful” life.

When we talk of critical thinking as a worthwhile and virtuous activity, I would urge you to examine with your children this whole idea of the dignity of man as we have traditionally come to presume upon it. It is in poor health in our society, and we Christians are the only folks that have the gold standard antidote. Do your children know what is at stake here? I would plead with you to take time and effort to discuss and teach them in very concrete terms the ramifications of the incarnation. This can be a Bible lesson or one seen in literature or History. The stark test of it is to visit a nursing home and wade into rooms full of the feeble, the broken, the incontinent, the mentally absent, the less than sweet smelling, and to touch their translucent skin in a way that says that they have great value because God said so. The fate of our society as we know it depends upon it.