Christmas in the Philippines

Caroling is popular here. Small mobs of kids walk around singing bad renditions of English Christmas songs.  Most of the time we hear 'We Wish You A Merry Christmas'. They will stand outside of our gate for about twenty minutes singing "we wish you a merry chis-mas, we will you a merry chis-mas, we wish you a merry chis-mas, and a happy new year! Advance merry chis-mas! Advance happy New Year!". This happens every night. Sometimes twice a night, with the same mob. They are begging for money or food. Sometimes they even come up and just say, "Hey, merry Christmas, give me money!".
One night we decided that we would tell kids to come back on Christmas Eve and we would hand out something then. While I was talking with these kids, I asked them what they were wanting. "Bisan unsa" (whatever). What were they going to do with it? "Magdala ko ani sa simbahan" (I'll take it to the church) Wait, the catholic church? Quick nod. Are you catholic? Violent head shake and a loud "dili!" (no). Something tells me they weren't really going to the church....

With that little story we are ushered into the Christmas season in the Philippines. Lights were going up way back in October (no respect for Thanksgiving here either!) and around the middle of November is when the caroling started. As far as we have learned, Christmas may be celebrated by families here, but unless you are Catholic, Christmas is more or less off limits in the church. So there are no decorations or Christmas trees up. No Christmas Eve service is planned, and no Christmas hymns will be sung, for the most part. With our church back in Texas being such a HUGE part of our lives, and with all the Christmas and Advent stuff they have going on even now, it is another big glaring reminder of the cultural differences between the US and the PH.

Another big holiday deal for us is the familial aspect. Even while living in Texas we would be back in Arkansas for Christmas Eve with one grandparent, Christmas morning with another, and Christmas dinner with yet another. The whole two days was spent with family and just hanging out with each other. But now we are here without our families and that is going to be difficult on us this year. I'm sure we will try to video chat with everyone, but it won't be the same.

Now, before anybody reading this thinks we're moping around here, just hold on a moment! We were in a tight spot emotionally a little while ago, but now we are getting back out and about, back on our feet, and everyone is feeling much better. But we still have to be able to make Christmas traditions anew in the face of our new cultural living situation. There are things that we just won't be able to do, like any sort of Christmas light house hunting via car, or eggnog, or ugly Christmas sweaters(we could but we would dehydrate very quickly)!
But we have to, in my mind, do two things with regards to Christmas: the first is make sure that the reason we are wanting to celebrate is more than just cultural or familial tradition and the second is that we need to be able to adapt to what we can do and make family traditions of our own that are not necessarily rooted in all of the American cultural Christmas trappings.

If we are only wanting to celebrate Christmas is because that's what we have done in the past, a tradition, like the Fourth of July, then we have a problem. If it is because we are wanting to praise God for the gift of His Son who came to earth so that He could die for us, then that is something different all together right?

And the traditions that go along with the holiday are important too. Is what we are doing merely an American holiday tradition? Or is it something that is rooted in the biblical story of redemption and the Gospel?

This past week we had a time of worship and fellowship with some other missionaries here and Hollie led a discussion about the theology of the song 'O Come O Come Emanuel' and how it really points to the reality of Christ and the Incarnation and how through Him alone we have the hope that defeats the tyranny of Satan and his dominion of death and hell. Something we need to do as Christians is take our own holiday stuff and check it against the Bible, to see if what we are doing is merely culturally Christian or if it is rooted in the Gospel. If it's not, do we really need it to be an essential part of our Christmas celebration (nice addition maybe but that's about it right?)?
Anyway, Hollie talking about this song reminded me that even an amazing song like that need to be grounded in the biblical story and point us to our hope in Christ.

Isn't that the real reason for the season?

A Theology Post.

This is a theology post. That means that it is supposed to be theological in nature, and have some level of smartypants theological content. But, then again, isn't everything we as Christians do supposed to be theological in nature? Isn't everything supposed to be centered in and around the study of God and how that plays out in our daily lives (which is what theology really is)?

Think about this: How do you think about theology? How to you think about God day in and day out? How do you think about how your family culture is shaped by your faith? How does our Christian faith in the finished work of Christ factor into how we do our jobs? Raise our kids? See those outside the faith?

We in the West are so compartmentalized in our thinking that we tend to literally only set aside Sundays for the worship of God. We have our work-life, our family-life, and our church-life. This is saying essentially: This way of me operating and living and my morals or actions are this way during this time and they are different at other times. And even as we protest that we may think back to how, subtlety, our thinking and actions may be different depending on the situation we find ourselves in.
If we find that we are being "more spiritual" on Sunday mornings (because we can't forget about that great American idol, Sunday night football) and Wednesday evenings than when we are sitting down with our co-workers during our lunch breaks on Tuesday...that's a problem.

Why?

Because in 1 Corinthians 10:31 we see that we are to do everything for the glory of God.

Now in context, the verse is involved in the conversation Paul is having with the Corinthian believers about offending the conscience and Christian liberty. In the larger context of chapter 10 it is nestled at the end of the chapter in which idolatry and meat offered to idols (and therefore eating meat and offending the conscience of someone) and so part of the take away from chapter 10 is the need for believers to look out for the weaker brother and to help strengthen him/her in the faith by helping to bear their conscience. This is essentially Christian living, which, if you read the New Testament, is never done in isolation. We have freedom in conscience, but it is for the service of our fellow believer. We don't eat meat offered to idols because it may burn the conscience of a weaker brother, causing him or her to stumble into sin. We see in this chapter and specifically this verse, that we are to live this way for God's glory. When we start to live this way, with God's glory as the reasoning for doing x, y, and z, we begin to lose the separate compartments that we have built into our lives. Everything we do begins to lose it's own inherent in your face urgency and fades into a daily day long pattern of seeking to bring glory to our Savior and King as we seek to strengthen our fellow believers.

Now how in the world are we supposed to do that? I mean, we have so much fighting against us don't we? The busyness and urgency with which we find our days seems to almost beg that it is impossible to break the cycle of compartmentalization and to see everything as something that can be holy is just hard to do. But there is freedom in fighting through that fight. There is freedom in finding out that doing the laundry in a way that is to bring glory to God (simply seeking to do it well to serve your family and therefore serve God) begins to make the chore itself seem less like a chore over time.

It turns into a joy to do the dishes (by hand!) or the laundry or balance the checkbook, or doing that report for your boss, whatever it is. There is holiness and grace to be found in seeing things as means to the end: glorifying God.

But now hold on, this can still be refined a wee bit more can't it? I mean, doing things for the glory of God? That could be a Jewish phrase, or even a Muslim command, so how does doing things for God's glory look explicitly Christian? Ah, that's a good question, don't you think? What makes our actions "Christian"? Have you ever thought about that? When we reflect on the questions that I posited at the beginning of this post, one thing keeps coming to mind: the finished work of Christ on the cross on our behalf.

Obviously, Christ is what makes us Christian and not Jewish or Muslim. Christ is what makes us believers in the true God and not the false god Allah or the misunderstood (and false) view of God that the Jews have. But it is not simply Christ that we find ourselves anchoring to, but it is the totality of who He is and what He has done. We rest not in the simple person of Jesus of Nazareth the carpenter, but Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, who took on the flesh of man, lived the life of perfect obedience to God's Law and because of His Innocence and Perfection, took the place of sinful men on the cross so that through His death, and His glorious resurrection, we may get back everything that was lost in Adam. We rest on this work, on this Person. This means that when we are doing things for the glory of God we are not doing anything to satisfy anyone or anything and attempt to bring about our own salvation or justification, heck, even our own sanctification. We do things for the glory of God and subsequently the love of our neighbor because we have been saved and justified through the work of faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross. We aren't trying to earn anything (heaven forbid!) but everything we do, when done for the glory of God is us rejoicing in His mercy and goodness and trying to show that same to our neighbors.

So how do you think about theology? How do you make your life revolve around Christ and His cross? I don't think it will necessarily look the same for everyone, and that's ok. But we need to prayerfully seek God's glory and set time aside to seek His face and to try to pray through orienting our lives around Him. We need to take the time to fight the fight of de-compartmentalization of our lives and seek to see everything as a means to glorify our God and King through resting in who we are inside of Christ. This means that the best way to be a Christian architect is not to only design beautiful churches, but to do the job in an exemplary way that shows that you take pride in your gifts and talents that God gave you and that you use them to help others and love them in the same way that God loves you.This is being Salt and Light. This is being a Christian. We also need to remember that we if we are Christian architects that we are Christians first that happen to have a job as an architect. The best way for you to be a Christian mother or father or ad executive or whatever it is, is by doing everything out of a love for God and neighbor (whoever that may be) and seeking to bring honor and glory to the God that redeemed us and to seek to do so as consistently as possible throughout our whole lives. We need to seek to love and to show God's love to everyone we meet, to love our neighbor as ourselves, and to seek to lift up and strengthen the family of God that we meet day in and day out through love.

All for the glory of God.