Luke 2:4-7
“And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” ( Luke 2:4-7)
Christmas was the happiest time of the year and I never doubted anything about it. Until my twentieth birthday. And then–angels singing in the sky? A baby born to a girl who had no contact with a man? A star that moved around locally?
1015 Gregg Street, Columbia, South Carolina–that’s where I was born and that’s where I celebrated those happy, happy Christmases year after year. But then I encountered Freud. I was twenty years old with a freshly minted BA and supreme self-confidence. That’s when I got acquainted with Freud as the father of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Only later did I discover that he was the most influential philosopher of the 20th Century, almost single handedly creating our therapeutic society. He made sense to me. And the more sense he made to me, the less sense the Bible did.
Losing confidence in the Bible stories, before long I lost God. Oh, I wasn’t arrogant enough to be an atheist. How could I affirm that such a being didn’t exist if I’d never even been to the other side of the moon? But I was agnostic. I didn’t know, could no longer affirm God’s existence. In fact I found myself committed to a thoroughly naturalistic view of life. Nothing was for sure unless I could put it in a test-tube, under a magnifying glass and prove it. What was to have been liberating freedom from the old superstitions, however, turned out to be a lonely road. If you couldn’t believe something unless you could prove it scientifically, then the most important things in life were uncertain – love, for example. With what sonar do you plumb the depths of love, with what scales measure the weight of it, with what tape determine the breadth of it? Or hope–where do you look for it, let alone find it? Especially for the dark void beyond the grave? That Christmas was lonely indeed. I didn’t simply lose the tinsel and trees, I didn’t merely lose the Bible and God. Nothing in fact was for sure – it all depends, they told me. I was trying to live by that ultimate oxymoron, absolute relativism. Nothing is really for sure except this one thing – nothing is for sure!
Then I had a moment of truth – “If you’re so all-fired scientific, McQuilkin, why have you excluded the possibility of a god from your investigations?” Thus I mused. And thus I decided I should be at least honest enough to give that option a try. So I prayed – the first time in a long while – a rather arrogant prayer: “Oh, God, if you do exist, please prove it to me on my terms. Give me evidence in a way I can see it, touch it, evaluate it rationally.” I didn’t think he could, even if he did exist. But maybe God answers even arrogant prayers…
For me he did! I had in my hands a book I didn’t believe. Especially I was bothered by the Old Testament. But I did have it my hands. I could evaluate it rationally, scientifically, so to speak. I knew what the critics disallowed as un-authentic. But as I began my investigation with the residue of what the critics admitted as evidence in their highly programed “court,” I found predictions of a coming messiah – when and where he would be born, what he would do, that he would die, how he would die in a criminal’s execution, but that he would live forever. Impossible! Hundreds of years before the events (even by the critics’ dating)–why, I reasoned, even the most renowned futurist or fortune teller couldn’t match that!
Thus I began timidly, slowly to return to the faith of my fathers. Enough to enter into ministry, ultimately as a missionary, yet! But still doubts about the reliability of the Book lurked around fringes of my consciousness. Ten years passed. At last I said to myself, “In or out, McQuilkin – get this thing settled once for all.” So I pitched a tent on a lonely beach to spend as much time as I needed to get it settled – “in or out.” I decided to read the gospels. As I read I was well aware of what the critics challenged, what “couldn’t be so.” But as I read a second and third time through, a historic person loomed over all the theories and challenges, over all the critics and detractors, a person who – try as I might – could not be explained in naturalistic terms. On the third day, as I stood looking over the broad Pacific, contemplating this unexplainable person, there seemed to be a presence with me, almost tangible, and a voice, almost audible. What I heard in my soul was the question, “Little brother, are you smarter than I?”
All the lights flashed on. “Oh, no, no Lord. I’m not smarter than you. And none of those critics – now long gone and forgotten for the most part – are smarter than you.” I ran to Jesus and embraced him with my mind. He’s smarter than I! Whatever he said about the Book, I accepted. He’s smarter than I. Whatever he taught about God and how to find him, about my final destiny, that I accepted. Oh, there are still parts of the Bible I wish weren’t there, things I don’t understand, but I can wait. In the meantime, I trust the record, I trust him. He’s smarter than I!
So let the celebration begin! Merry Christmas! There is a God and he does care enough about this dysfunctional old world to reach out in person on a rescue mission. It would be hard to imagine a more beautiful way to begin the Christmas story. Celebrate!