This is the fourth Lord’s Day of Advent, the year of our Lord, 2005.
Worldviews are more complicated than a being just a simple bundle of propositions. Propositions are of course involved—no one has a worldview who cannot answer questions about what he believes. But in our circles, this tends to be the only aspect of “worldview” that we focus on, teaching our children to answer the challenges to their faith. This is not to be despised, and never to be neglected, but there is far more to having a worldview than this.
There are three other components that one theologian has wisely noted. They are the elements of narrative, symbol, and practice. Narrative—how do we tell the story of what we are doing here? Symbol—what forms of shorthand do we use to summarize our beliefs and narrative? And practice—how do we live, day to day?
With this in view, we have to recognize how important Christmas is as a worldview issue. In our celebration of Christmas, we are telling the story of world history. Just as the Fourth of July tells the story of independence from Britain, so Christmas tells the story of our successful war for independence from the devil. Christmas, and all the symbols of it (whether trees, carols, or Handel’s Messiah), are markers, monuments built from stone. They are Ebenezer—thus far the Lord has helped us.
And practice. We order our lives around the life and accomplishments of Jesus. We do this, not so that we might live like pagans in between our holidays, but rather so that these holidays will mark and bound our lives, lives that are lived in the light of the conquering gospel.
And since we believe that the earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, by this celebration we are not only living out our own worldview, we are declaring to unbelievers what the worldview of the entire earth will someday be.