Thursday, December 18, 2008

Merry Christmas, again!

I had not intended to add to my already numerous Christmas posts, but I ran across something while reading an autobiography that made me see the Gospels in a different light and it was so delightful to me to find it now at Christmas time; it renewed my sense of awe and wonder about Jesus' birth -- and so I wanted to share it. Most Christians know that "Gospel" means good news and indeed this is what the angel told the shepherds in Luke, " . . . behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all people". Imagine the "good news" only in an intellectual way, from the point of view of a former atheist turned theist who is wondering since he now believes in a god, which god is it that he has come to believe in?

Here in his own words is C.S. Lewis considering the Gospels (the first four books of the New Testament):
"I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myths. They had not the mythical taste. And yet the very matter which they set down in their artless, historical fashion -- those narrow, unattractive Jews, too blind to the mythical wealth of the Pagan world around them -- was precisely the matter of great myths. If ever a myth had become fact, had been incarnated, it would be just like this. And nothing else in all literature was just like this. Myths were like it in one way. Histories were like it in another. But nothing was simply like it."

Go tell it on the mountain that "Jesus Christ is born!"