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Day 9: God’s Dilemma Yule Blog
Day 9: God’s Dilemma

The flawed human race, trapped in a cycle of cascading pain and wrong, is what and who God is bound and determined to love; the question is, How can He do it?

Day 8: One for All Yule Blog Nationalism Patriotism Israel
Day 8: One for All

The Christmas story doesn’t tell us how to reconcile the virtues and the vices of universal cosmopolitanism and local loyalty. But it suggests that we can somehow try to be true to both ideals: to be loyal members of our nations, our families, our tribes—and at the same time to reach out to the broader human community of which we are also a part.

Day 7: Meaning in 3-D Yule Blog Trinity Christmas
Day 7: Meaning in 3-D

My goal is much more modest: to help Christian and non-Christian readers understand what classical vanilla Christians mean when they identify the baby in the manger with God on high. That means taking on the most controversial and complex idea in Christianity; the doctrine of the Trinity is wrapped around that baby in the manger even tighter than the swaddling clothes.

Day 6: Personal Meaning - The Yule Blog
Day 6: Personal Meaning

For believers, the question isn’t why there are presents under the tree. It is whether the love around the family circle speaks of a larger reality and in some way reflects the meaning inherent in the universe as a whole, or whether that happy Christmas morning feeling is nothing more than the biologically conditioned response of a collection of primates in a kinship setting.

Day 5: The Meaning of Christmas - Yule Blog
Day 5: The Meaning of Christmas

For most people, their religious convictions don’t come from the realm of myth and fantasy; they come from that part of the human personality that sees the moral and physical beauty of the world and the people in it, and attempts to respond to that beauty in a serious and worthy way.

Day 4: The Hinge of Fate - Yule Blog - Holy Innocents’ Day
Day 4: The Hinge of Fate

Everybody wants to reduce Christmas to a Christmas card: we’d like this to be a pretty and sentimental tale. But today, the third day after the orgiastic opening of the presents beneath the tree, is also the day that the traditional liturgical calendar tries to slap us into serious reflection on the meaning of the event, jolting us out of our turkey comas and eggnog overdoses with an unforgettably grim story.

Which Question Comes First for the Church - Reinhold Niebuhr - Atomic Bombs - Soviet Alliance
Which Question Comes First for the Church?

“Which Question Comes First for the Church?” by Reinhold NiebuhrNovember 12, 1945 In both the religious and the secular world…

Day 3: Born of a What??? Yule Blog Virgin Mary
Day 3: Born of a What???

Conventional manger scenes don’t show it, but besides the ox, the ass, the sheep, and the camels, there was another animal in the room at Christmas: an elephant. And the elephant in the room was the idea that Jesus’ mother was a virgin when He was born.

Day 2: Rolling the Credits - Yule Blog
Day 2: Rolling the Credits

As we start to look at this whole Christmas phenomenon, it makes sense to begin with the basics. The first questions any sensible person asks about Christmas are pretty straightforward: What event is this holiday supposed to commemorate, and do we know that it actually happened?

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