Preparing for the Nativity: George Whitefield

This passage is taken from George Whitefield's excitingly titled, "The Observation of the Birth of Christ, the Duty of All Christians; Or the True Way of Keeping Christmas," in which he reminds us that, of all things, the birth of Christ warrants celebration:

If we do but consider into what state, and at how great a distance from God we are fallen; how vile our natures were…when I consider these things, my brethren, and that the Lord Jesus Christ came to restore us to that favor with God which we had lost, and that Christ not only came down with an intent to do it, but actually accomplished all that was in his heart towards us; that he raised and brought us into favor with God, that we might find kindness and mercy in his sight; surely this calls for some return of thanks on our part to our dear Redeemer, for this love and kindness to our souls. How just would it have been of him, to have left us in that deplorable state wherein we, by our guilt, had involved ourselves? For God could not, nor can receive any additional good by our salvation; but it was love, mere love; it was free love that brought the Lord Jesus Christ into our world about 1700 years ago. What, shall we not remember the birth of our Jesus? Shall we yearly celebrate the birth of our temporal king, and shall that of the King of kings be quite forgotten? Shall that only, which ought to be had chiefly in remembrance, be quite forgotten? God forbid! No, my dear brethren, let us celebrate and keep this festival of our church, with joy in our hearts: let the birth of a Redeemer, which redeemed us from sin, from wrath, from death, from hell, be always remembered; may this Savior's love never be forgotten! But may we sing forth all his love and glory as long as life shall last here, and through an endless eternity in the world above! May we chant forth the wonders of redeeming love, and the riches of free grace, amidst angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim, without intermission, for ever and ever!

I cleverly excluded the sections on how Whitefield expects people to celebrate the Feast of the Nativity: without "cards, dice, or gaming of any sort," without "eating and drinking to excess," and without taking time off from your "worldly callings to follow pleasures and diversions." Whitefield really knows how to throw a feast.

The "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" and Other Fictions of the Human Imagination

Our culture is obsessed with rights. In declaring our independence from Britain, the colonials enumerated the universal rights to which all people are entitled: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We believe (somewhat naively) that our whole society is founded on these rights, and we have used violations of these "universal" rights as the grounds for chastising, boycotting, and even invading other societies regardless of whether or not they share our conception of these rights. Moreover, Americans by virtue of their presence between, for the most part, 30 and 49 degrees north latitude have an extra endowment of Rights outline in our Bill of Rights. We can say what we want, worship what we want, own guns, and so much more.

But, if I may be presumptuous, God doesn't care about your rights. I dare say He doesn't even recognize them. Why should He? You didn't have a life before He made you, and no matter how much you claim the right to it, He can dispose of it as He wills without consulting you. He has no problem telling us that we cannot say what we want, that we cannot worship who we want, that we cannot shoot who we want if they are on the property that we "own." I will even go so far as to suggest that maybe God isn't bound by the Eight Amendment.

This all came up in a discussion of women's roles I am presently having with a non-believer. He is quite insistent that we cannot base rights on biology and that therefore women are entitled to preach. He is right, insofar as women are just as entitled to preach as men are. The whole concept of entitlement, and therefore rights, is totally foreign to the Christian religion. In the Christian system, you are not entitled to exist. God created you out of a free act of His loving will without compulsion or external influence of any kind. He didn't do it because you are entitled to it. He did it because He willed it. My views on the reality of free will aside, you aren't entitled to liberty either. In terms of sheer capability, He could have made you no less mindless than an ameoba. You certainly aren't entitled to pursue happiness, at least not apart from the ordained path of that pursuit.

Christianity is about surrender, more specifically about surrendering to a God who was first willing to surrender to us. The difference is, Christ's surrender was real. He was everything and became nothing. Our surrender is illusory. We give up only the pretension that we have anything on our own, that others and, more importantly, God owes us anything. The question of gender economics acts as a microcosm for the whole problem of Christianity and rights. The avant garde belief that ontological equality precludes economic particularity betrays that the whole issue has been clouded by a modern conception of rights. The idea that you are entitled to do or be certain things by virtue of some intrinsic value has led the church to believe that to "deny" women these "rights" is to somehow comment on their value. We have no value except that which divinely imputed to us, and we are entitled to absolutely nothing. Everything which we are or do respectively as distinct sexes--and, more generally, as created beings--is entirely gifted and directed by God. The very act of introducing "rights" into the discussion is a rebellion against our purpose.

Any intrusion of "right" into Christian practice should be excluded outright and replaced with more Christian concepts like duty or purpose or, God forbid, divine intentionality. If we treat others with dignity, it is not because they deserve to be treated with dignity, any more than you or I deserve to be treated with dignity (and if we reflect honestly on our own lives, I hope we will all see that we do not). We treat them that way because it is how God intended us to treat them so. If we intervene to correct injustice, it is not to prevent an affront against the abstract notion of universal rights. It is because we have a duty to a just God. Most importantly, we undermine the very nature of our salvation if we make a point of demanding our rights because we believe we are intrinsically valuable. Whatever value I have, I have by God's good pleasure and redeeming power. I and everything exist through His good will, are free through His good nature, and are happy through His good grace. Rights, so far as I am concerned, are an artificial fabrication of the human mind and a truly pernicious false god.