Posted on 12/27/2021 3:26:22 AM PST by Kaslin
Few verses are more popular at Christmas than Luke 2:14: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward man.” It’s a heart-warming verse that Christmas cards and decorations have simplified, for decades, to mean “Peace on Earth.”
It’s also the one that Linus quoted in A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) in his classic “drop the mic” moment during a speech after Charlie Brown yelled in frustration: “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?!” Charlie Brown was decrying Scrooge-like commercialism.
Boy, were those the good old days when that was all we had to worry about.
In our woke world, you don’t think much about commercialism destroying “the true meaning of Christmas” anymore because we’re too busy trying to keep political psychopaths from destroying the whole country. It’s creating an ambient sense of dread – a constant rattling that reminds us that things are way out of whack. We’re feeling like Asaph who wrote in Psalm 82.5: “All the foundations of the earth are unstable.”
When foundations and institutions that we thought were unshakable start to shift too much – and for too long – we instinctively let go of the stuff that’s crumbling to hold on to what’s immoveable.
Peace on Earth – at least the way most have understood it – is one of those crumbling things. Given the times, it rings hollow. And it’s OK to let it go because Jesus never said it. It’s not what the Bible teaches. You don’t have to look it up. Just look at the Earth. The proof’s in the pudding.
The kind of peace Jesus brought was a personal reconciliation between God and man, not necessarily peace between man and man. In fact, because of who Jesus claimed to be – the Christ, the Messiah, the one and only Son of God – it elevated conflict and division to biblical proportions between man and man, man and governments, man and learned culture, and between man and his most intimate relationships: Family. Some men, cultures, governments, and families can be deeply committed to things that are completely false, and they demand that you fall into line. Or else. Love them, then build boundaries. God comes first.
“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth,” Jesus said to His disciples as he sent them out as “sheep among wolves” (Matthew 10:34, NIV). “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword [division]. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.”
Make no mistake, when you put what was happening in the context of the times, Jesus was history’s greatest Disrupter. He brought deep division in the most intimate of relationships. No one shook the foundation of civilization to its core more deeply than Jesus Christ. Why? Because men had come to believe things, for centuries, that were false. Because He came to tell them the truth – hard truths – to “make the crooked places straight,” as Isaiah foretold. And because He came with the highest authority – Son of the God who created everything.
That didn’t sit well with people.
Jesus never wished for division. Division came because of the way people, groups, religions, and governments responded to what He spent three years telling them. Hard truths. If this man really was God’s Son, as He claimed to be, that shifted authority away from the crooked things they had anchored themselves to for centuries. “Multitudes” followed Jesus. That was threatening. He kept talking anyway.
Jesus threatened the authority of the tyrannical religious leaders of His day. After His crucifixion, His followers threatened the authority of a Roman government that would persecute and kill Christians for over a century after Nero. Today, it threatens the tyrannical authority of Islamist states and groups, some of whom strategically create an atmosphere of extreme fear by killing Christians in the most grotesque ways when people who grew up in strict Muslim cultures convert to Christianity.
And Christianity now threatens the tyrannical authority of groups and governments in America that want to impose abortion, same-sex marriage, gender identity, critical race theory, arbitrary lockdown mandates, and a cornucopia of other legal perversions on all Americans – particularly Christians – regardless of who they ultimately answer to.
One of their tools? Cancel culture. It’s been difficult for me to respect this high-schoolish term; this malignant wart that grew out of social media. What we call cancel culture is really something more deeply inhumane that’s old as dirt. It’s threats, intimidation; it’s creating an atmosphere of fear to force people into violating their deepest convictions. It’s punishment. And it’s getting old.
Christians are peacemakers, but when you all but force them to defy God’s will, you’ve breached sacred territory. Under the cover of equity and civil rights, wokeness pressures Christians to put other things first. Christians are instinctively law-abiding people. But when you force them to obey laws that conflict with God’s immutable laws, don’t be shocked when a more muscular Christianity kicks in.
That doesn’t sit well with some people.
The woke response to people who refuse to violate their consciences is the sticking point. A tyrannical response makes division inevitable. It’s as old as “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” This is where Jesus, Earth’s greatest Disrupter, brings the idea of peace into balance: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth? I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
In 2015, the woke crowd even punished Linus, a cartoon figure, when students at W.R. Castle Elementary in Kentucky were prohibited from quoting his biblically based speech in their performance of A Charlie Brown Christmas. Remember that?
“As superintendent of Johnson County Schools,” said Thomas Salyer, “I recognize the significance of Christmas and the traditions and beliefs associated with this holiday. In accordance with federal laws, our programs will follow appropriate regulations.”
Bah!
It took a bill from the Kentucky Senate in 2017 to turn that around but Linus had it exactly right in the cartoon. And if you look closely, Linus drops his trusty security blanket at the moment he quotes the angels urging the shepherds – who were “sore afraid” – to “fear not.”
The Christmas message should remind us to do the same. Drop the fear. Something sacred is being destroyed in America. With all the ruthless loss, suffering, and death that the woke crowd and their protectors have unleashed on good, hard-working, law-abiding people in this country, now is not the time for a misguided, milquetoast, misunderstood peace.
Jesus was King of the Jews, at root, he was a very special politician
The first sentence is misquoting Scripture
That was my first thought, but it is exactly what is written in the King James translation. You accurately quote the Douay-Rheims version, which is the same wording that is in my 1959 St. Joseph Daily Missal. It is written in Latin as “Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.”
I agree with the premise of the article, that Jesus never came to bring peace the way most people understand it. That “The kind of peace Jesus brought was a personal reconciliation between God and man”.
.......special kind of politician?
What does it say when your constituants ensure you are tortured and crucified?
Christ isn’t a disruptor, Christ is part of the Triune God who so loved the world that he came to free man from the death of sin.
See the link at metmom’s Post #6.
But the Jews were under the law because they asked God repeatedly to provide a set of rules/edicts in which to follow so they may know God's will.
God extended grace to the gentiles hoping to make the Jews jealous/envious of the relationship between non-Jews and Himself that it might draw those in the nation of Israel to Him.
As born-again believers in God's plan of salvation through His sacrifice in Jesus, we no longer have sin imputed to us. God has put away our sin as far as the East is from the West. Into the sea of forgetfulness.
Do we sin? yes, from time to time. Does it mean condemnation for us? NO!
My dad used to say, “We're born sinner and we'll die sinners.” lol
I would say, “dad, I have a crisp $50 bill if you can find that scripture within the bible.”
Truth is, we still struggle with sin. We bring it before God and ask for wisdom, understanding and yes...forgiveness, but as children of the most high God, we are ALREADY forgiven.
There are two messages in the bible and it runs from the old testament to the new through to the book of the Revelation of John. Those who accept and believe in God's plan of salvation through the sacramental sacrifice of His son Jesus will struggle with sin but will not face condemnation. We will receive instead, growth, wisdom, healing, grace, mercy and most of all God's open arms of love.
Those who reject God's perfect sacrifice...the Holy Lamb of God, offered up for the world are now and will be condemned. The unbeliever sins and it is imputed to them.
Receiving Jesus as our Lord saves us from the curse of the law, curse of sin, curse of death and the curse of the fear of death. Our sins have been forgiven...past, present and future. Some folks recoil when they hear that. How can this be?
When God looks at His children, He sees Jesus. Not sin. This is THE MOST INCREDIBLE LOVE STORY EVER TOLD! It brings glory to the Father and He alone.
God knew that the first followers of Jesus were Jewish (and 11 of the 12 apostles died as martyrs for their faith in His Son); He shared the message with Gentiles, but I don’t believe He viewed the rejection by some Jews as representative of the whole group.
Gentile were bound by the law as modified by Jesus (regarding marriage, diet - for Gentiles, punishment of criminals, etc.); it formed the basis of Western Civilization.
I understand your sentiment
His constituents came to see Jesus with open arms, joyously and waving palm branches as he entered Jerusalem. Palm Sunday is celebrated today as it was so long ago.
We celebrate a great President Donald Trump. Like Jesus, Trump was killed by political enemies whom he did not resist
Jesus was a Triune. I’m speaking of the man part
The King James version of this passage is different than many other bible versions.
The Catholic bibles all say the verse reads ‘Peace on earth to men of good will.”
A few years ago I was part of a mixed group of Christians and this verse came up. I mentioned the difference and we all checked our bibles. Only the King James version had the ‘Good Will toward men’ phrase. I will add that this was a small group.
There were some members who were Lutherans and their bibles, which were not King James version, stated ‘Peace on earth to men of good will.’
I am curious as to what Freepers’ bibles state in that verse.
Jesus said, “I have come to light a fire upon the earth’. Sorry I cannot identify the verse this is in.
Yet another beautifully written post.
Jesus said in Luke I think it was, “if any man has not a sword let him sell his cloat and buy a sword”
>>Gentile were bound by the law as modified by Jesus (regarding marriage, diet - for Gentiles, punishment of criminals, etc.); it formed the basis of Western Civilization.<<
The basis of Western civilization law as we know it today was the Mosaic law. Ten commandments. It is enshrined as the tablets on our U.S. Supreme Court building.
https://thetablet.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ten-Commandments.jpg
Jesus was born under the law and taught under the law. The gospel actually didn’t commence until the resurrection of Christ. Carrying His blood to the mercy seat of heaven in the temple of our God. Right? Then it was finished. The war between God and man was over. Jesus then sat down at the right hand of the Father. His work, defeating sin was over.
When Jesus taught things like; pluck your eye out or chop off your hand or sell everything you have and follow me. If you look at a woman the wrong way you’ve already committed adultery in your heart or anger against your brother you’ve committed murder in your heart. Jesus was demonstrating just how helpless they are/were to accomplish righteousness.
Jesus was preparing them for what was to come. Grace through faith, not works.
I was so blessed by these things when I learned them in bible college. I so hope it blesses you and others.
God is a good loving Father. After I graduated from bible college, I truly fell in love with God..Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
I was brought up with the notion that God was an angry, vengeful entity on a big white throne with a big white lightning bolt sitting in front of a huge chess game called life just waiting...just waiting to strike someone down when they screwed up.
I am amazed so many see God as harsh and distant. Ready to poof you into a pillar of smoke if you don’t tow the line. lol. Some actually preach, if you don’t give to God what is His, he’ll get it at the mechanic shop. That sort of nonsense.
God is a good loving Father. His very nature is Love. Not just love...but the purest, most intense, unimaginably deep sort of love that we will never comprehend until we sit in His glory.
I love God so much. I absolutely adore Jesus and yield myself to the Holy Spirit as best I can.
If Western Civilization stopped with the Old Testament I’d think we’d have a very different culture today (with concubines, dietary restrictions, etc.); Western Civilization stemmed from Judeo-Christianity (with the modifications from Jesus).
God bless and happy new year.
Thank you, and the same to you!
Well said, but the personal reconciliation between God and man is only for men of good will. IOW, there can be no reconciliation whatsoever unless man wants it, and he must want it - and will want it if he is good willed, otherwise reconciliation is impossible.
It is only to these good willed people that peace is offered. That's what is meant by peace to "men of good will" - to say "good will toward man" is altogether useless and meaningless because it implies that peace brings good will, when only the opposite is true.
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