A Christmas Devotional

Tis the night before Christmas and I’ll soon be asleep, but there are things to put down before I ask the Lord to keep.  Just some random thoughts to share.

The Creator of the Universe, all-knowing and all-powerful, chose to come down as a homeless, vulnerable baby, as far from the all-power as one might imagine.

To demonstrate His great power, God used Caesar Augustus to move the whole empire so that Mary and Joseph might travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, where the prophets foretold.

When the Wise Men saw Jesus’ Star rise in the East, was it the choir of angels ascending on high from their appearance to the shepherds?

Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was the only person to be there at his birth, his death, and his rebirth.

All the hype that has built up in the world of ‘secular’ Christmas cannot touch the appearance of that choir of angels.

The ‘pagan’ influences that have entered Christmas, i.e. the tree, the mistletoe, the holly, whatever else,  they are simply tribute to the greatest gift we have ever received.

If you read Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”, the author rejoices in the birth story of Jesus as the backdrop for the redemption that comes upon Scrooge-something that rarely translates into the screen adaptations.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Putting The Sentence All Together...

Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance

We are called upon to be like responsible children, those who can take on the things that the Lord has for us.  There is tremendous peer pressure that will be brought to bear upon us not to act in this manner.  Rather, the way things were, the ways ‘we’ve always done things’, tradition, this is what we can expect to return to.  Peer pressure will press us to return to these ways.  But these ways are from the time when we were ignorant, when we did not know that the Lord God had in store for us. 

Peter has gone from ‘recapping’ the faith message he brought in person to his readers to laying out for them what is expected in response.  BC-Before Christ-they lived lives of ignorance.  AC-After Christ (more consistent than AD, Anno Domino, “Year of Our Lord”)-everything has changed.  And they are expected, we are expected, to respond in the proper way to this change of everything.

“In Ignorance”: That Is A Place I Do Not Want To Live

Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance.

So we were conformed to our desires, which were lived in ignorance before the coming of the Lord Jesus.  Ignorance is a very interesting idea in the Christian faith.  What are we guilty of before our Father in heaven if we are living in ignorance?  How do the consequences of judgment press upon us when our ignorance has been enlightened by the light of our Lord Jesus Christ? 

“Ignorance” is like another country where we lived before we, the readers, came into the Kingdom of God.  I like how Peter has not automatically judged the ignorant, unlike many in the church today.  The ignorant are as hell-sent as the worst criminal.  Yes, well, that is one of those points of the faith that troubles me the most.

Ignorance, living there is living in a realm where we did not know any better.  The desires we had before, maybe in the light of Christ, they continue to exist as possible ways of living, but something fundamental has changed.  Living in Christ, living for Christ, that changes the ends and the means of our lives.  Because now we know better. 

And there is no going back.

What Does It Mean “To The Desires That You Formerly Had”?

Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance

There is an “old life-new life” dualism that exists in Biblical thinking.  This is the “old life” that Peter does not want his readers to return to.  It is full of desires.  Now, 21^st century American usage of the word “desires” usually presumes a sexual connotation to the word.  It lends the word a heavier aura than what it I think Peter intends.

I see a competing dualism in American Christianity.  On the one hand, there is a virulent stream of evangelistic thought that is motivated by a sincere theological belief that hell is for everybody but the chosen few.  On the other hand, there is a reaction to that kind of thinking, one that considers hell to be for evil people, of which the vast majority of us are not.  It translates into something that I have heard stated “well, I am basically a good person”.

“Conforming to the desires that you formerly had” is talking about something that is qualitatively different, to my way of thinking.  The most basic expression of believing in Jesus is found in Jesus’ command to love God and love Neighbor.  This leads to a whole new way of doing things, focused out from ourselves, focused for the common and the greater good, a renewal of all creation worked out even in ourselves.

The Desires That We Formerly Had are not simply the collection of sinful behaviors for which we might be condemned.  Rather, it is an entire lifestyle that is based around the self and our own personal fulfillment.  It is quite possible that the desires we formerly had are completely in line with the bible, the 10 Commandments and so on.  But life in Christ opens up something completely new.  Once we have experienced it, Peter warns against going back. 

Do Not Be Conformed

Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance

Remember high school.  Remember peer pressure?  You were supposed to conform to what the rest of the kids were doing.  Dress like them, act like them, do what is acceptable to them.  Exploring the nuances of peer pressure, of conformity, is at the heart of one of my favorite movies from my time in high school and today.  It is John Hughes at his best, “The Breakfast Club”.

Conformity is certainly not limited to high school.  Churches suffer from it too.  “Proper” worship requiring the ‘right’ kind of dress, the ‘proper’ music, the ‘correct’ instruments, the ‘approved’ point of view; that all reflects an ecclesial (that is a latin-borrowed technical term for “churchly”) peer pressure. 

This is not to say that peer pressure is always a bad thing.  When a drill sergeant is trying to build unit cohesion in boot camps, peer pressure is a force to bring civilians into line with the new skill set of being soldiers and sailors.  Even in high school, if your child falls in with the right group of friends, it can be a life-changer.   It could be the loner who discovers the theater kids or the nerd who joins the marching band, it can change their life.

All of this presumes something.  Conformity depends on something to be conformed to.  There needs be a model, a set of assumptions, rules to define what is right or wrong; something against which conformity is measured.  It can be good or bad.  Peter is telling his readers not to be conformed, foreshadowing that something negative is under way.

Like obedient children,

Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance

When I was taking a summer lab course during college, one of the supervisors made a comment that has stuck with me all my life. “I would rather be a responsible child than an irresponsible adult.”  When I shared that with my mom, she was not at all pleased with the idea.  Given the context, her son in college, apparently preparing for adulthood, spouting some nonsense about staying a child...

 I would like to think of an obedient child as a responsible child.  Such is our relationship to our God.  As Jesus teaches us to open the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father, who art in heaven…”  The obedient child gives us two things to think about.  There is the child.  Jesus is God’s Son, the firstborn of us all as we are made children, no longer servants, of the Living God.

Then there is the word ‘obey’.  We, freedom loving Americans, don’t take kindly to that word.  It was not welcome in my wedding vows.  But this is far different.  We are not battling the sin of hierarchy.  We are taking our relationship to God seriously.  To truly do the work of Jesus, we must be as Jesus was, obedient to our Father in heaven.