Advent 16: A Better Santa

Now that we're parents, my wife and I realize more all the time just how downright creepy the song "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" is.

He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good so be good for goodness sake, better watch out, better not cry, better not pout...

Big brother is always watching. An underhanded ploy for behavior modification set to such a jolly and innocent tune, this is downright twisted, the stuff communist regimes are made of. (OK, maybe that's a distasteful exaggeration...but...)

It's no secret that there is some strange, uncanny, and disturbing resemblance between Santa and God. Most obviously, it's in the all-knowing ever-present part. Before we're tempted to go further, I'd like to suggest that the resemblance stops there.

Because this part about being good in order to get presents...this part bothers me. It's too easy to believe God works that way too. You earn your gifts, you get what you deserve. The better you are, the better the gift. But if you've been bad, nothing but coal.

And the nagging question remains, just what is good? Who sets the standard? How good is good enough? What tips the scale in my favor? Is it not doing anything bad, like punching my classmate? Isn't it also making sure we don't neglect to do everything good, like giving my coat to the person who doesn't have one? All of a sudden, the month of December is a lot more dreary and even more exhausting, trying to keep up with these demands, what has become an unmanageable burden.

(And there's also the curious fact that we've never known the naughty kids to really get coal...they get toys like the rest of us...so what does that mean?)

But this is not the way God works through sending Jesus to us. He defines "good" and sets the standard high: perfection. But he knows we are unable to be good enough, giving us Jesus who meets the demand on our behalf. It's the message of grace, and with it comes freedom, joy, peace.

But we still have such a hard time understanding grace in our world. This message of grace is not one of "Do what you want and get away with it." Instead, it's something like "His desire and love for you has absolutely no correlation with your behavior or your merit. They are unrelated, separate issues, for he wants you as you are, good, bad, or somewhere in between." This is a foreign concept. Approval and behavior are always related in our merit-based society, and therein lies the confusion.

Bonhoeffer puts it this way: "But it is the grace of the Gospel, which is so hard for the pious to understand, that confronts us with the truth and says: You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner; now come, as the sinner that you are, to God who loves you. He wants you as you are; He does not want anything from you, a sacrifice, a work; He wants you alone...Be glad!" (from Life Together)

Is this not an infinitely better message than that of twisted behavior modification?

Not only that, but he gives better presents too.