Page 4380 – Christianity Today (2024)

This article, and its response, is provided by Religion News Service of the Arab World, which provides English translation of articles in the Arabic press.

The Associated Press on November 24, 1999, quoted the Most Rev. Dr. George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, as saying, “I haven’t encountered any hostilities toward Christians in Egypt, the further away from a situation, the greater the possibility of distortion.”

When we protested this statement, we received the following statement from the Press Office in Lambeth Palace: “The Archbishop replied that in his visit to Egypt he had not encountered any persecution personally, but he is aware of reports of persecution happening. The Archbishop also said that he thought that it was important to insure that there was no persecution or oppression of minorities in any country.”

Knowing that the Press Office statement was only an interpretation of what the Archbishop said and not a direct quote, we are at loss of what to make of it. Did the Archbishop actually say what he was quoted by AP, or not? If AP misquoted him, then the Archbishop should issue a corrected statement with a demand that AP publish the correct statement and apologize for their error.

On the other hand, if the Archbishop did in fact say the AP quote, but didn’t mean it the way AP reported it, then a corrected statement should be issued spelling out what he meant and what he didn’t mean. To tell the truth, it would be hard to accept the notion that the Archbishop didn’t mean what was attributed to him, when the second part of his statement doesn’t leave any possibility of doubt. That part reads, “the further away from a situation, the greater the possibility of distortion,” which can be understood to mean that the Archbishop have found the truth in Egypt, that was distorted when he was far away.

Vague statements, which can be interpreted in many ways to please everyone, don’t help. This type of political correctness, that we often see used by politicians, doesn’t befit a man of God.

Again, what did the Archbishop, exactly, say? And, What did he, exactly, mean? The World that heard him say his first statement is waiting for his answer.

The press office of Lambeth Palace responds:

Thank you for your enquiry about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s reported remarks in Egypt. There seems to have been some error in the translation which has misrepresented the Archbishop. The facts are as follows:The Archbishop was asked by a reporter what he thought of the hostility in Egypt towards Christians?

The Archbishop replied that in his visits to Egypt he had not encountered any persecution personally, but that he was aware of reports of persecution happening.The Archbishop also said that he thought that it was important to ensure that there was no persecution or oppression of minorities in any country. I hope this clarifies any questions you may have had about the reports.

Used with permission from the Religion News Service of the Arab World, 1999.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The ambition to create a simulacrum of a person, as human beings are said to have been created in the image of likeness of God, dates back as far as we can go in the surviving records of human imagination, appearing in different forms in cultures throughout the world. In our time, it has been a favorite theme of science fiction (as in Philip K. Dick’s novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the basis for the movie Blade Runner). Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been perhaps the most resonant telling of this tale.

Now this age-old ambition has moved from the realm of fantasy and black magic to the realm of science, just as Mary Shelley foresaw. Consider, for example, the December 4, 1998 issue of the journal Science, which includes an article by Giulio Tononi and Gerald M. Edelman entitled “Consciousness and Complexity.” Edelman, who received the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, is one of several Nobel laureates who have taken up the challenge of Consciousness Studies after making their mark in another field; among the others are Francis Crick, the codiscoverer of the structure of DNA, and the mathematical physicist Roger Penrose.

In fact, over the last fifteen years or so, there has been an extraordinary surge in the study of consciousness. In part this can be attributed to advances in neuroscience. And in part, no doubt, it reflects the lure of a formidable challenge, for consciousness has notoriously resisted scientific explanation. But another factor at work is the desire to disprove, once and for all, the traditional understanding of the human person which, in Western culture, has been deeply influenced by Christianity.

The concluding sentence of Tononi and Edelman’s article states that “The evidence available so far supports the belief that a scientific explanation of consciousness is becoming increasingly feasible.” Now of course what the authors mean by “a scientific explanation” is a naturalistic explanation; human consciousness, they believe, is the result of undirected, unsupervised natural processes. (Edelman’s theory of the brain, which he has developed both in technical works and in versions for the general reader, is called “neural Darwinism.”) And that is a striking claim.

But even more striking is the endnote for this sentence (note 52 in an article of four and a half pages). The note is crafted with the flamboyant understatement that many scientists relish: “It is perhaps worth pointing out that our analysis predicts the possibility of constructing a conscious artifact and outlines some key principles that should constrain its construction.” So, with no unseemly hoopla, Frankenstein’s monster enters the precincts of Science.In his fascinating 1992 book, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind, Edelman devoted a brief chapter to the question, “Is It Possible to Construct a Conscious Artifact?” He concluded with a tentative yes, adding that the prospect of creating “artifacts with higher-order consciousness” (such as we possess) is much more distant, although “in principle, there is no reason to believe we will not be able to construct such artifacts someday.” Edelman added:

Whether we should or not is another matter. The moral issues are fraught with difficult choices and unpredictable consequences. We have enough to concern ourselves with in the human environment to justify suspension of judgment and thought on the matter of conscious artifacts for a bit. There are more urgent tasks at hand.

Hmmm. I wonder if it not time to end that moratorium and begin sustained reflection and debate on “the matter of conscious artifacts.”John Wilson is Editor of Books & Culture, Christianity Today‘s sister publication.

Related Elsewhere

Visit Books & Culture online at BooksandCulture.com

Books & Culture Corner appears Mondays at ChristianityToday.com. Earlier Books & Culture Corners include:

The New Age Is Over | Now that Neopaganism has replaced the New Age Movement, flaws in evangelicals’ criticism are obvious. By Irving Hexham

The Grove Press Bible | A former p*rn publisher gets in the Good Book biz By John Wilson

Everything Old Is on TV | Antiques Roadshow asks, ‘What do you want to know today?’ By Elesha Coffman

co*ckroaches for Jesus | America’s most respected newspaper stoops to cartoon history at millennium’s end. By John Wilson

1984, 50 Years Later | Stop the spinning, I’m getting dizzy. By John Wilson

See earlier Books &Culture articles on consciousness, “I Cerebrate Myself | Is there a little man inside your brain?” (Jan./Feb. 1999) and “Soulless | If consciousness is only an illusion, it’s the greatest mistake human beings have ever made” (Jan./Feb. 1998).

Tononi and Edelman’s Science article, “Consciousness and Complexity,” is available online, but you’ll have to pay for it.

See also an article in The Scientist titled, “Consciousness Studies: Birth of an Empirical Discipline?” (May 10), Science-Week’s focus issue on “Substrates of Conscious Experience,” the Journal of Consciousness Studies, and Psyche: An interdisciplinary journal of research on consciousness.

Or, for a more understandable series of articles, see “The New Brain,” a special issue of the delightful online magazine Feed.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Bishop Musa el-Baramousy, the Coptic Orthodox bishop of youth work, is known to be one of the most evangelical among the Coptic Orthodox Bishops. According to Kees Hulsman, editor of Religion News Service of the Arab World (which provides English translation of articles in the Arabic press, including this one), he is especially known for speaking to Muslims in an explicit, yet nonoffensive way. The following article originally ran December 3 in al-Shaab, a Cairo-based Islamic paper that recently attacked the Egyptian government and harshly criticized normalizing relations with Israel. There is no doubt that Christianity, according to the Holy Bible, has its own viewpoint to money, and consequently to the market culture.

First: the Christian viewpoint to money. Christianity believes that:

1. Money is a gift from God. As the Bible says “As God who richly furnishes us with everything to enjoy.”
2. Money is not essential in life. As the Bible teaches us, “Take heed, and beware of all covetousness; for a man’s life does not consist of his possessions” (Luke 12:15) and also “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4), because “In him we live and move and have our being.”
3. Money is not essential for happiness. Solomon says, “Better is a dry morsel with quiet than a house full of feasting with strife” (Proverbs 17:1). Happiness is a psychological, spiritual value that can’t be bought by money.
4. Money is uncertain, as Paul advises the rich: “As for the rich in this world, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on uncertain riches but on God”

What is needed is the minimum necessity to support life, not extravagance because “Whereas she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives” (1 Timothy 5: 6), and “There is great gain in godliness with contentment.”

In this context the word of God teaches us that “Give us each day our daily bread”. “If we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content” (1 Timothy 5:6). The word of God advises us “Be content with what you have” (Hebrews 13:5) and “So that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).

The Bible teaches to be content in all the essentials of life, like food, drink, housing, education, health, etc. This does not mean that a young man can’t develop his life with a good investment in his educational or administrative talents for a better life standard. He should be sure that man is making every effort with the power of God who gives man talents for the glory of the Lord. God gives man these talents to trade with them for the glory of God not for a materialistic ambition that replaces the love of God with self-love and extravagance. That is why we prefer the expression “investing talents” to “ambitions” as the first expression means trading sincerely with the talents given by God for the glory of His name.

Through what we have mentioned, we can study the viewpoint of Christianity to the culture of the market: Christianity is not against economic freedom. Christianity is encouraging self-motivation, investment and increasing the agricultural and industrial production.Christianity warns against making these mistakes:

1. The love of money, because ” For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs” (1 Timothy 6:10).
2. Craving for materialistic richness, because “Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into the snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plug men into ruin and destruction” (1 Timothy 6:9).
3. Putting our trust in money. As the Lord says, “How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:24). Job also says, “If I have made gold my trust, or called fine gold my confidence; I should have been false to God above” (Job 31:24)
4. Serving with money. As the Bible advises the rich, “They are to be good, to be rich in good deeds, liberal and generous, thus laying up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of life which is life indeed.” (1 Timothy 6:18).
5. Money should not dominate every thing. Money should not dominate media, politics, trade and culture. Media can lead people to the right or wrong directions. The sex trade spread through TV, magazines and the Internet. Money is the only reason behind sex trade.
6. Economic freedom should not cause any harm to the national economy; through the GATT treaty and multinational companies which will make it very difficult for the local product to compete with the imported product.
7. Open heavens and communications and information networks should not affect our national identity that has its religious, ethical and social values. All these are similar dangers that might be impossible to avoid. Therefore, we should fortify Egyptians against all kinds of invasions in order to remain spiritually and intellectually firm before all these pressures.

The dangerous absence of the spiritual dimension

The most dangerous thing in the market culture is that a materialistic culture remains, void of a spiritual dimension. Here lies a dangerous threat to man’s salvation when he indulges in materialist life and abandons his own salvation, spiritual growth and eternal life.

Today, we always hear about “the two cultures,” namely the materialistic culture and the spiritual culture. The spiritual culture has an immortal heritage all over the world, not only in the Christian world that cares about salvation and eternal life.

The dangerous absence of the human dimension

When the wheel of imperialism runs, it destroys all what stops the increase of financial profits without any sense of guilt. It is known that technological progress and information networks decreased the importance of manpower. For example, image how many people used to work for the production of the Encyclopedia Britannica or the Encyclopedia Americana. Image how many people used to work in the writing, revising, printing and marketing of these encyclopedias.

Today, there is no need for all those people as you can have these encyclopedias on a computer diskette. It is of course impossible to stop scientific and technological progress. There is no doubt that this is for the interest of man in certain fields like in production, printing, information and others. But, businessmen and also the government should pay attention to what they what they call the society’s structure, namely taking from the rich and giving the poor. If we would not do so, the rich would become richer and the poor would become poorer which would lead to a dangerous social disorder. It is in the interest of the rich to care for the poor. It is better that the rich do this from an absolute humane basis or a religious, spiritual basis. Paul advises the rich, “They are to be good, to be rich in good deeds, liberal and generous, thus laying up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of life which is life indeed” (1 Timothy 6:18), “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35), and “A liberal man will be enriched, and one who waters will be himself watered” (Proverbs 11:25).

The dangerous absence of the cultural dimension

It is obvious that the love of money also lead man to the materialistic culture and makes him to neglect the development of his mentality and spirit.

We see in the West and especially America, the leader of the world through its scientific, military, economic, media and technological predomination, how man deteriorated from the level of spirit and reason to the level of the body. This deterioration will make him contented with two things:”They are to be good, to be rich in good deeds, liberal and generous, thus laying up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of life which is life indeed.” (1 Timothy 6:18).

The satisfaction of the body with food, comfort, and sport

The satisfaction of his instincts without any spiritual feeling or cultural development that promotes principles, values and human sciences like philosophy, psychology, education and sociology.

We will understand this when we look at these facts:

1. An 18-year-old young American has spent 15,000 hours watching TV., and has spent the same number of hours in education.
2. A 65-year-old American will have spent 9 years watching TV.
3. There are about 1,000 sites on the Internet presenting sex pictures and movies.
4. An American young man changes his girlfriend 12 times between the age of fifteen and eighteen.
5. AIDS is increasing among teenagers in the United States.
6. Sexual deviation is spreading among youth in the United States. Although the Holy Bible rejects sexual deviation, the American administration and the church try to control it.
7. The rates of violence and crime among teenagers are increasing.
8. Drug addiction is spreading among teenagers.

The reasonable explanation for these phenomena is that the Western culture is addressing the body and its instincts give no attention to the mind or spirit. The West is suffering from corruption because “Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again” (John 4:13). The United States enjoys scientific predomination, but it is spiritually, culturally and humanly retarded. It is enough to know that the American culture is summarized in the following way:

1. I want to make money
2. I want to make love
3. I want to be myself. They even call their culture “The me culture”

It is obvious that love for them is Eros, or bodily love. In the United States human love begins to disappear, while spiritual love is very rare. Even religion is sometimes turned into business and politics. This is the reason for the appearance of Christian Zionism that ignores the oppression of Palestinians by the Jews, believing that one day, the Jews will join Christianity. The salvation of the Jews by the blood of Christ is something and shedding the blood of Palestinians every day is something else.

Can we reconcile between the principles of Communism and the mechanisms of Capitalism?

I hope so.

We reject the materialistic communism, the atheist communism and the tyrannical communism. We want the communism of social justice and ideological, political freedom. Is it a far dream in the world of sin and injustice? Time will answer this question. But let us protect ourselves from the market culture.Reprinted with permission, RNSAW 1999.

Related Elsewhere

Yesterday we ran another article from Religion News Service of the Arab World, “Did Carey Really Deny that Copts Are Persecuted? | Was the Archbishop of Canterbury misquoted? What did he really mean?”See our recent articles on consumerism:

“Christmas Unplugged” (Dec. 9, 1996)”Trapped in the Cult of the Next Thing” (Sept. 6, 1999)”Shopping for the Real Me” (Nov, 24, 1999)”Keeping Up with the Amish” (Oct, 4, 1999)”Why the Devil Takes Visa” (Oct. 7, 1996)

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Nigeria’s leading Christian organization this week welcomed a government decision to return former mission schools to their sponsoring religions and urged foreign supporters to support the move as beneficial to education standards.

Charles Obasola (C.O.) Williams, general secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria, said the organization was finalizing the funding framework for dozens of secondary schools, due to be returned to the churches at the beginning of January.

He said: “This is a historic development which will raise the quality of education considerably. The federal government started taking over Nigerian mission schools in 1970.

“What they took over is now in a shambles with between 150 and 180 pupils to a class when the law allows a maximum of 30. We have an awful lot of work to do to raise standards again and weed out uncommitted teachers, but I can guarantee that the church schools are going to be highly popular,” he said.

CAN—which includes the country’s main Protestant and Roman Catholic churches—has obtained a pledge from Lagos State that it will subsidize each pupil whose school is taken back by a Christian or Muslim body to the tune of 5000 naira (about US$50) a year. This will be a temporary measure to ensure that all children continue to receive education but it is expected to be phased out as fee-paying by parents returns. Other parts of the country are expected to make similar arrangements.

Williams said: “This is going to be a huge job. We need to renovate both buildings and morale. We are going to need outside support, and we must convince our foreign friends to help. They believe that churches should not go into education but this is the only solution for Nigeria and the government has conceded it.”

Williams denied that the move to return schools to religious groups might exacerbate divisions between Christians and Muslims in the country.

Referring to Muslims, he said: “Let them have Koranic schools. Let people choose the education they want for their children. In the days when we had mission schools, many Muslims chose to send their children to us because our education was better.”

President Olusegun Obasanjo, who took office at the end of May as the first democratically elected head of state for years, is a Baptist who received his education at a mission school. His wife, Stella, is a Roman Catholic.

The high standard of mission schools in the years up to 1960 when Nigeria was a British colony is often cited. Writers such as Wole Soyinka, a Nobel literature prizewinner, and Chinua Achebe were products of these institutions.

Williams, a former teacher in a Methodist school and a former education ministry official, said: “In many states Muslims already have their schools, so we are merely restoring the balance. We are banking on people giving their skills and time to make these schools real centers of excellence.”

Related Elsewhere

See our related story, “School Decision Irks Muslims” (Sept. 6, 1999), and our recent coverage of Nigeria: “Nigeria’s Churches Considering Legal Challenge to Islamic Laws | Third state moving toward implementing Koranic laws” (Dec. 17), and “Nigeria On the Brink of Religious War | Northern states adopt Islamic law, increasing Christian-Muslim tensions” (Dec. 16)

See other coverage in Maranatha Christian Journal.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

On December 23, 1899, newspapers across North America were filled with stories of a man whose death the day before marked the end of an era in American Christianity. Lay evangelist Dwight L. Moody had for a quarter of a century stirred audiences of thousands on both sides of the Atlantic. Life had hardly left his huge frame before publishers were feverishly vying for biographies of the man who was eulogized as “the great evangelist of the nineteenth century” and even the “world’s greatest evangelist.” Fourteen biographies appeared within twelve months of his death!Within a very few years eulogy turned into controversy as various persons and institutions claimed to be the heirs to Moody’s mantle. An interesting sidelight of the modernist-fundamentalist debate in the 1920s can be partially traced in the pages of the Christian Century and the Moody Bible Institute Monthly as they debated whether Moody’s sympathies would have been with the modernists or the fundamentalists.

From our perspective, both the eulogies and the controversies seem to be uncritical and overdrawn, but his should not obscure the significance that Moody had for both British and American Christianity in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Indeed, historians have recently begun to take another look at the man who Martin E. Marty has said “could plausibly have been called Mr. Revivalist and perhaps even Mr. Protestant” at a critical stage in American religious history. Having spent three years in detailed research in the life and sermons of D. L. Moody, I have not only been impressed with his significance for his own time but have also seen that certain themes emphasized and exemplified in his ministry need very much to be reiterated today. (Most of the following quotations from Moody may be found with documentation in a book compiled by Patricia Gundry and me, The Wit and Wisdom of D. L. Moody, Moody Press, 1974.)

The low shall be lifted up

Moody’s life itself was an example of a principle that he himself often emphasized: God can take what seems small and insignificant to the human eye and use it greatly if it is given over completely to him. Moody declared:

It will be found that more has been done by people of one talent than by those who have many. If each one with one talent would wake up to realize this responsibility, what a work would be done to wake up and say, “Here am I, use me to do the work Thou hast for me to do” Look at the widow’s two mites her all; look at Mary’s precious box of ointment. Empires have come and gone since then and are no more heard of, but her name has come through the ages with the sweet savour of her loving service.

Moody’s early years gave no indication of the impact he was to have later, and his natural endowments and circ*mstances offered no such promise. It is thought that he had no more than a fifth- or sixth-grade education, and the quality of even that is suspect. His widowed mother struggled to keep the family together, and apparently there was little religious training in the home. When young Moody left his Northfield, Massachusetts, home for Boston in 1854 and attended his first Sunday-school class, he thumbed through Genesis looking for the Gospel of John.

Moody’s Sunday-school teacher shortly thereafter led him to Christ, but when the young convert presented himself to the membership committee of the Mount Vernon Congregational Church his application was deferred because of his utter ignorance of Christian teaching. His Sunday-school teacher, Edward Kimball, was on that committee and years later testified that he had seen few persons whose minds were spiritually darker than Moody’s and that the committee had seldom had applicants who seemed more unlikely to fill any sphere of public or extended usefulness. And yet Moody was drawn into evangelical Christian circles in Boston and later in Chicago, eventually becoming a leader in the YMCA and in the Sunday-school movement. He began to read and to educate himself by plying Christian ministers and teachers with questions whenever he found himself in their presence.

By the late 1860s Moody was widely sought after as a speaker, but it was not until the fall of 1873 that he and Ira Sankey began to capture the attention of the English-speaking world with their evangelistic meetings in England and Scotland. Their tour continued through Scotland, Ireland, and back into the great industrial cities of England till mid-1875. Large churches and public halls were packed with thousands, even at inconvenient hours and in bitter cold, to hear the two Yankees sing and preach the Gospel. They returned to America as celebrities and made an evangelistic tour of large cities here between 1875 and 1878. Although these years were the high-water mark of Moody’s ministry, till the end of the century he normally attracted thousands whenever he preached and captured front-page headlines wherever he went. Verbatim accounts of his sermons appeared in newspapers for a quarter of a century, and scores of books reprinting the sermons were published. And his impact went far beyond this. He started a Sunday school that developed into one of America’s great churches, established three schools, opened a summer Bible conference, and exerted his influence in countless other ways. Although historians disagree in their estimates of Moody, there can be no contesting the fact that no religious leader of his time had greater public visibility or impact.

How do we account for this? While Moody did have natural leadership qualities and developed into a forceful speaker, his limited training and abilities gave little hint in his early life of his future achievements! His ministry is an example of the principle that God can take what seems to be small and insignificant and use it greatly if it is given over completely to him. In 1867 Moody heard Henry Varley say, “The world has yet to see what God will do with and for and through and in and by the man who is fully and wholly consecrated to him.” Moody determined to be that man.

In 1871 he experienced a spiritual crisis in which he was driven to give up selfish ambition and submit himself to the Spirit’s power and control. Shortly thereafter came his sudden rise to fame as an evangelist. In view of his own commitment to God, it is not surprising that at the beginning of his meetings he would warn Christians, “It is not our strength we want.” “It is not our work to make them believe. That is the work of the Spirit. Our work is to give them the Word of God.” “I cannot convert men; I can only proclaim the Gospel.

“Moody lived and preached consecration to God and reliance upon him, but he also believed that God held human beings responsible to do their best, using their energies wisely for him. Moody said:

I want to add another word to “consecrate,” and that is “concentrate.” We are living in an intense age. The trouble with a great many men is that they spread themselves out over too much ground. They fail in everything. If they would only put their life into one channel, and keep in it, they would accomplish something. They make no impression, because they do a little work here and a little work there. They spread themselves out so thin they make no impression at all. Lay yourselves on the altar of God, and then concentrate on some one work.

“Many people are working and working, like children on a rocking horse,” he said; “it is a beautiful motion, but there is no progress.”Today we are devotees of the cult of bigness and success. We can relearn from Moody that what seems small and unpromising can become very effective when God is in it.

Nothing beats reality

One cannot study the life and sermons of D. L. Moody very long without being forcefully reminded of another basic Christian tenet: God wants his people to be real. Two insidious tendencies threaten the evangelical cause in our own day, the thin veneer of pretended piety and the false image often projected for public-relations purposes. What a tragedy when decisions are made on the basis of conviction! Although Moody understood the value of advertising, he did not project a false image, and he pointedly rejected anything that smelled of sanctimony. He was not a sensationalist in either his programming or his preaching. Even those who were not especially sympathetic to his message were impressed with his evident genuineness, as are many recent scholars who have studied his career.

He was free of pretensions and hypocrisy and had a realistic view of himself. He knew that he was nothing more than simply “Mr. Moody.”He spoke often against what he called “religious cant,” by which he meant something akin to religious pretension. Long public prayers were especially irksome to him because they seemed to be showy. “Some men’s prayers need to be cut short at both ends and set on fire in the middle,” he would warn. “A man who prays much in private will make short prayers in public.” Moody said:

Any place where God is is holy, and this putting on another air and a sanctimonious look when we come into the house of God and laying it aside when we go out, thinking that this is going to be acceptable to God, is all wrong. Every place ought to be holy to a true child of God.

“We may sing our hymns and psalms, and offer prayers, but they will be an abomination to God, unless we are willing to be thoroughly straightforward in our daily life.” Repeatedly he would say words to this effect:

What we want is to be real. Let us not appear to be more than we are. Don’t let us put on any cant, any assumed humility, but let us be real men and women, and if we profess to be what we are not, God know all about us. God hates a sham.

Moody not only said it; he lived it!

The tie that binds

Some of Moody’s most eloquent statements were on a theme for which he carried a burden throughout his career: There is a unity that binds all true Christians together for work and fellowship. John Pollock has called Moody the “grandfather of ecumenism.” That is reasonable if one remembers that Moody’s ecumenism was founded on an evangelical understanding of the Gospel and basic Christian doctrine. Nineteenth-century evangelicals were not noteworthy for their sense of Christian unity. Petty denominational interests and doctrinal controversy did anything but bring them together. And yet Moody, while recognizing the legitimacy of denominational concerns, succeeded in placing them in proper perspective by emphasizing the centrality of the gospel message: ruin by the fall, redemption by the look, regeneration by the Spirit. By focusing on this he was able to galvanize British and American Christians of widely divergent theological traditions into fellowshiping and working units. Speaking of the English ecclesiastical scene he suggested:

Suppose Paul and Cephas were to come down to us now, they would hear at once about our Churchmen and Dissenters. “A Dissenter!” says Paul, “what is that?” “We have the Church of England, and there are those who dissent from the Church.” “Oh, indeed! Are there two classes of Christians here, then?” “I am sorry to say there are a good many more divisions. The Dissenters themselves are split up. There are the Wesleyans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Independents, and son on; even these are all divided up.” “Is it possible,” says Paul, “that there are so many divisions?” “Yes: the Church of England is pretty well divided itself. There is a Broad Church, the High Church, the Low Church, and the High-Lows. Then there is the Lutheran Church; and away in Russia they have the Greek Church, and so on.” I declare I do not know what Paul and Cephas would think if they came back to the world; they would find a strange state of things. It is one of the most humiliating things in the present day to see how God’s family is divided up. If we love the Lord Jesus Christ the burden of our hearts will be that God may bring us closer together, so that we may love one another and rise above all party feeling.

Typically, Moody would warn believers in cities where he ministered:

Talk not of this sect and that sect, of this party and that party, but solely and exclusively of the great comprehensive cause of Christ. In this ideal brotherhood there should be one faith, one mind, one spirit, and in this city let us starve it out for a season, to actualize this glorious truth. Oh that God may so fill us with His love, and the love of souls, that no thought of minor sectarian parties can come in; that there may be no room for them in our atmosphere whatever; and that the Spirit of God may give us one mind and one spirit to glorify His holy name.

One of the more divisive issues among evangelicals of Moody’s day was eschatology. Premillennial schemes of interpretation were rising in popularity, but by the 1890s the premillennialists were finding their own ranks rent by controversy. A premillennialist himself, Moody nevertheless warned, “Don’t criticize if our watches don’t agree about the time we know he is coming.” He even extended the olive branch to post-millennialists and said, “We will not have division.” The evangelical climate today suggests that many of us still need to take these words to heart.

They will know we are Christians by our love

Moody’s concern for Christian unity points to another theme that pervaded his preaching from beginning to end: God is love, and love is the mark of God’s people. Moody’s emphasis on the love of God rather than the terror of hell was a departure from what had been characteristic in American revivals and evangelism. While we would occasionally affirm his orthodoxy by stating his belief in the wrath of God and the existence of hell, it was more typical for him to say:

A great many people say I don’t reach up the terrors of religion. I don’t want to don’t want to scare men into the kingdom of God. I don’t believe in preaching that way. If I wanted to scare men into Heaven, I would just hold the terrors of hell over their heads and say, “Go right in.” But that is not the way to win men. They don’t have any slaves in Heaven; they are all sons, and they must accept salvation voluntarily.

Sons would be drawn to God by love, not fear; fear would only produce slaves. “If I could only make people believe God love them, what a rush we would see for the Kingdom of God.”

You ask me why God loves. You might as well ask me why the sun shines. It can’t help shining, and neither can He help loving, because He is love Himself, and any one that says He is not love does not know anything about love. If we have got the true love of God shed abroad in our hearts we will show it in our lives. We will not have to go up and down the earth proclaiming it. We will show it in everything we say or do.

What was true of God was to be true of God’s people. “If you go through the world with love in your heart, you will make the world love you’ and love is the badge that Christ gave His disciples.” “The test of religion is not religiousness, but love.” “The man that hasn’t any love in his religion, I don’t want it; it is human. The man that hasn’t any love in his creed may let it go to the winds: I don’t want it.” Similarly, work that did not spring from love was of no value. “I am tired of the word duty,” Moody declared, “tired of hearing duty, duty, duty.” God hates the great things in which love is not the motive power; but He delights in the little things that are prompted by a feeling of love.” “There is not use working without love. A doctor, a lawyer, may do good work without love, but God’s work cannot be done without love.

“Moody was painfully aware of the Church’s inconsistency in not holding to the necessity of love. He observed:

If love don’t prompt all work, all work is for naught. If a man in the church ain’t sound in his faith, we draw our ecclesiastical sword and cut his head right off; but he may not be sound in love, yet we do nothing in his case. The great want in our churches is the want of love in them.

If D. L. Moody were to look at the church today, would he still find this “great want”?

This article was originally published in the December 20, 1974, issue ofChristianity Today. When he wrote this, Stanley N. Gundry was a member of the theology faculty of Moody Bible Institute. He is now Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of the Book New Media Group at Zondervan Publishing House, and author of Love Them In: The Life and Theology of D.L. Moody, just reissued from Moody Press.

Related Elsewhere

See today’s related article, “Why We Still Need Moody | The man who invented modern evangelicalism,” for links to Moody-related sites.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

About 2,000 years ago in fields near Bethlehem, angels were said to have told shepherds of the birth of Jesus. A few shepherds can still be found there today, wandering with their flocks across the sparsely covered grass slopes much as their predecessors did in biblical times, but their numbers are dwindling.

Most shepherds have given up the hard life and moved into modern homes adjoining the fields, where they work strictly on a part-time basis. Should the angels return, they would be likely to find many of the shepherds inside their homes next to an electric heater, watching television.

Only a few shepherds still watch their flocks by night, gazing up at the stars as their forefathers did, looking for good or bad omens and attempting to divine the future.

“Now technology has changed all that. People are less interested in the stars. I have radio, video, television and a satellite dish which picks up all 30 channels,” Mr. Elisa Banoura, 67, a Palestinian Christian, told Ecumenical News International (ENI). “They supply me with all the weather reports and news I need.”

He typifies the modern-day shepherd now living on the outskirts of Bethlehem. He keeps only seven animals—sheep and goats—in a small room at the rear of his house, seldom letting them roam out of his backyard. He feeds them until they are ready to be slaughtered and sells them for about US$170 each.

The high cost of feedstuffs renders his vocation uneconomic, he says, making it a true labor of love to keep alive a family tradition dating back 500 years. Banoura, who is also a retired science teacher, is the last of a long line of shepherds. All of his children have decided to enter other professions, such as law and medicine, rather than to keep to family tradition.

Another shepherd, Ahmed Abyyiat, 60, a Muslim, was born and has lived all his life in Beit Sahur, also known as the Shepherds’ Field. A member of the Taamrah tribe, he has been wandering the hills around Bethlehem since the age of seven.

His bed is a raised steel platform in an open field. He spends his nights covered in wool blankets, next to the wooden enclosure of his flock. There is a small stone shelter nearby, to provide protection in case of rain.

Waking before sunrise, he opens the gate for the sheep and goats and begins searching for grazing areas. The vegetation is often sparse. For most of the year the hills are brown and barren in appearance, as they have been for centuries. But they have served as home and a life support system for Abyyiat and his forefathers, nomadic tribesmen.

He has about 100 sheep and some goats. All of them have names and they understand him when he calls out. “As we walk, I sing and recite poetry, in which I delight, although I have never learned to read or write,” he said.

He started learning his profession at the age of seven from his father, who learnt it from his father. “In my youth, one could stroll freely, without limits. You did not need anyone’s permission or stop and think, ‘Is this my land, or does it belong to someone else’,” he said.

This was before 1967, when the West Bank was occupied by Israel. “This is sad for someone like me who is descended from a long line of shepherds, going back at least a century and probably even longer; I have always considered myself Palestinian,” he said.

Most of the West Bank remains under Israeli military occupation but Bethlehem itself has been allowed limited Palestinian self-rule. Abyyiat noted that Jesus, who is recognized in the Koran as being of the holiest prophets, came from Bethlehem. But, he said: “I am a Muslim, and we have different beliefs about him. And no, I do not know the Christian story about his birth.”

It was news to him that angels were meant to have appeared before the shepherds in biblical times to announce the coming of Jesus into the world.

“All those who can read and follow the Koran closely know that there were many miracles in the life of Jesus,” he said. Ahmed devotes some time to prayer, but most hours are taken up with work.

“I am grateful that some of my sons help me in the fields but I know that not one of them will be a shepherd. The country is getting smaller and the food for the sheep more expensive. We are not making real profits any longer. I can see that we are a dying breed. In my area now there are only about 20 shepherds, so you can see how we are facing the threat of extinction.”

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Mike Molnar was a lot more interested in expanding his coin collection than figuring out the identity of the Star of Bethlehem when he ran across a 2,000-year-old coin at a coin show back in 1990.

But the image on the coin, of a ram looking over its shoulder at a star, sent the Rutgers University astronomer to dusty astrological texts to interpret its meaning. And what he found was the key, he believes, for unlocking the secret of the Star of Bethlehem.

The Star of Bethlehem has mystified and intrigued Bible scholars and astronomers (and those who fancied themselves a bit of both) for centuries.

The second chapter of Matthew’s Gospel describes a unique celestial phenomenon that somehow escaped the notice of King Herod and the rest of Judea yet attracted mysterious visitors from the distant east, seeking a newborn king.

A number of celestial events have been proposed to explain the Bethlehem Star. A newly revised Bible Handbook, issued this year by the Zondervan Publishing House, states “there’s one and only one astronomical object” that meets all of the Biblical criteria: a comet.

Molnar, who earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1971, is sure it’s not a comet. In an interview, Molnar said ancient astrology texts never refer to the birth of anybody related to a comet. Comets usually signal disaster, such as a war or the death of a king, he said.

In those ancient texts Molnar discovered that Aries the Ram was the zodiac symbol for the ancient kingdom of Judea, something that most scholars had apparently missed. Its appearance on his coin, minted in Antioch around A.D. 6, probably symbolized the solidification of Roman rule of the region.

Based on that information, he then went looking for the kind of celestial event that would have signaled to ancient astrologers like the Magi that something as memorable as the birth of a king was about to take place. “I really had to think like them,” he said. “What would they look for?”

His research lead him to the morning of April 17, 6 B.C. The planet Jupiter, named after the supreme deity of the ancient Romans, came over the horizon that morning accompanied by a host of other celestial signs that would have been like flashing neon light to the astrologers.

The moon and the sun were both right there, and Saturn was nearby, all within the sign of Aries the Ram. “All of these things, according to ancient manuscripts, indicated the birth of an incredibly powerful king,” Molnar said.

Restudying the original Greek of Matthew’s Gospel account Molnar saw a very technical description of exactly what occurred that April, as well as later in the year.

“These are also astronomical terms,” he said. “‘In the east,'” in Greek, meant ‘at morning rising in the east.’ Words for ‘going forward’ and ‘stood over’ were the same as what we call today retrograde motion.”

Retrograde motion is an optical illusion created by the orbits of the planets. As the earth’s orbit catches up to another planet, such as Jupiter, the planet’s movement across the sky appears to slow and stop.

Later that summer and fall, Jupiter underwent retrograde motion. “I believe this was the time the wise men were visiting King Herod and had their audience with him,” Molnar said.

Molnar’s colleagues at other East Coast universities seem to consider his new book, The Star of Bethlehem, a major breakthrough. Bradley Schaefer of Yale writes, in a Sky & Telescope review, that all the old Star of Bethlehem theories are now irrelevant.

Harvard’s Owen Gingrich, in an endorsem*nt on the book jacket, calls it “the most original and important contribution of the entire twentieth century on the thorny question of how events recorded there should be interpreted.”

Molnar says the book, which was issued in October by Rutgers University Press, is now in its second printing.

Gordon Govier is news director at Madison radio stations WNWC AM1190 and FM102.5 and produces a weekly program on biblical archaeology called The Book & The Spade.

Related Elsewhere

See Mike Molnar‘s Web site at Rutgers University here, which includes an area on the Star of Bethlehem.

Want to know other ideas about the Star of Bethlehem? There are many theories on the Web. The best page of Bethelehem Star links is at Los Angeles’s Griffith Observatory site. Some of the better sites dealing with the Star are found at Encyclopedia Britannica, Bakersfield College Astronomy, Susan Carroll’s Astronomy for Everyone, the December 1993 issue of Imprimis, a listserv entry on Wise Men stored at American University, and an article in The Seattle Times. There’s also the official government take at the U.S. Naval Observatory.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

One of the church’s earliest and best Christmas sermons was preached by Gregory of Nazianzus (A.D. 329-389) in Constantinople’s Church of the Resurrection on December 25, A.D. 380. A well-educated man from Cappadocia, Gregory’s life alternated between monasticism and pressure into public ministry—eventually into the bishopric of Constantinople (which he resigned shortly after his appointment). A defender of orthodoxy against the Arians (who believed Jesus was not fully God), Gregory also condemned the emperor Julian, a pagan, for attempting to exclude Christians from higher learning. But in his love for learning, Gregory also believed that belief in God’s incomprehensibility was a necessary element of orthodox theology. For his rhetorical skill, especially against the Arians, he was given the title “the theologian.”

Christ is born, glorify ye Him. Christ from heaven, go ye out to meet Him. Christ on earth; be ye exalted. Christ in the flesh, rejoice with trembling and with joy; with trembling because of your sins, with joy because of your hope. Christ of a Virgin, without Mother, becomes without Father (without Mother of His former state, without Father of His second). He Who is not carnal is Incarnate; the Son of God becomes the Son of Man.

The Festival is the Theophany or Birthday, for it is called both, two titles being given to the one thing. For God was manifested to many by birth. On the one hand Being, and eternally Being, of the Eternal Being, above cause and word, for there was no word before The Word; and on the other hand for our sakes also Becoming, that He Who gives us our being might also give us our Well-being, or rather might restore us by His Incarnation, when we had by wickedness fallen from well-being. The name Theophany is given to it in reference to the Manifestation, and that of Birthday in respect of His Birth.

Therefore let us keep the Feast, not after the manner of a heathen festival, but after a godly sort; not after the way of the world, but in a fashion above the world; not as our own, but as belonging to Him Who is ours, or rather as our Master’s; not as of weakness, but as of healing; not as of creation, but of recreation.

Now then I pray you accept His Conception, and leap before Him; if not like John from the womb, yet like David, because of the resting of the Ark. Revere the enrollment on account of which thou wast written in heaven, and adore the Birth by which thou wast loosed from the chains of thy birth, and honor little Bethlehem, which hath led thee back to Paradise; and worship the manger through which thou, being without sense, wast fed by the Word. Know as Isaiah bids thee, thine Owner, like the ox, and like the ass thy Master’s crib; if thou art one of those who are pure and lawful food, and who chew the cud of the Word and are fit for sacrifice. Or if thout art one of those who are as yet unclean and uneatable and unfit for sacrifice, and of the Gentile portion, run with the Star, and bear thy gifts with the Magi, gold and frankincense and myrrh, as to a King, and to God, and to One Who is dead for thee. With shepherds glorify Him; with angels join in the chorus; with archangels sing hymns. Let this Festival be common to the powers in heaven and to the powers upon earth. For I am persuaded that the Heavenly Hosts join in our exultation and keep high Festival with us today … because they love men, and they love God. …

Look at and be looked at by the Great God, Who in Trinity is worshiped and glorified, and Whom we declare to be now set forth as clearly before you as the chains of our flesh allow, in Jesus Christ our Lord, to Whom be the glory for ever. Amen.

This edited sermon was originally published in the December 12, 1980 issue of Christianity Today.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere

For the full text of this homily, Oration XXXVIII: ‘On the Theophany, or Birthday of Christ,’ see the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, which has other Gregory of Nazianzus sermons and letters.

See a seventeenth-century Greek fresco of Gregory of Nazianzus at the Hellenic Ministry of Culture site.

Read Gregory’s biography in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Christian History featured Gregory Nazinazus and other early church leaders in its issue, “The First Bible Teachers“

Our earliest description of Christmas from C.S. Lewis is a bitter one. The year was 1922. As usual, C.S. Lewis and his brother Warren spent the holidays with their widowed father in his big house outside Belfast.

"It was a dark morning with a gale blowing and some very cold rain," Lewis reported in his diary. Their father Albert awakened his two sons, both in their midtwenties, to go to early Communion service. As they walked to church in the dawn light, they started discussing the time of sunrise. Albert irritated his sons by insisting that the sun had already risen or else they would not have any light. He was an illogical and argumentative man.

Saint Mark's church was intensely cold. Warren wanted to keep his coat on during the service, and his father disapproved. "Well, at least you won't keep it on when you go up to the Table," Albert warned. Warren asked why not and was told that taking Communion with a coat on was "most disrespectful." Warren took his coat off to avoid an argument. Not one of the three Lewis men had any interest in the meaning of Communion. The two sons hadn't believed in Christianity for years.

"Christmas dinner, a rather deplorable ceremony, at quarter to four, Lewis continued in his diary. After dinner the rain had stopped at last, and Albert urged his two sons to take a walk. They were delighted to get out into the fresh air and head for a pub where they could get a drink. Before they came to the pub, however, some relatives drove by on the way to their house for a visit and gave them an unwelcome ride right back home.

After too much sitting and talking and eating and smoking all day in the stuffy house, Lewis went to bed early, dead tired and headachy. He felt like a flabby, lazy teenager again. It had been another bad Christmas.

In 1929 Albert Lewis suddenly died of cancer. There would be no more coming home for Christmas. Within a couple of years of their father's death, both Warren and C.S. Lewis privately made some major shifts in their ideas about religion. They were separately moving toward Christian faith.

It was 1931. In Shanghai, where he was serving as a British military officer, Warren got up at 6:30 on Christmas morning. There was bright sun, frost on the ground, and what Warren called a faint keen wind. For the first time in many years Warren went to church to take Communion. He was deeply excited about it.

Warren couldn't help thinking about the old days when he had attended Christmas Communion at home in Ireland. "The kafuffle of the early start, the hurried walk in the chill half light, Barton's beautiful voice, the dim lights of Saint Mark's and then the return home to the Gargantuan breakfast-how jolly it all seems in retrospect!" It hadn't seemed jolly at the time. Warren felt great sorrow about the past, but his sorrow was outweighed by gladness and thanks that he was once again a believer in the Christmas story.

On that very day, Christmas of 1931, C.S. Lewis sat down in Oxford to write an eight-page letter to Warren. He began by warning that because of his teaching duties he had done, read, and heard nothing for a long time that could possibly interest Warren. Then he proceeded to write one of his usual entertaining letters full of humor and ideas and bits of new. In the middle of the letter he mentioned that it was a foggy afternoon, but that it had seemed springlike early that morning as he went to the Communion service. That is how he admitted the big news that he had taken Communion for the first time in many years.

At that point in the letter, C.S. Lewis recounted a few thing that he had heard in recent sermons. In a sermon on foreign missions the preacher had said, "Many of us have friends who used to live abroad, and had a native Christian cook who was unsatisfactory. Well, after all there are a great many unsatisfactory Christians in England too. In fact I'm one myself." In a different sermon, that preacher had declared that if early Christians had known they were founding an organization to last for centuries, they would have organized it to death. But because they believed that they were making provisional arrangements for a year or so, they left it free to live. Lewis thought that was an interesting idea.

A less helpful preacher had said shortly before Christmas that he objected to the early chapters of Luke, especially the story of the Annunciation, because they were indelicate. Such prudery left Lewis gasping.

That Christmas letter from C.S. Lewis found its way to Warren on January 19, 1932, and he wrote in his diary, "A letter … today containing the news that he too has once more started to go to Communion, at which I am delighted." Had he not done so, Warren reflected, they would not have been quite so close in the future as in the past.

From 1931 to the end of his life, C.S. Lewis looked at Christmas from a Christian point of view. In 1939 Warren was on duty away from home again, and on Christmas Eve C.S. Lewis wrote that he had been thinking much that week about Christmas cards. Aside from the absurdity of celebrating the nativity at all if you don't believe in the Incarnation, "what in heaven's name is the idea of everyone sending everyone else pictures of stage-coaches, fairies, foxes, dogs, butterflies, kittens, flowers, etc.?"

Warming to his topic, Lewis asked his brother to imagine a Chinese man sitting at a table covered with small pictures. The man explains that he is preparing for the anniversary of Buddha's being protected by the dragons. Not that he personally believes that this is the real anniversary of the event or even that it really happened. He is just keeping up the old custom. Not that he has any pictures of Buddha or of the dragons. He doesn't like that kind. He says, "Here's one of a traction engine for Hu Flung Dung, and I'm sending this study of a napkin-ring to Lo Hung Git, and these jolly ones of bluebottles are for the children."

Aside from thinking about Christmas cards, Lewis had enjoyed himself in two ways that week. He was back at work on his book The Problem of Pain, and he was able to enjoy good winter walks. The pond on his property had a thin skin of ice. The beautiful frozen days had been of two kinds: "those with bright yellow suns, turning at sunset to red cannon balls, and those with deep dark-grey fog through which the ridges of the grass loom up white." Near the end of his letter he said, "Well, Brother, (as the troops say) it's a sad business not to have you with me to-morrow morning. … " That meant church.

During World War II C.S. Lewis gave a series of talks about Christianity on BBC radio, and later he brought these out as his book Mere Christianity. In that book Lewis summed up Christmas and Christianity in one memorable sentence: "The Son of God became a man to enable men to become the sons of God."

In his 1950 book for children, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis made it clear that he was all for merry times and good gifts and Christmas pudding. The land of Narnia was under the spell of a wicked white witch who made it always winter and never Christmas. When the great gold lion Aslan brought the thaw that spelled her doom, Father Christmas came at last.

In 1954 Lewis published a very different kind of fantasy about Christmas, "Xmas and Christmas." It is an essay about the strange island called Niatirb (Britain spelled backwards) and the winter festival called Exmas that the Niatirbians observe with great patience and endurance.

One of the customs that fills the marketplace with crowds during the foggiest and rainiest season of the year is the great labor and weariness of sending cards and gifts. Every citizen has to guess the value of the gift that every friend will send him so that he may send one of equal value whether he can afford it or not. Everyone becomes so pale and weary that it looks as if calamity has struck. These days are called the Exmas Rush. Exhausted with the Rush, most citizens lie in bed until noon on the day of the festival. Later that day they eat far too much and get intoxicated. On the day after Exmas they are very grave because they feel unwell and begin to calculate how much they have spent on Exmas and the Rush.

There is also a festival in Niatirb called Crissmas, held on the same day as Exmas. A few people in Niatirb keep Crissmas sacred, but they are greatly distracted by Exmas and the Rush.

On December 17, 1955, Lewis wrote to an old friend that he was pleased by the card the man had sent him, a Japanese-style nativity scene. But, he continued, Christmas cards in general and the whole vast commercial drive called "Xmas" was one of his pet abominations. He wished they would die away and leave the Christmas observance alone. He had nothing against secular festivities. But he despised the artificial childlikeness, and the attempt to keep up some shallow connection with the birth of Christ.

In 1957 C.S. Lewis published "What Christmas Means to Me." He claimed that three things go by the name of Christmas. First is the religious festival. Second is an occasion for merry making and hospitality. Third is the commercial racket, a modern invention to boost sales. He listed his reasons for condemning the commercial racket. First, it causes more pain than pleasure. Second, it is a trap made up of obligations. Third, many of the purchases are gaudy rubbish. Fourth, we get exhausted by having to support the commercial racket while carrying on all our regular duties as well. "Can it really be my duty to buy and receive masses of junk every winter … ?" Lewis demanded plaintively.

Two years later C.S. Lewis was featured in the Christmas issue of the Saturday Evening Post. The issue, dated December 19, 1959, bore on its cover a 15-cent price, a picture of a man struggling clumsily to get a package wrapped, and the announcement of a new Screwtape letter by C.S. Lewis. Inside was a life-sized, close-up photo of Lewis's face and his essay "Screwtape Proposes a Toast." This was a kind of Christmas gift to the public from the editors.

In 1963 the Saturday Evening Post featured C. S. Lewis in its Christmas issue for the second time. This time the price on the cover was 20 cents and the picture on the cover was of a children's choir. Inside was Lewis's article "We Have No 'Right to Happiness'" with the heading, "Is happiness-in particular sexual happiness-one of man's inalienable rights? A distinguished author attacks the brutality of this increasingly common notion." In the upper right-hand corner is the announcement, "As this article went to press, its author died at his home in Oxford, England. The article is his last work."

Since Lewis's death on November 22, 1963, a number of his writings from earlier years have become more widely available. A few not published at all in his lifetime have now found their way into print. One of these is his undated poem "The Nativity," available in his book Poems. In this brief poem Lewis shows what the nativity scene meant in his own prayer life.

First, Lewis likens himself to a slow, dull ox. Along with the oxen he sees the glory growing in the stable, he says, and he hopes that it will give him, at length, an ox's strength. Second, Lewis likens himself to a stubborn and foolish ass. Along with the asses he sees the Savior in the hay, and he hopes that he will learn the patience of an ass. Third, Lewis likens himself to a strayed and bleating sheep. Along with the sheep in the stable he watches his Lord lying in the manger. From his Lord he hopes to gain some of a sheep's woolly innocence.

One of the earliest photos of C.S. Lewis shows him as a very little boy posed with a Father Christmas doll. The half-smile caught forever on his plump young face seems balanced between anxiety and pleasure. He looks thoughtfully attentive. It is fitting, because he half-smiled at Christmas the rest of his days. We might do well to pause in the "kafuffle" and "Exams Rush" and look into the manger with C.S. Lewis.

This article originally appeared in the December 16, 1983 issue of Christianity Today. Kathryn Lindskoogis a writer living in Orange, California, and author of C.S. Lewis, Mere Christian (Cornerstone), and How to Grow a Young Reader (Harold Shaw).

Related Elsewhere

Last year, on the one-hundredth anniversary of Lewis's birth, Christianity Today ran an article by J.I. Packer titled "Still Surprised by Lewis | Why this nonevangelical Oxford don has become our patron saint" (Sept. 7, 1998)

See also our earlier story, "Jack Is Back | The search for the historical Lewis" (Feb. 3, 1997)

Despite the glut of C.S. Lewis information online, there's not much on Lewis and Christmas. Still, if it's Lewis you're interested in, Into the Wardrobe should fill your every desire.

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Budget time in my church comes during the approach of Christmas, for our fiscal year begins January 1. The juxtaposition is simply jarring.

Christmas in church is the dreamiest of times, when we rejoice in song as we never do otherwise, when the staunchest of iconoclasts welcome at least some decoration (a few pine boughs, perhaps) into the sanctuary, when our memories of childhood get tangled with the story of the birth of Jesus. That story has proven its strength to rekindle people’s deepest hopes, whether they believe it or not. We who do believe it almost burst with hope at Christmastime.

But then we face the budget, the antithesis of the star atop the Christmas tree. The budget embodies dreary materialism, with all its inevitable disappointments. It is hard to synchronize this with Christmas; hard to harmonize the reedy sound of children practicing “Silent Night” with the anguished comments of the small committee of tired elders working late into the night to make the numbered columns come out right.

Not that budgets are entirely uninspiring. At my church, we begin the process in various committees by seeing visions and dreaming dreams. The Christian education committee envisions buying a complete library of Christian videos. The outreach and membership committee (with the pastor’s enthusiastic concurrence) dreams of hiring a retired pastor to call on the sick and homebound. For the plant committee, paradise would be a repaved parking lot.

Ordinary though our dreams may sound, they are offspring of a wider vision: to live and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. When we work through the logistics of making our dreams come true, our dreams grow sharper. We are lifted out of our routines and, almost inevitably, inspired. We begin not merely to wish, but to hope.

But it is hard to transfer that hope to a budget. Most people grow weary just looking over the relentless columns of numbers. The budget categories (“operating expenses,” “capital debt”) speak openly as a clam; the figures bury intelligence in an avalanche of facts. The mind grows numb. Five minutes after beginning a budget confab, a $48.83 item seems as important as one costing $48,483.83. That is why people talk so much about “the bottom line.” Above the bottom line grows an impenetrable jungle.

Yet we try. We dream our budgets and then present our dreams, carefully wrapped in numbers and logic, to the congregation. Members fill out pledge cards, and we who are designated leaders use those pledges to decide what we can do and what we cannot. Every year, our dreams are returned to us in pledge-sized fragments. We are given the money to do a few new things, but not half of what we dreamed.

So we will make do. And then try to forget it as we sing Christmas carols.

Last year, however, as I read the Christmas story and worked on the budget, a different perspective came to me, for the original Christmas was also a make-do affair.

There was, first, the matter of explaining the unexpected pregnancy. Joseph and Mary, Zechariah and Elizabeth knew the truth, but how could they make their neighbors believe it? Perhaps only God’s opinion really counts, but judging from my own experience, those who love God still care what their neighbors think.

Then came the incredibly inconvenient summons to Bethlehem. When you are about to have a baby, you want relatives around to help. You desperately want your own home and your own things. Joseph and Mary made do in a crowded, strange town.

They could not even find a proper room. They had to make do with a stable, making a baby’s bed out of whatever was at hand. No number of angel visitations could take away the wearying inconvenience of that lonesome birth. Surely this was not their dream-neither their dream of a first son, not their dream of welcoming a Savior.

Yet it was in those make-do circ*mstances that God came. We truly sing of that baby in his thrown-together bed, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

“To each of us a task is given. They had to watch their neighbors’ eyes grow skeptical as they heard the circ*mstances of the pregnancy; I have to try convincing a dubious congregation that the extra money is really needed. They made do with a room paved in sheep dung; I may make do with a potholed parking lot. Neither situation seems to have much to do with the glory of God. Yet both sets of circ*mstances may welcome and nurture new, supernatural life. It happens particularly when we respond like Mary: “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.”

It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, Proverbs tells us. In Bethlehem he concealed his Son in a manger. In my church he conceals his gospel in the budget. Often God fulfills our hopes in such ways, which seem in their untidiness to mock our hopes. How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given. This article as originally published in the December 15, 1989 issue of Christianity Today. Tim Stafford is currently Senior Writer for Christianity Today, and author of Stamp of Glory: A Novel of the Abolitionist Movement (Thomas Nelson).

Related Elsewhere

See today’s other Christmas-related articles by Philip Yancey, Kathryn Lindskoog, and Gregory of Nazianzus.

Earlier Tim Stafford articles include:

“The Business of the Kingdom | Management guru Peter Drucker thinks the future of America is in the hands of churches” (Nov. 8, 1999)

“Anatomy of a Giver | American Christians are the nation’s most generous givers, but we aren’t exactly sacrificing.” (May 19, 1997)

“God’s Green Acres | How DeWitt is helping Dunn, Wisconsin, reflect the glory of God’s good creation.” (June 15, 1998)

“God Is in the Blueprints | Our deepest beliefs are reflected in the ways we construct our houses of worship.” (Sept. 7, 1998)

“The New Theologians | These top scholars are believers who want to speak to the church” (Feb. 8, 1999)

“The Criminologist Who Discovered Churches | Political scientist John DiIulio followed the data to see what would save America’s urban youth.” (June 14, 1999)

Stafford also had two articles about abolitionism in the September/October 1999 issue of our sister publication, Books & Culture: “Abolition’s Hidden History | How black argument led to white commitment,” and “The Puzzle of John Brown“

Stafford also writes the “Love, Sex, and Real Life” column for Campus Life magazine, another Christianity Today, Inc. publication.

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