Christmas Is Weird. That's Good.

First off, I promise this article is going to have to do with Christmas. I also promise that the next two Sundays will be Christmas focused. As much as we all loved going through Acts, I was getting the sense the last two weeks that there was some anxiety about whether we were ever going to get around to Christmas stuff here in December. Friends, now… is… the time (to be read with dramatic tension).

I just read a book that will go down as one of my favourites from 2023. It’s a very recently published book called “The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God” by a British fellow (I thought “fellow” would be more British than “guy”) named Justin Brierley. His case is that the receding “tide” of faith we’ve witnessed in Western culture might be reaching its limit. In his work interviewing leading thinkers from a whole variety of backgrounds, he believes he is seeing an increasing number of thinkers re-consider Christian faith. He believes the increasing atheism of the last couple of decades has actually sparked the greatest revival of Christian intellectual confidence in recent memory.  This is hopeful stuff, especially in comparison to what we usually hear!

(Side note: I definitely recommend this book. It’s relatively accessible and filled with stuff that will strengthen your own confidence in Christian faith)

One of my favourite sections of the book is in the conclusion, where Brierley makes three proposals for how the church can prepare for a new “great awakening”. The second is to “keep Christianity weird”. For example, here’s a quote he provides from an agnostic journalist named Ben Smith (who was the longtime editor of BuzzFeed News):

That’s a very different take than we’re used to, isn’t it? We tend to feel we should hide the stuff that makes us different, water down the stuff that makes us stand out. Here’s another similar quote from Tom Holland, a highly influential author and historian (a different Tom Holland from the guy who plays Spiderman). We’re getting closer to Christmas here (I promise):

“The churches need to absolutely embrace (their beliefs) rather than being slightly embarrassed about them…the churches have to lay claim to everything that is weirdest, most countercultural, most peculiar. Don’t duck all the stuff about angels- major on that!”

(Another side note: this Tom Holland is on a journey of his own. Since writing a landmark book on Western history in 2019, he has begun attending church regularly)

There are angels in the Christmas story, right? They’re pretty prominent. Gabriel announces the impending birth of Jesus. A choir of angels announce the birth of Jesus to the shepherds. Apparently, a belief in angels is one of the things that makes Christians slightly strange. However, if you think about it, there’s a lot about the Christmas story that is a bit strange, isn’t there? A virgin conception. That doesn’t fit with typical sex ed content. The Son of God, who holds all things together and through whom all things were made, born a baby. That’s a tough one to wrap your head around. A King and Messiah being laid in a feeding trough at his birth and whose family fled the country soon after as refugees. Not your typical life story of someone predestined for greatness. Foreign court officials/philosophers/magicians following a divinely placed star to find this child. A bit stranger navigational method than following Google Maps. In all these ways and more, Christmas is…weird. Right?