359 Christmas Eve and the Suspension of Disbelief

"Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 19:14

Is Christmas only for children? If you think so, you have lost some important hard-wiring in your brain. You're less human.

Our minds are a gestalt: beyond the autonomic drive to breathe and rhythmic impulses keeping our hearts beating, we're also born with innocence.

But innocence is not a lack of something.

Innocence isn't merely a blank slate—ignorance of the world. It is not the stupidity that proclaims that "sucker born every minute." Thereon are instruction sets written in invisible ink; we all come into the world hard-wired with that innocence.

Innocence has room for life's inscriptions, written in life's calligraphy, in many hues of ink. Sometimes, in colors of pain. How easily our original instruction sets are overwritten.

Have you ever tried explaining to a child why some people hate others? Even people they don't know? Or why some people do unspeakable things to others, as if any reason could justify it? Especially societally?

Why can't a child understand why one religion sees hurting members of another as a good thing? Or nations; or skin? Would a child see homosexuality as bad? What if it were explained as love between two people?

When the children in Matthew swarmed Jesus and bugged his disciples, they shooed them away, like irritating gnats. Jesus rebuked them for slighting those closest to the God of the love he was teaching.

A child comes into the world as pure love.

Watch children's reactions to nonsensical hate. Or the Nightly News. They don't fail to understand because they're ignorant of the real world; or stupid. No, they fail because it contradicts the hard wiring we're born with. Calligraphy fails. Their slates become cluttered with graffiti, spray-painted in tears.

And blood.

If you've ever defended to a child any reason justifying hate and ill will—successfully—then perhaps you're the problem. How far have you distanced yourself from the loving God in whose presence you were born?

This Christmas, suspend disbelief and join the innocence of childhood. Even if Jesus means nothing to you, innocence is a Godly thing and yours to miss.