Most newborn babies have brought joy and hope to their parents and families. History has seen some privileged babies that their birth had brought joy to the entire city, or even the entire land. Yet no other baby has ever come close to the birth of Jesus Christ in terms of growing world-wide popularity and the joy it brings to people. Among all world religion founders, you cannot find another one with this kind of celebrated birth. I say this not only counting on the fact that Christianity is the number one religion by head counts. Ranking the familiarity of the birth story of a religion founder among nonbelievers, Jesus Christ is still the undisputed champion. I used to be a total stranger to Christianity, never read a single page of the Bible. Rather I had spent much time studying Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. Even then I knew the date of Christmas day, and heard about virgin birth of Mary, and knew the common calendar was divided by the birth of Christ. Yet I knew almost nothing about the birth of Buddha, Confucius, and Laozi. Indeed, their birth record were near blank.
The fame about the birth of the Christ, cannot be simply brushed away as a result of successful propaganda by Christians. The core of Christianity centers squarely on the person of Christ, that is His birth, death, and resurrection. All religions are preaching in words, but only with Christianity, the Word became flesh, born into this world in human form, walked on earth, suffered hunger and fatigue, ate bread and drank wine, died on the cross, buried but left an empty tomb behind, and received back to heaven in the cloud in front of a gaping crowd. His words and deeds, His gestures and signs, even His flesh and blood, all speak to us. This Word came from heaven to earth, and He first stopped at a manger in Bethlehem. Therefore, the birth of Christ is an undivided part of the truth. As long as this truth is proclaimed in the world, there will always be a merry Christmas for men.
Of all the incidents surrounding Christ’s birth, the most amazing one may belong to the virgin conception. Critics often laugh at this common sense-defied doctrine and considered it sheer fabrication by Christians to boost Christ’s divine origin. Can we judge truth with our common sense? Not only all religions categorically contradict common sense, any breakthrough in science, indeed even the birth of scientific inquiry itself, start with shattering people’s common sense. Truth, by definition, transcends common sense, unless you consider we human have already bagged the entire truth. Therefore, for those who pursue truth, they must not be held back by common sense. For a truth-seeking scientist, when he observed something that contradicts common sense, not only would he not shy away from it, but all the more pay attention and study with diligence. The Nobel prize is set up only to reward those common sense-shattering scientists. On the other hand, if people try to boost Christ’s divine nature with fabrication, comparing to all the imagined deities demonstrated in all human fairy tales and fantasy stories, the virgin birth story would appear surprisingly modest.
In ancient times with the vast majority being illiterate, difficulty in writing, and without paper, people wrote in extreme concise and succinct style. It was rather exceptional among ancient documents that the birth of Christ has been preserved with much details about times, locations, and people. If this happened in ancient China, this portion alone would take several dozen pounds of inscribed bamboo-slips. This record testifies the importance of the birth of Christ. It vindicates the authenticity of the two-thousand-year-old Hebrew Bible. Even the virgin birth, answers back to the judgment God pronounced against Satan in the Garden of Eden that one day he would be destroyed by the seed of the woman. (Gen. 3:15) The countless Christians after Christ also vindicated the authenticity of the birth of Christ. When they are filled with the Holy Spirit, and have lived a new life entirely alien to this world, would that demonstrate a similar miracle like unto the virgin birth?
Prayer: O Lord! Thank you for descending into our world in human flesh two thousand years ago! Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom He is pleased!
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