Christmas

Christmas is about potential.  We celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, who grew up to be the Saviour of all men.  We collect as families and close friends to celebrate what will be.  Maybe I'm not making sense.

Before the world was formed, God had a plan.  His spirit children (us) needed a world to come to and experience life in a body and learn how to master bodies.  He knew we would make many mistakes and needed a way fo us to be able to return to Him.  (He is perfect and imperfect people can't come back to stay.)

Jesus Christ volunteered to come to earth as a mortal, like us, and suffer more than any man had ever suffered.  He would experience the entirety of human experience and atone for all pain, lost, sickness, and sin--all imperfections--so we could return to God and live with Him forever.

We had known Jesus for a long time, and knew He was the only spirit sibling we had who could possibly make good on such a promise.  We supported this and looked forward with faith to His life.

On Christmas day (or what we celebrate as Christmas day), Jesus was born to a virgin mother.  Heaven had such trust in Jesus that angels proclaimed his birth across the world.  A new star appeared, telling everyone the Saviour was born.

It is the beginning of His perfect life we celebrate today.  We celebrate the potential of a tiny baby child; born in the muddy, flea-ridden stable; lain in an animal's feed trough for a bassinet to become the perfect example to all mankind of how to live and how to return to God's presence.

Christmas reminds us of our potential.  Each of us can choose to be like Jesus.  We can live following His example, repenting of our mistakes because He atoned for our sins.  His suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane and on Calvary's Cross allows us to repent and have our sins, though as scarlet blemishes on our souls become white as driven snow (see Isaiah 1:18).

Jesus allows us to fulfill God's plan, to fulfill our potential as children of the Most High.  We can achieve limitless heights because He performed His mission on earth.  We each must do the same.  We must follow all His commandments and help other do the same.  We must find and fulfill our purpose of life.

Then we, too, through Jesus' atonement that rights every wrong, will realize our potential as we stand before God and are ushered into His loving arms once again.

Jesus Logic

At first this may sound a little blasphemous. It's not, I promise. (As an aside, I freaking hate toaster ovens. I can't even toast things properly.)

In Toronto I met a lot of people whose opinions about Jesus varied. "He was a good guy." "He was a fraud." "He taught good things." "He was the Son of God." "He was a charlatan."

While opinions are well and good, we can know Truth. We can know exactly what Jesus was/is/will be. The Spirit will guide us to this knowledge as we are prepared.

However, what helps me is whether things make sense. Regardless of what my mother claims, I feel I am a logical person whose opinions are based in fact and reason. Thus we shall take a lawyer-influenced look at Jesus and His claims.

We know Jesus taught many things taken as truth and as beneficial. However, are they really? Can we really trust a man who claimed he was the Son of God? In a court case, if a witness is proven to have lied on the stand, even once in hours of testimony, the entire testimony is often discounted and the witness is assumed to have lied about everything. This must happen because picking truth from lies is impossible.

Similarly, we can put the testimony of Jesus on trial. Without doubt, the claim that he was the son of a God and a mortal woman is the most questionable he ever made. If someone can disprove that claim, the entirety of his teachings falls apart. Thus the Beatitudes become useless--for they are obviously taught by a liar, His commands to love one another become unnecessary, etc.

Following that track, any teaching that has come since derived from Jesus' words is also false, any teaching from other perceived great men (Ghandi, Confucius, Mohammad, etc) agreeing or citing Jesus must also be taken as false. As you can see, claim Jesus is only a great man and not 100% what He said He was leads to the disruption of much of the moral code the world follows.

However, if He is the perfect Son of God--a knowledge any willing person can gain--all of His teaching (even the ones you don't like) must be true (because He could not lie) and must be followed in order to gain the Eternal Life He promises to His disciples. This is the case because the Son of God would have full authority to speak on any subject, and His words would be eternal law. Thus evaluating Jesus' claim to divine sonship is the crux of most arguments about Christianity.

So the decision comes to you. Will you throw away the morality of the world by believing He is less than what He claimed to be, or will you discover whether He is the Son of God?

My knowledge is that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He died and was resurrected so each person who ever lived may gain Eternal Life by following His teachings. Logic supports it and the confirmation of the Spirit irrefutably confirms it.

Christ's Role in My Life

It's funny at first to think that someone I've never seen could be the central focus of my life. I mean, seriously, I centre my life around Jesus Christ, His atonement for me, and His example.It seems ridiculous looking in with no shared understanding of the effects Christ can have in a life.

I take comfort knowing I have felt His atoning influence in my life. I am grateful to have often felt the ease of the burden of guilt and shame for my actions. We often think of atonement in the terms of sin, but it covers much more than that. I have felt effects of the atonement for sadness, sickness, depression, and hatred. Truthfully, I have felt it in so many different situations I'll bet it covers everything. At least that's what the scriptures teach, and I'm pretty inclined to believe them.

Even when I'm not in the middle of some trauma, I kneel down and seek the love of the Lord. It comes. He gives it that freely.

When I ponder what Christ endured and overcame I am astounded at the amount of love He has for me. (I do not limit that love to just me, but this is about His influence on me.) His atonement wasn't a finite, calculable experience. It involved infinite suffering and strength to perform. To kneel alone in a garden and take--individually--the sins of each person upon Himself shows more love than I can imagine. In some small way, I have suffered pain for others, usually emotional, but never the full extent of what they feel. never physical, spiritual, mental, emotional, and any other way you might think.

I know it's an act of love that I could not perform. But because He was perfect, He could. Only He could. Only He can help us perfect ourselves. It's something I know. And that knowledge supports me in my times of trial.

Art of Atonement

I visited the Museum of Art yesterday with my New Testament class. The museum has a collection of religious and Christ-centred art. My favourite painting was Triplus Number 3 by Ron Richmond.

It is of three vessels sitting on crossed cloths. Each vessel is full of a different medium. The near vessel holds water. The far one looks to hold nothing, but actually holds Spirit. and the centre vessel holds Blood.

The symbolism cannot be ignored: three vessels sitting on crossed red and white cloths certainly have reference to our Saviour. It is also interesting to realise the only things in full focus are the vessels. The edges of the painting are hazy , drawing our attention to the middle.

I was touched how the vessel of blood takes the centre spot in the line of vessels. It is because blood, the blood of Christ, His atoning blood, is what sactifies us. We know by the water that we keep God's commandments (baptism as Christ was), by Spirit we are justified (brought back to even level prior to sin), and by Blood we are sanctified (made Holy and able to enter God's presence).

Christ, though absent in form is the centre of this painting, through the use of symbols.