Sunday, December 16, 2007

Trivialization of Christmas

You hear a lot about how we've made Christmas trivial: how we've lost its true meaning and commercialization has stolen a most sacred holiday. And that's certainly true. It is just very easy to miss the important with so much that is trivial pressing from all sides.

But if we who are called Jesus' followers attempt to place all the blame on the world around us, without accepting our own fault in the matter, we are kidding ourselves.

So much of what we say about Christmas seems to lessen the importance of the incarnation...God becoming man. We speak of brotherly love and peace on earth, which are undeniably good things. But Christmas is about something much more revolutionary. If God truly has become man, as we say we believe, then everything else is secondary.

There is certainly no problem with emphasizing the many good things we associate with Christmas. But there is only one true meaning of Christmas. It is that "The Word became flesh and lived among us." We do the world a disservice if we let than message be choked out--even by good things.

Monday, December 3, 2007

Excellenct Excellence

When the book In Search of Excellence was the rage it immediately began something of a debate in church circles. Initially, I remember many Christians questioning whether excellence was a legitimate goal for the church.

It seems today that the debate is settled. Church services today are typically much better planned and executed than 25 years ago. Even smaller churches give much more attention to small details to ensure that the poor quality does not distract from the message. And personally, I think that's a good thing.... to a point.

The focus of the debate when the book first appeared was whether we should choose excellence over Spirituality; whether excellence was essentially fleshly; whether human effort would replace dependence on the Spirit. The problem was that a false dichotomy was created: Why should dependence on the Spirit detract from a commitment to doing things well?

Ironically, we may need to re-visit the idea. Are we so committed to excellence today that we are willing to compromise spirituality and moral excellence? Do we demand the highest "quality" in our services, and spend so much time pursuing it, that we are no longer dependent on the Spirit? And do we choose human performance over spiritual reality?

The question should not be phrased as either/or. But when there is a choice, the choice is clear.