Master of the Universes

Doubt, for me, tends to come in an overwhelming package, all at once. I don’t worry much about nuances of particular doctrines, but every so often I catch myself wondering about the whole grand scheme of faith.

I stand in the futuristic terminal at O’Hare Airport, for example, watching important-looking people in business suits, briefcases clutched to their sides like weapons, pause at an espresso bar before scurrying off to another concourse. Do any of them ever think about God? I wonder.

Christians share a seemingly odd belief in parallel universes. One universe consists of glass and steel and leather briefcases and the smell of freshly ground coffee. The other consists of angels and demons and places called heaven and hell. We palpably inhabit the material world; it takes faith to consider oneself a citizen of the other, invisible world.

Occasionally the two worlds merge for me, and these rare moments are anchors for my faith: The time I snorkeled on a coral reef and suddenly the flashes of color and abstract design flitting around me became a window to a Creator who exults in life and beauty; the time my wife forgave me for something that did not merit forgiveness. That, too, became a window, a glimpse of divine grace.

I have these moments, but soon toxic fumes from the material world seep in. Sex appeal! Power! Money! Military might! These are what matter most in life, I’m told, not the simpering platitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. For me, living in a fallen world, doubt seems more like forgetfulness than disbelief.

Two worlds come together

I do not feel much Dickensian nostalgia at Christmastime. The holiday fell just a few days after my father died early in my childhood, and all my memories of the season are darkened by the shadow of that sadness. For this reason, perhaps, I am rarely stirred by manger scenes and tinseled trees. Yet, more and more, Christmas has enlarged in meaning for me, primarily as an answer to my doubts, an antidote to my forgetfulness.

In Christmas, the two worlds come together. If you read the Bible alongside a Civilization 101 textbook, you will see how seldom that happens. The textbook dwells on the glories of ancient Egypt and the pyramids; Exodus mentions the names of two Hebrew midwives but neglects to identify the pharaoh. The textbook honors the contributions from Greece and Rome; the Bible contains a few scant references, mostly negative, and treats civilizations as background for God’s work among the Jews.

Yet on Jesus the two books agree—at least, in part. I switched on my computer this morning and Microsoft Windows flashed the date, implicitly acknowledging what the Gospels and the history book both affirm: whatever you may believe about it, the birth of Jesus was so important that it split history into two parts: before Christ and after Christ.

In the cold, in the dark, among the wrinkled hills of Bethlehem, God who knows no before or after entered time and space. He who knows no boundaries took them on: the confines of a baby’s skin, the restraints of mortality. “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation,” Paul would later say; “he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

But the few eyewitnesses on Christmas night did not see that. They saw an infant struggling to work never-before-used lungs.

Reading God’s signature

Why did Jesus come to Earth?

Some theologians tend to answer that question from the human perspective: He came to show us what God is like, to show us what a human being should be like, to lay down his life as a sacrifice for us. I cannot help thinking, though, that the Incarnation had meaning in other, cosmic ways.

God loves matter. You can read his signature everywhere: rocks that crack open to reveal delicate crystals, the clouds swirling around Venus, the fecundity of the oceans (home to 90 percent of all living things). Clearly, according to Genesis, the act of Creation gave God pleasure.

Yet Creation also introduced a gulf between God and his subjects, a gulf that can be sensed all through the Old Testament. Moses, David, Jeremiah, and other bold wrestlers with the Almighty flung this accusation to the heavens: “Lord, you don’t know what it’s like down here!” Job was most blunt: “Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as a mortal sees?”

They had a point, a point God himself acknowledged by visiting planet Earth. Choosing words that astonish, the author of Hebrews reflects on Jesus’ life as a time when he “learned obedience,” “was made perfect,” and became a “sympathetic” high priest. There is only one way to learn sympathy, as signified by the Greek roots of the word syn pathos, “to feel or suffer with.”

Of the many reasons for the Incarnation, surely one was to answer Job’s accusation. Do you have eyes of flesh?

Indeed. I, a citizen of the visible world, know well the struggle involved in clinging to belief in another, invisible world. Christmas turns the tables and hints at the struggle involved when the Lord of both worlds descends to live by the rules of the one. In Bethlehem, the two worlds came together, and what Jesus went on to accomplish on Earth made it possible for God to resolve all disharmonies in both worlds. No wonder a choir of angels broke out in spontaneous song, disturbing not only a few shepherds, but the entire universe.

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