The Terror of Christmas

The Terror of Christmas

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Well, it's Christmas; the birthday of that guy who swung a violent whip at people, driving them out of the temple, the guy who let most of those following him know that they were on the road to a burning eternal hell, the guy who told the religious leaders of the time that they were the sons of Satan. Some guy, huh?
Christ is love?
Yes, He is, no doubt about it. But that brings about another question: What is love? (if you want another answer to this question, go to my column "What Is Love?" in this same Let's Talk section).
Is love telling someone that you love them when you really don't? Is love giving someone a drink when they're an alcoholic because they are begging and crying for it? Is love letting someone pass a class or get a college degree simply because you feel it is owed to them?
Or is love telling someone that they don't yet have the skills necessary for a particular job and that they'll have to work harder if they want to succeed? Is love telling your seven year old that he can't go to the movies with the other kids because of his misbehavior in the department store and actually not giving in to his pleas for you to change your mind ... "just this once?" Is it love when you tell you best friend that his fiancé just propositioned you, even though it might affect your friendship negatively? Is it love when you allow your wife to stay fat even though it makes her ashamed to go anywhere out of embarrassment?
Love doesn't always look pretty. It doesn't always come in the form of a calm, soft, warm caress. Sometimes it comes in the form of a hard truth. Sometimes it takes on a picture of criticism, a stern rebuke. Sometimes love is a slap in the face or a punch in the gut. It aint easy. Love – true love – is often difficult, offensive ... ugly even.
Case in point, Jesus Christ.
It isn't sweet or pretty to be stripped of all, and I mean ALL, of your clothes, as Roman crucifixion did, and hung upon a cross for all the world to see. Ripping someone's skin into a bloody mass where the sinews and open tattered muscle can be seen isn't pretty. Having your beard ripped from your chin in clumps isn't pretty. Having eight inch long, three quarter inch thick spikes pounded through your hands and feet isn't pretty.
It's ugly.
It's dehumanizing. It's humiliating. It's demeaning, loathsome, hideous, horrific, harrowing, agonizing ... and when it's done against an innocent man with his own consent, at the hands of the guilty, to save the guilty, it is the only real and tangible example of love. Such love is incomprehensible. We can only understand it in the most adumbrated of ways.
You want love? I give you sacrifice. You want love? I give you blood. You want love? I give you Christ. His blood is the measure of all love. As we were ripping His flesh, He was shedding tears for our mocking, black hearts. As we were spitting in His face, He was defending us to the Father. As we were laughing at His agony, He was petitioning for our forgiveness.
That, is love.
Were we to ever get even the slightest unshielded glimpse of such true and terrifying love, our souls would evaporate into a mist in an instant.
Thanks be to God for His protection from His wrath and from His full and awesome glory.
And thanks be to Christ for His birth, blood, death, and resurrection.

Keck

I will be on vacation form my weekly column until the first of January. So look for me to return to my regular wit, wisdom, and worthlessness after that.