Scott Peck, in his best-selling book, The Road Less Traveled, suggests that we can shape other people into host organisms. It is not a pretty picture: people are the intestine, we are the worm.

“I do not want to live. I cannot live without my husband [wife, girlfriend, boyfriend], I love him [or her] so much.”

And when I respond, as I frequently do, “You are mistaken; you do not love your husband [wife, girlfriend, boyfriend].”

“What do you mean?” is the angry question. “I just told you I can’t live without him [or her].”

I try to explain. “What you describe is parasitism, not love.”

The Bible summarizes these various shapes this way: People are our cherished idols. We worship them, hoping they will take care of us, hoping they will give us what we feel we need.  What we really need are biblical shapes and identities for other people.  Then, instead of needing people to fill our desires, we can love people for the sake of God’s glory and fulfill the purpose for which we were created.

-Ben

1. Everyone else to stop sinning in ways that annoy me, inconvenience me, or make me feel like I need to rebuke them or tell them to stop.
2. Everyone else to focus on making me happy, meeting my needs, fixing my problems.

Simple enough, right?  I feel like I’m not too unique here.

Here’s Jesus’ approach: “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” – Mark 10:45

I can’t “give my life as a ransom for many” and atone for sin.  But I can stop looking at myself and start looking at Jesus because of His atonement for sin. And I can serve others, for His glory, as Jesus enabled me and showed me how to do.

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. – 1 Peter 4:10-11

How to really be happy?  Live pointing at, relying on, and hoping in Jesus.

-Ben

These reactions have led to the catchphrase, “put the Christ back in Christmas.” This is a dual attempt to put Christmas back as the Holiday being celebrated this Season and refocus our hearts and minds on “the reason for the season” – the man of Jesus whose birth we celebrate on Christmas. Our response to this should be, “great! Which Christ?”

It’s not enough to just blindly “put the Christ back in Christmas” by fighting against the sins of greed and idolatry that the commercialism produces in us. Reading the Christmas stories, singing more “Christian” Christmas carols, and going to church on Christmas Eve are all good, but they don’t save people.

It’s the Christ that we’re “putting back into Christmas” that saves people.

That’s why he came. Yes, he set a good example for us. But he wasn’t just here as an example for us to follow. For instance, I don’t recommend you going around trying to forgive sins, claiming to be God, and inciting riots leading to your death on a cross. It’s those things that Jesus did that we can’t do that we celebrate most at Christmas. Jesus wasn’t just a perfect man, a good teacher, and an inspirational revolutionary. He changed the world by dying the death we should have died so we can live the life he deserved to live.

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.  – 1 Timothy 1:15

Save them from what?  Hell.  Save them for what?  Eternal life with Him.  The best gift of Christmas is God.

God is the Gospel.

For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.  – 2 Corinthians 4:5-7

That’s what we really need – “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.”  We are blinded by Satan, unable to see the glory of God and treasure Him as we ought.  But God broke into this world and removed the blinders from our eyes so that we could behold His glory and treasure Him, rightly, above all things.  

Sadly, Christmas has come to symbolize all the things we treasure above God.

God broke into this world on Christmas to free us from this idolatry and to proclaim amnesty – pardon – to us.  We deserve death, but he offered life to all who would turn to Him and trust Him and treasure Him.

God broke into this world on Christmas to free me from this idolatry and to proclaim amnesty to me.  But I see in my heart, that though I believe, there is still unbelief.  There is still much of me that longs for the things of this world, the comforts, the toys, the status, the success.  There is still much pride in me – pride that loves the praise of men and loves to ridicule men.

But I see in the Bible  (2 Peter 1:8) that God is working to sanctify me – to slowly change me to be more like Him and to desire Him more.  Or I guess that can be better phrased, be more like Him by desiring Him more.   I’m not perfect – no Christian is going to be perfect in this lifetime – but God is slowly causing me to enjoy more and more of Him.

This, this is Christ the King,
Whom shepherds guard and Angels sing;
Haste, haste, to bring Him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

-Ben

That’s fine, right?   Romans 12:9 says, “Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.”  Creation has been subjected to futility, and evil such as poverty, hunger, pain, suffering, loneliness, etc., abounds.

The only problem comes when we place the focus on fighting that external evil and miss the evil in our own hearts.  When “acting justly” and “loving mercy” trump “walking humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)  As Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick.”

So when we’re fighting evil, it must first be the evil in our own hearts.   Romans 3:10 says, “None is righteous, no, not one.”  To overlook our own sin for the rest of the evil in the world is a very dangerous thing.  Luke 9:25 – “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?”  It is possible to go about fighting evil all across the world, in the name of God, in the name of “selflessness”, and still not know God.

“The fear of the Lord is the hatred of evil.  Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.” – Proverbs 8:13

Hating, and “fighting”, evil is good.  We just need to look Biblically at what about evil we should hate and what it means to fight it.  Here we see, first and foremost, pride and arrogance.  Thinking we’re better than God.  Preferring ourselves, our own comfort, our own opinions, over God.  Looking for satisfaction in our view of ourselves and in others’ view of ourselves, instead of in God.  From Romans 12:9, perhaps we see some of how to fight evil: “hold fast to what is good.”  Latch on to the truth of who God is, the promises that he has for us, the work that he’s done for us and called us to do.

We need to set ourselves about killing our own sin before we set ourselves about killing natural evil.  We are called to act justly, and to love mercy, but apart from the regeneration of the Holy Spirit we won’t know how to do that.  It is far too easy to idolize what we see as “mercy” and “justice” without actually acting and loving.

And the heart of the matter is, it’s far too easy to forget the Gospel in all of this.  When we say, “Christ died to save sinners,” we mean, chiefly,  “Christ died to save sinners from hell for eternal life with Him.”  Yes, we’re all sinners.  Yes, we all deserve hell.  And hell really is the worst thing that could happen to us.  For those that don’t follow Christ, this world, no matter how much you are suffering in it, is the best you’ll ever know.  And heaven really is the best thing that could happen to us, because that’s where God is, and God is “the best thing.”  For those that do follow Christ, this world, no matter how joyful and happy we are now, is the worst we’ll ever know.

The most loving thing you can do for a person isn’t to feed them or to clothe them, but to tell them about Jesus.  Feeding and clothing them is loving – it shows them Christ’s love and compassion and shows that you treasure that more than yourself and are willing to place their own comfort above your own.  But withholding Christ from them is cruel. You’ve misled them into thinking that what they need most in this world is food (false!) and that what is most valuable in this world is food (false again!) and that you care more about their ability to survive the next few days than their eternal soul (tragic!).

Of course, I’m oversimplifying things here.  There’s much more to expound and explain than I have space or time for.  And it should go without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that I’m by no means an expert on any of these things – fighting sin, fighting natural/social/moral evil in the world, “walking humbly”, etc.  To paraphrase some wise men I respect, “I’m just a proud man pursuing humility by the grace of God.”

-Ben