Today’s Word of the Day (WOTD) is “repent.” This means, literally, “turn around.” And today’s Public Service Announcement is brought to you jointly by the Wyoming Dept. of Transportation (WYDOT)… and John the Baptist.
I mention John because today’s the 25th of December and that marks the end of the penitential liturgical season of Advent which was the Baptist’s heyday. It’s also the beginning of the 12 Days of Christmas leading up to Epiphany on January 6th – but that’s really only relevant if you’re Anglican, like me.
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Most of us trust our GPS implicitly, just as most of us place great faith in our own moral compass. But the Baptist’s message – “repent” – flies in the face of auto-directed wisdom. I’ll leave it to you to mull that over in your own quiet moments. But as for me, I have found John’s direction to be both trustworthy and true.
Everybody thinks they have a good grip on things, and that their own sh*it doesn’t stink. But everybody’s got an a**hole and, at least in the broad strokes, everybody is wrong about the stink part. Do you doubt it? Let me share a vignette to illustrate. Maybe that’ll help you reconnoiter (literally, “think again”).
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A long-time friend of mine who calls herself a Buddhist had this to say on social media about Christmas: “If Christian mythology would have featured the birth of a brown baby girl, can you imagine how much hate, racism & misogyny the world would have been spared? I love myth stories, twinkly lights & a month-long glut of excessive eating as much as anyone, but for my money… once we’ve reached the age of four, believing in & talking to an imaginary friend who we feel can assist us isn’t charming. It’s psychotic.”
Eating disorders aside, that’s some pretty tough rhetoric right there – and also misguided, IMHO. The problem isn’t the content of the mythology, per se. And by that I mean that substituting “brown baby girl” for the usual inhabitant of our Christmas creche may satisfy a progressive’s sense of political correctness, but it does nothing to ameliorate the fundamental flaw in the human heart that leads many to “hate, racism, and misogyny.” And also, I might add, leads some to a misplaced sense of self-righteousness. C.S. Lewis called this “the problem of pride.” By that he meant, basically, the sense that our own sh*t doesn’t stink – while everyone else’s does.
It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that, with 2.38 billion Christians worldwide, that’s a whole lot more “psychosis” floating around this planet than most of us are willing to own up to or than most psychoanalysts are willing to diagnose. (It also lets most Buddhists off the hook, but let’s not go there.) The fact is, there is such a thing in this world as psychosis, and also, way too much hate-racism-misogyny. But to lay all of that at the feet of belief in an “imaginary friend who we feel can assist us” is short-sighted at best, and perhaps something a whole lot worse.
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Both my friend and I have had our struggles over the years. And both of us have come through the fire intact, albeit with our share of scars. Neither of us did so alone. Both of us had lots of help. My own feeling on the matter is this: Whatever works, baby. And also this: We get by with a little help from our friends, “imaginary” or otherwise. But mostly, my bottom line is this: I’ve got an a**hole just like you. Our major point of difference is this: I’m not so proud as to think that mine’s the only one without stink. Nope. Sorry. You, me, and that baby born in a stable? We all share a smell that’s integral to the human condition, and is the consequence of having a functional digestive tract. Believe it or don’t. But please, spare me the “It’s all the fault of an un-PC mythology.” I won’t call that “psychotic,” exactly. But it is missing the mark by a wide margin.
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Last word goes to Fredrick Buechner, whose quote I really like.
Alright, I lied. Last word goes to history.com whose story of the Christmas Truce of 1914, here, harks back to a time when such an extravagantly merciful thing as a soccer game in no-man’s-land was still possible. In a world full of hate-racism-misogyny – along with wars and rumors of wars – may it ever be so.
Oh, and also this:
Repent (turn around), and reconnoiter (think again).
You can say you heard it here first.
Merry Christmas, y’all.