In the Times today is an article observing that 2007 has been a bad year for Faith what with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Philip Pullman, Mohammed the Teddy and finally the good old Archbishop expressing his opinion that the traditional Christmas story is largely legend. Good timing!!The journalist Gerard Baker closes with the following comment "That faith, by its very nature, entails doubt. If we could be really, truly certain, about the existence of God, what, really, would be the point of it all?
It is the Christmas Story, or legend if you will, as much as anything we believe, that underlines this essential tension between faith and doubt.
You'd have thought (and certainly the pre-Christians did) that the Son of God, when He chose, would enter the world in a way that would leave no doubt who He was or that He existed.
But He chose instead to come in a way that ensured just about the maximum room for doubt; merely another barely noticed nativity in the most miserable of circumstances. If you were lucky enough to be one of those shepherds on the hills around Bethlehem who got the news from the angelic host, or one of the wise men who followed that star, you were lucky. No long, dark night of the soul for you. Instead, just one brilliant flash of celestial light and the secret of the universe was revealed.
But for the rest of us, forced to ponder the complexity of our existence and the competing implausibilities of faith and unbelief, that was surely the point of the manger, the stable, the ox and the ass. That God would choose to come among us in such a way is so strange, so inexplicable, so unbelievable, it compels us to believe. " NUFF SAID
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