Tyler Johnson, MDiv
Tyler is a pastor, a teacher, and a former NASA engineer. He loves to explore truth through God’s word and God’s works. He lives in Kansas with his wife and four children and spends what little free-time he has pondering the mysteries of light.
This is the first week of Advent in the church. It begins the time of anticipation of, not simply opening a bunch of presents at Christmas, but the celebration of the birth of Jesus. And of course, that too is easily misconstrued. Advent is a time of waiting and anticipation and remembering of the greatest event in human history: the Incarnation of God.
My favorite Advent hymns are those that are played in a minor key. This is how I experience Advent and Christmas. There is joy and love and hope and peace, but it is always marred and distorted by the profusion of consumeristic advertisements and efforts at secular meaning making. There is the celebration of what God has done, and the desire for God to complete the work. Advent is a reminder that we live in between these events.
The rituals of Advent and Christmas are great. We seek to mark the season off as special as different than ordinary time. My family cuts down a Christmas tree and decorates it. We decorate the house both inside and out. We bake special treats, watch certain movies. I love the rituals. But still the season seems to lack something.
Upon reflection, I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason for my dissonance during Advent is that none of these things seem to adequately capture the true meaning of Christmas, by which I am referring to the depth of the Incarnation. And I’m fairly certain that this is inevitable.
C.S. Lewis calls the Incarnation, “the central event in the history of the Earth - the very thing that the whole story has been about.” That’s a big deal. Far bigger than any nativity scene, or lights display, or Christmas Eve service can capture. The Incarnation is indeed a paradox. God becoming man, the Creator becoming a part of the creation, omnipotence depending on a young woman for life, omniscience being taught: none of it makes sense. And yet either it happened, or the whole Christian faith is a farce.
The meaning of the Incarnation cannot be captured easily. It’s paradoxical nature rejects any satisfying scientific or philosophical explanation, helpful though these can be. In many ways it is unreasonable or irrational. This doesn’t mean that the Incarnation isn’t true. It is just a recognition that truth and meaning are not the same thing and they derive from different places.
“Reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.” So argued C.S. Lewis. And I think he is absolutely right. Truth is found through the proper use of our rational functions. But meaning is found through the proper use of our imaginative functions. All the facts and data in the world cannot produce one ounce of meaning. That comes from a different place, from story, from myth, from the functions of the imagination.
I’m beginning to think that the goal of Advent is not just reasserting the facts of the story, not just making sure that Christ is in Christmas, but actually allowing the Incarnation to work on our imagination, allowing it to extend beyond Christmas. The paradoxical reality of God becoming man should invigorate our imaginations to consider just what kind of universe we live in, what it means to be human, what is the purpose of life, and all kinds of other big (and little) questions. It should color our perception of what is and what is possible.