Chesterton and Christmas

As I see it…
GK Chesterton once wrote a book entitled, Everlasting Man. Among other matters, he addressed the idolatrous heart of man who, has down through history, tried to “create” gods (via wild imaginative thinking) that were a mere extension of himself; these gods just had greater powers than man. Likewise, mankind has also sniveled around and generated small images of gods before which he would bow and to which he could present votive gifts or offerings. In any case, Chesterton would take idolatrous humanity to task for such feeble efforts to reach out to or comprehend “god.” Two and a half millennia before Chesterton, my friend Isaiah was likewise holding forth on man’s idolatrous tendencies. From chapters forty-three through forty-six, Isaiah uses divine sarcasm to humiliate the efforts of his peers to construct a god they could worship. Using the same log, they would: 1) start a fire by which they would warm themselves, 2) cook food to feed themselves and 3) carve an idol to worship and thank for the log which became the versatile utensil of fuel and worship. But later on, the Holy One of Israel, speaking once again through his prophet, addressed the issue of idolatry from a greater perspective, i.e. time versus eternity. Even if man could fathom a “god” or construct an idol that would serve as a comprehensive-spiritual-need-provider by which his conscious could be salved and his aching heart quieted, he is still faced with the suffocating reality that it was a “god” which man had created. This would not/could not be a “god” of any spiritual substance. In fact, to hear the Lord describe himself and his existence, we are left in utter amazement: For thus says the high and exalted One who dwells in eternity, whose name is Holy, “I live on a high and holy place… As astounding as that divine description is, the Lord offers a paradox of equal astonishment, “[I also dwell] with the lowly and contrite of heart.” And the only way to cross the chasm of eternity to modernity is via the path of the incarnation. In Christmas, the quest for God is resolved; not by man, but by the Eternal One himself!