Question: Why did Jesus come to earth on that first Christmas Day?
Answer: In order to be a light.
Because in John 12:46 Jesus tells us that he came as a light in order that all who believe in him may not remain in darkness.
You’ve probably heard it before – the thought experiment that seeks to suggest that all religions are but complimentary ways to understand the same God. It goes something like this
Imagine four blind men, who having never before heard of about elephants, find themselves alongside one in a pitch black room.
Each man stretches out his arms to feel this thing they’re encountering, hoping to understand it better.
One takes hold of the trunk, and concludes it is a snake. Another wraps his arms around a foot, and imagines it to be a tree.
The third man feels the elephants tail, and declares that it’s a rope. And the last man slaps his hands against the elephants body, and announces that it is a wall.
Some people say that, just as all four men are describing the same thing in different ways, so too different religions offer different perspectives of the same God
Which all sounds very wise until we notice the very obvious limitations of the analogy that encourages us to think in ways that are wrong and which subsequently lead us to draw conclusions that are false.
Because what we need to recognise is that all four of the men in the thought experiment are wrong. It wasn’t a snake, a tree, a rope or a wall that they were feeling – it was an elephant!
Furthermore, the thought experiment doesn’t recognise any form of special revelation. That is to say the elephant doesn’t speak.
But we have a God who does speak – through creation, through the pages of scripture and through a person – the historical man who was, and is, Jesus Christ.
And so to extend the thought experiment a little, imagine that as the blind men flounder around in the dark, the elephant starts to talk and declares himself to be an elephant!
Such a declaration would have absolute authority. Why? Because the elephant knows what it is. And, because it knows exactly what it is talking about, its testimony would be one that is totally trustworthy.
But when it comes to our understanding of who God is, it gets even better than that. Because as well as declaring himself to be God, Jesus not only restores our sight but, by being the light of the world [John 8:12] switches on the light in order that we need not remain in darkness as to who he really is.
The nature of God does not depend on what people think about him. He is not the subjective product of our own imaginations, but an objective reality – the one who is who he is, and the one who, in Christ, he reveals himself to be.
There is then such a thing as absolute truth – and that absolute truth is God. And, because of Jesus, who, as well as being the light, said he was also the way and the truth [John 14:6], that God is one that, through Jesus, can be known.
We therefore need not ever be in darkness, because of the light that Jesus came to be, when he came to earth on that first Christmas Day.
To reveal the secrets concealed behind door 14 of last year’s Christmas Countdown, click here
Some musings 