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Christmas Peace

BY DAN KIEHL, Senior Pastor of Oakwood Presbyterian Church

     My wife and I watching television one December evening and were rudely assaulted by a commercial for a horror film called “Black Christmas.” Without the protection of the remote in my hand, we were subjected to quick clips of blood and gore with some kind of Christmas theme. My wife reacted immediately, with considerable passion, shouting to unnamed movie-makers beyond the screen, “Hey!!! You just had your season during Halloween…you can’t have Christmas, too!”

     The association between Christmas and graphic mass murders for entertainment purposes would surely offend even most non-Christians. Christmas, in almost everyone’s perception, is associated with peace and harmony – you know, “peace on earth, good will toward men.” Traditionally, it has been a time to lay aside hostilities. There are moving stories told by World War I veterans of tired and bloody British and German soldiers laying down their weapons on Christmas Day, crawling out of their muddy trenches, and meeting their enemies in the middle of the battlefield to sing Christmas carols, share food and gifts, and play soccer. However, when the Christmas celebrations were over, the fighting began again.

     The world has no idea how to stop the fighting. The prophet of the Baby Boomers, John Lennon of the Beatles, wrote these sappy, happy words for his contribution to holiday music, “Happy Christmas (War is Over):”

[Chorus]
A very Merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear 

[Verse 1]
And so this is Christmas (War is over)
For weak and for strong (If you want it)
For rich and the poor ones (War is over)
The road is so long (Now)
And so happy Christmas (War is over)
For black and for white (If you want it)
For yellow and red ones (War is over)
Let's stop all the fight (Now)

     I’ve never understood why anyone whose brain hasn’t been fried by drug use would find Lennon’s lyrics to be profound. His superficial sentiments here rank right up there with his other famous catch phrase, “Give peace a chance”, and the plea of police-beating victim Rodney King, “Can we all just get along?!?”  

     The reasonable responses to such simplistic pronouncements about peace are, “Why? On what basis? And by what means?” Two thousand years ago, God dispatched a battalion of angels to proclaim to the world that the Prince of Peace had been born in Bethlehem. If you’ve heard a good, Biblical sermon on Luke 2, you probably know that the old King James translation of their announcement, “peace on earth, good will toward men” isn’t a very good rendering of the original Greek words. More accurately, the New International Version translates it in this way: “…on earth peace to men on whom His favor rests.” In other words, the coming of Jesus Christ would only bring peace to God’s favored ones. The masses that do not receive His favor and grace will never experience true peace. “‘There is no peace,’ says the LORD, ‘for the wicked.’” Isaiah 48:22.

     Jesus said Himself that His coming would bring division, even among close relatives: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” Matthew 10:34-35. He said that one day this division will one day be final and eternal, when He returns again and sits on His throne to separate His “sheep” from the “goats” who have rejected Him.

     That eternal division among mankind is between those resting in God’s favor and those at war with God. There’s an old Gospel tune that says, “There will never be any peace / Until God is seated at the conference table.” Wars, big and small, between men cannot be stopped until the much more long-term war between God and us is ended. It is a war that we must acknowledge we can’t win, and we must surrender to Him completely.

     But the peace that Jesus Christ brought when He came to earth wasn’t just the cessation of hostilities - it was the opportunity to experience the unimaginable and eternal blessings of being one “on whom His favor rests.”  Paul describes this kind of peace in Romans 8:29-32: “For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” It is the promise of what the Jews called “shalolm” – all our needs fully satisfied in God and His kingdom.

     The message of Christ’s birth isn’t that we just need to get along and give peace a chance. The message of His birth is that God’s favor is available to all who will put their faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. The real hope for peace in the Middle East or violent American neighborhoods can only be based in the good news announced to the shepherds in Bethlehem. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the key to world peace! As David puts it clearly in Psalm 2, “Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish in the way, for His wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in Him.”

A Taste for Finer Spiritual Foods

 BY DAN KIEHL, Senior Pastor of Oakwood Presbyterian Church

     I once read a medical news report about an usual side effect of brain damage in some people:

     “Swiss researchers report finding a new brain disorder in a small percentage of people who have suffered strokes, brain tumors, and head traumas. In each case, the damage has produced a persistent behavioral effect. Yet none of the victims desires a cure. Indeed, they're enjoying the fallout: a craving for fine foods.

      Marianne Regard of University Hospital in Zurich and Theodor Landis of Geneva University call this benign disorder gourmand syndrome.

      Regard first encountered the condition 8 years ago in a 48-year-old political journalist who had been hospitalized with a stroke. Scans of the man's brain identified a lesion around the middle cerebral artery in the right hemisphere. The wound produced a temporary weakness on the left side of his body, making him unable to walk. Even so, Regard recalls, "he didn't complain about that." Instead, he griped about hospital meals.

      "Since most people complain about hospital food, we initially took no notice," the neuropsychologist admits. But when she asked him to keep a diary of his thoughts, the man exhibited an inordinate preoccupation with food. Before the stroke, he had had an overwhelming interest in politics and had shown no particular food preferences, Afterwards, he lived for food. Indeed, as soon as he returned to work, he abandoned politics to become a columnist on fine dining.

     When she observed a businessman hospitalized for stroke who also exhibited a newfound "lusting" after food, Regard says, she began investigating the role of the brain damage. After studying 723 patients suspected of having a discrete lesion in the brain, she and Landis identified 34 more instances of gourmand syndrome. Each patient had brain damage, usually in the right frontal region.

     What constitutes fine food has proved "very individual," Regard says, with no single cuisine or taste--such as sweet or salty--driving the compulsion.

     Most patients exhibited additional symptoms at first, such as spatial memory problems or diminished control over impulsive behaviors. During 8 years of follow-up, these symptoms disappeared for the most part, but the passion for food remained, Although preoccupied with shopping, dining rituals, and food preparation, the patients did not become overweight.”¹

     This could be good news for someone like me with notoriously undiscerning culinary taste. Not to make light of a serious condition, but I sure wish that my tastes in foods (as well as in many other things) could be improved by a good knock in the head! It’s just as well, though; I can’t afford to eat fine foods anyway.

     I especially wish that my taste and passion for the presence of Christ and the things of His Kingdom could be improved that easily. God’s Word tells us, “Delight yourself in the Lord” (Psalm 37:4a) and “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). God promises that if you will seek fullness and satisfaction in Him that He will “give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4b) and Psalmist declares to God his confidence that “You will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.” (Psalm 16:11) The problem is that we have dulled and deadened our spiritual taste buds with a steady diet of the pleasures of sin and materialism, along with the empty “calories” of spiritual and emotional junk food. We just don’t have a taste for the “fine foods” of heaven – the Bread of Life, the Water of Life, and our King’s banquet table – and we have no idea what we’re missing.

     C.S. Lewis once wrote, “…if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.” We need to grow up in Christ and discover the much finer foods offered at His table. But this will only begin with a conscious change in lifestyle and focus. We must stop filling our hearts and lives with temporal things that cannot satisfy more than a moment. We must simplify our lives and make time to relish the presence and promises of the Lord. Whatever it takes, let’s live to savor the glory of God!

¹"Patients savor this brain disorder.." The Free Library. 1997 Science Service, Inc.