Also Read: When Christian Leaders Fail (Part I)

By J.R.R. Tolkien

Higher devotion to religion is, of course, degraded in some degree by all ‘professionals’ (and by all professing Christians. But you cannot maintain a tradition of learning or true science without schools and universities, and that means schoolmasters. And you cannot maintain a religion without a church and ministers; and that means professionals: priests and bishops. The precious wine must (in this world) have a bottle, or some less worthy substitute.

‘Scandal’ at most is an occasion of temptation—as indecency is to lust, which it does not make but arouses. It is convenient because it tends to turn our eyes away from ourselves and our own faults to find a scape-goat. But the act of will of faith is not a single moment of final decision: it is a permanent indefinitely repeated act—a state which must go on—so we pray for ‘final perseverance’.

The temptation to ‘unbelief (which really means rejection of Our Lord and His claims) is always there within us. Part of us longs to find an excuse for it outside us. The stronger the inner temptation the more readily and severely shall we be ‘scandalized’ by others. I think I am as sensitive as you (or any other Christian) to the ‘scandals’, both of clergy and laity.

The only cure for sagging of fainting faith is Communion. Though always Itself, perfect and complete and inviolate, the Blessed Sacrament does not operate completely and once for all in any of us. Like the act of Faith it must be continuous and grow by exercise. Frequency is of the highest effect.

Go to Communion with them (and pray for them). It will be just the same (or better than that) as a mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people. I myself am convinced by the Petrine claims, nor looking around the world does there seem much doubt which (if Christianity is true) is the True Church, the temple of the Spirit* dying but living, corrupt but holy, self-reforming and re-arising.

*Abridged from a letter to Michael Tolkien, November 1, 1963. From The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Mariner Books, 2000).

Today’s Reading
2 Chronicles 34 (Listen – 6:23)
Revelation 20 (Listen – 2:49)

By J.R.R. Tolkien 

I think I am as sensitive as you (or any other Christian) to the ‘scandals’, both of clergy and laity. I have suffered grievously in my life from stupid, tired, dimmed, and even bad priests; but I now know enough about myself to be aware that I should not leave the Church (which for me would mean leaving the allegiance of Our Lord) for any such reasons.

For myself, I find I become less cynical rather than more—remembering my own sins and follies; and realize that men’s hearts are not often as bad as their acts, and very seldom as bad as their words.

In the last resort faith is an act of will, inspired by love. Our love may be chilled and our will eroded by the spectacle of the shortcomings, folly, and even sins of the Church and its ministers, but I do not think that one who has once had faith goes back over the line for these reasons (least of all anyone with any historical knowledge).

If He is a fraud and the Gospels fraudulent—that is, garbled accounts of a demented megalomaniac (which is the only alternative)—then of course the spectacle exhibited by the Church (in the sense of clergy) in history and today is simply evidence of a gigantic fraud.

If not, however, then this spectacle is only what was to be expected: it began before the first Easter, and it does not affect faith at all—except that we may and should be deeply grieved. But we should grieve on our Lord’s behalf and for Him, associating ourselves with the scandalizers not with the saints, not crying out that we cannot ‘take’ Judas Iscariot, or even the absurd and cowardly Simon Peter, or the silly women like James’ mother, trying to push her sons.

It takes a fantastic will to unbelief to suppose that Jesus never really ‘happened’, and more to suppose that he did not say the things recorded of him. We must therefore either believe in Him and in what he said and take the consequences; or reject him and take the consequences.

*Abridged from a letter to Michael Tolkien, November 1, 1963. From The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Mariner Books, 2000).

Now Read: When Christian Leaders Fail (Part II)

Today’s Reading
2 Chronicles 33 (Listen – 4:01)
Revelation 19 (Listen – 3:47)

Christ’s life begins and ends in poverty. It’s easy to see the depth of pain in the end; where the Messiah is homeless and stripped of his sole earthly possession moments before being hung on a cross. The beginning of Christ’s life, however, has been sanitized.

“Manger” is a generous word because it distances our minds from the realities of an infant resting in a feeding trough. Jesus’ story starts not just in financial poverty, but also relational poverty. It doesn’t appear that Joseph had family or friends in the town of his ancestors— searching for room in an inn is the task of a foreigner.

While it’s easy to miss all this while we carol, the reality of Christ’s birth was never far from the minds of the authors behind the carols. Born to an impoverished single mother, Joseph Mohr penned the original German lyrics to “Silent Night” around 1816, while serving as the Father of a small village church in the alps. Mohr would spend long sections of his life ill, ultimately succumbing to a pulmonary disease at 55.

Thousands travel to the Austrian Alps to visit the town where Mohr is buried, but only because it’s a now thriving ski resort. It’s easy to miss the full impact of Mohr’s life; present luxury quickly overwhelms past reality.

Although far from affluent, Mohr also found himself significantly more comfortable than his family had been. In this, he chose to leverage everything he had for others. Mohr died penniless after reportedly donating all his money to children’s education and care for the elderly. (Mohr demonstrates how a Christian with wealth should live not in guilt, but in thankfulness and generosity.)

The lyrics to “Silent Night” can easily trick our mind’s eye into seeing comfort and privilege that simply were not present—Heavenly Peace entered our world through the depths of poverty. Silence and stillness were not present that night for the reasons the affluent find them, but because God’s presence filled our barren world with radiant sufficiency. Truly, Jesus was Lord at his birth.

Listen: Silent Night by Sarah McLauchlan (3:48)

Today’s Reading
2 Chronicles 30 (Listen – 4:56)
Revelation 16 (Listen – 3:17)

On Christmas Eve of 1906 Reginald Fessenden, who had been one of Thomas Edison’s chief chemists, was testing a new generator for radio transmissions. In what became the first broadcast of voice and music over radio, Fessenden read the Christmas story from the gospel of Luke and played the carol “O Holy Night” on his violin. This remarkable entrance into history was not the first, nor the only for this song.

The lyrics to “O Holy Night” came from a French socialist, who penned them for a Catholic service in 1847. The music was written by a Jewish composer. Legend holds that the song brought a 24-hour respite to fighting between French and German troops after being sung from the battlefield on Christmas Eve of 1871. The carol hopped the pond, thanks to the Unitarian minister and abolitionist John Sullivan Dwight, and caught on in the North far more quickly than in the South:

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;
And in His name all oppression shall cease.

The only thing more astonishing than the journey of one the most beloved Christmas songs is the event which it celebrates:

Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
‘Til He appear’d and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

How remarkable that in the light of God our soul feels its worth? “God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment.” remarks Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book, God is in the Manger. He continues:

And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.

The hope, love, joy, and peace of Advent broke into our world on the holiest of nights. Songs about Christ have endured, and changed, history—more importantly the good news of Christ changes our present and future.

Listen: O Holy Night by Chris Tomlin

Today’s Reading
2 Chronicles 29 (Listen – 6:49)
Revelation 15 (Listen – 1:29)

“God travels wonderful ways with human beings, but he does not comply with the views and opinions of people,” observes Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book, God is in the Manger.

God does not go the way that people want to prescribe for him; rather, his way is beyond all comprehension, free and self-determined beyond all proof. Where reason is indignant, where our nature rebels, where our piety anxiously keeps us away: that is precisely where God loves to be. There he confounds the reason of the reasonable; there he aggravates our nature, our piety.

True to this, the Christmas story is full of unlikely characters. At the center we have a single mother, in a culture that scorned those in such circumstances, and a father who was thinking about bailing. Together they form a subsistence-level family carrying enormous amounts of stress.

The next groups to arrive are the shepherds, outcasts of society, and the wisemen, who were likely both superstitious and pluralistic. In the midst of this we find the Son of God—first in a barn, laying in a feeding trough, then in the arms of political refugees fleeing across international borders.

If earthly comforts and riches are “blessings,” Christ lived a radically unblessed life. He was found far from the palaces of men. He spent much of his adult life homeless, detached from even the slightest of luxuries, and, upon his death, possessed only the clothes on his back.

“Do You Hear What I Hear?” asks the carol, of the same name, by Noël Regney. ”I am amazed that people can think they know the song—and not know it is a prayer for peace,’’ Regney told the New York Times.

Rome brought peace through the sword. God offered peace freely, though it was bought with the humbling and destruction of his own son. Grace confounds power and pride. Bonhoeffer concludes;

Only the humble believe him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that he does wonders where people despair, that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly.

Listen: Do You Hear What I Hear? by Mary J. Blige 

Today’s Reading
2 Chronicles 27-28 (Listen – 6:27)
Revelation 14 (Listen – 3:51)