A New Years' prayer

Samuel Johnson on New Year's Eve, 1749/50:

ALMIGHTY GOD, by whose will I was created, and by whose Providence I have been sustained, by whose mercy I have been called to the knowledge of my Redeemer, and by whose Grace whatever I have thought or acted acceptable to Thee has been inspired and directed, grant, O Lord, that in reviewing my past life, I may recollect Thy mercies to my preservation, in whatever state Thou preparest for me, that in affliction I may remember how often I have been succoured, and in Prosperity may know and confess from whose hand the blessing is received. Let me, O Lord, so remember my sins, that I may abolish them by true repentance, and so improve the Year to which Thou hast graciously extended my life, and all the years which Thou shalt yet allow me, that I may hourly become purer in Thy sight; so that I may live in Thy fear, and die in Thy favour, and find mercy at the last day, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.

"On eagles' wings"

I had always assumed we already had a national bird. Apparently, I was wrong:

President Biden last week signed a unanimously approved bill that officially names the bald eagle America’s national bird. Few have paused to reflect on the deeper meaning of this iconic creature.

When the Founding Fathers considered designs for a national emblem after the Declaration of Independence, they considered depictions of Moses parting the Red Sea and the children of Israel in the desert. In 1782 they chose a bald eagle, clutching in its talons an olive branch and arrows—biblical symbols of peace and war.

In the media coverage surrounding the eagle last week, our national bird’s religious significance was overlooked. The Bible mentions the eagle at least 30 times, including in Exodus, Deuteronomy, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Hosea, Jeremiah, Obadiah, Samuel and Revelations. Isaiah 40:31 declares: “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles.” Exodus 19:4 describes God carrying the Israelites “on eagles’ wings.” .... (more)

Eli Federman, "The Bald Eagle Is Heaven-Sent," The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 31, 2024.

"I heard laughter"

I retired from teaching before the cell phone took hold with high school students but I live among today's college students. On the elevator in my building, walking on the street, in a restaurant, wherever, their eyes are down and they are watching something, texting, or talking on the phone. I read that is also true in the high school classroom. That is changing. From "How Jonathan Haidt Won the Fight Against Smartphones in Schools":

This fall, when Suzanna Kruger walked into her biology classroom, she noticed something strange: Two dozen students were staring back at her.

“They were willing to make eye contact,” Kruger, a 55-year-old high school teacher in Seaside, Oregon, told me. “They even said hello.”

It was something she hadn’t seen since before the pandemic. “If a kid had their phone in class, I could just simply walk up to them, and they would hand it over,” Kruger said. But by the fall of 2021, when students returned from a year of distance learning, she said she had started feeling like the teacher from Charlie Brown.

“They looked at me like I was just going ‘wah, wah, wah,’ ” Kruger said...

This past fall, the Seaside School District became one of the first in Oregon to ban cell phones for both middle and high schoolers, forcing kids to lock their devices in pouches near the school entrance until the end of the day. Seaside has joined thousands of schools nationwide in recently banning smartphones, as a growing body of evidence shows they’re linked to falling test scores and rising rates of teen mental illness. ....

Haidt spells out four “foundational rules” to inspire a “Great Rewiring of Childhood.” They are: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16, no phones at school, and more unsupervised play and independence for kids. ....

For nearly a decade, Seaside High School principal Jeff Roberts said he’d been “dancing around” a phone ban. There was no question phones were causing “constant turmoil” at his school. But after he read Haidt’s book, he went to the school board to propose a ban from “bell to bell”—throughout the entire school day.

It’s been only one semester since the ban has taken effect, but Roberts says the school’s failure rate has fallen by 30 percent, meaning a full third of students who would have likely flunked a class are now on track to pass. Just as important, he says, is a sound he’s lately been hearing in the school cafeteria, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean. It’s a sound he says he’d almost forgotten.

“I heard laughter,” he said. “And I mean laughter. And there wasn’t a single phone in sight.” (more)

Olivia Reingold, "How Jonathan Haidt Won the Fight Against Smartphones in Schools," The Free Press, Dec. 30, 2024.

A Complete Unknown

I may wait until it is streaming, but I will see A Complete Unknown. From a Wall Street Journal review of the film:

Among the many music greats who’ve gotten the biopic treatment, Bob Dylan presents an especially tough multiple choice problem. He’s an artistic deity whose output made a real mark on history. He’s also a living cartoon character with a rasp and patter that has inspired countless bad impressions. And he’s a shapeshifter with many musical phases and a habit of tweaking his own mythology. ....

“[Timothée Chalamet] was really excited to be the one to be able to introduce this music and these lyrics to a new generation.” Chalamet, who has said he knew little about Dylan before landing the part, got good enough with the material to do some 35 songs live on camera, including guitar and harmonica work, and for those on-set performances to make the final cut, the filmmakers say. ....

He’d been practicing the music since 2018, when he was cast in the role, and had extra time to get better thanks to pandemic and Hollywood strike delays. Along the way, he became the movie-star equivalent of that dude in your college dorm who was always noodling on a guitar. His “Dune” co-star Oscar Isaac has said that Chalamet demonstrated his stuff by playing “Girl From the North Country” for cast-mates. ....

“When someone does an impersonation of Dylan, what they’re often missing is the sincerity with which he sings those lyrics,” Vetro says. “He was getting a message across, and that’s what people gravitated to, not because they were like, ‘Oh, I love that nasal voice.’”

Chalamet studied Dylan’s vintage performance footage as well as his body language and his attitude in press conferences. “We’d be watching an interview and Timmy would start speaking the lines just like Bob did. So then he would go into singing it like Bob, but the Bob of that specific time period” ....

...“A Complete Unknown” focuses on four precipitous years. The story starts with a 19-year-old Dylan’s arrival in New York City and ends with the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where he rocked out with a band and blew up his image as a lone prophet with an acoustic guitar. ....

Dylan, who is now 83, never got involved in Chalamet’s performance, Mangold says, but the singer reviewed the screenplay. He circled instances of people calling him “Bob” in the script, and changed that to “Bobby” for most characters. Dylan also crossed out a section of lyrics to “Masters of War” that he would skip when singing it live, the director recalls. “He was like, ‘Oh man, I never did this verse.’”

When they met (in a Santa Monica coffee shop that was closed to the public during the pandemic), Dylan said the decision to go electric at Newport had been less about shaking up the music scene than his craving for the camaraderie of playing in a rock band. .... (more)

John Jurgensen, "How Timothée Chalamet Learned to Sound Like Bob Dylan," The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 24, 2024.

"Mem’s of 7th day B’pt Church"

For some reason, this came to mind today. Matthew Bracewell and his wife may have been Stonefort Seventh Day Baptist Church members. Pope County is the southernmost county in Illinois, across the Ohio from Kentucky. Reposted:

Dissenting took more political courage in the days before the secret ballot. In "Abraham Lincoln and Pope County" C.A. Crisp, who has a "hobby of finding cemeteries" in Pope County in southernmost Illinois, notes reference to an 1860 voter who was distinctly in the minority — and proud of it.

"…The 1860 election records show that Abraham Lincoln received only 127 votes in Pope County, while Stephen A. Douglas, received 1,202 votes…Opposition to Lincoln’s election in 1860 was so strong that one farmer in the northwestern section of the county was assaulted physically at the polls when he showed up to vote for the 'Rail Splitter.' Matthew Bracewell lived to a ripe old age and never regretted the way he cast his vote…" Pope County History and Families, Vol. 2, page 16, ‘The Civil War in Pope County’ - submitted by Ricky T. Allen.

The small cemetery where Matthew Bracewell and Irenne, his wife, were buried is located almost 4 miles west of Delwood. It is in a small grove of trees surrounded by a field. On his tombstone it reads:

"Mem’s of 7th day B’pt Church" ....

Matthew’s ripe old age was 81 years 1 month and 5 days.

Abraham Lincoln and Pope County | Pope County, Illinois Cemeteries

In the bleak midwinter

In the bleak midwinter,      frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron,     water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow,     snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, long ago.	Angels and archangels may     have gathered there, Cherubim and seraphim     thronged the air; But His mother only,     in her maiden bliss, Worshiped the beloved with a kiss.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him,     nor earth sustain; Heaven and earth shall flee away     when He comes to reign. In the bleak midwinter     a stable place sufficed The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.	What can I give Him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd,     I would bring a lamb; If I were a Wise Man,     I would do my part; Yet what I can I give Him:     give my heart.
Enough for Him, whom cherubim,     worship night and day, Breastful of milk,     and a mangerful of hay; Enough for Him,     whom angels fall before, The ox and ass and camel which adore.

 Christina Rossetti, 1872

The Truth sent from Above

Ralph Vaughan Williams, "Herefordshire Carol":

This is the truth sent from above, The truth of God, the God of love; Therefore don’t turn me from your door,    But hearken all both rich and poor.	And at that season of the year Our blest Redeemer did appear; He here did live, and here did preach, And may thousands he did teach.
The first thing which I do relate Is that God did man create; The next thing which to you I’ll tell Woman was made with man to dwell.	Thus He in love to us behaved, To show us how we must be saved; And if you want to know the way, Be pleased to hear what He did say.
And we were heirs to endless woes, Till God the Lord did interpose; And so a promise soon did run That He would redeem us by his Son.

There are more verses, including:

"Go preach the Gospel," now He said,
"To all the nations that are made!
And he that does believe on me,
From all his sins I'll set him free."

O seek! O seek of God above
That saving faith that works by love!
And, if He's pleased to grant thee this,
Thou'rt sure to have eternal bliss.

God grant to all within this place
True saving faith, that special grace
Which to His people doth belong:
And thus I close my Christmas song.

A love of reading

Lamenting the decline in reading for pleasure by the young, this Telegraph column explains why "Reading is vital for our children":

One of the greatest gifts my grandad ever gave me was a love of reading. From an early age he handed me book after book. Beatrix Potter, Sherlock Holmes, Treasure Island – I couldn’t get enough.

But my favourite was the Chronicles of Narnia. I stumbled through the back of the wardrobe with Lucy Pevensie, into the world of Aslan the lion, Maugrim the wolf, Mr Tumnus and the White Witch. I was hooked from the first page.

Books hold a special power to light up children’s imaginations. Generations have flown off to Neverland and leapt down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. They’ve run through the hundred-acre wood and snuck into the secret garden. From tea with tigers, to picnics with hungry caterpillars – the magic of children’s books can cast a spell on us all. ....

Reading is vital for a child’s language and cognitive development. And it brings a raft of emotional and social benefits. Reading carries children into different worlds and transports them into the minds of others. They can experience different perspectives, helping them to build empathy and connect with people unlike them. All told, these benefits bode well for a child’s future – from employability to earnings. ....

The books we read as children become part of who we are as adults. From the days I spent in the land of Narnia I learned about friendship, loyalty, forgiveness – and the dangers of accepting Turkish Delight from strangers. But it was the magic of children’s stories that gave me a lifelong love of reading. My grandad understood the value of that. He understood that reading could set me on the path to success. And now it’s our duty to make sure the next generation of young readers don’t miss out on that wonderful gift. (more)

Bridget Phillipson, "Reading is vital for our children," The Telegraph, Dec. 20,2024.

More Dickens Christmas

Christmastide at 600 College St. when I was young: candles in every street-facing window, a wreath on the front door and a festooned evergreen in the front window (first real, then later, artificial), large-format Christmas Ideals on the coffee table, Christmas cards taped to the kitchen wall by Mom, and more. Records came out, too. We had a recording of A Child's Christmas in Wales read by Dylan Thomas himself. The record I remember best was a 45rpm of Lionel Barrymore as Scrooge in Dickens' Christmas Carol. He had performed that role year after year on the radio in the 40s and 50s. Listening to the record was one of our family Christmas traditions. I transferred the recording to CD years ago and just found it among my collection of Christmas music. The original record sleeve:

 And this, provided by YouTube, is the recording:

The rightful king has landed...

C.S. Lewis on the Incarnation:

• 
  …the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left. (God in the Dock)
• The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this. (Miracles)
• In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down;…down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature he has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. (Miracles)
• The Incarnation…illuminates and orders all other phenomena, explains both our laughter and our logic, our fear of the dead and our knowledge that it is somehow good to die, and which at one stroke covers what multitudes of separate theories will hardly cover for us if this is rejected. (Miracles)
• But supposing God became man—suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person—then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God…. But we cannot share God’s dying unless God dies; and He cannot die except by being a man, That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all. (Mere Christianity)
• Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.” (Mere Christianity)

"Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days"

From Dickens' Pickwick Papers.

...[N]umerous indeed are the hearts to which Christmas brings a brief season of happiness and enjoyment. How many families, whose members have been dispersed and scattered far and wide, in the restless struggles of life, are then reunited, and meet once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual goodwill, which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight; and one so incompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world, that the religious belief of the most civilised nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the first joys of a future condition of existence, provided for the blessed and happy! How many old recollections, and how many dormant sympathies, does Christmas time awaken!

We write these words now, many miles distant from the spot at which, year after year, we met on that day, a merry and joyous circle. Many of the hearts that throbbed so gaily then, have ceased to beat; many of the looks that shone so brightly then, have ceased to glow; the hands we grasped, have grown cold; the eyes we sought, have hid their lustre in the grave; and yet the old house, the room, the merry voices and smiling faces, the jest, the laugh, the most minute and trivial circumstances connected with those happy meetings, crowd upon our mind at each recurrence of the season, as if the last assemblage had been but yesterday! Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveler, thousands of miles away, back to his own fireside and his quiet home! ....

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, Chapter 28.

Heaven

Joni Eareckson Tada reflecting on the hymn "When We All Get to Heaven":

.... Shining in brilliant beauty, with no more pain or sorrow, dementia, or disability. We will shed these travails as we would a heavy coat slipping from our shoulders, and we'll finally comprehend that the whole plan of redemption—all the suffering—was the Father's way of securing for his Son a wonderful gift: a radiant bride. And to think we can brighten that radiance, for it will be made plain how our suffering prepared us for such shining glory! Charles Spurgeon writes:

We make too much of this poor life, for the trials that now weigh us down will soon vanish like morning dew. We are only here long enough to feel an April shower of pain, then we are gone among the unfading flowers of the endless May. So, put things in order. Allot to this brief life its brief consideration, and to everlasting glory, its weight of happy meditations.

Now picture it. You and I among great multitudes of the redeemed, pulsing with joy and infused with light. We are surrounded by the angelic host, and we happily press in line with the great procession of the saved, streaming through gates of pearl, an infinite cavalcade from earth's wide bounds and the oceans' farthest coasts, all in one joyous parade countless generations, all lifting our diadems before God. ....

Joni Eareckson Tada, Songs of Suffering: 25 Hymns and Devotions for Weary Souls, Crossway, 2022.

"Our list of allies grows thin"

First Things is a magazine that has always had Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish contributors. Carl Trueman, a Protestant, is one of them. He was recently asked why he isn't a Catholic. Part of his answer:

Many issues are important in my commitment to Reformed Protestantism: authority, salvation, the nature of the ministry, and the significance of sacraments are just a few of the more obvious. And while I am open to the criticism that Protestantism hasn’t given Mary her due, I believe the Catholic Church has given her a significance that is well beyond anything the Bible would countenance. But above all, at the current moment, Catholicism doesn’t appeal to me because of the man at the top: Pope Francis. In my answer, I did try to be respectful of my audience, but I could not help but observe that the present pope seems to be nothing more than a liberal Protestant in a white papal robe. ....

J. Gresham Machen, the Presbyterian controversialist who came to prominence in the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, argued that confessional Protestantism and Roman Catholicism were separated from liberal Christianity by, among other things, their commitment to supernaturalism. (Both agreed that the tomb was really empty on the third day.) In other words, the former were species of Christianity while the latter was a completely different religion. ....

Confessional, orthodox Protestants should take no satisfaction in Rome’s increasing resemblance to the old enemy of liberal Protestantism. Rome still has the money and institutional weight to make a difference in these great struggles over what it means to be human. If Rome equivocates and falls on these issues, the world will become colder and harsher for all of us. To quote Elrond, our list of allies grows thin. And Pope Francis is not reversing that process. (more)

Carl Trueman, "Why I Am Not Catholic," First Things, Dec. 12, 204.

Intellectual humility

The author of The Certainty Trap describes the problem:

...[T]he easiest way to recognize it is by how we feel when we’re in it. We know we’re in this trap when we demonize, dismiss, or otherwise view with contempt people who disagree—especially on heated issues. ...

Avoiding the trap means understanding that, when we judge as hateful or ignorant someone who sees the world differently, it’s because certainty has paved the way for us to do so.

To see how this can work, consider the claim that biology and gender are entirely distinct. Certainty on this point clears the path for the conclusion that saying “a trans-woman isn’t a woman” is transphobic. Similarly, certainty that inequality is caused by systemic racism, past and present, paves the way for the conclusion that questioning the role of systemic racism is itself racist. And certainty that, for instance, immigration is good for the economy makes possible the judgment that anyone who favors immigration restrictions is xenophobic.

To be sure, people holding any of the positions just mentioned may well be transphobic, racist, or xenophobic. For that matter, so might people who hold none of the opinions listed here. The problem is that certainty means other possible explanations are dismissed. ....

The Certainty Trap is made up of three fallacies.

The first is the Settled Question Fallacy. It refers to the way we treat our knowledge about the world as final, rather than provisional. It also describes our tendency to treat our preferred policy or decision as though it has no downsides, or at least none worth taking seriously.

The second is the Fallacy of Equal Knowledge. This is the assumption that, if we all had the same information, we’d agree on issues like abortion, Black Lives Matter, and immigration.

Finally, there’s the Fallacy of Known Intent. As the name implies, it means we’ve made an assumption about the other person’s motives. Avoiding each of these is required for avoiding the problem of certainty. ... (more)

Ilana Redstone, "Beware the Certainty Trap," Martin Center, Dec. 11, 2024.

Someone came to find us

Advent began this past weekend. Walter Russell Mead reflected on the meaning of Advent in "The Coming":

.... If there is no Christmas, there is no Cross, no answer to the problems of sin, separation, failure and pain. Advent is a time to think about what life would be like if we didn’t have faith in a Redeemer, a Savior who was ready, willing and able to complete the broken arc of our lives, forgive what is past and walk with us step by step to help us build something better in the time that is left.

Advent is a time to remember that we need something more than what we can summon with our own resources to make our lives work. It’s a time to remember how lost we would be if Someone hadn’t come to find us. .... The preparation for Christmas begins by reflecting on what kind of world this would be, and what kind of lives we would have, if Christmas had never come.

There are worse ways to start your preparation for Christmas than by using this prayer from the old Episcopal Church Book of Common Prayer:

ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.

The Coming | Via Meadia

Being a Christian means something definite

Jake Meador exited the church he grew up in at age seventeen, "angry and confused." Reading Sheldon Vanauken's A Severe Mercy helped him come back, not to that church, but to the faith.

...[T]he Vanaukens, both before and after their conversion, knew that being a Christian meant something definite—most of all it meant a definite affirmation of the resurrection of Christ. But other Christians across time would remind us as well that it meant a definite resolve to submit to Christ, no matter the consequences. This seriousness meant the materialistic "Christianity" I so often encountered as a child was best rendered in scare quotes and must be strictly distinguished from the real thing. More recently, it also strikes me that a seriousness about Christianity inherently excludes the sort of utilitarian or consequentialist reasoning so ascendant in our own unhappy day. Jesus did not attach conditions to our discipleship. He knew nothing of conditions under which hatred of enemies could be allowed, for instance. So neither should we. ....

Vanauken was seeing where a life of moral seriousness and quiet devotion to the good could lead one–and it enthralled him. More than that, it told him what he was meant for—not perfectly or completely because it was still lacking the ultimately necessary reality of Christ. But it showed him something true and real nonetheless.

These qualities, of course, aren't the essence of catholic Christianity—the essence, I think, is found in the Scriptures, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the decalogue, and the common practices of the Christian church, carried on down through the centuries. You can have a kind of seriousness without catholicity. But the package that Vanauken encountered at Oxford and that I encountered in Vanauken and which, though I didn't realize it at the time, permanently defined my intellectual trajectory, can't be had without catholic Christianity, I think, for the lofty thing we ultimately are meant for is Christ himself, of course, and we voyage toward him through a life of moral and intellectual seriousness and find in him the spaciousness that so captivated the Vanaukens. At one point they speak of realizing what precisely Eliot meant when he described the Christian life as one of "complete simplicity / costing not less than everything." What they learned from Eliot, I learned from them.

When I first opened A Severe Mercy nearly 20 years ago I had needed a vision of Christian faith that was unapologetically devoted to Christian doctrine without being materialistic, more American than Christian, and completely uprooted from history. .... (more)

Jake Meador, "Constructing Toward Catholicity," Mere Orthodoxy, Dec 2, 2024.

Pagan, or not?

I put out my Christmas wreath this weekend. I've known Christians who choose not to celebrate Christmas. Kevin DeYoung explains why at least some of the oft-cited reasons don't stand up. From "Is Christmas a Pagan Rip-off?":

We’ve heard it so many times that it’s practically part of the Christmas story itself.

The Romans celebrated their seven-day winter festival, Saturnalia, starting on December 17. It was a thoroughly pagan affair full of debauchery and the worship of the god Saturn. To mark the end of the winter solstice, the Roman emperor established December 25 as a feast to Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun). Wanting to make Christianity more palatable to the Romans and more popular with the people, the church co-opted these pagan festivals and put the celebration of the birth of their Savior on December 25. For whatever the Christmas holiday has become today, it started as a copycat of well-established pagan holidays. If you like Christmas, you have Saturnalia and Sol Invictus to thank.

That’s the story, and everyone from liberal Christians to conservative Christians to non-Christians seem to agree that it’s true.

Except that it isn’t. ....

...[T]here is good evidence that December 25 was not chosen because of any pagan winter holidays. This is the argument Andrew McGowan, of Yale Divinity School, makes in his article “How December 25 Became Christmas” (first published in Bible Review in 2002). Let me try to distill McGowan’s fine historical work by addressing three questions.

The three questions:

• When did Christians first start celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25?
• When was it first suggested that Christmas grew out of pagan origins?
• Why do we celebrate Christmas on December 25?

The answers.

Kevin DeYoung, "Is Christmas a Pagan Rip-off?," Gospel Coalition, December 15, 2020.

The miracle at Cana

From "And They Began to Be Merry" by Kevin Williamson:

Jesus’ first miracle isn’t about transmutation of beverages—it is about social anxiety. It is about shame. Some relations have not planned well for their wedding, and they are going to be embarrassed, and probably gossiped about, when they run out of wine to serve their guests. Shame related to such an occasion was a big deal in that world. This is, emphatically, not Jesus’ problem. But Jesus has a mother, and mothers of the kind He had have a good way of making things that aren’t our problem our problem, and so Jesus’ mother gives Him a nudge. Jesus is not obviously ready to be nudged, and replies: “Woman, what concern is this to us?” Mary, deploying a classic passive-aggressive maternal strategy, tells the servants: “Do whatever he tells you.” ....

And so Jesus launches the public part of His career on someone else’s schedule in order to spare some relatives embarrassment. ....

The miracle is that the Ruler of the Universe cared about such a little thing as the social anxieties of a bunch of nobodies in an obscure little corner of the world of no particular importance, and that He loved them the way a father loves his children—and what kind of father offers just enough at a time like that when he has, at his disposal, the very best? The best robe, the gold ring, the fatted calf, the wine that was better than any wine the local whatever-was-Hebrew-for-sommelier had ever tasted? The supernatural stuff is one thing, but consider the magnificence of that gesture, the sheer audacious style of it. I do not care if you are the most cynical atheist walking the Earth—it is impossible not to admire the panache. He bends reality into a new shape, makes the universe follow new rules, to help out a friend, and He does it cool—nobody even knows what happened except for the waiters. .... (more)

Kevin D. Williamson, "And They Began to Be Merry," The Dispatch, Nov. 28, 2024.

Marcionism

An ancient heresy returns again in support of political bigotry. From The Free Press:

.... Like a boil on the backside of the body politic, there has been an ugly irruption of Jew-hating foolishness over casting in the upcoming Netflix film Mary, about the life of Jesus’s mother. People are outraged—outraged!—that director D.J. Caruso cast an Israeli Jew, Noa Cohen, to play the title character. ....

...[E]very Christian knows from the Bible that Mary was a Jewish maiden visited by the Archangel Gabriel, who told her that, though a virgin, she would conceive by the Holy Spirit and bear Israel’s long-awaited messiah.

“Behold, the handmaid of the Lord,” she replied. “Be it done unto me according to thy word.” (Luke 1:38)

The Gospel of Matthew begins with a recitation of the long lineage of Jesus, to demonstrate that the Nazarene son of Mary descended from both Abraham and King David. This is not coincidence: It is necessary to establish Jesus’s messianic credentials according to the Hebrew Bible.

Of course Jews don’t accept this, but believe that the messiah is still to come. The point is simply that it is impossible to extricate Jesus and his mother from Judaism. ....

To deny the Jewishness of Jesus is not only to negate the clear and unambiguous testimony of Scripture but to render as nonsense the entire salvation narrative.

Indeed, as Jesus himself told the Samaritan woman, God sent salvation to all of humanity through the Jewish people. No Jews, no Jesus. Though from the Christian perspective, Jews today reject the divinity of Jesus, as did their ancestors—while from the Jewish perspective they have merely remained true to their covenant with God—followers of Jesus cannot reject the Jews without being guilty of a serious, even fatal, heresy.

That heresy is a very old one, and it is called Marcionism. Marcion was a wealthy second-century Christian who, under the influence of Gnosticism, taught that the God of the New Testament was not the God of the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew god was, according to Marcion, a god of wrath; the Christian god was a god of love. These are two distinct deities, he said, and the Christian god is sovereign. ....

Marcionism was strongly condemned by the Church fathers, who defended the legitimacy and necessity of the Hebrew scriptures. In Marcionism, Christianity replaces Judaism; in Christian orthodoxy, Christianity fulfills Judaism. “Don’t misunderstand why I have come—it isn’t to cancel the laws of Moses and the warnings of the prophets,” said Jesus (Matthew 5:17). “No, I came to fulfill them and to make them all come true.” ....

...[W]hat all authoritative Christian traditions share is an irrevocable, undeniable testimony that God chose the Jewish people to make Himself known to all of humanity, and that without Hebrew Scripture and tradition, the Christian faith would make no sense at all. .... (more)

Rod Dreher, "On Mary and the Mob," The Free Press, Dec. 1, 2024.