Christmas In Utero

“And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” Luke 1:41-42

Jesus Christ, in utero, is, without question, the most popular fetus in the history of the world. Even the recent “royal baby”, for all of the attention granted him while he was still growing and forming in his mother’s womb, can hardly be mentioned in the same sentence. True, while still forming he was the subject of a fair number of front page stories and endless speculation, one can hardly expect Prince George’s birth to ever be celebrated as an international holiday. It would take some strange sort of madness to think that any nativity scenes will ever be replaced with ceramic figures of a Prince and Princess, giving birth in a modern hospital, surrounded, not by Magi or Shepherds, but by doctors, nurses, pain medication, and, of course, the flash bulbs of the media.

Jesus is hardly in danger of being overshadowed by any modern birth, for He was born. And perhaps one of the reasons for this is that we no longer see birth as we used to, but for isolated moments when it is a birth that extends some famous or royal bloodline.

Christmas is undoubtedly a season that is a celebration of childbirth—and as such, it is a time that really ought to make out society a bit more anxious. It is remarkable just how capably we can come together as a nation, erecting trees in our living rooms, hanging lights and gaudy, colorful ornaments upon every visible limb, without any semblance of recognizing the irony of a nation with no reverence for children, suddenly coming together to revere a child who spends much of His own story as a fetus.

Christmas is undoubtedly a celebration, not just of the birth of a child, but the anticipation, from the very moment of conception, of a child. It is not hard to believe that, if the miracle of the incarnation was to be repeated today, God would have to be exceedingly careful in deciding whom to bestow with the gift—should he choose another unmarried teenage girl, there is a very good chance that the child will never be allowed to come to term, as even an angelic announcement can be swept aside as a trick of the imagination or a schizophrenia-induced vision.

Do our modern sensibilities cringe when Elizabeth speaks of Mary’s fetus as if it was something more than a lump of tissue? If they do not, they certainly ought to. Do we think it strange that Elizabeth should call Mary “Blessed among women” when really she is just an unwed teenager who never really chose to become pregnant? We really should.

To those unable to fathom why anyone should ascribe any human value to a child in that murky area between conception and birth, it really would be best to simply ignore the story prior to Luke 2:6 and pretend it doesn’t exist. Forget the announcement of John the Baptist, who was destined to prepare the way of the Lord—until he is actually born, it is all just speculation anyway. Forget the angel coming to Mary and Joseph. Certainly forget the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth, where the author (who had the audacity to consider himself a medical doctor) makes far too much over a couple of fetuses.

Until that very moment that the child is actually laid in the manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a bed of straw, there is no Christmas story—there is only the potential for a Christmas story. Nothing is real until then—the moment the story begins in earnest.

If it happened today, we might consider the fact that Jesus even survived long enough to be born one of his greatest miracles.   

And as the story progresses and the first couple years pass, the further Jesus gets from the womb the more valuable His life becomes. When Herod, in an attempt to destroy Jesus, orders the murder of every toddler in Bethlehem, it is recognized with universal scorn and contempt. It is called “The Massacre of the Innocents”, even by those who would take great offense to the same term being used to describe the present plight of the unborn.

The Christmas story is about new life, but this should only be a source of true joy to those for whom new life really is cherished. Christmas is a delight to those of us who recognize that Christ truly came into this world, not on the first Christmas morning, but 9 months earlier, where already He was recognizable, even by other infants.

An Old Fashioned Credo

I was called “old fashioned” the other day.

No, that is not entirely accurate. It was not said to my face, and it was not in any way directed toward me. It was said in a nearby conversation with which I was not involved, but it was said about a belief that I very much continue to hold. Had these individuals known that their accusations were applicable to someone who happened to be inadvertently (or advertently, as it may very well have been) eavesdropping, would they have still used the phrase? I wouldn’t think so, as our world has become far too (woefully) peaceable for that. They would have politely waited until I was out of earshot.

Old Fashioned.

I didn’t laugh when I heard it, as it took a few moments for me to absorb the term, by which time I was in control of my responses. But as soon as I understood it, I knew that it really was hilarious, though not entirely unexpected. It might have been intended as an insult, and as a result it really was funny, because I realize now that the insult is really on the accuser.

I am not, for the record, speaking about being called old fashioned in terms of clothing or tastes in movies or music or any other sort of passing fad, in which case the term might, indeed, be accurate (and does, in many ways, describe me). What I’m referring to is the much more foolish notion that one somehow may be accused of believing in something that has the audacity to also have been believed at some time in the past. “Oh, you believe in X? Well, don’t you know that people believed in X during the 19th century? Don’t you know that X was believed back when men practically still lived in caves and beat their women over the heads?”

In the same vein (but in somewhat different words), a response to one of my previous articles, on the Christian faith, made (with what I assume was a straight face, though I have no direct knowledge) the accusation, which he deemed a grave insult, that I was guilty of believing in “Bronze-age fables,” as if somehow being believed by men in the bronze age immediately renders something untrue today.

The accusation is really the epitome of audacity. What sort of fool would accuse another of believing something simply because it had the longevity to survive the generations? Is this really something to be pitied? Or is it more pitiful to immediately believe in something that has only just occurred to men? Is it more foolish to believe in something that has been discussed and debated among philosophers and theologians for thousands of years, or to throw the entire weight of belief behind something devised by some social scientist in the 1960’s? Would I rather have the weight of history behind my beliefs, or the opinions of progressive politicians and modern psychology?

Of course, it should be noted that the term itself is really inaccurate in the first place, for, in order for something to be “old fashioned”, it really has to have gone out of style at some point, but this is really hardly ever true about beliefs that are called old-fashioned.  I am, for example, quite “old fashioned” in my idea of marriage, but only because I believe in the same things that have been believed and continue to be believed and have not been persuaded by the strange new ideas of a very vocal minority. I am “old fashioned” in my idea of human life, but only because I agree with the consensus of history that there is something truly valuable about it, and I have not obtained the sort of faith required to believe in the modern notion that humanity is a bad thing, and that we really ought to be able to end life just as it is beginning.  

The truth is that many things deemed old fashioned are not really old fashioned at all. It may be true that some have ceased believing in it (and they are often very loud about it), though the belief itself has survived, for as often as not it has the benefit of being true. When someone says that something is old fashioned (when they really ought to say “traditional”), it only means that they have somehow come to live in a world that refuses to recognize that certain things have never died. They only wish that they had. Just because one wishes that some new and novel belief would overrun the world does not make the current beliefs old fashioned. In fact, it means (and it really must mean) that what is new faces an uphill battle to overtake the traditional. But this is a good thing. It should be difficult for the world to come around to something new. We often chastise ancients for not coming around quickly enough to some belief or another that turned out to be true, but why? Isn’t there something admirable about being steadfast, about holding to things and not letting them go without certainty?

One should never be quick to abandon the traditional in favor of the novel. If some new belief comes along and happens to bring along with it the virtue of truth, that is, if it really is better than the traditional belief, then it very well may be inevitable, and it is certainly worth fighting for, but it should not be accepted without a fight. That being said, these things are rare. We might use the abolition of slavery as an example of this, but this is only partially true, for in effect, slavery itself was a bit of a novelty, at least among the Christian world. The abolition of slavery was really in itself a return to something “old fashioned”, for the tradition of Christianity has always differed from the world in its idea of freedom and human dignity. The evil of slavery was a novelty that tragically wormed its way into the world in the same way infanticide continues to gain popularity today; and it is only the “old fashioned” among us who endeavor to protect the world from being swept away by every novelty.   

“Old fashioned” is, in short, a badge of honor, and ought to be worn with pride. The accusation ought to be accepted gladly. Those who accuse others of being old fashioned are really the ones who ought to be pitied for their absolute willingness to believe in the absurdest things.