Christians have been engaged in a battle to put “Christ back in Christmas” for as long as I can remember. There have been uproars over the use of “happy holidays” instead of “merry Christmas,” outrage over lawsuits that have been filed to keep Christmas trees or nativity scenes out of public view. The hostility toward anything Jesus-related is hard to miss. While I do find this opposition disheartening at times, and I do mourn over this PC-run-amok nonsense, I sometimes wonder if Christians are fighting the wrong battle.
While celebrating the birth of my savior is certainly a good thing, the term “Christmas” isn’t inherently biblical. It’s a man-made celebration of a heavenly event, and as such, if the celebration has become meaningless, maybe it’s time to move on. Seriously, how many different times have you heard someone – usually a voice-over artist in a commercial – tell you the “true” meaning of Christmas this year? How many of them have actually gotten it right?
Personally, I feel that this battle has been lost on a cultural level. The work “Christmas” has no real meaning to the majority of Americans today. So what’s the value of constantly fighting to keep it from being censored?
Is it possible that it’s time for a new angle?
My pastor always gives a little introductory thought at the beginning of our church services, before we sing and he transitions into his actual topic of the day. And it was with these thoughts about the Christmas battle already in my mind that I listened in amusement (due to my pastor’s West Virginian style) to him expressing many of the same sentiments in one of his introductions. But he had a solution.
There is an other term used by some Christians to describe the arrival of Christ. In some contries, it is actually still in wide use. It is the word “advent.” It means “The coming or arrival, especially of something extremely important.”
What is more important than the arrival of our Savior on Earth? My pastor’s suggestion was that we stop using the phrase “merry Christmas” and instead say “blessed Advent!” It’s a wonderful idea, because it both avoids the controversy surrounding the word “Christmas,” and it also gets people’s attention. And, as my pastor put it, once you have their attention and ask what you mean by the phrase, you can hand them the book The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller. It’s a perfect one-two punch. :)
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to say that using the word “Christmas” – or doing what we can to bring Christ back into it – is wrong or completely useless. But when we step back and look at what has been made by God and what has been made by man, it might create a subtle but effective shift in our perspective. We just might find better ways of glorifying God and proclaiming His son’s redeeming work on Earth. And that, my friends, is the true meaning of Christmas… err… the Advent. :)
The next time someone claims that the Founding Fathers wanted a total separation of church and state, try asking them who made these statements:
It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe.
It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors.
And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever.
This will be huge someday. Researchers have found a way to take the output of a neuron, or group of neurons, in a monkey’s brain and route them through electrodes to their destination muscles. Basically, they can bypass a section of nerves, meaning that at some point doctors will be able to reverse the effects of some forms of paralysis. From the IEEE Spectrum Online:
Though it will be years before spinal bypass surgery reaches even the clinical-experiment stage, researchers at the University of Washington (UW) and the Washington National Primate Research Center, both in Seattle, have figured out a way to get macaque monkeys in their lab to manipulate temporarily paralyzed muscles in their arms using brain-controlled electrical stimulation. In research reported last week in Nature, they describe what happened when they attached electrodes to neurons in a monkey’s motor cortex—the part of the brain that controls voluntary movement—and used fairly simple algorithms to translate activity in these cortical cells into electrical signals that tell muscles when, how much, and how forcefully to contract.
This by itself will be a huge advance in medical technology when it is ready for prime-time.
But wait, there’s more.
Not only have they been able to re-connect the existing brain cells that control, say, a wrist to the muscles in that area, but they found that the monkey could retrain other brain cells to do the same thing.
The most surprising outcome of their experiments is the revelation that motor cortex cells that had previously been dedicated to moving, say, the big toe on a monkey’s left foot or bending its knees could be trained to control its wrists. This flexibility, says Fetz, may allow patients with head injuries that damaged part of the cerebral cortex to still be candidates for a neuroprosthesis.
It’s hard to even imagine the kind of impact this kind of research will have in the future.
Many are familiar with Monty Python’s skit about the “Norwegian Blue” parrot with “lovely plumage” that was “pining for the fjords.”
Fewer know that the Norwegian Blue actually did exist, apparently. However, it has now “joined the choir invisible,” as it has been extinct for many years. 55 million years, according to one Dr. Waterhouse, who made the finding. (I have doubts about his number, but that’s an other topic for an other time.)
The U.K.’s Daily Mail reported that Dr. Waterhouse noticed a fossilized bone among bird remains found in a mine in Denmark:
Research has now confirmed the bone was part of an upper wing
from a bird in the parrot family. Although the mine was in Denmark,
the birds would also have lived in what is now Norway.
Dr Waterhouse, now assistant curator of natural history at the
Norfolk Museums Service, said: “All that remained was a single
upper wing bone, but it contained characteristic features that
showed it was clearly from a member of the parrot family, about the
size of a yellow-crested cockatoo.”
…
Details of the Norwegian Blue have been published in the latest
issue of Paleontology journal, under the distinctly Pythonesque
title Two New Fossil Parrots (Psittaciformes) from the Lower Eocene
Fur Formation.
I don’t know if this will have any actual impact on anything, but at least the news should be heard. The Democrat leadership in the house has blocked a vote on important energy legislation, and has gone home for a five-week vacation. Many of the Republicans are still in the capitol, protesting the move. Get the word out!
Regret the Error has posted what must be the best (or worst) typo of 2008. Personally, I suspect Gollum has started working for this particular newspaper.
