Like a Child's Faith in Christmas

And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. Luke 1:31 And Mary said to the angel, "How will this be, since I am a virgin?" And the angel answered her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy--the Son of God. Luke 1:34-35

One of my favorite holiday movies is The Polar Express. In this movie, the boy has a stack of pictures, articles, encyclopedia entries, and questions that make him skeptical about Santa Clause’s existence. He continues in his skepticism throughout the movie, even after he caught a glimpse of Santa, rode on a magical train, and saw the North Pole and elves. He finally came to believe in Santa when he settled in his mind that he was going to simply have faith in one set of facts over another. He came to understand that believing is seeing.

We may not like to admit it, but the same is really quite true about the birth of Jesus. If you want to believe that Jesus is God and that He was born to Mary that night, you can find an infinite number of authors to prove your point. If you want to believe the opposite, there are an equal number of authors who will also prove your point. Satan uses this controversy to his advantage by keeping us in turmoil, so we’re always having to prove our faith. So you constantly have to ask yourself, “How can I know the Bible is infallible; how can I know that God became a man or really prove that Jesus was born at all?”

No one is immune from Satan’s trick. A couple of days ago as I started to read The Secular City, my mind started going over again “how can I really prove my faith?” and “how can we know if a set of facts are true?” But then I caught myself and realized that, like that boy in Polar Express, I had to say “ I believe” and simply leave it with that. Now, I’m not saying you should blindly accept what people say without thinking for yourself. It’s just that I have come to the place were I’m no longer threatened when a PhD says Jesus never lived, that He was just a good man who never did miracles, or that He is not God. When it comes down to it, it really doesn’t matter how important or smart the author is. I can find just as many people who are just as smart with the opposite view.

Satan wants to complicate the issue and make it harder then it really is. You don’t have to figure anything out. The simple choice is to simply believe or not. You don’t need any more proof to settle whether Jesus was born as Luke sets out. Friends, we have all the proof we need in our hearts that God is real, that He wants to reveal Himself to us, and that Jesus was born that night in Bethlehem.

We express this proof every Christmas time when we look to something greater then ourselves, some kind of love, hope, or joy, which will bring an end to the wars, pain, and suffering we face. Oh, sure, the department stores can side-step the reality of the season by saying that Santa Claus symbolizes this spirit or talking about “the spirit of Christmas.” The fact is that we’re really revealing something that God has printed on our hearts; we’re displaying our belief that there is a God in heaven who sees our hurt, who will some day end our suffering, and who will bring justice to the earth.

Some might object to this line of reasoning by suggesting that God is merely our highest hopes and aspirations personified. Sheer sentimentality and wishful thinking, however, are not enough to heal the hurts of our hearts or the world. That’s why I believe people get so depressed around Christmas time. People place their hopes that the goodwill of Christmas will ignite an end to all of our sorrows, but it’s never able to do so.

John Lennon, the leading atheist spokesman of our age, expressed this profound inadequacy of sentimentality to satisfy our religious needs in his song “So This Is Christmas.” The season’s highest hopes and aspirations are not enough to cure our cancer, keep people from getting sick from their treatment or keep them from the anguish. A faith in a sentimentality, science, philosophy, or idea is not enough to satisfy the longings of the human heart. As Christian author Norman Geisler points out, “There can be no true devotion without a personal object.” ¹

And this is where a simple faith in the birth of Jesus is very different from the secular aspirations of Christmas or a faith in Santa Claus. Secular Christmas, for all the expectations, has no power to bring about the peace we desire. But when I turn to the manger and the fact that God became a man with the purpose of revealing Himself to us, I find the peace my soul seeks. Even in circumstances that I do not want.

So, now, instead of asking “why me” when I suffer, I can think back to that manger and ask “why Him”? Why did He choose to feel the worst possible things we could feel: the indignities of a person violated, the loss of a child, spouse, or friend, the personal suffering of illness, torture, and injustice? Jesus experienced life as you and I have and then took all our suffering on Himself on the cross when God came to earth in the form of the God-man. Consequently, He can now tell you in your moment of suffering, “I know exactly how you feel, because I have felt your pains of life; because I felt that too, when I died for you on the cross.” More than that, He can do something about it, because he is God.

This is why it’s so important to believe the facts of Jesus’ birth. If the Gospel writers made up Jesus birth to fit the prophecies, then Jesus is not God, and He has no way of feeling and healing my hurts. If Jesus was only a man, we are still dead in our sins. My faith is no different than that of a person believing in the false hopes of a secular Christmas which can bring no peace. Friends, we have all the proof we need about the reality of Jesus’ birth. Believing is seeing.

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, 'They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.' As I swore in my wrath, 'They shall not enter my rest.' " Heb. 3:7-11

¹Geisler, Norman, Is Man The Measure, Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1985, p167.

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