Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel

Of all the great Christmas songs—the fun ones, the rollicking ones, the cheerful ones, the reverent ones, the worshipful ones—“Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel”—I guess you could describe it as a somber one—is my favorite. I especially like this version by Mannheim Steamroller that uses deep, almost Gregorian chant-like vocals, a cathedral echo, and is sung in Latin. Say what you will about Holly and the Ivy, or Rocking Around the Christmas Tree, or any other Christmas song, this one feels most like Christmas to me. I want to spend the rest of this post explaining why.

First, this song has a distinctly old feeling, which appeals to me. Not only was it written a long time ago (either in the eighth or twelfth centuries) but it’s use of the title “Emmanuel” harkens back to the Old Testament. The title literally means “God With Us,” and Isaiah uses it in speaking about the Messiah. When used with the plea, “Oh Come, Oh Come,” it reminds me of the time immediately preceding Christ’s birth.

While Joseph and Mary were on their way to Bethlehem, the Kingdom of Judah, what remained of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, was suffering under the tyrannical rule of the Romans. The second line of the song refers to “captive Israel,” and I think of this situation when I hear those words. These people were desperate for freedom and many believed that the Messiah would come and deliver them from this political bondage. Which would have made it all the more difficult to recognize, in the poor carpenter’s son from Nazareth, the awaited deliverer.

I want to go back, briefly, to that word “Emmanuel.” As we know, it means, “God With Us,” referring to Jesus’ premortal identity of Jehovah. Jehovah was the God of the Old Testament and he was born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem, literally making him God in the flesh, or God walking among us. I can’t imagine the kind of mental leap that the people around Jesus, the neighbors, the friends, the family, the strangers, must have made to look at someone they could see to be flesh and blood, just like they were, and say, “Yep, that there is God.”

True, he performed miracles among them, healing the sick and causing the lame to walk and the blind to see, but prophets did that stuff in the Old Testament too. Elijah even brought someone back from the dead. And it is also true that not everyone who followed him recognized him as the Messiah, but the mere fact that anyone did is mind boggling. That knowledge, that assurance, that the man standing in front of you, the man who breathes and eats and does everything else that you do, is God in the flesh can only come, as Jesus told Peter that it came to him, through the Holy Ghost.

When I hear this song, I wonder if I would recognize Christ for what he was. I wonder if I would have heeded that subtle voice of the spirit that was telling something that my brain would surely react against as impossible, or at least very unlikely.

Second, I like that this song is so old. As noted above, no one is exactly sure when it was written, but we know that it was sometime in the dark ages when Christianity consisted wholly of Catholicism. As a Mormon, I understand that the original church, the church that Christ established during his mortal lifetime, was lost soon after his death and ascension. The people of the eighth or twelfth centuries didn’t have the priesthood organization to facilitate revelation or to make their sacraments valid.

However, this song reminds me that many of them were still wholly devoted to Christ. They believed in him and relied upon his grace and mercy. This song is one of the most beautiful pleas for supplication that I have ever heard. It is far greater than most hymns that Mormons have come up with. Which is why it helps remind me of the bond that I share with my other Christian fellows, which is one of things that we should remember at Christmas, but also of the glorious truth of the restored gospel that these people can receive sacraments under the proper authority, even though they didn’t live in a time when that authority was active.

There has been a lot of great Christmas music written and I hope that more will be written in the future. I feel the reverence of songs like “Silent Night,” and “What Child is This?” as much as anyone. And I like to go riding in a one-horse sleigh and to make my Christmases holly and jolly as much as anyone. But this sacred song, “Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel,” has a special place in my season’s celebrations. And I hope that whatever your favorite Christmas song is (and please tell me about your favorite in the comments) that this season helps remind you that Emmanuel did come, and that he did ransom us, and that he will come again.

Flagella and Faith

Have you heard the big news? Scientists have found microbes that use arsenic in their genetic makeup instead of phosphorous! If that doesn't mean anything to you, don't fret. It didn't mean anything to me either until I learned a little more about it. Basically, all of life as we knew it uses six elements as its building blocks: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. This bacteria uses arsenic, a poisonous substance to most organisms, instead of phosphorous. It's kind of a big deal.

Well, it's a big deal for scientists and people interested in that sort of thing. So why am I writing about it here?

One of the greatest questions that people have pondered since the beginning of pondering is where we came from in the first place. I came from my parents who came from their parents who came from their parents and on and on. But, we can't follow that pattern back forever. There had to be a beginning. One of religion's jobs is to tell us where that beginning is. The Judeo-Christian tradition finds the answer in the book of Genesis: There were first parents and their names were Adam and Eve.

Okay, so where did Adam come from? Genesis answers that as well. God created them. Great. That settles that.

At lest it did settle that until Darwin had to come along with his little book on The Origin of Species. You probably know the rest of the story. These new ideas about evolution seemed to show, at least to some, that man was not created by God, but sprung from lesser beings through the mechanism of natural selection. And this mechanism does not need God (again, at least to some). Since then, religious people and scientific people have been engaged in a war over the minds of the people.

I see this new discovery as another battlefield in that war.

I read a book once called The Language of God by Francis S. Collins. Collins is an expert geneticist. In fact, he oversaw the Human Genome Project. He's also a Christian. And in his book, he wrote about being a believer while being surrounded by skepticism, and also some of the traps that believers can fall into when confronted with scientific evidence.

The one that is pertinent to my discussion here is what he calls the “God of the Gaps.” This is when people of faith see gaps, usually in the evolutionary record, that science can't explain and ascribe this gap's existence to God. For example, there is a bacteria that has a flagella (a tentacle like thing that it whips around to propel itself through water) and scientists can't find the evolutionary steps that would have had to occur in order to develop the flagella. “See,” believers will say, “there is God's fingerprint. It couldn't have developed through evolutionary means, therefore, it was created directly by God.”

Here is the problem with this tendency: scientists have this annoying knack for discovering things. To my knowledge, this flagella thing hasn't been figured out yet, but a lot of other gaps in the evolutionary time line have been filled in. So, if you find God only in these gaps, what do you have to stand on when there is no more gap?

DNA could have been one of these gap situations. As far as we could tell for a long time, life could only be based on six elements out of over a hundred. That makes life orderly in a chaotic universe. And order comes from intelligence. So, in the basic structure of life, we find evidence for God's existence.

But this discovery puts a kink in that argument. If life could develop to use arsenic in an environment that is heavily saturated with the poisonous element, what else could it use? Are there any limitations? Is it really chaos?

If someone's faith in God is based on this limited observation of the natural universe (life on Earth only uses six elements), then that person may not be able to answer those questions. Faith has to be based on something internal, not external. It has to be based on spiritual experiences, not physical ones.

After all, science and religion tell us fundamentally different things about the universe. Religion tells us that God created the world. Christians don't all agree about the defenition of creation used here, but we Mormons see it more as organizing existing chaotic matter into the organization that we see today. Religion also tells us that God created humans in his own image, which we Mormons understand to mean that we were made to look like God physically, or that God has the basic appearance of a man, albeit a glorified and perfected one. Religion also tells us why God created all of this stuff. In Moses 1:39, which is found in the Pearl of Great Price, on of the books of scripture that is unique to Mormonism, that God created the world “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”

Religion does not tell us how God created the world. It doesn't concern itself with that because it doesn't matter for the ultimate purpose of creation. Knowing how God created the world will not make us better able to live his commandments and become like him. So, religion leaves that question to science. Which is exactly why people of faith shouldn't let any scientific discoveries affect their faith. After all, it's only studying God's creation.

The Two Dollar Rule

My mother likes to tell a story about when I was young. According to her, she once took me with her to the store and told me that I could choose one thing for myself that cost two dollars. I was excited to get a new toy and when I saw a Voltron robot, I knew that it was the toy that I had to have. The only problem (which you know if you have clicked on the link) is that the Voltron robot costs much more that two dollars.

When I pleaded that my mother get me that toy, she refused, citing the two dollar rule that I had agreed to before entering the store. I had already set my heart on that Voltron toy, so rules no longer had any meaning for me. When I realized that I couldn't convince her by an rational means, at least any rational means at the disposal of a child (“You should get it for me because I want it”), I resorted to every child's last resort. I started to cry.

I cried as my mom dragged me through the aisles to get the rest of the things she went to the store for. I cried in the checkout line. I cried all the way to the car. Finally, after everything was packed away and we were sitting in the car, my mom waited until I calmed down a bit, then turned to me and said, “Was that fun?”

“No,” I responded.

“Did you get anything?”

“No.”

And just like that, my mother turned the car on and backed out of her parking space, having taught me one of the most important lessons of my life. I learned that just wanting something is not enough justification to get it. We have to follow the rules as well.

It's important to note that my mother hadn't imposed the two dollar rule simply because she wanted me to learn to appreciate cheap things. At that point, my parents really couldn't afford anything more expensive for me. It is harder for parents to teach their children this lesson when they don't have that restriction. When you have the means to by a Voltron robot, it is hard to say no, especially when you have to suffer through the embarrassment of dragging a crying child around in public. But it is important for children to learn that wanting something is not reason enough to get it.

But why isn't wanting something enough reason to get it? If I want something good, why can't I have it right now?

If we instantly have our wants satisfied, we start to think that the world revolves around us, that we are somehow important simply because we exist. We get more selfish, more egotistical, and more lazy. We start to see people as mere means to our own satisfaction.

God did not intend for us to live that way.

When God curses the ground in Genesis, he doesn't say that it is to punish Adam. He says that it is “for [Adam's] sake” (3:17). Adam had to work in order to survive. That helped him to appreciate his life all the more. He was being productive. He was learning and growing. His life had much more meaning outside of the Garden of Eden, where he had to work, than inside the Garden of Eden, where all he had to do was pick his food from the nearest tree.

The world has evolved since the days of Adam though, and survival is not a pressing concern for most of us. But the same principles still apply. If I want to stand on top of Mount Everest, I can't just stroll up there. I have to buy the gear, train for an extended time, make some preparatory climbs, and then travel to Nepal and start the grueling trek up the mountain.

Similarly, if I want a million dollars, I better be willing to put in a lot of work over a long period of time. That is the way God intends for us to get what we want. Through work. However, there is another way. If I really want a million dollars, I can steal it. Getting up to the top of Mount Everest without the work would be a little more tricky—it would require getting someone to drag you up or something—but if it could be done, it would be worth far less than the effort that those who climb it put forth.

God has given us many commandments that work much like my mother's two dollar rule. He gave them to us for many reasons, but they have the added benefit of teaching us that we can't always get what we want (who knew that you could find pearls of truth in Rolling Stones songs?).

Take chastity, for one example. Our society says that if you want to have sex, you should be able to. Nothing should stop you. In fact, we are even working extra hard to disconnect sex from it's natural consequences, some of which are good, like pregnancy, and some of which are bad, like sexually transmitted diseases. A person used to have to confront these consequences if they wanted to have sex, which might make them think twice about having it. Today, though, those consequences are almost completely avoidable (the operative word there is “almost”). So why not allow people have sex when they want?

That's because sex is a sacred thing. It's the way we give life to more of God's children—or at least that's how God intended it to be. And it forms a strong, intimate bond between a man and a woman. God intended that as well. The relationship between a husband and wife is one of the most sacred unions that anyone can hope to enter into. It should have the utmost importance and provide the most meaning to a person's life.

When we compare that meaning to standing on top of Mount Everest or earning a million dollars, it becomes clear that skirting the divinely ordained way to get it, through marriage, cheapens it and makes it less satisfying.

As my mom drove me home from the store that day, I could have decided that I was going to work and save until I could by the Voltron robot for myself. If I really wanted it, that is exactly what I would have done. But I didn't. I got home and turned on the TV or started playing with some of my other toys. I wasn't willing to pay the price to get it, so it was clear that I didn't want it enough. God's commandments serve that purpose. They help us determine what we really want, and help us get them in a way that helps us get the most out of them.