North Star Writers Group

We scramble at this time of year. We run around like headless chickens, donating to various charities, delivering meals for the homeless, buying presents for needy children, visiting shut-ins to sing carols. On top of all that, there is the forced merriment of the dreaded office party and the not-always-cordial family reunions.

How sad that the season devolves into obligation, drudgery and strain for so many of us – especially those tasked with the domestic duties of cleaning, cooking, baking, decorating, buying presents and ensuring that all the parties come off without a hitch.

I heartily recommend making the season less complicated and stressful. It’s not that I don’t enjoy getting or giving presents, or attending casual gatherings with loved ones and friends. All the hoopla, however, is not really the point.

For me, the birth of Jesus represents the birth of the most profound idea the world has ever known. That idea? That we human beings and God are not separate - that God is unconditional love and that we merit such love simply because we are God’s own, souls created from the very unconditional love-fabric of God.

Before Jesus, most religions of the ancient world assumed that God (or the gods) had to be placated and/or bribed in order to bestow favors, and that we on earth were separated from the Divine by an unbridgeable gulf.

In raising the dead, healing the sick, changing water into wine and walking on water, however, Jesus showed us that at least one human being had abilities previously ascribed solely to the Divine and that human and Divine nature are, ultimately, the same. “I and my Father are one,” Jesus told his listeners, and they understood him to be referring to God. (John 10:30).

Of course this did not set too well with some of them. They wanted to stone him for the presumption of claiming that he had set himself up as God. He reminded them of their own teachings with this question: “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, You are Gods’?” (John 10:34)

Jesus also seemed to suggest that he was not the only human being who could work miracles. “Most assuredly I say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do he will do also….” (John 14:12)

Where I part company with traditional religion is how I believe in Jesus. Instead of focusing on his death, I celebrate his life, which united God and humankind and brought hope to so many in his time and still does today. For me, his message is that we are all children of a God who demands nothing more of us than to be all of who we are, in all our imperfections. His death and reappearance simply affirm my understanding that death is simply a transition to a new life, not a one-way ticket to hell or, even worse, oblivion.

The meaning of Jesus is very much a matter of faith, and faith is what the season is truly all about. What is our faith? What do we believe? Why believe at all?

If we spent more effort this time of the year pondering these questions and sharing our thoughts and hearts with loved ones, and less time trying to impress our neighbors, the season might just be a lot merrier.

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This is Column #CT14. Request permission to publish here.