West Port Experiment

I once read somewhere that one of the Puritans recognized they were very odd ducks. As I recall, the term was “speckled birds.” Who likes being the outsider, the stranger in a strange land?

Kids can have an especially nasty way of tapping into this instinctual longing for inclusion and reinforcing herd-conformity. As a boy, I distinctly remember a time when a group of my friends and I took a break from our game of street baseball. Somehow it came up in discussion that one boy’s family didn’t observe Christmas. “What!” Replied another. “You don’t observe Christmas? Man, if I didn’t observe Christmas, I’d kill myself!” Oof. Of course, it was adolescent hyperbole; and we were soon back to the diamond. But I must confess, I also was on the shocked side. Not having Christmas? Not having the stockings hung by the chimney with care? Not waking up at dark-thirty to wake up the parents? No giddy, vulture-like descent on the presents? I mean, come on! My quirky friend felt the sting. He was not one of us! He might as well have had three eyes.

Then about seven years later, I swam the Tweed. After my evangelical conversion, I eventually found Calvinism (or Calvinism found me!). And after Calvinism, I found Puritanism; and after Puritanism, I found Presbyterianism. But not just any kind, mind ye! No, I’d say it was full-on “Scottish Old Believer” Presbyterianism. And that, among other things, meant no Christmas. Right. Just like my crestfallen boyhood buddy. Who would have imagined!

Now, I’m not actually sharing this to argue for the position. I’ve done that elsewhere, as have many others. For the moment, however, I’m reflecting on what it means to be a red-blooded American who loves baseball and hot dogs and apple pie … and doesn’t observe Christmas. One the one hand, it certainly means making the hard decision to dissent from what is culturally “normal.” It involves a measure of self-denial. The romance and nostalgia still beckon, and family tradition seconds the call. Opting out of Christmas is also a challenge because I have to part ways with sincere fellow Christians in our pitched war with the secularists. I hardly relish giving even indirect support to their scorched-earth anti-Christendom campaign. No, this is conflicted business at best. And in a way, I now very much understand how my stigmatized boyhood buddy felt that day. Every year.

Now, make no mistake. It was my free choice. It’s a free country, after all – the great American melting pot! And compared to the condition of persecuted Christians abroad, this hardship is rather slight indeed. But actually, there’s been some surprising discoveries in this exercise of voluntary self-exclusion. By joining the fast-shrinking (yet curiously expanding) “Scottish Old Believer” subculture, I’ve found a new sense of solidarity I never imagined. A new closeness and fellow-feeling. And I’m not actually thinking at the moment of my immediate family and fellow Scrooges.

I now sense deeper solidarity with the Jews. That’s right. (And if you’ve read this far, you’ve not written me off just yet … so bear with me.) A big reason why my ‘normal’ boyhood friend found our playmate so strange was because he was born and raised right here in the U.S. of A. We all celebrate Christmas, right? Well, except for the Jews.

This dawned on me several years ago when taking my children to karate lessons. I had become friendly with one of the other dads, who happened to be Jewish. We must have had some spiritual conversations before, because he knew I was a serious Christian. Well, it must have been December. I remember him asking in a friendly kind of way, “So, you have any big plans for Christmas?” “Well, actually,” I said with a smile, “We don’t observe Christmas.” Instead of baffling him, however, he grinned widely and replied, “Wow! So you know that Christmas actually originated from the pagans?” All of a sudden, I had gone up another notch in his esteem. I was a Christian, yes; but not an uncritical one. And his December 25 surprisingly would look much like mine. In that moment, I felt a deeper kind of kinship with him. No, not in a liberal, Kumbaya sort of way. But in the bittersweet kind of way Paul felt for his own Jewish kindred, so close and yet so far.

Since the destruction of Jerusalem, the heavy hand of God has been upon His ethnic chosen. They rejected their own Messiah, their eyes blinded by a veil in the reading of their own law and prophets. They could not see the Chief Cornerstone for He was, and instead they cast Him aside as worthless rubble. They have ever since gone about to establish their own righteousness and have not submitted to the righteousness of God by faith. And in their place, God has welcomed an army of dirty dogs whom He cleansed by simple faith in a crucified Savior.

But not all! No, there was and still remains a remnant according to the election of grace. God has not forsaken His promise to the fathers! Witness Paul of Tarsus, Peter of Galilee, James and John, Thomas, Mary, Martha, Lazarus, etc., etc. And throughout the ages, God has preserved a remnant from Abraham’s genetic line. They are one with Gentile brothers like me, who can boast of no Hebrew ancestry and yet has experienced the circumcision of heart. We were the prodigals, they were the elder brothers. And now we are both at home in the one family of faith, scattered over the globe and worshipping in Spirit and in truth.

It is very striking indeed that some of the most robust theology and energetic passion for Jewish missions historically was among the non-Christmas-observing English Puritans and Scottish Presbyterians. Cotton Mather of Boston earnestly prayed that one day he would have the opportunity to share the Gospel with a Jew and bring him to his own Messiah. These men longed for their salvation as a kind of debt of gratitude. Thomas Boston wrote, “All the means of grace and acceptance through Jesus Christ, we had originally from the [Jews] … It was the light that came out from among them that lightened our dark part of of the world.” And what more shall I say of the Church of Scotland’s great mission to the Jews, of Chalmers, of M’Cheyne, of the Bonar brothers, and of course, quirky ol’ John “Rabbi” Duncan?

These men took Romans 9 to 11 seriously, and specifically, that God wasn’t done with ethnic Israel. Now, this is not to be confused with later Dispensational views of land-restoration, much less the rebuilding of the temple and the re-institution of the bloody, Levitical cultus. Yet they endeavored to keep the tension, “As for the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (or, ‘are irrevocable’; Rom. 11:28-29). Oh, and they kept a very Kosher Christmas too (that is, none).

Ever since, I’ve looked on December 25 as a kind of day to remember Zion. To self-isolate, yes; but also to identify with those strange, scattered ones, that sad Diaspora who have wandered far, far from their Father’s house. My December 25ths now ever remind me of theirs, and I mean to ‘improve’ that. Certainly this will make me all the more of a “speckled bird” to most. But that’s o.k. Sometimes there are hidden beauties in the margins that help make up for the losses of marginalization.

To my fellow bekilted Scrooges, let’s follow our godly forbears this month as we believe they followed the Lord. If it’s not commanded in worship, it’s forbidden (Deut. 12:28-32, Matt. 15:9, Col. 2:20-23). But let’s also remember that our biblical, Presbyterian heritage also calls us to remember the Jews in our hearts, our prayers, and our evangelism. As they rightly taught us, “In the second petition (which is, Thy kingdom come), acknowledging ourselves and all mankind to be by nature under the dominion of sin and Satan, we pray, that the kingdom of sin and Satan may be destroyed, the gospel propagated throughout the world, the Jews called, the fullness of the Gentiles brought in” (Westminster Larger Catechism 191). To the Jew first!

And next year, may more of these elder brothers come back home. Next year, in Jerusalem (Gal. 4:26)!

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I would like to call as many friends of the Jews to set aside a window of time, however small, this coming Friday, December 25, to pray for the conversion of the Jews across the world. “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn” (Zech. 12:10).

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