An obvious framework of ordinary, everyday existence, or the universal life seen in every newborn child
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| The Jew, Nathan the Wise, receiving a newborn baby girl from a Christian stable lad |
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Whatever else Christmas is about, its origins lie in a very ancient tradition that, whatever else God is, or the gods are, they are, “with us.” In the singular, the phrase, “God is with us”, is, as many of you will already know, the meaning of the name, Emmanuel, given to the newborn baby Jesus by the author of the Gospel of Matthew (1:22–23), a name which he borrowed from the much earlier author of the first chapters of the book of Isaiah (7:14).
Perhaps the simplest, and most widely comprehensible further unfolding of the meaning of the name Emmanuel or “God is with us”, — a meaning that, importantly, would be agreed on by both the Jewish author of First Isaiah and the later, Christian, author, Matthew — is to say that for both of them the name Emmanuel meant “a helpful God” — i.e. a God who was understood to be some immanent, motivating spirit who moved among or within them, helping their efforts to bring about a better kind of world than the one in which they currently found themselves living.
But, today, some 2700 years since First Isaiah, and some 2000 years since Matthew, in our own, unusual, creative, inquiring, free and liberative religious/spiritual community — where disbelief in God (howsoever defined) is an as acceptable starting point for a person seeking to lead the good life as is belief in God (also, howsoever defined) — then even using the term, “a helpful God”, is obviously and more than occasionally, going to run into some difficulties, especially during our time together over the Christmas season which is undeniably rooted in the idea of Emmanuel or “God is with us.”
Given this issue, and having unfolded “God” to mean Emmanuel or “God is with us,” and then having unfolded this to mean “a helpful God,” it’s clearly worth asking whether there might be a further unfolding that makes it much easier for believers and disbelievers in God to get together to celebrate Christmas in a way that doesn’t do injustice, either to our personal metaphysical beliefs, or to the Christmas story’s original intuition.
Well, I think the answer is, yes, and it comes to us courtesy of the only recently deceased, contemporary French philosopher of science, and a practising Catholic, Bruno Latour (1947-2022). In his 2013 book, “Rejoicing: On the Torments of Religious Speech”, Latour suggested that today, in order to draw believers and disbelievers in God into a creative, common conversation and way of acting together in the world, we need further to translate “a helpful God” into, “an obvious framework of ordinary, everyday existence”.
Latour felt that “an obvious framework of ordinary, everyday existence” is a modern idiom which believers and disbelievers in God can all agree upon and which, in some genuinely meaningful way, leaves the original meaning of the name “God”, especially God as Emmanuel, intact.
If Latour is right, and I am right in following him — and I fully appreciate that you may not agree with me on this point — then, despite there being many significant differences in our individual metaphysical beliefs about God or not-God, in gathering together at Christmas as people committed to a creative, enquiring, free and liberative kind of religion/spirituality, I want to suggest that, just as once were the Zoroastrian Magi in the old Christmas legend, we can best understand ourselves as being a group of people who are on a shared pilgrimage seeking the birth of something that, ultimately, promises to gift our own age with a new shared, “obvious framework of ordinary, everyday existence.”
It is clear that, not only our own local community, but our entire world, desperately needs such a framework of ordinary everyday existence that is obvious to everyone, whether or not they believe in God. The climate emergency we are currently facing is, surely, one of the most pressing examples of why we urgently need to seek out such a new framework.
However, across the world, alas, this shared framework has not yet been found — in fact, far from it. Given this, it might seem utterly deluded of me to suggest that anyone who stops and looks properly, is going to find that it’s always-already been right in front of our noses all the time, and completely obvious.
I remain convinced that the “obvious framework of ordinary, everyday existence” is to be found, not in some share belief, or sets of belief (or disbeliefs) in God, but whenever there occurs a sincere and profound contemplation of the sheer mystery and miracle of life that can be seen in every newborn child, whether that child is the archetypal, mythical one lying in a straw-filled manger in the Christmas legend, or an actual flesh and blood child lying in linen-lined cot in a bedroom, an incubator in the most advanced hospital, or on a carpet on the floor of the humblest dwelling.
Today, now knowing that the newborn life of every child is not an independent phenomenon, but instead a single expression of the unbelievably complex intra-dependent network of being that is nature-naturing (natura naturans), we can extend this obvious framework in a way that remains consistent with the Christmas legend as it was further developed and enlarged through the Middle Ages (for example in Chapter 14 of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew written in c. 600-625 CE), to include the mystery and miracle of life seen in every newborn sheep, ox, ass that eventually came to share the stable with Jesus. And staying within the Judaeo-Christian tradition, we can extend this even further by turning to the words of the Hebrew Psalmist who, in his still astonishing Psalm 148, includes in the mystery and miracle of life every sun, star, sea monster, flame, hailstone, snowflake, mountain, hill, fruit, tree, all wild and tame animals, all creeping things and flying birds, all of which are also capable of praising the source of all being which provides the framework of ordinary everyday existence. As one might put it in Buddhist tradition, everything is Buddha-nature.
It’s important to realise that the story of the Christ-child in the manager is but one human expression of the intuition that we are all expressions of an unbelievably complex intra-dependent network of life in which nature is doing what she has always-already been doing since the start of time. She, nature, is to us the obvious framework of ordinary everyday existence.
But, I realise, this can sound very cosmic and abstract, so let me finish today by bringing you back to earth and reminding you of a story about the positive, practical, intra-religious consequences that occur when living by this kind of framework of ordinary everyday existence.
It comes from the great eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosopher, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), and it’s found in his dramatic poem, Nathan the Wise (1779).
His story takes place in Jerusalem in 1192 during the period of the brutal, Third Crusade. In it, Nathan, a Jew, has lost seven of his sons, all of whom were killed by the Christian Crusaders. However, following his loss, a young stable lad brought Nathan the infant child of his Christian master, seeking Nathan’s help. The child’s mother had already died, and the father had gone off with the Crusaders, leaving no one to care for the baby. Nathan, overjoyed, accepted the child as if one of his seven slain children had been returned to him, and he raised the child nobly in the Jewish faith, naming her, “Recha.” However, eighteen years later, the matter was discovered, and hearing of this the Christian patriarch of Jerusalem, enraged that a Christian child had been raised by a Jew, pronounced that Nathan must be burned at the stake, and ordered his monks to hunt Nathan down. One of the monks given this task was, by coincidence, the same stable boy from all those years ago, and he immediately went to Nathan and said, this child needs love more than anything else—more than Christianity. Even the love of a wild animal would suffice. He can always become a Christian later. And, if it hadn’t been for your compassion, that child would have surely died. You, a Jew, are the true Christian. I’ve never known a Christian as noble as you. And, to this, Nathan responded:
“We are both blessed. What makes you see me as a Christian in your eyes, makes me see you as a Jew in mine” (Act IV, scene VII).
As the important twentieth-century Yuniterian (sic) and advocate of a creative, inquiring, free and liberative religion, Imaoka Shin’ichirō (1881-1988), noted, Lessing’s story reveals that “the essence of religion is greater and more sacred than Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Shinto, creeds, rituals, or sects. It is the universal life (which we may call love, perhaps) that transcends all of these. A free-religious person is solely dedicated to the free expansion of that universal life” (from “Creation,” Issue 12, Showa 26, 1951).
And, as far as I am concerned, it is this universal, natural life that we see in every newborn being, that is the obvious, useful framework of ordinary, everyday existence which we seek today, and it is a framework that will always transcend all differences of belief or disbelief in God.
Given this, may we, as a community of free-religious people, confidently leave the Christmas season behind and enter into the coming New Year dedicating ourselves anew to the free expansion of this universal life for all beings everywhere.
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