Christmas is a time for family gatherings. It is often, in our war-torn world, a time for peace—or, if not peace, at least a “cease-fire.” It is a time celebrated as the Nativity of the Savior, but, at the same time, it is also celebrated in countries where there is a limited Christian footprint because it just “feels special and right.” Christmas is many things for many different people, but for God the Father, the Creator, it is a magnification of his imagination. The Incarnation goes well beyond what any prophet hoped for and certainly well beyond what we understood as even possible. The Incarnation stands in powerful witness to the reality that, as creatures, we cannot even begin to imagine what the Father imagines. We cannot create as the Father creates. We are so limited, and God is unlimited. There are no boundaries that limit the imagination of God. The Incarnation of Jesus is proof of the Father’s imagination. Divinity becomes humanity. Strength is rooted in fragility. Condemnation is crushed by innocence. Despair is replaced with hope. Mercy triumphs over judgment. What God promised and what we’ve patiently longed for has been fulfilled beyond expectation.
The Incarnation is not the Father’s first imaginative and creative action, but it does retain a place of privilege and purpose in the plan of salvation. It should also teach us a profound lesson: the Father always has the last word, and that word is more powerful than we can ever imagine. The Incarnation introduces this reality, and the resurrection confirms it. Everything in between explains it, but not entirely. There is so much more that we do not know. There is so much more that we cannot comprehend. One thing is for certain: whenever we forget that we do not possess the full and complete experience and imaginative power of the Father, we make a mess of things. We always come up short. We are never creative enough, generous enough, compassionate enough. We are severely restricted by our humanity and confused by the false certitude that humanity assumes, duplicating the original error repeatedly. It is so painfully arrogant to pretend that we somehow know and understand, when in reality we do not.
Humanity just does not listen. It jumps to judgment and is not patient enough to receive, meditate on, and engage with the whole story before it commits to a response. As a result, our actions are often foolhardy. We find ourselves tripping over our words and implementing fragmented decisions and judgments, because we do not incorporate the whole of what has been revealed. We settle for a single word, concept, or phrase and pronounce it fundamental, solid, unchanging, and absolute. While we may perceive a shortcut to be good, it always eliminates and does not include. Perhaps it can be a good choice for a singular journey, but it’s not the best choice for the fullness of life and the eternity that is to come. As a famous Redemptorist theologian once observed, “When it starts out stupid, it just gets more stupid.”
If humanity is prone to coming up short, imagine the consequences of disordered humanity. Imagine the consequences of human action, interpretation, and meaning if generated by something other than grace. Imagine what happens to a human being who suffers, through no fault of his or her own, from a disorder that makes him or her at least partially incapable of generosity, compassion, and understanding and prefers judgment, condemnation, shame, and anxiety. The way the person receives the Father’s imagination is distorted, and, in the distortion, there is no life—only darkness and death.
Scrupulosity steals the language, the images, and the promises that are gifts from the Divine, distorting all that is good and cloaking it in questions, doubts, and uncertainty. It cannot change what the Father has created, but it can provide just enough doubt to make what the Father has gifted us seem uncertain, murky, or “for everyone else but not for me.” As powerful and as convincing scrupulosity’s pretentious act might seem, it is nonetheless a pitiful and weak caricature. The Father’s imagination and the creation that it generates may be obscured, but it is never truly diminished.
The Incarnation of Jesus, our Christmas story, must not be distorted. It must not be covered and obscured by a disordered mist that makes it difficult to embrace and engage with. It is a story that is intended to be celebrated, but even more important, it is intended to be lived. When Jesus became a fully human person, divinity and humanity were once again made whole. Sin, which is the primary experience of distortion, was revealed to be false. The disconnect that sin enables was mended and restored, and all of God’s people were revealed to be the beloved children of God.
Our imperfect past and our uncertain future are once again connected to the present moment, the Eternal Now, and in that present moment, we discover the truth that we are indeed loved. As long as we remain rooted in the Eternal Now, we experience the fullness of the imagination and the power of God—authentically identified as grace— the necessary energy that restores us and animates us to live in his kingdom. Everything else, anything that emerges from the past or that we generate as an imagined part of our future, is utter nonsense. It does not give life but only mirrors death.
In contrast to the life-giving energy and power of the Father’s love for us are the lies that scrupulosity generates. The scrupulous condition, no matter how it might present itself or distort its true intention and purpose, always represents a singular reality, one which is not the truth. It is incapable of telling the truth. It is incapable of nothing but deception. It masquerades, sometimes even effectively, as something that seems to be true, because the feeling it generates falsely identifies the as something authentic—but it is not. In further contrast to the imagination of the Father, scrupulosity can generate only anxiety, guilt, and shame. To repeat, it does not give life but only mirrors death.
During our Christmas celebrations, when we gather together with family and friends, when we try to act with greater humanity, when we realize something much grander than we are capable of imagining or creating, we do so with a heart filled with gratefulness. We claim once again what has been gifted to us and what is yet to be revealed. The power of the imagination of God cannot be defined, and it cannot be contained—it can only be received and celebrated.