Bing Crosby goes Rambo: Thoughts on Christmas and the Incarnation

Been thinking about Christmas. Right after Halloween, the music in Walmart turned Bing Crosby on me and the lights started to go up around town. Some parts of the holidays make my stomach churn: everything turns Hallmark and pristine. For a month (or several months in some stores) our whole society turns into "It's a Wonderful Life." At it's worse, it loosens our wallets and diets in the spirit of warm liberality. At it's best, it encourages "peace on earth, good will towards men" as a short respite from calamitous times. But the kitsch wears on me after a while. I get tired of the porcelain figurines, and the bigger versions in front of churches: a baby among barn animals with angels looking on adoringly. Awwww... cute. Sometimes I just can't take it seriously.

But what I do take seriously; What I love about Christmas is the Incarnation, the literal "enfleshment" of God. It's God's outrageous all-or-nothing effort to pursue the hearts of mankind and rescue them from death. Like Hannibal crossing the Alps to attack Rome from the north... It's so crazy, it just might work. For centuries, God had spoken to Israel through prophets, warning of imminent doom, yet hinting at a rescue plan, a renewal of David's royal line, bigger and broader than anyone imagined. And it starts in the Death Star's tiny access chute, a chink in Satan's cosmic armor: a baby in a barn. Perfect. Having no natural humility, the enemy would never think to look for the Messiah in the humblest place.

So Jesus is air-dropped under the radar deep behind enemy lines. In my imagination, the manger is cold and dark. Mary and Joseph are scared and exhausted. The angels are six-winged creatures, covered in sleepless eyes, terrifying yet awed by God's perfectly upside-down plan. The baby has this quiet about-to-kick-some-ass look about him. It looks more like "Lord of the Rings" and less like "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

To me, the incarnation is hopelessly beautiful. It's God stopping at nothing to change everything. Yearning for His creation to know and follow Him, he puts all His cards on the table and finds a way to inflict our punishment on Himself. Becoming one of us, God-in-flesh begins to whisper about a new revolution: a Kingdom that transcends national boundaries, an inside-out redemption of all things. Like the Israelites enslaved in Egypt, God has a plan to loot the enemy's  kingdom and leave it desolate and hollow through the ultimate espionage. It begins with God conquering death by dying. It moves forward into a new "race" of people, a race of the "living dead" (dead to the dreams of this world, alive in God's Spirit and Kingdom) sabotaging the enemy in his own territory by displaying other-woldly love, audacious humility, and radical justice. It culminates in a New Creation, a setting-right of all things, a final judgement, and the running-over of time into eternity.

I'd like to see that Christmas card.

A good kind of fear

I read the first 7 chapters of Ezekiel. It got me thinking about the fear of the Lord and my own fears.

Imagine. 4 living creatures appear, flying with wings outstretched underneath an icy expanse over which a throne and figure like a man (half molten metal, half flames) float, casting rays of light and rainbows of radiant color. The whole assembly approaches and you hear a voice addressing you, telling you to warn a rebellious nation against imminent destruction.

The story goes that Ezekiel sat quietly for 7 days overwhelmed. (I’m pretty sure that’s the appropriate response.) Then He started doing some crazy stuff: lying on his side for over a year, cooking his food with cow pies, laying siege to homemade etchings of Jerusalem.

But I have to wonder how my life would change if I lived with the image of God in His holiness always before me. For one thing, all my earthly fears (rejection, loneliness, poverty, death) would be dramatically trumped by my fear of God. Also, the prosperity gospel would sound pretty silly. The idea that God’s greatest aim is my comfort, security, and happiness would seem quite hollow.

But frankly, I’d rather encounter this living, terrifying God and be led from the experience in “bitterness and anger” against a rebellious people than live in comfort and security oblivious to the terrifying awesomeness of His Presence.

I think each of us is made to live our lives drawn along by a vision of God’s holiness. People, I believe, are most alive and most authentic when their fear of God trumps all other fears. But we’ve been enticed to lust after the idols of security, happiness, and self-sufficiency. At some level we all want to do life all by ourselves. God is given authority in our lives only insomuch as he plays along with our personal ambitions. And the fluffy spirituality that we’re spoonfed every Sunday plays right into our secret hope that someday, God might leave us alone to live happy and contented lives without the ambiguity of the hard stuff He sometimes requires of us. But God’s enduring passion throughout Ezekiel is that “they will know that I am the LORD.” He says it over and over after every prophecy, every judgment.

So when my ambition for comfort works against God’s ambition for glory, who will win? God Himself will ensure that at the end of all things, whether through love or wrath, trial or blessing, salvation or damnation… that “every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

So in every word and action, let me acknowledge that He is the LORD. Let me trust my fear to one who is trustworthy and good. Then I’ll be free from all other fears. That’s why God’s promise to give Ezekiel a stubborn spirit and firm resolve to accomplish his prophetic commission is believable: because the promise comes only after the vision…. AFTER Ezekiel sees something truly worth fearing, all his other fears can take a back seat.

God plant the fear of You in the central locus of my identity.

Weaning off the Ego Strokes

Today I was reading my bible and I felt the impulse to look up Ezekiel 3:9. That happens to me a lot: random bible references pop into my head. Sometimes, the verse is obscure or even silly. Other times, the reference doesn't exist! Today though, it was profound.

"I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint. Do not be afraid of them of terrified by them, though they are a rebellious house."

Ezekiel was being sent as a prophet to Israel in exile. A stubborn and rebellious group, God promises Ezekiel that they won't heed his message. But He also promises to give Ezekiel a thick skin and stubbornness to match.

For weeks I've been asking God to remove this gnawing fear of people, to burn it out of me. Particularly toxic to me is the approval or rejection of respected Christian leaders. Their approval strokes my ego and their rejection darn-near crushes me.

It's always been that way. Since I decided to follow Jesus at age 16, the personal attention and approval of key Christian mentors has steered me down a path to become the person they will approve of: a visionary leader with impressive personal charisma. Is that really me or do I just play the part? Right now, I think the answer is yes and yes.

The problem is that through my personal relationship with God, I've developed some skepticism towards many churches and the folks that shepherd them. In part, I feel I also have a prophetic calling to a rebellious house: the Church. A beautiful bride stubbornly prostituting herself to Security, Comfort, and Success. I feel like I'm supposed to call the church to higher integrity and deeper discipleship. But that means challenging the leaders I idolize. It's a conflict of interests. Do what's right, invite rejection, lose self-esteem.


I feel I need to experience His sufficiency to meet the needs once met by people. Or at least I need to be so terrified by His holiness that fear of man pales in comparison! I feel like today's verse is a promise to me: that one way or another, God will strengthen my resolve, wean me from the ego-strokes of people, and instill a stubbornness about the truth; a thick skin and a firm resolve. Yes please.

This weekend, I'm going to a

Remembering 101 for Amnesiacs

I've been reading the Psalms lately and I'm dumfounded by the role that remembering plays in the worship-lives of the authors. They were still praising God for things he did a zillion years prior.

"You, O God are my king from old... It was you who split open the sea... It was you who opened up the springs... Your path led through the sea... You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron... [You] guided them with a cloud by day and with light from the fire all night."

Remembering is key to faithfulness: knowing that what's before me NOW doesn't necessarily define what's real. Remembering brings stability and sobriety to the way we process our present experiences. I can remember what God has done in my life and realize how subjective my perception is.

For a long time, I wanted to be a spiritual rogue: someone who figures everything out by himself and doesn't need help from anyone. Nowadays, I find tremendous comfort in knowing that the spiritual journey I'm on is one walked by countless others before me. I used to hate Christian history because of all the abuse that church history has recorded. But now I love it because I realize that even in medieval, byzantine, or renaissance cultures, God genuinely reveals Himself to humble hearts and works powerfully on their behalf. History recorded the abuse, but that's no surprise. Newspapers love Fred Phelps, but no headline will read, "Grandma Still Godly after 90 Years." So, I've made a choice to walk away from faddish buffet-style spirituality. I'm choosing to remember who God is and how He's shown Himself to countless generations.

Has God worked in your life? Have you glimpsed His love and power? How about your parents or grandparents? When was the last time we praised God with elation for the Welsh Revival, The Great Awakening, Irish Monasticism, or the early Catholic missions movement? That's tough, when I can hardly remember what He did in my life last year. When I consider His faithfulness in my life alone, I have no reason to doubt his presence and power and love through my life and the scheme of human history. But I forget easily. The psalmists seemed to understand our propensity toward amnesia. That's why in the midst of authenticity about pain, and doubt, and confusion, the mantra of those old worship songs seems to be, "Remember. Recite. Repeat."