"Anything but God"

CS Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” Isn’t that a very brief but very accurate description of human history? “The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and it fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it.” (Gen. 3:6). It all started there, with wanting something besides God and his gifts. We’ve run salivating and sweating away from good, and toward every other distraction and non-good (let’s just call it evil) ever since, and we keep on reaping the sad and disastrous fruit of our actions, day after day.

But since God is God, he planned ahead to join himself to us forever, through his Son becoming flesh to be one of us; and of course, being God, he wasn’t surprised when we rebelled. He knows how very messed up we are in our thinking, by our choice to find something besides him to satisfy us, so he supplied Immanuel, God-with-us, as a new beginning for humans. Jesus is the “second Adam” (1 Cor 15:47), and was the one who not only brought God to us, but who responded completely perfectly to God’s will. Instead of doing his own will, he always submitted himself completely to the will of the Father (John 5:30, 6:38). His thinking was not warped by inserting his own desires, trying to find some way to honor the Father and still do what he wanted — instead, he followed his Father in everything (Heb. 10:7, 9), because that was what he wanted.

By way of illustration, I’m working on replacing the handle of a piece of luggage. I’ve tried repairing it but in the end, the only cure will be to take out the old and bring in the new. In somewhat the same way, the Christmas story focuses on the birth of the Savior, as the beginning of the complete replacement of our defective humanity. A 'new human’ had to be manufactured, as it were, to replace our defective one. As Jesus grew up and was fully submitted to God, he created, in himself, the only way to reverse the drastic mistake made in the Garden. When we try to ‘repair’ ourselves, our best efforts fail. Our only hope is a full replacement of our broken selves, with the complete righteousness of Jesus Christ. Not theoretically, but actually, by letting him live in us, following his will and not our own, submitting to promptings of the Holy Spirit he sent to live in us.

As C.S. Lewis observed, only God will make us truly happy. Not presents or money. And he has already given us happiness by giving us Jesus, the best gift of all. Merry Christmas!