‘Dead certainty or living possibility?’, by Jean West, from December 21, 1979

‘No wonder there are people who hate Christmas!’

Christmas means many different things to different people. Some I know who hate it, mostly because of the fuss and the crowds, the upset from a quiet routine, and perhaps too because of an antipathy towards the deeper symbolic meaning. Some may dread it, because of the emphasis on their own loneliness at a time when others are assembling in family groups. But for most of us it is a time of sharing and caring, a bright spot in the dark days of winter, a meeting with one another, and in particular a meeting with children. And as this International Year of the Child draws to a close my thoughts have been focusing on the world’s children and wondering what more can be done for our children everywhere.

I think back to my own childhood, a time of absolute security and certain knowledge of encircling love. I look into the wide trusting eyes of my little granddaughter as I change her nappy, and I am aware that this early relationship is the most important thing in a child’s life.
I know this sounds trite and sentimental. And I know that plenty of people who have not been privileged or fortunate at the beginning of life can grow up achieving much more than those who have had an easier time. Perhaps this is what I am striving to understand and express. Because, although I feel, with an absolute crystal clarity, a desire to make a loving start possible for every child born into this world, yet this is only half the picture. I know that there is something much more than that. In fact it is because this cosy warmth and gentleness has been so much emphasised, that many of us can only think of love – and Christmas – in this way. And because life turns out to be so very different, we lose faith in love, and we criticise Christmas for its sentimentality as well as for its commercialism. No wonder there are people who hate Christmas! It is a bitter hypocrisy: it tries to make us believe that there is a loving God, and that all we need do is trust him!

Some months ago I heard a rabbi from the East End of London talking on the wireless about his experiences in Auschwitz. He was only a boy at the time. At the beginning he had not believed in God, but when he came out he did. He had come to discover the dark side of God, as he put it.

What did he mean?

For most of us, if we have had any teaching at all, God has been pictured as a loving father. Even if we do not personify God, the word ‘love’ remains. And with love we associate security, trust, gentleness – something permanently good and beautiful, the love that came down at Christmas. That God was not very visible in Auschwitz. Yet the young Jewish boy emerged believing in God, so much so that he was fired to go on and live a life of dedication to God and to teach his ways. On the surface there was nothing but violence, torture, destruction, death – everything epitomised evil. But deeper down he must have experienced a positive vitality, a creative energy, some force which sustained him throughout this hell, something of prime importance, or as Paul Tillich expresses it, of ultimate concern.

I believe that every one of us is concerned with the ultimate, but not every one wants to wrestle with it. (I am fascinated by the language of seventy or more years ago when devout Protestants would ‘wrestle with the Lord in Prayer’!) I believe that every one would like to understand the meaning or purpose of life – and death. But man, feeling uneasy in the face of uncertainty, either pushes the whole concept away from him, or invents a plausible argument that will satisfy his need for security. In fact this open question is the purpose of life. We are continuously growing and evolving and we must keep our uncertainties.

I used to think of God as this growing point. My present analogy for him is a matrix, because this is multi-dimensional, as well as nurturing. Growth is the key word – or energy, power, spirit. Man feels fulfilled when he is in tune with this energy; he is at one with this matrix and together something is created. Each one of us is his own centre, so that fulfilment is bound to come to us in diverse ways, yet it is the same spirit that is at work everywhere. That is why one person can look at the trees and the sky and say, ‘But of course there is a God, just look at the trees;’ while another will answer that that means nothing to him. Yet he cannot rest until he has probed further, asked more questions, driven by this same energy to push the fringes of his knowledge further into the unknown.

The one thing that is certain is that you cannot wrap God up in a neat little parcel and hand him out as a Christmas present. Nor does it really matter what name he is given, whether it is pantheism, humanism, Buddhism or Christianity. That is why it cramps God to describe him as a loving father, or indeed anything at all. Words can only falteringly describe an aspect of experience which in its totality is both a mystery and an inspiration. The whole cycle of life and death offers us ample opportunity for both, and along with them comes a quality which I can only describe as one of worship.

Having written that paragraph, and looking for some convincing note to end on, I realise that wrapping God up as a neat Christmas present is just exactly what I have been trying to do! So I leave you with words from Sydney Carter’s Rock of Doubt:

‘What kind of proof can I expect? The question you ask is not the right one. The proof you seek is not the kind of proof that matters. Back your hunch and take your chance, that is how the game is played. You are part of the creation, so create. To create you have to play. You ask for dead certainties; all we offer is a living possibility. Sulk and you will get no pity. So take up your fate, your cross (if you prefer to call it that) and use it to create.’

Jean West, a GP, was a founder member and the first clerk of Church Stretton Meeting. She is quoted in Quaker faith & practice 26.20.

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