‘Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and those who love are born of God and know God. Those who do not love do not know God; for God is love.’ 1 Jn 4:7-8.
What
are we to make of the story of the birth of the Christ child?
The
Nativity Story is so much more than a
supposedly literal account of the birth of Jesus.
The story is a myth in the truest and
most sublime sense of that word. It speaks of the reality of a spiritual—that is,
a non-material—event that we all can experience, Christian and non-Christian
alike.
What
event, you may ask? Well, it’s this—the birth of the Christ child within our
‘hearts’, that is, our minds, the latter symbolized by the Virgin Mary. You
see, we all need to wake up, surrender, and be born anew. The message of the Buddha, in two English
words, is this—wake up. The message
of the prophet Muhammad,
in one English word, is this—surrender.
The message of Jesus, in five
English words, is this—you must be born
anew. The point is this—we must change in a very radical and profound way.
Furthermore, this change must go far beyond what is ordinarily understood as
self-improvement.
Each
one of us must undergo a Copernican revolution—that
is, a deep, inner psychological revolution, transformation, and mutation—in the
way we think, act, and live. We must surrender, let go, and die to self, indeed
die to the very idea that there is a separate, independent, permanent self at
the core of our being, in order that a new sense of being—metaphorically and
symbolically, a new-born baby—may be born in our psyche.
Now,
most of what I’ve said above is rank heresy to fundamentalist
and evangelical Christians.
That does not worry me at all. Indeed, I draw great comfort and pleasure from
the fact. You see, I am proud to be a heretic. A heretic is one who chooses,
and who chooses to think differently and be different. We need more heretics in
the world—more people who are prepared to think and live differently. Indeed, I
would go so far as to say that only a heretic can change our damaged, troubled
and threatened world. And only a heretic, who is prepared to surrender and
throw out of the window all their past thinking and conditioning on matters
religious and non-religious, can wake up and change the world for the better. And
despite what some would have you believe, only you can make the decision to wake
up and be born anew.
May we all wake up this Christmas.
