The darker side of Christmas carols

I've been singing a lot of carols lately. A favourite one among my friends is the Coventry carol, about Herod's slaughter of the children of Bethlehem. It's a reminder that carols don't just talk about the joys of Christmas, but also hint at the darker side. Christmas isn't all mistletoe and wine and small children singing "Away in a manger." Numerous carols about the magi (or wise men, or kings if you really must) mention the symbolism of their gifts: gold for a king, incense for a priest, myrrh to show that he would suffer and die.

Another favourite carol among my friends (well, given that the tune is by Sullivan it's not exactly surprising) is "It came upon the midnight clear." The message of the carol shows how the angels' message "Peace on the earth, goodwill to men" has been ignored by a world too busy with its' own selfishness to think about God or others:

"Yet with the woes of sin and strife the world has suffered long,
Beneath the angel strain have rolled two thousand years of wrong.
And man at war with man, hears not the love-song which they bring,
O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing."

And it's true that the world is in a mess, and ignores the message of Christmas. So much of the time we're too busy giving and receiving Christmas cards and presents (or, this year, worrying about whether we can afford them) to pay much attention to the baby in the manger, or if we do we stop there and forget what that baby went on to do.

If you believed everything that you see on TV over Christmas, you might take issue with my saying that "the world's in a mess." We're bombarded with feelgood, happily-ever-after films and shows. But behind the glitz and the tinsel we all know that things don't always end happily. Many people will find Christmas hard this year after the loss of a family member, others will be lonely, or ill, or homeless. And further from home people are dying of cholera in Zimbabwe, dying of starvation or AIDS in Africa, in fear of war in Afghanistan- the list goes on.

It's hardly surprising that so many people say "If there's a God- a good, loving God, like you say- why does he let all this happen?" And it's not an easy question to answer. I'm not going to try in any depth here, partly because I don't know. I may write about it more later. I think, mostly, it has to do with humankind's free will to choose not to do what God wants, and to mess up our lives and other people's. Without free will there would be no love- love that is compelled, without the option of not loving, isn't really love. If you're interested in the suffering question, read The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis for some interesting ideas. Or ask me for my thoughts. But I don't pretend to have all the answers.

Whatever you think about suffering dilemma, the one thing you can't deny is that if the Christmas message is true, God himself lived and died and shared in our human sufferings.

"He came down to earth from heaven, who is God and Lord of all
And his shelter was a stable, and his cradle was a stall,
With the poor and mean and lowly lived on earth our Saviour holy."

And later in the same carol:

"He was little, weak and helpless, tears and smiles like us he knew.
And he feeleth in our sadness, and he shareth in our gladness."

More than one carol dwells on this wonderful miracle- God, the creator and ruler of all things, becomes a man- more than that, a child, submitting himself to parental authority, going through all the traumas of growing up, of not being understood by his family and friends, the grief of losing loved ones, of living in a country subject to a hated foreign power, hunger and thirst and temptation, and ultimately betrayal by his friend, abandonment and pain and a truly horrific death.

"Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in a stone cold tomb."*

And I think that's why I'm prepared to accept that I don't, and never will (in this life) fully understand why there's suffering. He went through what we go through. But he did that so that we could have a way out from this messed-up world- a chance to make a new start. So that we could be set free from our own selfishness, free to live our lives to fulfilment. Christmas changed the world. Carols look back to that. But they also look forward. In the run up to Christmas, Christians look forward to Jesus' return when justice will be done and suffering will end;

"When the new heaven and earth shall own the Prince of Peace their king,
And all the world give back the sound which now the angels sing!"

Happy Christmas!


*Strangely enough, that verse from We Three Kings is also a favourite among my friends. Do I sense a theme of them preferring the sadder, depressing bits?!

Bestseller or unread behemoth?

This article on the BBC news website made me think about people's perceptions of the Bible, and of the church in general. What interested me most was that the author seemed to assume that Christians would be against the Bible being presented in unusual ways. Yet again someone has failed to grasp that it's not the manner something is presented in that matters, but the message contained in that presentation. The media like reporting on Christians disagreeing with each other, or condemning what other people are doing. Sadly we give them a lot of scope for that.

The Bible is not a nice book. There are plenty of bits we'd all rather gloss over. Here's some examples:
"Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be looted and their wives ravished."
"They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open."

The Bible and its interpretation cause Christians to disagree with each other more than almost anything else (as is demonstrated by some of the comments on the article). But as the guy from the Bible Society comments in the article, the idea of the Bible as a big book with small print has only been around for four centuries or so. Before that highly decorated manuscripts were the norm, for example the York Gospels which can be seen here. Having been lucky enough to see the manuscript in real life (a history degree is useful for something!) I can safely say it's a real work of art and a thing of beauty. Before that, the texts were written on scrolls in the same way Jewish holy texts still are.

During the Reformation, one of the main aims of the reformers was to make the Bible text accessible to everyone . So as well as translating it from Latin into commonly spoken languages such as English and German, the text was printed in as small (and therefore cheap) a format as possible, allowing ordinary people to afford one. Thousands of people were able to read it for themselves (assuming, of course, they were able to read at all) and judge for themselves the truth (or otherwise) of what they read. The examples given in the article of different ways of presenting the Bible's message (such as this, although I'm not sure that "your beliefs are silly" or "he says we are to be judged by a zombie" are the most tactful way of explaining the gospel!) at least help to counter the claim that "the Bible isn't relevant today."

But all the modern translations and presentations are no good unless people think about what they read (or see in pictures, or hear on their ipods). Which is why an organisation I'm part of, Scripture Union, launched its WordLive website last year to get people reading the Bible, thinking about it in a way that's relevant to them, and applying what they read to their own lives.

This is a book that has shaped our culture, influenced our history and had an effect on countless lives. If you're not familiar with it, I'd suggest taking a look- whether it's on the web, in bricks, in pictures or cartoons, or even- to be controvertial- in print.

Masquerade!

What makes you who you truly are?

I was reading Maskerade (as in the Discworld novel) the other day. The book draws on The Phantom of the Opera for aspects of it's plot. Both include a Ghost who wears a mask to change himself- in one case because of a disfiguring scar, in the other it gives him a totally different personality, with much more confidence and ability.

As well as concluding that I'm the character Agnes (cursed with a nice personality and an ability to keep her head, while others panic, faint gracefully and grab the limelight; however sadly I don't have the ability to sing in harmony with myself!)- shame that witching as a career is out of the question!- the book lead me to think about masks.

Some people construct themselves a mask to hide their true feelings, to protect themselves. I know some people like that. Maybe it's because they don't like who they are, or are afraid of what people will think of them. They want to be more popular, to appear more confident. They present a face to the world that is tougher, more witty, more worldly than they themselves are. They hide their true feelings, the hurts they suffer, the disappointments, the secret ambitions and desires, and present to the world what they think other people will want to see.

But the trouble with masks is that they slip. And they don't change what's going on inside. Maybe it can help, for a while or in certain circumstances. But I want to be who I am, to become even more so, to be the person God designed me to be. And hiding behind a mask I've constructed can't do that. I can't make myself someone else entirely (and I wouldn't want to anyway), and trying to become someone else means you loose something that makes you you. And that's a precious thing. Each of us is unique, reflecting (I believe) an aspect of God. So if we're continually trying to be someone else (the latest celebrity or hero from a film, book or history) we're not going to be happy. We can only do that by learning to be happy with ourselves, and with who we are in relation to God.

The word hypocrite apparently means "someone who has decided to act or speak under a false part – to wear a mask." (WordLive, 19th November 2008). To be a hypocrite is therefore to pretend to be someone or something you're not, or to believe one thing yet act in a way that contradicts that belief.

In Tom Holt's book Earth, Air, Fire and Custard Paul Carpenter is so fed up with being who he is (a total looser) that he changes his appearance and pretends to be a different person. This allows him to become the person who he wants to be- who in fact is actually him, but because he stops feeling that he's a looser he doesn't feel bad or ashamed of himself, has more confidence and actually is a much better person. In a way that's what I need. More confidence in myself to allow me to become more fully me. But where that's going to come from (other than God) I don't know.