Celebrating God’s birthday is no time to quibble over theology
Dan Brawner
December 18, 2007
I went to a newspaper convention once in which three veteran columnists warned us never to write about religion, politics or the weather. So here goes. Gee, it’s been a cold December and the ice storm knocked down my electric line. I’m still waiting for the power company to answer their blasted telephone. As for politics and religion, Iowa’s favored Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee recently kicked off the Christmas season by suggesting Mitt Romney and all Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan are brothers.
Whatever the official LDS position is on Christ’s family tree and how to theologically explain the relationship between good and evil, the idea that Jesus and the Devil are brothers does make a certain amount of sense. I mean, have you been Christmas shopping at the mall lately? What is more natural than to have the bad brother mess up the good brother’s birthday? Okay, the bad brothers says, the whole world can celebrate your birth, but it will mostly be about Santa Claus and reindeer and people buying a lot of stuff they can’t afford and don’t want anyway.
It’s ridiculous to cast stones at other folk’s religion. Theology is the silliest form of fiction. Very little of it makes any sense and yet each side claims that their’s is true and everybody else’s is heresy. You can’t prove that the earth is not supported by four elephants. So you’ve seen the photos from space and there are no elephants? Well, that’s because they are special, invisible elephants. You can only see them if you believe in them. But what do the elephants stand on? And what do they eat? These are mere details, to be meticulously worked out by learned men and women who spend way too much time alone in their rooms.
God is an angry god, some say. What’s he mad about? Because we’re so bad. Then why didn’t He make us better? And if He knows everything, including the future, why is He surprised when we make mistakes? You can drive yourself nuts thinking about this stuff.
But no matter what the theologians say, there are no experts on God. Is there such a place as Limbo and do unbaptized babies go there? Who knows? The question itself is absurd. The problem is, we want so desperately to know things, especially those things we can’t possibly know, that we resort to inventing the answers.
What little we do know about God cannot be scientifically quantified or substantiated. The larger belief is real to us even if we can’t fill in the factual details. So what’s so bad about celebrating God with gifts and evergreen trees and Santa’s and good food and getting the family all together in one place once a year? I imagine He-- or She is pleased about it. I love Christmas. I only wish those elephants would tilt us a little toward the sun. I’m freezing!
Whatever the official LDS position is on Christ’s family tree and how to theologically explain the relationship between good and evil, the idea that Jesus and the Devil are brothers does make a certain amount of sense. I mean, have you been Christmas shopping at the mall lately? What is more natural than to have the bad brother mess up the good brother’s birthday? Okay, the bad brothers says, the whole world can celebrate your birth, but it will mostly be about Santa Claus and reindeer and people buying a lot of stuff they can’t afford and don’t want anyway.
It’s ridiculous to cast stones at other folk’s religion. Theology is the silliest form of fiction. Very little of it makes any sense and yet each side claims that their’s is true and everybody else’s is heresy. You can’t prove that the earth is not supported by four elephants. So you’ve seen the photos from space and there are no elephants? Well, that’s because they are special, invisible elephants. You can only see them if you believe in them. But what do the elephants stand on? And what do they eat? These are mere details, to be meticulously worked out by learned men and women who spend way too much time alone in their rooms.
God is an angry god, some say. What’s he mad about? Because we’re so bad. Then why didn’t He make us better? And if He knows everything, including the future, why is He surprised when we make mistakes? You can drive yourself nuts thinking about this stuff.
But no matter what the theologians say, there are no experts on God. Is there such a place as Limbo and do unbaptized babies go there? Who knows? The question itself is absurd. The problem is, we want so desperately to know things, especially those things we can’t possibly know, that we resort to inventing the answers.
What little we do know about God cannot be scientifically quantified or substantiated. The larger belief is real to us even if we can’t fill in the factual details. So what’s so bad about celebrating God with gifts and evergreen trees and Santa’s and good food and getting the family all together in one place once a year? I imagine He-- or She is pleased about it. I love Christmas. I only wish those elephants would tilt us a little toward the sun. I’m freezing!
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