The Christmas Difference

There is no doubt that I will be writing on for some time about the differences between conservatives and liberals, but I strongly suspect that all the text in the world has less meaning that the state of the individual soul relative to the true Christmas. Those that come to a God of order by the Son freely given and sorely needed by an imperfect mankind will never be able to brook the "liberal" path that believes in the basic goodness of man and cries out for the imposition of a godless totalitarian state by all means possible.

I, as all Americans, have been strongly taught that politics and religion are two solidly separate elements, and those that taught us such had a very strong and ancient reason for doing so. How strong and how ancient is like most of such things, a matter of faith. One’s belief in God, or not, is to be a private matter as is the name one chooses to apply to that God and what means one decides on for worship. All fall under the dogma of “separation of Church and State”, which as become so specific that much of our country finds it fine for a man to hold public office and religious views as long as those religious views have no impact on his actions. (e.g. Kerry, Catholicism, and abortion). Religion that has no impact on actions is as dead as a toy puppy.

The founding fathers never intended any such dogma. They found it important that the US not have a FEDERAL church, meaning only that it not be official and state supported, but a number of the states, including Massachusetts had a State church that was tax supported for a good long while. They had no problems at all with Christian holidays like Christmas being national, and created “Thanksgiving” which was not intended to be “thanks to randomness and a lucky roll of the dice for allowing us to be Americans”.

I’m a couple of books behind on book reports to the blog, but I’ve made a solid start on “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot” by Russell Kirk, and can tell it will have a fairly significant impact on my knowledge of the roots of today’s ideas. A key item made clear in the book is the explicit connection between conservatism and religious faith. If there is no “Divine Plan”, then ideas ultimately come down to “what works” (utilitarians), or worse “what we hope will work” (romanticism), and “works” ultimately becomes “power”. Apart from a higher power the validity of the ideas ends up completely defined by who has the power to make the ideas real and declare them to be “right”. Might is right.

Christmas Eve at the candlelight service has become one of those spiritual touchstones of each year for me. I was raised with the idea that “Christmas is for family”, and noted a number of the “mega-churches” weren’t holding services on Christmas. The family is important, but it isn’t of prime importance, God comes first. The position and makeup of the family streams like that holy light from heaven above, or it streams not at all. Take away the divine and “family” becomes a bumper sticker, as in the common one I see; “I value ALL families!”. Given the word “all”, one can assume that would include some number mommies and some number of daddies in any possible combination, along with what? One can only begin to guess, certainly eventually whatever other relationship the human imagination can proudly imagine, and announce equally proudly that they "value" it on their bumper.

Standing in a beautiful candlelit church decorated for the holiday singing Silent Night with a wife and two healthy sons makes the peak of the holiday come early, all the rest is just “icing” by comparison. Having one Christmas to do that is a gift beyond measure, having had over ten is wealth of the obscene level. The deep and the important is simple however, and has been handed down over now two thousands of years. God is a God of order, he wants it to work that way, and it often does.

When it doesn’t though, when there is no family, or even no friends, then he is still in the primary position, and always has been and always will be. Not on our terms, but on his terms which require the one thing that is generally impossible for those of the left. The recognition that man is not primary, and the way to God is one person wide and through the person of Jesus; those are the stumbling blocks to those intent on the deity of man.

The basic of our thought is that leap of faith, and if that leap is made, then the universe and values are suddenly no accident. Fall the other way, and the meaning of existence is random, so it may as well be “what feels best” or just “whatever”.

May I never lose my faith and fall into that pit!