The official LITD Christmas post

I often start my reflections on how I came to a genuine faith walk with one of my last few sticking points. There were a few, and a perusal of past years' Christmas posts is a good way to see them enumerated and elaborated upon.

You see, I didn't accept any of what I was taught at home or in Sunday school on good-faith reliance on the authority figures in my life. That's just not how I've ever rolled. I suppose some part of it was a demand for empirical proof, although I don't for the most part approach life scientifically. I think it was mainly the authority thing, submitting to a chain that went from "because mom and dad say so" up through "because the dean says so" to "because it is written in the Scriptures." Looking back, I can't see what kind of basis I had to go on for thinking that I could come up with a better set of guidelines for living, but by an early age the rock-and-roll rebel in me held sway. Believe me, there were consequences.

Anyway, one sticking point for me was that there was no discernible difference in human history, in the way our species behaved, between the time before Christ's earthly existence and after it. In fact, the Church founded upon his rock proved just as prone to corruption as any other institution.

So what was the point of his existence?

A way out of our predicament, of our being stuck in the way things seem to be, as I began to hazily intuit, but not yet fully embrace.

But, I then asked myself, what if there is no "predicament"? What if the chaotic fits and starts, the advancements and the setbacks, the acts of nobility and the acts of evil, are all we can expect from this thing called life?

Well, then, there's no point to any of it. None of it has meaning There's not a point to religion, let alone the Judaism from which Christianity sprang. There's no significance when justice occurs, or when mercy occurs. It's just as random as when the opposite occurs, and hopelessness and cruelty hold sway.

But something in the human heart knows better. And certain people throughout time and throughout the world fashioned myths and built shrines and temples to that which they reckoned decreed that a certain kind of order was right and proper.

We can see that the ancient Jews had the most accurate take on this. They listened most closely to what a sovereign universal ruler was revealing to humankind. Hence, the covenant, the Ten Commandments, the way David and other kings very much grew up in public, and the prophecies.

And then - Him. There's never been quite the same take on matters of the spirit and ultimate reality, not even from his Jewish forebears, let alone systems that sprang up in other cultures.

He was like us in every aspect, save one that is all-important: He created us - and, indeed, everything. Here was this guy, walking  around, x number of feet and inches tall, with a certain hair and eye color and pitch of voice. He got hungry and tired. He wept and laughed. He got mad on occasion. But through it all, he knew the end game, because he was the author of it. And he invites us to participate in that endgame with him.

Can we attain his perfect wisdom and mercy? No, but availing ourselves of his grace in spite of our inability to so attain achieves the same effect. We spend eternity free of what besets us during our brief time in this realm. That stuff is over for good.

And, indeed, the more closely people approach him, and the more people who do so, this world can become a better place to live. (Not that we want to get attached to it, though!)

"Look full in his wonderful face," as the song says.

You might as well look. His gaze is actually inescapable. He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake.

Just like when Judas kissed him, no matter what we do, he says, "I knew you were going to do that."

But his compassion is as inescapable as his gaze, and your crummy choices in no way diminish how much he wants you in his eternal company.

Look full in his wonderful face. It is the face of God.