NC Family Staff | December 21, 2024 | SHARE: 
Christmas is such a wonderful time of the year, but it can be easy to get lost in the busyness of everything and forget the miracle we are celebrating – the birth of Jesus Christ.
This week on Family Policy Matters, host Traci DeVette Griggs welcomes Dr. Carl Trueman, a Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City College, to discuss the miracle of Christmas and how we can fully embrace the spirit of the season.
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TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. For those of us who are believers in Jesus Christ, we often at least understand the importance of Christmas and not letting its true meaning get lost in the gift giving and glitter of the season. But today’s guest sees an even more profound opportunity to refresh our faith during this time of the year, and as a consequence, bring some much-needed humanity to our relationships, especially those who are with unbelievers. Dr Carl Truman is a professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City College and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He has written countless books and articles that dive deeply into questions of theology and wrestling with cultural issues. We’ll couple that serious scholarship with a fresh excitement over the celebration of Christmas, and we have a very interesting person to interview today. Dr Carl Truman, welcome to Family Policy Matters.
CARL TRUEMAN: Great to be here. Thanks for having me on Traci.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: All right, so my first thought when I hear you talk about Christmas is CS Lewis, and you seem to combine that same serious scholarship with a childlike and almost playful love of Christmas. Now, is that a fair characterization?
CARL TRUEMAN: Well, I’m not sure that CS Lewis would be flattered by the comparison. I’m very flattered by it, but yes, I love Christmas. Always loved Christmas it’s family time as a kid and as a Christian, I think there is no more profound, or in some senses, mysterious season of the year than Christmas, when we focus upon the incarnation of God Himself.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Right. Is it important for all of us to go here? Do we need to understand deeply the meaning of the season, but also have that childlike joy?
CARL TRUEMAN: I think so. I mean, one of the things one loves at Christmas, of course, is giving and receiving gifts. And the greatest gift of all is the Lord Jesus Christ. I think when God gives himself to us in human form at Christmas time, He’s reminding us that we are dependent creatures, but that He delights to meet us in our dependency and give us that which we truly need.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: So how do we do that? Are there some practical ways? How in the midst, I think you called it in the midst of chaos, do we bathe ourselves in this celebration or joy that you’ve described?
CARL TRUEMAN: Well, I think one of the obvious ways is to make it a gathering with family or friends. What are families but units where we acknowledge dependency upon others, and we take delight in that a lot of the time. Is it not delightful to have parents who love us? Is it not delightful to have children and grandchildren who depend upon us? And of course, there are those who don’t have families, but I would suggest to Christians with families, it’s a time to open your home to those, to the students who can’t get home for Christmas, to the people in your neighborhood who might be on their own. It’s a great opportunity for you to, for want of a better term, pay forward what God has done for you. As God met with us in our dependency, so we can meet with others in their dependency.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: That comment, delight in dependency, that seems like a very counter cultural term. Talk a little bit about that.
CARL TRUEMAN: Well, it is counter cultural, because if there’s one thing that modern men and women want, we want to think about ourselves as autonomous and independent. We want to think about all the relations we have as being contractual about what we can get out of them. But in actual fact, to be human is to be dependent. No one is an island. No one wants to be on their own. No one wants to grow old alone. We all intuitively understand the need we have for relations with other people, and I see that not as a problem to be overcome, but as something in which we delight. I delight in the fact that I’m married, that I have children and I have a granddaughter. It delights me that I need those relationships in order to be fully human, I would put it that way.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Okay, so I’m going to read this quote of yours to you, and let’s talk about that a little bit, because I think I’m hearing what you’re saying so far. But you said that “Christmas offers Christians everywhere the opportunity to reflect once again on the Incarnation, sing of its glorious mystery, and make connections to a rich understanding of what it means to be human.” So when you talk about what it means to be human, is that what you’re talking about our sort of interdependency on each other?
CARL TRUEMAN: It’s part of that, but clearly, it’s more than that. I think when we’re reflecting upon the Incarnation, we’re not simply reflecting upon a horizontal existence, if you like, as human beings, the way we relate to family, friends, neighborhood. We’re also being reminded of our dependency upon God, that you know, human beings, we are those made in the Image of God, and that has horizontal implications for how we relate to each other, but it also points to that ultimate, great dependency we have upon God who gives us life, who calls us by name, who numbers the very hairs of our head. And I think often as Christians, we can get very absorbed in some of the great acts of God in what we might call his redemptive history. But Christmas pulls us back to the original miracle, if you like, the miracle of who God is and who He has been, or who He is towards us. And that’s where I think the reflection upon our ultimate dependency upon God is such a delightful aspect of Christmas that we realize, yeah, we were a people dwelling in great darkness. But the darkness has not overcome the light. The light has come into the darkness in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, that God has given Himself to us in order to bring us back into communion with Himself.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: You also mentioned in that quote “a glorious mystery.” I mean, I think we all agree it’s a mystery, what all God has done for us and will do. But why glorious? Why do you think it’s glorious?
CARL TRUEMAN: I think it’s glorious because, well, a couple of things. One might say it’s glorious, first of all, because the whole idea that the infinite, eternal and unchangeable God would take human flesh, and as the Gospel of John says, and be manifest in the flesh, reveal Himself to us, that’s an astounding thing. Secondly, it’s glorious because as Christians, we believe that life is not what it should be. We should be living our lives in perfect communion with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We can’t do that because we’re fallen and sinful. We’ve rebelled against God. We’ve wandered away from God. What God does at Christmas is begin to set that right. When we gaze upon the face of Christ, if you like, we see humanity in perfect communion with God the Father, and that is a glorious thing. So, God reveals Himself to us as glorious, and He does a glorious thing in the incarnation.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Talk about the hymns too, because you’ve discussed this in some of your writing about how important the hymns are. And I think sometimes we’ve heard them so many times we’ve sung them so many times that, you know, it’s just kind of a rote thing, but it sounds to me like it’s not at all like that for you.
CARL TRUEMAN: No. And I think being a rote thing is not necessarily a bad thing, because saying something by rote drills it into your mind and drills it into your heart. And one of the things I love about Christmas hymns, you know, we call them carols, but they’re really just hymns that we sing at Christmas, is how much rich and deep theology they have. When we sing about God of God and Light of Light, that’s profound theology. Born that man no more may die. That’s profound theology. Some of the most theological hymns you can think of, not surprisingly, surround the incarnation, the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. And hymns are a reminder, of course, to us that doctrine is not just about head knowledge. It’s not just about knowing facts. Doctrine is to grip the whole person. It’s to grip our imaginations. And I think the poetry of hymns is one way of gripping our imagination with the great truths, reminding us that the truth about God are not the equivalent of a table of logarithms. The truths about God should grip us at the very, very depth of our being.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Wow, I’m so grateful that you are a teacher and that you’re teaching our young people. Thank you for that, by the way, I just love to see you speak into young people in this way.
CARL TRUEMAN: I love it too. It’s a great privilege. It’s a great privilege and honor to be able to do it.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Let’s talk a little bit about how God’s view of humanity and our humanity is different than the culture views it. But you have also said this view of humanity coupled with hospitality could be a very powerful antidote to what you call the cynicism that dominates our culture. Talk about that.
CARL TRUEMAN: Well, we take for an example, one of the primary means of social interaction today, social media. One of the notable things about X is I don’t think X is a medium for pursuing the truth. Typically, interactions on X seem to me to involve either promotion of the self, the person who’s doing the posting, or cynical and ferocious attacks on the character of other people. In other words, I would say X tilts towards dehumanizing us. We might put this in a way that everybody can understand things are said on X, one person will say something about somebody else on X, they would never say to them face to face. And I think one of the ways we can counterbalance that is by recapturing what it means to be in real human relationships, and the way to do that is to actually have real human relationships in real time with real, embodied people. And what’s one of the most beautiful ways of doing that? Hospitality, opening one’s home to others, welcoming others into one’s home, sharing a meal with them, sharing a drink with them, sharing conversation. One of the joys you mentioned, it’s a great joy teaching at college. It certainly is, but one of the things I most enjoy about teaching at college is that my wife and I have regular open houses or meals for my students, so they come over to the house and we’ll share a meal or share a dessert and share an evening together, and that’s a great reminder that we’re all more than just the ideas, say, we express on social media. We’re real people with real histories, and there’s a delight we can take in each other that can only really be accomplished, really, really be achieved when you’re in each other’s company in that kind of setting.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Wow. Some great advice there. Let’s talk a little more about having those real human relationships, because I think one of the scariest ones is probably inviting someone over to dinner that you’ve sparred with, say, on one of these social media outlets. How do you go about doing that? Or there’s things that we need to be careful about? What are some tips?
CARL TRUEMAN: Well, thankfully, not doing social media. I’ve never faced that particular challenge myself, but I certainly think that there are challenges I would say, you know, in my classes with students, there are always some students that one warms too, and there are some students you don’t know and there are other students that you do know a bit and don’t warm to. My policy has been, when my wife and I have students over from classes, it’s an open invitation to all students. So, I don’t judge, you know, it’s not that you’re worthy of coming to my house and you are not worthy. I like you, but I don’t like you. It’s an open invitation, and anybody who comes can be assured of a warm welcome to Trueman household, regardless of what you think of me or what you’ve said about me. So, I think there’s that that can be done. Secondly, I think people should be more confident that when you actually interact with people at face to face, it’s generally not as hostile as it is online, because you look into each other’s eyes and you see each other as human beings. Theologically, you see each other as made in the Image of God. I often quote to the students George Orwell, the English essayist. He’s been very critical of a particular person, and he stopped us being critical of him. And this person, at some point, meets Orwell and says, you know, why do you stop being critical of me? And he said, Well, we met at a party, and when I looked into your eyes, I realized that you’re a man like I’m a man. You’re flesh and blood like I’m flesh and blood. And that led to an automatic toning down of the way that I addressed you and interacted with you. And I think, in the world in which we live today, particularly very polarized world that we have say in the United States at the moment, much of it, I think, could be overcome by restoring much more restraint online, combined with actual real time, real human interactions in time and space.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: I wonder if that’s what has contributed to the polarization is this sense that in the political realm, if you see somebody from one side of the aisle talking to someone on the other side of the aisle, they get criticized so publicly, and so if we’ve stopped talking to each other, it’s just gonna make matters worse. You mentioned social media, but what about popular culture media during Christmas time? Do we need to watch for that? I mean, is it okay to listen to our little Santa Claus songs and things, or do we have to be careful about that?
CARL TRUEMAN: Again, it depends who you are. I don’t think that those things are intrinsically evil or wrong at all. If they’re causing you a problem, if they’re causing you say, to neglect your family or to ignore your wife or not to be engaging in the delightful, real human interactions that one can engage in at family gatherings, then maybe they’re wrong for you. But I would say we can use these things, just make sure that when we use them, we are not using them in a way that dehumanizes ourselves or others, that distracts us away from the things that are really important. I’m not a technophobe, but, you know, living in the United States, I’m delighted that I can zoom and my mother can see my face and I can see my mother’s face. So, technology in itself is not bad and pop culture in itself is not bad. It’s just a question of making sure that when we use it, it is us using it, not it using us.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: All right. Well, what a pleasure. We’re just about out of time for this week, though, before we go, Dr Carl Trueman, can you tell our listeners where they should go to follow your good work?
CARL TRUEMAN: Well, most of my writing online is at First Things. It’s at FirstThings.com. It’s not exclusively Christian. It’s a sort of religious conservative magazine and website. And I also write a column or two each month for World Opinions. And you can find that if you search for World magazine online, you can find the opinions column, and I write a couple of pieces there most months.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: All right. Dr, Carl Trueman, thank you so much for being with us today on Family Policy Matters.
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