Local man boycotts egg nog in attempt to be religious

My friend said something that stuck with me ever since, he said that the bible was made to support us, not us to support it.

I really connected with that, because I used to label myself as someone that was into theology. Theological debates, defending the bible. The bible to me was just this plethora of issues and discussions to be had, and subconsciously in my mind, there was always an end goal of having gone through all the issues and being at peace with them. Finally finding some answers, and that would be where I would find peace.

What ended up happening was I found peace in admitting I had no freaking clue about a lot of the stuff in this book. I have no clue why God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Or why the things prophesied in Ezekiel about Tyre and Egypt never happened as far as we can tell historically (in fact, if history and science are to be trusted at all, we're certain they didn't happen). If you're like me, after you read that last sentence, you're either googling those things, to see if what I said is true, or you're flipping through your mental encyclopedia of prepared Christian theological answers to enlighten me as to how Nebuchadnezzar actually did destroy Egypt and history just doesn't know it. Or how Nebuchadnezzar was symbolic of other things that will eventually destroy Egypt. There's always an answer.

I never found peace in those prepared answers, and if you're like me now, you just sit back and say "yeah I've got no clue either". Eventually I came to a point where I stopped caring almost entirely about "theological debates" and started reading the bible as if it was something that God could speak to me personally through, something I could learn from and experience God in. Once I let it, the bible started to support me. It wasn't something that the whole world thought was useless that I had to convince them otherwise about, I can't carry that burden any more.

The original thought I believe my friend had, was applying what Jesus said about the Sabbath in Mark 2:27

The NIV reads: "Then he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."

to the bible.

It occurred to me this morning that maybe we need to hear that about holidays some times as well. The church will always remind kids that Christmas is actually about Jesus' birth, not just presents and Santa Claus, but how much we do we really believe that ourselves?

When we come away from the holiday season, and someone asks us how our Christmas was - what's the first thing we evaluate in our minds? Is it not the food? The overall flow of the traditions, meals, presents and everything else? I don't think anyone, when they're asking that question, is really asking "how was your time of reflecting on the fact that the Messiah was born to save us?", they're asking how enjoyable a tradition we created after the fact was.

My goal is not to paint a black and white canvas here, the only shade I seem to be able to create is grey.  What I means is that I'm not saying sharing a meal with family, opening gifts and doing the traditions is bad at all, I'd never try to take that away from someone. I'll put it in bold to really drive the point home. I'm not trying to say that tradition, meals, time with family, presents or egg nog are bad.

But my goal is simply to say that the coming of Jesus Christ was meant to support us, not us put on the best show we can every year to honour it. If all of our traditions and everything were terrible, Jesus will have still come to earth to save us from our sins. How good of a show we put on to honour it is something entirely made up by us after the fact, I think. It's quite irrelevant to what we're claiming is the purpose of all this, if we're honest.

I don't think that's really our mindset either. I don't think all the stuff we do, in our minds, is really an attempt to honour the birth of Christ. I think it's primary purpose is family and celebration (who could decorate a tree well enough that Christ would love them more?). Which again, isn't a bad thing.

But I can't be the only one who thinks there's something pretty messed up when we're celebrating the coming of a Messiah whose purpose was to free us, by creating the most stressful and emotionally draining time of year for it.