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Wednesday, Apr 01, 2015

The Sublime Logic of Christmas

December 24, 2012|8:38 am

The foundation of all logic lies in the simple statement, "God is love."

Such logic is to the universe what the steel skeleton is that keeps gales from blowing the Statue of Liberty apart, or the hefty keel of a great sailing vessel that holds her steady midst turbulent seas.

Einstein knew there was a unifying truth that gave coherence to all the structures in the universe. The great physicist was compelled to search for the "unifying field" partly because he was irritated by the emerging ideas of quantum mechanics, and strange implications of sub-atomic theory: apparently schizophrenic matter simultaneously particle and wave, and not seeming to exist anywhere specific until observed.

"God doesn't play dice with the universe!" Einstein snorted. But the irritation in Einstein's brain produced a stunning pearl-the theory of relativity that has illuminated so many physical mysteries. Yet the sparkle wasn't enough to shed light on the "unifying field."
The ancient Greeks knew about the fundamental unity before Einstein, and even gave it a label-the Logos. But they, like Einstein, died before they could move from abstraction to concreteness.

In the "fullness of time" God Himself made the abstract concrete in the coming of the Logos-made-flesh. The Apostles John and Paul had not heard of unifying field theory, but they knew about the Greeks. In fact, St. Paul, through the Spirit, grasped clearly the concretion of the Logos abstraction in Jesus of Nazareth, and wrote, "By Him all things were created… And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together (e.g., "cohere"). (Colossians 1:16-17)

Christ is the Logos, the Grand Unifier of all, and love is the logic Logos expresses.


• Because God is love, it is logical that He would create.
Love, even more than nature, abhors a vacuum. It demands relationship, and relationship requires a field of relatedness-the world.

• Because God is love, it is logical that He would create beings with the capacity to respond to that love, beings in His own Image. There must be "Other" for love to be love.

• Because God is love, it is logical He would allow these beings to be free.
God is not a rapist. Love is real only when it is a free response. Freedom introduces the probability of pain, even for God's mighty heart.

• Because God is love, it is logical that He would communicate with His beloved ones.
Love unexpressed is like a flame that can't burn, impossibility. Love must tell the beloved, and it must do so in language the dear one can understand. If the beloved is human, then the Lover must become human, with all the burden and bother attached to humanity. All to say, "I love you!"

• Because God is love, and because love mandates freedom and communication, Hell is logical.
The rejection of love is the rejection of intimacy and affirmation of separation. A lover spurned can only hold on by imprisoning the beloved so he or she cannot leave. Leaving means there logically must be a place outside the love-nest where the choice of separation can be fully lived out. "Outside" is Hell. The Lover consigns no one there, but, with tears and pleadings, permits anyone who so chooses to live in that final, absolute separation.

• Because God is love, it is logical He would provide a way for the reconciliation of His beloved to Himself.
The complex of love and the freedom it necessitates is the highest of risks. Freedom must logically allow for rejection, but because rejection brings heartbreak, loss of intimacy and communication, there must be a way back. There must be the ink for penning the love note: "All is forgiven… come home." God inscribes the letter by the pen which is the cross, dipped in the ink of Christ's blood.

• Because God is love, it is logical that He is extravagant and inventive.
Lovers relish surprising their cherished ones. Lovers love out-of-the-box expressions that are forever marked as special. So it is logical that the Logos appears among us in a feeding trough, lives as one "despised and rejected," and wins our salvation on a splintery cross.

• Because God is love, it is logical He will come back for us.
When humanity, through Adam, chose evil, we scuttled our own ship. We are stranded on a barren desert isle. Supplies are running out. But our Lover is unrelenting in His pursuit, down to the very last of us. It is logical, therefore, that the Logos-made-flesh says, "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there may you be also." (John 14:1-6)

Our hearts cry for peace and our minds crave reason in an insane world where innocents are slaughtered in school rooms and mothers' wombs, where computer-generated fable is confused as fact, where secure hedges are uprooted so the ravagers can slither in, and where "bad" is considered "good."

In our contemporary craziness, wild theorizing, and philosophical fretting it's good to remember on this Christmas of 2012 sound advice penned by St. Paul: "See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ." (Colossians 2:8)

That's why it is a wondrous thing, especially in this irrational era, to contemplate the logic of Christmas, the celebration of the Logos becoming flesh and dwelling among us.

That is the supreme logic of love.

Merry sublimely logical Christmas!

Wallace Henley is a senior associate pastor at Second Baptist Church, Houston, and author of Globequake: Living in the unshakeable Kingdom while the world falls apart (Thomas Nelson, 2012).
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