Christmas and the Jerry Springer in All Of Us

There’s no time like the holidays to bring out the Jerry Springer in people.  A time to gather, a time to remember… all those decades of past slights and offenses, real and imagined.  We’re currently undergoing such a drama in my family.  In years past, I would have enthusiastically engaged in it, fiercely defending my position and making a case to show why I’m right, dammit, and you need to [stop, start, resume] [behaving a certain way.] Over the years, my perspective has gradually changed as I slog through this pursuit of holiness.  I’m less concerned with my own honor and more with God’s.  (Which is not to say that the “I’m right, dammit” feeling doesn’t just rise up in me.  It certainly does.  I’m just more prone to stamp it down now.)  As I’ve mentioned before, I’m pursuing holiness, and make no claims to have achieved it.

Back to the practical: how should a Christian deal with these dramas in the family?  The details are unimportant and common; if you did a survey on your street probably half or more of the families on it would report similar problems.  Right or wrong, what I’m choosing to do at the moment is back off and not communicate at all.  I’m praying a lot; not just for the person involved but for wisdom for myself and my husband.  This family member chose not to join us for Thanksgiving.  That was a shame, but we slogged on and had a very pleasant day anyway.  For my son-in-law’s sake I am determined to make the holidays nice, since he’ll be in Iraq next Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Christmas is coming and we wonder – do we push to reconcile or wait for the family member to approach us?  As Thanksgiving proved, we are perfectly able to have a pleasant holiday anyway, but this person’s loss was felt – and more than that, for the person’s own sake, exile – even self-imposed! – is not healthy.  But when I think of trying to manipulate the situation, I think of Abraham and Sarah and Ishmael.  Better to wait and see what God does than to try to force my own solution.  Right?  (sigh) So… prayer.  And sorting out my own sin issues: the desire to be right, dammit! at all costs, the desire to put my own needs above someone else’s, the desire to defend an injured party who is fully capable of defending himself if he chose; it’s just another instance of my proclivity to jump into a fight.  And my “victory” in that instance would not honor God.

God could have sent the Jesus of Revelation – a warrior on a white horse, winning the final victory over evil. Instead he chose to begin with a baby who grew up with his own family problems, including his mother and brothers trying to interfere in his ministry.  And I noticed that while he dealt with them firmly and did not accept their behavior, he also did not respond to them with the same level of heat that he did with the moneychangers.  I wonder if part of the point of the Christmas birth of the baby, with the subsequent slow growth of the Christian life and dealings with difficult family members instead of appearing as the full-grown victorious Messiah, was to create these dramas that we’d then have to work through, addressing our own sin along the way.  Jesus modeled the correct response for us and now, Choose Your Own Adventure style, we have to make our choices and bear the consequences.  Short term point scoring or long term relationship?  Prove that person wrong at all costs, or take the eternal view and be a witness for Christ?  The fact that these dramas so often occur during the holidays, when we’re ostensibly celebrating the birth of our Savior, but instead choosing to wallow in our own perceived righteousness and desire for justice (when we should be begging for mercy), is… irony or confirmation?  Both?  In any event, it’s undeniably sad.