Christian Piatt Blog

Still searching for the ‘true meaning’ of Christmas

I am as crusty as any Christmas traditionalist, I suppose, when it comes to the co-opting of the “true meaning of Christmas” by the so-called secular world. It annoys me that the greeting of “Merry Christmas” has been watered down so often into a more benign “Happy Holidays” wish.

Never mind that the root word of “holiday” comes from “holy day,” thus still smacking of religiosity, but we’ll leave that for another time.

My annoyance reached its peak recently when my son, Mattias, was watching one of scores of holiday specials on television called “Shrek the Halls.” Though I feared an opportunistic, pandering string of fart and booger jokes, it actually was pretty clever, and included the original stars’ voices from the “Shrek” trilogy.

However, just as I was drawn in by the jolly old ogre, they slapped me with a profound heresy. They pronounced, rather boldly I might add, that the true meaning of Christmas is about family and sharing.

Huh?

It’s not as if I expected Donkey or Shrek to pronounce that the true meaning of Christmas is to set time aside to remember the birth of Baby Jesus; that would have knocked me right out of my chair, in fact. However, if you’re not really going to talk about the “true meaning,” why lay any claim to it, right?

Hasn’t ever stopped us church folk, has it?

We’ll assume most people know by now that we co-opted Dec. 25 from pagan traditions in the first place, and that Jesus wasn’t likely born this time of year at all. But the more I look around, the more I realize how much we do without any real understanding of why.

We all know the song about the 12 days of Christmas, but how many of us celebrate a full 12 days? If so, when do the 12 days start? Is Dec. 25 the beginning or the end of the week-and-a-half marathon?

It turns out that hardly anyone can agree, not that this should come as a surprise to anyone familiar with church politics. Generally, the 12 days are considered to be the period in the liturgical year before the Epiphany when the Magi traveled to bring gifts to Jesus. Historically, it’s more likely that this happened over a period of years, but who needs to be bogged down with details?

And whoever decided there were three Magi? Good luck finding that in scripture. But I digress.

For some churches, Christmas’ 12 days don’t even begin until the Dec. 26. Some Eastern Orthodox traditions don’t observe Christmas until Jan. 7. We could go on about why we put up and decorate trees, trade gifts, or why some us seem to think Christmas is permission to abuse our bodies with sweets, alcohol and late-night parties.

But the heart of the matter is best addressed in a quote from Dennis Bratcher, who writes the following as a theologian with the CRI/Voice Institute, a global and ecumenical ministry dedicated to providing “biblical and theological resources for growing Christians.”

“Many of the symbols of Christianity were not originally religious,” says Bratcher, “including even the present date of Christmas, but were appropriated from contemporary culture by the Christian faith as vehicles of worship and proclamation. Perhaps, when all is said and done, historical accuracy is not really the point.”

Amen.

We may not agree with everything that others do in the name of Christmas, but we can rest assured that, somewhere out there, more than a handful of people object to the way we handle the holiday as well. We’re best served when we take the time to discern our own “true meaning,” while being careful never to lay exclusive claim to such.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for my divinely mandated daily dose of fruitcake and rum balls.

Christian Piatt is the author of “MySpace to Sacred Space” and “Lost: A Search for Meaning.” For more information, visit www.christianpiatt.com.

Let us prey: Who’s to blame?

Everybody, nobody? After a long litany of online rants, 24-year-old Matthew Murray gunned down unarmed innocents at the Youth with a Mission Center in Denver. He proceeded to make a stop at the Web site where he regularly posted his messages to verbally take aim at Christians in particular before heading to Colorado Springs half a day later, where he took more lives at New Life Church.

Murray’s actions, like those of many other mass murderers in recent years, are made more egregious by the nature of the victims he claimed. Like small Mennonite communities, unknowing holiday shoppers, school-age children, college students and faculty and so on, missionaries in training and church congregants are completely vulnerable. Such violence not only suggests complete disregard for human life, but also smacks of utter cowardice.

So, whom do we hold accountable for his atrocities?

Let’s blame the Internet for providing him with the anonymity and fuel for his emotional fires. After all, you can find a supportive group of peers for practically anything online, including gunning down innocent bystanders.

Perhaps we should condemn violent video games and films for numbing the senses and sensibilities of our youth. Though we have no reports thus far of Murray being a video-game junkie, it’s not a stretch of the imagination to assume as much. He was young, male and had at least a basic understanding of computers. In the days to come, we’ll undoubtedly learn he was a regular player of Halo, Doom or some other “shooter” games.

We could dogpile on home-schooling while we’re at it, since Murray was home-schooled. After all, how can a child possibly develop necessary social and emotional coping skills while cloistered away from his or her peers at home, right?

It would be irresponsible to leave Ted Haggard, founder and former senior pastor of New Life church, out of the blame game. Murray mentioned Haggard in some of his blog posts, citing the hypocrisy of his apparent do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do approach to ministry. Murray had at least loose ties with New Life, so it could be that his outrage stemmed from disillusionment about an institution he thought would usher him into mission work.

This leads us to the Youth with a Mission office in Denver. Word is that it dismissed Murray from its missionary training program, citing some sort of vague reference to “health issues.” Certainly, being turned away from a calling to humble service is to blame for his disintegration into whatever personal crisis that culminated in the assassinations of his peers.

We should also point a finger both at the firearms industry and legislators for their permissive approach to dealing with guns in the hands of our citizenry. It can, and likely will be argued that, without their complicity, he would not have had the means to carry out his bloody rampage in the first place.

One could cast a judging eye toward Murray’s parents, extended family and friends, as well. After all, how could they not have seen this coming? Could such a violent person not have exhibited some signs of his potential for dangerous behavior if anyone was really paying attention?

And how about the Web site managed by the Association of Former Pentecostals where he left his telling notes? Did they alert authorities about the content of his posts? If so, did they do so in a timely enough manner? Any of the readers on the site could have done the same. Did they, and if not, why?

We could expand our witch hunt to include entire political parties, religious denominations, or even religion all together, without too much effort. But explaining extreme human behavior such as this is far too complex to place the target of blame on any one person or group.

This hardly will stop us from trying, because it’s in our nature to hold someone, something accountable for actions we do not understand, and which we sense we can’t control. Somewhere in the backs of our minds, a voice tells us that, if we can root out and eliminate the cause of that which we fear, we can assure ourselves safety in the future.

Such assurances, however, are illusory. It’s fair to ask such questions, but to expect answers that give us any real comfort is to misunderstand the nature of evil: It is everywhere around us and within us.

We don’t like that answer, but in the end, it’s the byproduct of our own free will.

We’re victims of our own choices, and that scares the hell out of most of us.

Christian Piatt is the author of “MySpace to Sacred Space” and “Lost: A Search for Meaning.” For more about Christian’s books, visit www.christianpiatt.com.

Virtual world can lead to real-life problems

It’s harder than ever before to define what exactly constitutes cheating in a relationship. With the combination of increased access and greater anonymity the Internet affords, more and more people are flocking to the Web to meet needs otherwise met in the “real world,” or perhaps not satisfied at all.

Before the advent of the Internet, fidelity was at least a little bit more clear-cut. If you spent an inordinate amount of time with someone other than your spouse, and certainly if you had romantic physical contact, you were a cheater. Of course, there have always been the more subtle emotional affairs that can drag on for years between two longing souls who never technically cross the line.

With the help of technology, that line has become infinitely fuzzier.

Most everyone knows about the proliferation of pornography online. This is nothing new. When innovators in the film industry developed video for home use, an entirely new adult video industry emerged soon thereafter. Wherever there is a new means to convey information cheaply and privately, you’ll find porn.

However, there are other uses of the Internet that some still may not realize. Since the creation of “chat rooms” – places where people can go online and have discussions on any topic of their choice – there has arisen the phenomenon of cyber-sex. This practice reached even greater levels of popularity with the introduction of private Web cameras. It’s a common enough practice that reaching sexual climax while participating in such activities online has its own name: cybering.

Just like in the physical world, however, there are many types of intimacy expressed between two people online. Some folks, both single and married, carry on years-long emotional relationships with people they have never met. In some cases, they never even see what the other person looks like, and there are people who prefer this safe sense of removal.

As if chatting and exchanging messages was not enough, now there’s the avatar factor. An avatar is an image or character created by its user to represent them online. This allows a balding, pudgy banker from the Midwest to recreate himself on the Internet as a buff, bronze rock star. With the introduction of Web sites such as Second Life, the fantasies become even more elaborate.

Second Life is, quite literally, exactly what it sounds like. You create a character you present into this virtual community, and then you proceed to live a life that doesn’t exist. There are homes, jobs, spouses, pets, churches, schools and entertainment complexes, much like what you find in the world around you. However, the sense of escapism and control over one’s identity and environment is fuel for fantasy in millions of American minds.

There are reports of people going onto sites such as Second Life and spending hours in front of the computer screen with a virtual spouse, managed by some other woman or man they don’t know at all. Meanwhile, their real partner sits in the next room, flipping through channels or reading a book. The Second Life character cohabitates, makes love, buys gifts, gets sick, and conducts him- or herself as realistically as one can imagine.

It’s not real. Or is it?

Can someone cheat on a spouse with someone they don’t know and will never touch? While many find great safety in the shadows of such so-called games, the potential damage is evident.

Communities of faith offer a potent antidote to this addiction to safe anonymity. The key word is community: unity through togetherness. With this togetherness comes accountability, not necessarily in the form of judgment and guilt. If we have a group of people that lovingly expects us to be more generous, faithful and kind than the average person, then we tend to want to live up to these expectations.

Church communities aren’t perfect, but there’s something basically important about physical presence. It demands something of us, and in the cases when the vision for the group is affirming and based in hope and love, it nudges us into expressing the best parts of us we already have within us.

Christian Piatt is the author of “MySpace to Sacred Space” and “Lost: A Search for Meaning.” for more information, visit www.christianpiatt.com.

Good or evil: Do we even have a choice?

There are those rare people we meet in life who seem to exude a glow of goodness. They radiate a gentle energy that makes everyone around them feel good. Then there are those whose souls seem permanently damaged, darkened by anger or hatred, irreversibly evil.

How do two members of the same species become so morally different? Can St. Francis of Assisi and Osama bin Laden really both be equally human?

According to a recent Time magazine article, the answer is yes.

It seems to be common sense that there is some greater social value in care for others. Particularly in times when we lived more in the midst of nature and its many threats, it stands to reason that close-knit tribes and families had to look out for each other or get eaten. After all, we’re not the fastest or fiercest animals on the planet, so an “everyone for themselves” attitude would be detrimental to long-term survival.

So how much of this survival-based moral code is innate in our genes, and how much is learned? It turns out that, much like spoken language, we’re born with a certain “moral grammar” that affords us the potential for empathy, kindness and concern for the well-being of others. However, just like someone who never experiences language in a social context, we do not develop our moral skills without learning both from modeling by others and through the consequences of our own actions.

By watching our peers, and through trial and error, we learn the social protocols of our community, and thus, we help ensure our place within the larger group. In return, we receive some of that same protection and care in return.

If our capacity for good is both inborn and nurtured, it stands to reason that both nature and nurture can play parts in those same systems going haywire. In some rare cases, humans are born without that so-called “moral grammar,” making it much harder, if not impossible, for them to learn by example or trial and error. In a broad sense, we call this sort of social detachment psychosis.

More often, a series of choices and/or experiences gradually lead to us veering off the moral tracks, turning increasingly inward, casting an ever-broader net of “otherness” over the world around us. Extreme cases of such divergence result in genocide, systemic neglect and countless loss of life. In the everyday world, it may result in us making a more selfish choice at the expense of others.

In the Time article, Jeffrey Kluger concludes that “merely being equipped with moral programming does not mean we practice moral behavior. Something still has to boot up that software and configure it properly, and that something is the community.” He notes that we generally cannot learn a sense of right and wrong that meshes with our culture unless it is taught in applied settings.

This means that the old “do what I say, not as I do” approach simply won’t stick. We can learn to some degree by being told about right and wrong, but in the end, it must be lived out. Ideally, parents, teachers and other peers throughout the community would all be consistent in their moral modeling, but we all know this is not the case. Some parents fall short; some teachers grow weary or apathetic; some ministers model greed and corruption even while preaching compassion from behind the pulpit.

Like individual humans, churches have a choice in the direction they take. Perhaps nearly as powerful as our capacity for good, however, is our ability to justify our own behavior.

Kluger suggests that the most powerful agent in our tendency to stray is in our potential to “other-ize” the world beyond our immediate environs. It worked for the Nazis, and we see it today. From government-sanctioned ideological warfare to neglect of entire continents under siege, as long as the group under attack seems somehow less than human, it’s a short journey to justify horrendous acts of evil, no matter who we are.

At its best, church provides not only the moral message but also the living example of kindness, compassion and righteousness. At its worst, as has been seen throughout recorded history, church is the one drawing the lines of other-ness, sanctioning everything from rape to murder as part of the “greater good.”

We have been given the tools we need, but only we can decide how and when to use them.

Christian Piatt is the author of “MySpace to Sacred Space” and “Lost: A Search for Meaning.” For more information, visit www.christianpiatt.com.

Christian Piatt column

Love can be as close or far as one condition away

A middle-aged mother faced a reality every parent prays to avoid, the premature death of her son.

She lost him to AIDS two years prior, but the pain she feels over the loss is still like a fresh wound. Even now, she receives dozens of sympathy and support cards from friends of his.

New cards arrive on birthdays, anniversaries and those holidays with images of family that only magnify her son’s absence, and therefore, her sorrow. Some family members offer comfort from a distance, while others try to ignore the death altogether. Though the judgment and awkwardness is hard, she tries to understand. She struggles with her own degree of shame about it all.

As she begins to learn more about parts of her son’s life he was reluctant to share, she befriends others within the gay and lesbian community who share her sense of grief. For them, her son is one of many friends and loved ones they have lost to AIDS in the past two decades. Knowing they hurt alongside her is of some solace, though she still hesitates to talk about his personal life.

After the death of yet another young friend of her son’s, she shuffles through the handful of condolence cards, wishing to find something conveying the empathy she has for them. She finally settles on one and takes it to the counter.

The clerk behind the register wears a bright smile and a rainbow bracelet. He asks how her day is and she lies, saying everything is fine. Noticing the card, he asks if she has lost someone special.

“No,” she pauses. “I mean, yes.” She explains that although this card is for another family, she lost her own son to AIDS two years prior, the word “AIDS” suppressed to a muted whisper as she casts her eyes toward the counter.

“You don’t have to whisper,” said the man, coming out from behind the counter, offering her a long, warm embrace. “You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I didn’t know that man,” she explains, “but in that moment, I loved him.” She carried that love he shared out into the world that day, resolving never again to speak of her son’s life, or death, with shame.

Another mother confronts her daughter, who has told her she is a lesbian, and confesses that she will never accept her as such. “I prayed she would change,” says the mother. “I felt she was committing a horrible sin.” She even took her daughter to corrective counseling, though it was clear the girl, only a teenager at the time, didn’t feel there was anything wrong with her that needed to be fixed.

As time went on, the distance between mother and daughter only grew, until the daughter stopped corresponding all together. The final words the mother received from her daughter were in the form of a letter that explained the irreparable damage she felt as the subject of her mother’s “shaming words.” She ended the letter with the words, “Heal thyself, mother.”

In 1997, the family received a call about their daughter’s suicide. She hanged herself in her closet, leaving no note. Through friends, the family learned their daughter had been undergoing treatment for depression for some time.

The woman’s parents began to study everything they could about homosexuality and the Bible the following year. “It was a big jump for us,” says the mother of their change of heart. “(But) in the end I found myself far away from the safe place I’d been all my life.”

Since then, she has started speaking publicly about the dangers of homophobia, creating an educational program called TEACH: To Educate About the Consequences of Homophobia.

“Now I know the value – the power – of unconditional love,” she explains, “and though it came too late for Anna, I believe she knows what we’re doing. And she is proud.”

Christian Piatt is the author of “MySpace to Sacred Space” and “Lost: A Search for Meaning.” For more information, visit www.christianpiatt.com.