The Challenges of Gift Giving

Another Christmas has come and gone, and with it the pressures of Christmas shopping and gift giving. It's not that I'm a stingy person--I love to be generous and give gifts to the people I love. But I don't like feeling like Christmas gift giving has evolved into a duty, the challenge of buying things for people who have everything that they need--as well as a lot of stuff that they don't need. It's the tension of avoiding Christmas becoming all about the physical things we can buy for each other while focusing on the reality that the Word became flesh--our God took on a physical body to attain for us the spiritual blessings that none of us could ever buy.


I wouldn't want to do away with gift giving, I suppose. Gift giving motivated by love can be meaningful and joyful. But I yearn, like blogger Amy Julia Becker, for a time when gifts meant more because they were something beyond the everyday. Amy Julia explains:


My idealized version of Christmas comes from “Little House on the Prairie,” where Christmas involved treats and presents that weren’t a part of every day life. Laura and Mary couldn’t imagine anything better than a stocking with a tin cup, a peppermint stick and a shiny new penny. I would love for our Christmas celebration to approximate their sense of delight. But I can only imagine one way for Christmas morning to become a time of celebrating the material world and humbly receiving from one another. We would have to live more simply for the other 364 days of the year.

In the world of the Little House family, when an orange and peppermint stick were once-in-a-year events, it was relatively easy to find gifts that would delight the receivers.  Those peppermint sticks and oranges didn't have to compete with smart phones, flat-screen TVs, game systems, and e-readers. And the relationships among family members satisfied then what many of us try to satisfy today with things that drive us away from meaningful human relationships. What could possibly provide this level of delight in our fast-food, Facebook, texting, smart-phone world, where our problem is finding space for all of the stuff we already have, never mind room for all the new stuff we don't need--or even want? 


This year, I think my daughter Katie had the right idea. A college student, she is operating on a limited budget. We encourage her to use whatever money she earns from babysitting jobs, photography clients, and her on-campus job in the library for the things she needs: tuition, books, day to day expenses. She wanted to give gifts to her family, but she didn't have much to work with. She adopted a chapter from the Little House books and bought each of us small treats that she knew we would enjoy. For Henry and me, a small box of Belgium chocolates. For her brother, some kind of Japanese soda with a marble in it that is released when you open the bottle. She gave similar treats to her grandparents. I loved watching her hand out her well-thought-out treats and the delight she obviously felt as we received them with gratitude. Things that aren't part of the every day, things carefully thought out and lovingly given. Things that didn't cost much in dollars.


And then there was Jonathan, whose face lit up when he opened up the package with the Answers in Genesis book that he asked for. The truth is, he would have been thrilled to have found a laptop or expensive game system under the tree. But if he had, I'm not sure he would have found the book so exciting, and I'd rather he learn, for now, the value of the gift of learning.


So while I still haven't entirely figured this gift-giving thing out, some good things happened this year at Christmas. Next Christmas, I'm sure, will be the one where I figure it all out.

An Exciting Evening at Our House

It's been really crazy lately--one of those stretches when we barely have time to breathe, when one event barely ends and the next is beginning, when Henry and I found ourselves asking the dreaded question, "Will we ever have a date night again?" and truly thinking that it's possible that we may not. And that question was followed by "Why does everything happen all at once?"

So tonight, I left work a little late because I have a project with a looming deadline that I probably won't make, ran a few errands, and arrived home around 6:00. Jonathan was at his grandparents' house, and Katie doesn't come home for Christmas break until tomorrow night. Just Henry and me. And nothing we had to do, no place we had to go, no one to transport anywhere.

We didn't get any meat out of the freezer for dinner, so Henry suggested we just clean up some leftovers, which made dinner--and clean-up--quick and easy. In one of those this-almost-never-happens moments, we realized that it was 7:00--and really didn't have anything we had to do. And this is how the conversation went:

Annette: I feel like I should be doing something.
Henry: We should go for a walk.
Annette: It's 24 degrees outside.
Henry: People mall walk. We should mall walk.
Annette: Where do you want to go?
Henry: Meijer?
Annette: I don't think we'd be able to get much exercise there. I should just go to the mall and go Christmas shopping.
Henry: What are you going to get?
Annette: I don't know.
Henry: Then don't go.
Annette: What are you going to do? Do you need to work?
Henry: We could . . . relax.
Annette: Well, what are you going to do to relax?
Henry: We could read . . . watch Doc Martin, Monk, or Cranford.
Annette: Hmmm . . . read . . . I could blog! And we could listen to music.

And so it's official. We've turned into those people who don't know how to relax.We even have to work hard to figure out how we're going to relax. And even as I type this, I'm thinking that there must be something that I should be doing. But I'm just going to breathe and dream of that great Christmas tradition--the one with Mama in her kerchief and Papa in his cap, just settling down for a long winter's nap. And maybe I'll read.

Communication and Culture

My doom-and-gloom perspective on contemporary means of communication stems, at least in part, from the history minor in me. Just a few examples from history demonstrate well how our means of communication and our use of language shape us culturally—for good or bad. An early example of communication misused occurs in Genesis 11, where the “whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.” The people used their language to work together to build a tower whose top would reach to heaven so that they would not be scattered over the earth. And because that was not God’s plan for humanity, he addressed this misuse of communication to confuse the people’s tongues, so that they were forced to scatter over the earth. This misuse is corrected by God in Acts 2, where the people gather and hear the gospel proclaimed in their own languages. In this incident we see the greatest use of language—the proclamation of the good news of the gospel—and we see language being used for its highest purpose.


If we skip ahead a few centuries we see the abuse of communication again as the Roman church conducted religious instruction in Latin, so that there was no need or opportunity for most people to learn to read. Only the highly educated clergy had the opportunity to learn to read, and even when they did, the options of what to read were limited. And that is what is so amazing about the Reformation and the invention of the printing press. Now there were books to read, and the Reformers, starting with Luther, saw the need to translate the Scriptures into the common tongue. Once again, communication was used positively to shape culture, as there was now opportunity, incentive, and the ability to communicate more widely the truths of God’s Word. Theology, education, the sciences, politics—all were developed more fully because of the ability to communicate more deeply and more widely than ever before.

And now we have Facebook, texting, e-mail, Twitter—a whole new world of communicative tools that allow us to communicate more widely, but not more deeply. And so I wonder how this communication will shape us—is shaping us. The saddest thing I’ve recently heard is a situation where a young woman has moved away from home. There is a rift between her and her parents, who love her very much. A couple of weeks ago, she e-mailed them to tell them that she is pregnant. Her e-mail announcement to them was followed by a proud Facebook announcement to the world. The parents are devastated. The young woman should be.

I’ve read a couple of articles in the last week that are noteworthy. One is an article that looks at how teens are using Facebook and texting and how it is affecting their ability to think and learn. I’ve often wondered why people are so drawn in by Facebook, which seems to serve to let people know what near strangers ate for breakfast or what chores they've accomplished this morning. One teen in the article gave the most insightful answer to that question that I’ve read, explaining why he has a hard time getting his homework done: "I know I can read a book, but then I'm up and checking Facebook," he says, adding: "Facebook is amazing because it feels like you are doing something and you are not doing anything. It is the absence of doing something, but you feel gratified anyway." I don’t think there’s anything I could add to that. Read the rest of the article—especially if you have children—here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/technology/21brain.html

The second article (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gabler-zuckerberg-20101128,0,7889675.story) talks about communication in history, and contrasts the changes between the invention of Gutenberg (the printing press) and Zuckerberg (Facebook):

"Gutenberg's Revolution transformed the world by broadening it, by proliferating ideas. Zuckerberg's Revolution also may change consciousness, only this time by razing what Gutenberg had helped erect. The more we text and Twitter and 'friend,' abiding by the haiku-like demands of social networking, the less likely we are to have the habit of mind or the means of expressing ourselves in interesting and complex ways.

"That makes Zuckerberg the anti-Gutenberg. He has facilitated a typography in which complexity is all but impossible and meaninglessness reigns supreme. To the extent that ideas matter, we are no longer amusing ourselves to death. We are texting ourselves to death."

So what happens to a culture that misuses communication, that doesn’t even have the lofty goal of building a tower to heaven, that seeks only instant gratification? Perhaps a historical analysis of the culture of Rome can answer that.

John’s Thesis

"But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."
                                ~John 20:31


I began to learn to write in Mrs. Grosh's freshman composition class. As in most freshman composition classes, we began writing paragraphs: description, persuasion, comparison/contrast. The paragraph was to begin, of course, with a thesis statement—an assertion of something that had to be proven. And then came the hard part: Mrs. Grosh insisted that every sentence in the paragraph had to support the thesis. If it didn't, it didn't belong in the paragraph. It doesn't sound that hard, but finding a thesis statement that was neither too broad nor too narrow and then shaping sentences so that they somehow tied back to the thesis could be a challenge. And Mrs. Grosh was one of those tough but amazing teachers who had high expectations for her students. I think I finally started getting it when I took advanced composition with her my sophomore year in college.

The apostle John would have done well in Mrs. Grosh's composition classes. He establishes his thesis in his first chapter, writes most of the rest of his gospel to demonstrate his thesis, and then wraps it up with the conclusion of John 20:31. And with every word that he writes, every incident that he details for us, every character that we meet along the way, John is masterfully demonstrating his thesis: that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

The Bible study I attend started studying the gospel of John this fall, and after three meetings, we're still on the first chapter. It's a fascinating book, and there are seemingly endless things that have been written about it and that I could write about here.

So how does John make his case that this Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God in the famous first eighteen verses—his prologue? He begins by telling us that in the beginning (reminding his readers of the book of Genesis) was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. His Greek readers would have said, "Right—we know about the Word, the logos. It's the ordering principle behind all things. It's the source of reason and wisdom in the universe. Nothing new here, John."

His Jewish readers would also have responded positively to the idea that there was a Word in the beginning. This concept had rich meaning for them as well. For them, "Word" was always attached to deed, so that God spoke a word and brought creation into being. The Old Testament prophets would speak the Word, and something would happen. Because they wanted to avoid using the name of God for fear of blaspheming, Jews adopted other words that were a kind of code for God. One of those was "the Word." John had nothing new for them, either.

John tells us that the Word existed from the beginning—before all things. He also says the Word was "with God," subtly informing us that Jesus is a distinct person in the Trinity. Finally, he says the Word was God, and since we understand that the Word is Jesus, we see that Jesus is fully divine; all that can be said about God the Father can be said about God the Son. He goes on use words like light and life, again reminding us of Genesis 1, to tell us more about this Word.

But then, in verse 14, John writes the shocking thing that would have made both Jew and Greek—and us today—sit up and take notice: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."

For thirteen verses, John has been telling us that this Word was divine, with all of the qualities that both Jews and Greeks would expect a divine being to have. And now, all of a sudden, John tells his readers that the "Word became flesh and dwelt among us." And that's the surprise—that God would come down, take on human flesh, and dwell among men.

Why would God do that? That's what John will be explaining for the rest of his gospel.

Jonathan 1-2-3

Interesting fact about Jonathan: he was born at 1:23 am on November 3, 1993, which makes him seventeen years old yesterday. Is Jonathan as easy as 1-2-3? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. When we go to parent-teacher conferences and we hear things like this: (1) Jonathan is a great Christian kid, (2)Jonathan will be a great success someday, (3) Jonathan is a joy to have in class, we think yes, he is as easy as 1-2-3. When he needs new clothes and I ask him if he wants to come with me to the mall to pick them out, he tells me to just get what I think is good--and that is pretty easy. If the Republicans, Red Wings, or Tigers win, he's happy; if they don't, he's not. Easy. On his pizza--pepperoni only. It doesn't get much easier than that.

But when you hear Jonathan talk apologetics or politics, you know there's more to him than a simple 1-2-3. When he's listening to a sermon in church or answering questions during family devotions and I wonder how he could ever have possibly known that answer, I realize that there's more than 1, 2, and 3 multiplied many times over there.

There are a few other ways that Jonathan isn't as easy as 1-2-3 at times, but I won't mention them here. I'm just very thankful that on November 3, 1993, Jonathan was born at 1:23 am. Happy birthday!