The Good Terror of Christmas
When Isaiah saw God, his first response was to say, “Woe is me! I am lost...” Not many people say such things any more. We hear him speak in the Scriptures and almost no one says, “Woe is me!” Instead we go on at length about how I feel about the text. We stand in his presence in the gathering of the church (his Temple) and almost not one trembles in fear anymore, almost no one has an immediate sense of their need for atonement, we just complain about the music, or the temperature, or the preaching). We speak horrid words, trite words, ugly words, slanderous words in jest around a table, in some self-righteous political tirade on social media or in anger while driving never considering in whose presence we said such things nor crying out, “I am a man of unclean lips!”
Tozer once observed that there are few things more important to a person than what it is that comes to mind when they think of God (Lewis’ response to this notwithstanding). Those thoughts will either conform to reality (in other words, they will be true) or they won’t. And it is really important that they to conform to how the world actually is theologically, morally, physically.
There are few attributes of God more centrally attested in the Bible and yet so difficult to grasp as is the issue of God’s holiness. Without it laying at the center of our conceptions of God, everything else He is and does gets reduced, or worse, distorted beyond recognition. His love is reduced to sentiment. His righteousness becomes mere politeness. Our own experiences become the center and God’s attributes become relative (he becomes a super version of us), rather than God’s character being central and our own relative to him.
We have failed to attend to God’s holiness and this is reflected in a whole range of our current troubles. Evangelical worship has become exceedingly casual and a matter of mere religious self-expression - we have abandoned the God-instructed worship in the temple, for our own self-built high places. Or worse, we quickly abandon the worship of God in the church in the name of questionable (at best) public health policy. We unhesitatingly make calls for justice without considering the absolute nature of God’s justice and how His justice comes in both glory and horror - we treat God’s standards as a trifle. We take to social media, quick to slander public figures with little to no pause or actual knowledge of these people - our mouths are unclean.
God is holy. Angelic beings, before whom we would fall down as dead men, cover themselves and cry out “Holy! Holy! Holy!” In his presence. He is not like us. He is not common. He is not simply another being in the world of being. His thoughts are not in the same category as our thoughts. His words are not attempts to describe reality, they create reality. His moral judgments do not accord with some eternal, platonic and rational form, his moral judgments determine morality and rationality and are eternal. His authority is not dependent on us. His purity and righteousness is not on some sort of subjective scale. He is holy and the appropriate universal reaction to coming into his presence is terror. The appropriate human response to God and his holiness is to cry out, “I am lost!”
Without the terror of God’s holiness, Christmas is reduced to mere sentiment. The wonder and the trembling of the incarnation is that all of this holiness comes as a baby. Christmas is the juxtaposition of the holiness of God and a child born of a woman, come to rescue God’s people from their enemies. When God’s holiness is little considered, our ability to marvel at the grace of this season is lost. Jesus is simply a cute baby who will do some fairly marvelous things. But the glory and terror of the world was lying in a manger. The glory and terror of the world was crying and pooping and needed feeding that night. This is why Christmas is marked by glory and terror. It is why we should tremble and sing. The Holy One has come to rescue us, to conquer unbelief, to destroy our enemies, to crush the head of death.
May you consider the holiness of God as you light candles and drink eggnog and exchange gifts. May the mystery of this glory terrify you and fill you with wonder.