December 2022
Dear Friends
It’s almost the perfect story for little children: nothing more
scary than a dazzling angel (if you leave out Herod’s rage) and nothing more
upsetting than finding, after a long journey while heavily pregnant, that the
inn has no record of the booking (leaving aside the barbarism of Herod’s
soldiers). Then there’s cute animals, a
cute baby and majestic kings riding exotic camels carrying expensive gifts.
But when little children grow up they start thinking like us
adults and that means they have problems with the story, especially with angel
messengers, a pregnant virgin, and a star that can stop over a house without
incinerating our whole planet. These
things are problems for them because we teach our children that we live in a
closed universe full of wonders but with nothing outside it, and so we close
their minds to anything beyond; there can’t be any answers that don’t begin and
end here.
But the Bible writers began with a different assumption – that
there is a creation and a Creator.
Their minds were open to the possibility that this Creator could do
things differently from usual. Creatures
who are not part of our material world could appear here if he wanted them to, human
life could begin without a human father, and a dazzling object in earth’s
atmosphere could function as star-nav.
The Creator is not limited by our closed minds. If there might be both a creation and
a Creator then perhaps Xmas is more believable than you thought?
Rebecca McLaughlin has written a brilliant little book
called “Is Christmas Unbelievable? Four
Questions Everyone Should Ask About the World’s Most Famous Story.” You can get it on Amazon for £3 but we have
lots of copies to give away too and you can pick
one up at this year’s Candlelit Carol Services.
Happy Christmas!
Graham Burrows
