The past few weeks have been pretty emotional for me, along with countless other Americans. The reason for my emotional instability is that I don't know how I feel about celebrating Christmas in light of the tragedy that recently occurred in Connecticut. I don't want to dwell on the facts of that event...or even the reactions that have stemmed from those details. What I have been focusing on has been increasingly visceral and much more emotional: I've been thinking about the way in which Christmas was stolen specifically from 20 sets of parents and how suddenly their world fell apart. I've been selfishly dwelling on my mind's images of those innocent children and their uncanny resemblance to my Kindergartner Emma and her group of friends. I recently read a quote from author Greg Welsh that made me ponder even more deeply on this subject:
"This big beautiful world which is all we have needs more prayer and less bullets. You're not hating when you're praying; you're not plotting unspeakable attrocities when you're praying. Answers are in praying...calm comes from praying...big picture understanding, yep, you got it, comes from praying. Maybe a prayer along the line of 'Jesus, please calm the violence that swirls amongst my thoughts these days...' could have given us a new outcome to this soul-crunching ordeal..."
Mr. Welsh makes some great points that ultimately lead us to a very Biblical solution: the measure of a society's ability to resolve moral issues rests not in moral legislation but rather in deciphering the motivation for the morality. Now I don't mean to say that legislation is unnecessary...this statement simply reflects the idea that legislation alone is unable to provide the solution to the motivation for these types of incidents. We can clearly see, from a Biblical perspective, that all of humanity suffers from an ugly truth: Romans 3:23 aptly states, "All have sinned and fall short of God's glory." Mankind, by nature, is depraved and messed up and confused; it is our natural default setting to be wrong to each other, to be selfish, and we very naturally move away from the "good" of God plunging headlong into everything short of God's beauty and love and justice. All of humanity is afflicted by this reality. When tragedies the size of Newtown happen, we tend to self-protectively distance ourselves from that calculated evil in any way that we can, placing blame anywhere we can...as long as we are not part of what is to blame. What Greg seems to be saying is that the only true hope for society cannot be found in any human means but only outside of the human-focused attempts we make at resolution...what Mr. Welsh is saying is that the only hope humanity truly holds rests in praying to our Ever-Present, Ever-Gracious, Ever Hope-Providing Father and in KNOWING that in our desperation a true solution has already been found.
2 Corinthians 5:17 states, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." The simple truth of that verse is that individually we are being made new through Christ's transforming power; in the same way, we are corporately made new through the gathering, the equipping, and the sending aspects of the Christian communal experience. Christians make things better, make things right, make things new through their very presence in society...not because of their inherent "goodness" but because of the goodness of Jesus as He reaches into the confusion of the world through the obvious presence of His Followers. At that point, moral consciousness is changed as Christ is integrated into the societal experience through an influx of Christians but not solely through an invasion of Christian thought. Many times, it is not what is being said but rather what is being seen and modeled and displayed. What Mr. Welsh is saying is that society's hope rest not in looking inward but undoubtedly is found in peering outward...specifically towards the only One who promises hope that is lasting and perfect and eternal. Society, people, need Jesus.
So, as Christmas quickly approaches, and as Nativity scenes are spotted on wintry drives through neighborhoods in the places we call home, remember that Jesus is not only the reason for the season, but He is the reason for hopeful anticipation of all things "being made new". His arrival on earth, 2000 years ago, ushered in a new paradigm...a new way of thinking about the world, about existence, and about the future. Even with the current tragedies, even with the tragedies that will occur in the future, we still have hope. With that thought in mind, I want to emphatically say Merry Christmas. May the God who offers you a future remind you within your hope-filled heart, He too has hopes for you. May you exist in that place where you are always filled with hope and in turn encourage others to have hope in Him as well.
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