{"id":35791,"date":"2017-12-21T17:30:16","date_gmt":"2017-12-21T22:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=35791"},"modified":"2017-12-21T17:30:16","modified_gmt":"2017-12-21T22:30:16","slug":"the-best-that-we-are-able","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2017\/12\/21\/the-best-that-we-are-able\/","title":{"rendered":"The best that we are able"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Here\u2019s one of my favorite Solstice songs \u2014 Dar Williams\u2019 \u201cThe Christians and the Pagans<\/a>.\u201d It\u2019s a gentle, sweetly funny holiday story,\u00a0and it paints a nice picture of robust religious pluralism.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re different people with different beliefs. We\u2019re also kin and neighbors. And we all like pie. The only thing that stops us from living together is our tendency to lose our minds out of fear and cowardice, and we might perhaps choose not to do that.<\/p>\n

<\/iframe><\/p>\nThere\u2019s a lovely moment in the last verse when the uncle decides to call\u00a0the brother he hasn\u2019t spoken to in a long time. \u201cIt\u2019s Christmas,\u201d he says. He states this as a greeting, a request, an explanation, an argument, an apology. And it works as all of those.<\/p>\nThat phrase gets used a lot in all of those ways this time of year. \u201cIt\u2019s Christmas<\/em>,\u201d we say, and the appeal has a strange power to it, as though we\u2019ve just played a trump card that the other person is obliged to recognize.<\/p>\nI don\u2019t think the power of that is strictly sectarian. It\u2019s clearly related to the sectarian Christian holiday of Christmas, and from the way that Christianity has dominated and shaped our culture. But the appeal we\u2019re making when we say \u201cIt\u2019s Christmas\u201d doesn\u2019t derive from that, exactly. That\u2019s why it\u00a0tends to be just as compelling even when it\u2019s made to someone who doesn\u2019t share any particularly Christian notions of Christmas as a sectarian holy day (and also why it\u2019s sometimes not compelling even when it\u2019s made to someone who does).<\/p>\n\u201cBut please, it\u2019s Christmas<\/em>\u201d isn\u2019t so much about the birth of Jesus as it is about us<\/em>. It\u2019s a reminder that we have, collectively,\u00a0agreed that this particular time of the year should be different \u2014 should be better<\/em> \u2014 than the rest of the year. We have, collectively, agreed that we<\/em> can and will be different and better, at least for a bit, at this particular time of the year.<\/p>\nYes, it\u2019s certainly true that\u00a0one reason our culture associates this annual special dispensation with this particular part of the year is due to the timing of a sectarian holiday, but the need<\/em> for such a period each year seems broader and deeper than that.<\/p>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-35847\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2017\/12\/shark.jpg\" alt=\"shark\" width=\"550\" height=\"293\"><\/p>\nEvery Christmas, Christians like to remind everyone that \u201cJesus is the reason for the season.\u201d Well, yes, obviously. But also not really, or at least not entirely. (Or, I should say, wearing my theologian\u2019s hat, not in quite the way you might think.)<\/p>\n\u201cJesus is the reason for the season\u201d\u00a0doesn\u2019t explain \u201cthe season\u201d when it comes to Christians because we Christians are supposed to be taking Jesus\u00a0this seriously all the time<\/em>. The stuff he taught and showed and commanded wasn\u2019t supposed to just apply to one brief \u201cseason.\u201d The Sermon on the Mount doesn\u2019t include some\u00a0fine print suggesting that it can be ignored for 11 months out of every year.<\/p>\nAnd it doesn\u2019t explain why \u201cthe season\u201d seems compelling even for people for whom Jesus is not a particularly relevant and compelling figure. \u201cCome on, it\u2019s Christmas<\/em>\u201d works as a deus ex machina<\/em> ending to a silly story like Christmas Vacation<\/em> because we recognize that \u201cthe season\u201d involves some kind of\u00a0something<\/em> that tugs at even people like the Griswolds, or the selfish boss played by Brian Doyle Murray, or the SWAT team raiding the house \u2014 people who have no particular affection for or understanding of anything to do with Jesus.<\/p>\nThe reason for the season, I think, is that we all recognize that most of the time the world is not as good as we\u2019d like it to be, and that most of the time we<\/em> are not as good as we\u2019d like ourselves to be. But maybe, if only for a little bit at the tail-end of the year, we could all agree to just act<\/em> as if we were better people living in a better world.<\/p>\nSo \u201cthe season\u201d is partly just a conceit, just a pretense or a game. But we all feel the need or the desire to play\u00a0along with it because we could all use a break from the world and from ourselves and from the awful way we accept or allow things to work most of the time for most of every year.<\/p>\n\u201cYou can\u2019t lay off those workers now,\u201d we say, \u201cIt\u2019s Christmas<\/em>.\u201d That\u2019s both a lovely and a\u00a0horrifying argument.<\/p>\nWhat it\u2019s really saying, in part, is that \u201cYes, fine, during most of the year it\u2019s perfectly acceptable to put profit-chasing and dividend-boosting ahead of human decency. During most of the year, it\u2019s not unusual or impermissible to be callously cruel, to destroy livelihoods and families, to treat others as tools and objects and stepping stones for one\u2019s own acquisitive ambitions. That\u2019s just the way the world works and no one will stop you from doing that during most<\/em> of the year. But it\u2019s Christmas<\/em>. This isn\u2019t most of the year. This is the one little slice of the calendar during which we\u2019ve all agreed, temporarily, to act like we\u2019re not all back-stabbing assholes in a Hobbesian war of all against all. \u2018Tis the season in which we all briefly practice just barely enough basic decency that we can almost manage to live with ourselves during the rest of the year when we don\u2019t. Please play along with the illusion that we\u00a0might in any way possibly be better than that and put off\u00a0devastating all these families until January.\u201d<\/p>\nIt\u2019s an odd arrangement. We seem to be conceding something about ourselves and our lives together. Either we\u2019re admitting that we\u2019re actually capable of treating each other and ourselves much better than we do most of the time, or else we\u2019re admitting that we\u2019re not, and that this little season of respite and forced decency we\u00a0muster up at the end of every year is just an illusion and the best that we can expect of ourselves and of one another.<\/p>\nNeither admission is particularly flattering, but I prefer the former.<\/p>\nAnyway, have a blessed solstice. Well done, well done everyone. We\u2019re half-way out of the dark.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Either we’re admitting that we’re actually capable of treating each other and ourselves much better than we do most of the time, or else we’re admitting that we’re not. Neither admission is particularly flattering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>The best that we are able<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Either we're admitting that we're actually capable of treating each other and ourselves much better than we do most of the time, or else we're admitting that we're not. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The best that we are able","description":"Either we're admitting that we're actually capable of treating each other and ourselves much better than we do most of the time, or else we're admitting that we're not. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}