A Counter Cultural Month of December

Observing the church's Advent Season (four weeks prior to Christmas) in a culture that wants us to celebrate Christmas (see recent Gap commercial for a good cultural definition of Christmas) is one of the most difficult things for a serious minded Christian to do.

The church's liturgical calendar of daily and weekly scripture readings throws phrases our way such as "you bunch of snakes" and today's difficult to swallow message from the prophet Amos, "Woe to those addicted to feeling good—life without pain! those obsessed with looking good—life without wrinkles! They could not care less about their country going to ruin."

There are some options here. The serious minded Christian could just give up and capitulate to the dominating culture and celebrate Christmas early and just brush aside the Advent Season as an outdated liturgical focus that doesn't fit into a capitalistic "feel good at all costs" society.

Or as I tend to do with most challenging scriptural passages like the ones we read in Advent, we could interpret these passages to be about other people and not about us.

The problem with those options, is that they don't help the seriously minded Christian in his or her struggle to get from point "A" to point "B." Point "A" being our present state of not being the person of God I am called to be and point "B" being not so much a point or a finished goal but a process of sanctification in which we are allowing God's grace to mold and shape us into God's likeness.

This is why the month of December is always a counter cultural time for the serious minded Christian. Thankfully, we have the four Sundays of Advent and all of these annoying and challenging scriptures to bring real change and transformation to our lives so that when Christmas does come, there's something to celebrate.

So as we are out doing some Christmas shopping, baking cookies, and enjoying holiday parties, let's be open to the other side of Christmas, the side that the church calendar calls, "Advent." It's during these four weeks, that we can grow the most.

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