Advent
Meditation
November 23rd
1.
The Certainty of the Truth
Luke
1:3-4 Therefore,
since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning,
it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most
excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things
you have been taught
We
live in a world of uncertainty which is strange because in so many ways
we think we are in control. Science and technology have so pressed ahead
in the past fifty years that one writer suggested we have been through
greater changes than in all the millennia that man has lived on this
earth. We have apparently made tremendous strides in nutrition and health
and so we live longer. Yet still there is an uncertainty to life that
we all struggle with. None of us can be absolutely certain that we will
be here in a year's time.
When
it comes to the Bible, unbelieving theologians from last century created
so many doubts that many who should know better, doubt. When it comes
to Christmas the same doubters suggest that Christmas is an add-on to
a pagan winter feast. The truth is that it was a Roman Emperor in AD
272 who established the pagan festival, but in northern Africa, Christians
were already celebrating the birth date of Jesus as December 25 in AD
243, 30 years beforehand. No, the pagan festival was the add-on. Then
there is the uncertainty of the date of the 25 th December. One of the
foremost scholars on ancient Jewish culture and sacred writings, states:
“There is no adequate reason for questioning the historical accuracy
of this date. The objections generally made rest on grounds which seem
to me historically unfeasible”. But he's just a scholar, so what should
he know!!!!
Post-modernism,
the philosophical approach of the late twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries is all about doubting what has gone before. That's why, before
we move into these meditations based upon the Christmas story, it's
important that we face up these things. It is refreshing, in the light
of the current doubt and cynicism that so often prevails, to find Luke
writing about the certainty of the things you have been
taught. Luke was a doctor and even by the standards of those days,
that made him an intellectual, and intellectuals pride themselves on
investigating the truth and getting it right! Hence he says, I myself
have carefully investigated everything from the beginning
and it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account
for you, which is the language of such a person.
If
only critics of the Gospels would take the same care that Luke did,
we'd have a lot less critics! So, when we come to think about theses
amazing events as recorded in Luke's and Matthew's Gospels (Matthew
has some equally good reasons for believing what he wrote), how about
coming to the Christmas story with a new sense of openness that is willing
to accept what a careful, intellectual scholar like Luke says.
Last
century, a solicitor by the name of Morrison, decided to debunk the
Gospels and carried out a serious investigation, which resulted in a
book called, “Who Moved the Stone?” written by a man clearly converted
to the truth of the Gospels. There are others we could cite (e.g. J.B.Phillips)
who have had the same experience. Writer and evangelist, Michael Green,
speaks of an atheist he met at a party, a clever man doing doctoral
studies in physics. Green asked the man if he had ever read the Gospels
with an open mind. The man replied, “I dare not.”
Dare
we come and risk this same experience, of being confronted so powerfully
by the truth, that we'll never be the same again? That's what open-mindedness
does. It enables you to look the truth in the eye and realize that that
is what it is – the truth! Risk it, read along open-minded this Advent.
If
you wish to e-mail us any comment on this meditation please click here
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tony.thomas@rochfordcc.co.uk
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