Now Nadab and
Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid
incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, which he had not
commanded them. And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed them, and
they died before the LORD. Then Moses said to Aaron, Ò This is what the LORD
has said, ÔAmong those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all
people I will be glorified,ÕÓ And Aaron held his peace.
— Leviticus:
10:1-3 English Standard Version
Today is the first day of Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of
Lights. According to the Jewish calendar on the twenty-fifth of Kislev, the
first of eight candles were lit, just after sundown Tuesday evening. The
celebration marks the rededication of the Second Temple during the Maccabean
Revolt in the second century BCE, as well as the miracle of a small jar of
consecrated oil, which burned for eight days in the TempleÕs menorah, when the
quantity was only sufficient for one day. The New Testament says in John 10: 22
that Jesus celebrated the Feast of Dedication (Hanukkah).
On December 9, 2011 President Obama had a ÒHanukkah PartyÓ
in the White House. As a Christian I find the PresidentÕs party pretty much in
line with the Òstrange-profane-unauthorized fire in the Leviticus quotation
above. I also realize that many historic White House Hanukkah celebrations
would not be considered kosher in the Jewish sense, but for some reason I find
this date and the whole lack of any sort of sanctification or glory given to
God, to fit the party occasion properly. I also read a number of writers who
thought that the President would not treat a Muslim religious observance with
such inaptitude.
The great thing that separates we humans from all of the
lower animals is that we are inventors, or creators if you will, and with our
mental and physical inventive creations we are able to innovatively construct
cultures. This week we will look at our totally unique human attribute, which
drives our whole worldÕs economic engine this time of year. That creation is
religion.
Every human being that has ever lived; spent his life
developing, worshiping and dying according to their specific interpretation of
a personal religion. Over the centuries the invention of religion has become
quite limited, yet variations on these themes are mixed together to help us
create our individual personalities.
Hanukkah is not a Biblical religious festival, yet as we
noted, the most famous Jew in history, Jesus from Nazareth celebrated it. About
two weeks short of 2,176 years later, the cleansing of the Jewish temple was celebrated half way
around the world by the President of the United States.
While the birth of Jesus, the founder of Christianity, is
discussed in the Christian New Testament supplement to the Old Testament Jewish
scriptures; again there is nothing in those pages that say we should celebrate
Christmas. Yet Christmas, during this dark time of the year, drives the yearly economic
engine of the worldÕs consumer economy.
The probability of Jesus being born on the calendar
equivalent of December twenty-fifth is slim to none. While we donÕt know for
sure, most religious scholars believe he was born on one of the important
Jewish religious festivals, but as far as the actual day, we really donÕt even
know for sure the real year.
However if you really want to understand the nature of the
Christian Messiah becoming an actually breathing and living human being, a
totally common date seems totally appropriate. Perhaps Jesus was born on your
birthday; more fitting, you were born on his.
We do know that December twenty-fifth was chosen, not
because it was near the winter solstice and the church scholars were too stupid
to get the date right, but rather so that Jesus could be circumcised in the
temple on our westernÕs secular cultureÕs New Years Day.
In our highly evolved culture is it still appropriate to say
Merry Christmas?
The so-called war on Christmas has slowly been subject to
much entropy in recent years, but the Happy HolidayÕs just wonÕt go away,
because when you get right down to it, our secular world is just as anti-Semitic
as it is anti-Christian, it just depends which way the wind is blowing that
particular moment.
Christianity for its part, especially the various
denominations, non-denominations and sects of Protestantism, has attempted to
overcome this stigma by focusing on cultural relevance. Therefore for most
people, the church has become just another institution telling people how to
live their lives according to a specific series of laws, which this
religious-political Christianity believes will save the nation.
In the process they have become the fundamental reason the
country and the world have lost their moral compasses. A church practicing
themes of a Christless Christianity, materialism and monetary prosperity,
succumbs to the laws of entropy, just as has happened in the world of finance
we discussed last week.
The churchesÕ graceless vain attempts at relevance allows for the reality of all the
economic hype that this season produces: Black Friday, the day after the American
Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday and there are also Super Sale Days until after the
New Year, of course focusing on the weekend, when people have time to shop,
instead of work in that boring, low paying service job, unless of course you
work in retail.
For the true atheist it is also difficult to carry their
godless religious card this time of year. We wish you a Happy-Merry Holiday
Season, because it gives or gave me a job the rest of the year.
What would drive this economic seasonal period if it were
not for the holidays? Would we all just sit around our big screen TVs and watch
football bowl games, eat boiled potatoes, sauerkraut, root vegetables, and
drink beer?
We began this weekÕs merry discourse with the reality that
two sons of Aaron, the High Priest, brother of Moses, decided to take the
religion of the Exodus into their own enlightened hands and found out they were
not all that enlightened in their religion.
Our human religions are all really religions of law. The Ten
Commandments of the Exodus were and are a codified religious law given to the
Jewish people by God on Mount Sinai in the wilderness. In reality this law was
really a codified version of human common law, written on our consciences and
has existed since God created man and woman. It is that common law that really
has allowed us to develop a human culture in which we can create our specific
interpretations of religion, and establish essentially the rule of law.
This historically has brought about what we call the rise
and the dominance of western culture. Not only does western culture rule the
world, but also it was western culture that gave us Christmas in the form that
drives a goodly portion of world consumerism and even the demise of the Debt
Supercycle.
For those who wonder how this drive came about, especially at
the expense of other civilizations such as the Chinese, there is a distinct possibility
these blessings arose out of something beyond the scope of human created
religion. This really doesnÕt gain any cognizance at all in an advanced human
religion where people evolved from some form of advanced primate eons ago, but
in a young earth religious setting, as outlined in the Bible, it does make a
lot of sense.
Sometime after the myth, when God destroyed the world by a
worldwide flood, thousands of years ago, Noah, whom after religion has named
this flood, got drunk and two of his three sons covered his drunken nakedness.
One sonÕs religion let the old man sleep it off. In Genesis 9:25-27 when he awoke, Noah provided the
following religious blessing and curse:
Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to
his brothers.
He also said, Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem; and
let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in
the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.
That blessing pretty much describes the rise of western
culture and its supremacy in the world today. It also doesnÕt bode well for the
future dominance of Chinese stateism, even in the not too distant future; especially
in the context of evolving atheistic-material elitism.
Again we see a pronouncement of religious law, base upon
common natural law, governing human behavior. We can generally, or commonly see
from these examples, that human culture is built upon the application of law. In
the United States we pride ourselves on the rule of law, but it seems that
finding and expressing that rule amongst all the current political noise is
getting more and more difficult.
What is missing from our human endeavors, where the guilty
are always punished, except for my transgressions and not yours, is any thought
of a concept known as grace. In grace we donÕt get what we deserve, not even
some concept of a lesser or reduced punishment. In grace we are not punished at
all even though we deserve it.
That grace concept is so inhuman, it would seem we are
programmed only for law. The world of economics is built upon the law of supply
and demand. As we will discuss next week, economics doesnÕt do a very good job
with creativeness outside these two parameters.
However creative invention, and even to a lesser extent its
half-baked relative, innovation, are really components of a universe outside
the constraints of our laws. We vaguely comprehend the virtues of common grace,
but it is totally apart from our concepts of secular or religious law.
Beauty, love, compassion, are just three in a long list of
human common grace attributes that donÕt fit in our law abiding world, and even
more so, in our law disregarding world. Yet even though we have trouble
defining those attributes, they, at the most inopportune times, override our
legal and religious laws. How unsettling is that?
So into this dark dying world, in which it is always winter,
but never Christmas, a legal world ruled by ÒBah! Humbug!Ó a few primitive
people attempt to celebrate a couple of Happy-Merry Seasonal Festivals. In one
of those a bottle of oil that should have burned only for one day lasted for
eight.
In another, a light shown into this world, which really was
not in any sense a common miracle, however unlawful that miracle might be. This
miracle was that the specific grace of God entered a legal structure and over a
short period of time in a backwater province of the Roman Empire, changed human
history.
That miracle of Jesus, (Jeshua, Joshua, God Rescues) was that God became man, lived a
sinless live, was crucified on a cross for our justification, and was raised
from death as the timeless hope that all of human law had become subject to the
unmerited specific grace of God.
The reason for the season, thereafter changed forever, is
that this season is no longer subject to the rules of the calendar, of life and
death and the requirements of all law. This reason is not apprehended by our
logical mind of rules and regulations, yet it still apprehends the hard hearted
as it did, throughout our short history on this earth.
We have created through our desire for lawful order, a
festival of a Merry Christmas; ChristÕs Mass, or Holy Communion, the Eucharist
of GodÕs redemption of human law, simply because it truly was and is a
representation of simply the unmerited grace of God. Nothing more! Nothing
less, could change the history of the world.
Merry Christmas everyone!
©
2011: All rights reserved.
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