Ep. 45: Why Christmas Is Bigger Than We Think

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, this is Andrew Marcus. Welcome to THE INDOUBT SHOW. We got a terrific program today. We have Jared C. Wilson, who’s going to be talking to us about why Christmas is significantly bigger than you think, what it actually means for us, what we should be focusing on. And so, it’s a fantastic program.

Just want to remind you that we have our calendar year-end happening, so we’re trying to raise $45,000 with the ministry by December 31st to help us launch into all God has for us for 2024. And so if you feel led to give, we’d really appreciate it. You can go to indoubt.ca or you can call 1-800-663-2425. We really appreciate your support. God bless.

All right, we have Jared C. Wilson all the way, and you said Kansas City, Missouri.

Jared C. Wilson:

That’s right, Kansas City, Missouri.

Andrew Marcus:

Awesome. Awesome. How are you doing today, man?

Jared C. Wilson:

I’m doing great. How are you?

Andrew Marcus:

I’m doing great, man. This is awesome that we get a chance to connect. I really appreciate your time. You’ve done a lot of writing over the years. What are you working on these days? Tell our listeners a little bit about who you are, what you’re doing these days.

Jared C. Wilson:

Yeah. I’m privileged to serve at Midwestern Seminary, which is in Kansas City. I teach pastoral ministry there and serve as author and residence, so that keeps me busy writing books all the time and blogs and articles and traveling and speaking and all that sort of deal. I’m also honored to serve at Liberty Baptist Church as one of the pastors. I serve as a staff pastor for preaching, and I direct a residency program there called the Pastoral Training Center.

And yeah, I’ve been married to my wife Becky for 27 years. We have two daughters and that’s what I’m currently working on. I’m always working on something. I’ve got a book right now, I think it’s my 26th or 27th book that I’m currently writing for Zondervan. It’s on the dangers of drifting from gospel centrality.

Andrew Marcus:

Oh, come on, bro. When does that come out?

Jared C. Wilson:

It’s supposed to come out I think, early 2025.

Andrew Marcus:

Okay. We’ll have to have you back, man. I feel like we talk about that topic a lot-

Jared C. Wilson:

Yeah, good.

Andrew Marcus:

… on the program. I get overwhelmed just seeing local churches and just places around, even just online, just kind of drifting away from verse by verse teaching or different things, and it’s a slippery slope. It gets dangerous very fast. That’s a very important book, and so we’ll definitely have you back. We can walk through that together. That would be amazing.

Jared C. Wilson:

Yeah, I’d be glad to do it.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s awesome. Okay, so it’s Christmas, we’re leading up to Christmas. And it’s chaotic, it’s crazy. I have two little ones, and so of course, presents is what they talk about all the time. But it’s the season where we’re buying things. We’re maybe getting a little bit, we talked last week about consumerism and just materialism, and just getting caught up in this commercialized Christmas.

And so being a Middle Eastern descent, so my family’s from Egypt. And they would always tell me that in Egypt, Easter is so big and Christmas is pretty minimal. They really emphasize the cross, the resurrection, and celebrate it a lot more than they do Christmas. But we were going to talk today about this reality that Christmas actually is significantly bigger than you think. You’ve written an article with Gospel Coalition and just talking about how Christmas is actually more significant than you think. Why would you say to a young person today, “Hey, actually Christmas is a big deal.”?

Jared C. Wilson:

Yeah. Well, I think because we tend to sentimentalize it, number one. We treat Christmas like a cultural holiday or a cultural sort of occasion more than we do sort of a theological reflection. And we miss, I think, the important element of the good news that’s there because we’re expecting or we just treat it like a momentary sort of event. When really, it’s the momentary celebration of an eternal truth, which is of course, that God became flesh, that he incarnated as a man. So I think on that level, we miss out.

I think on the other level, it’s because we’re usually looking at other things at Christmastime, or expecting other things to fulfill us or satisfy us, including lots of good things. I mean, the presents and the decorations and the songs. And I’m big on Christmas movies. My wife and I have a whole stack of the Christmas movies that we try to get through before we get to December 25th and what order we’re going to watch them in and all that sort of thing. These are all good things and good gifts, and yet sometimes when we’re so preoccupied with all of the trappings of Christmas, we can forget that it’s much bigger than the wrapping paper that it even comes in.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s a good word. And I feel like that answers basically the question that I had written out here of just sometimes we go through the Christmas season. And we have this expectation that we’re going to be filled with all this stuff, and then we kind of still feel empty. And I think it’s because we put our focus and our attention on all the traps you mentioned, which are good things. But when they get out of their boundaries, we still feel empty.

Jared C. Wilson:

Yeah, we expect sometimes those things to do for us what really only the meaning can do for us, what the essence of Christianity can do for us. We expect the symbols, the indications, the arrows that are pointing to Christ. We expect the arrows somehow to be fulfilling to us. And then of course, we’re bewildered when we get neck deep into Christmas season and wonder why we still feel the same or sometimes even why we feel worse.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, absolutely.

Jared C. Wilson:

Like, “Why am I so sad right now? Shouldn’t Christmas be doing something for me that it’s not doing?”

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, it’s true. And I feel like, and maybe we could speak into this, I notice depression and anxiety and loneliness. And people lose loved ones, and all of a sudden events like Christmas or other major cultural holidays that we celebrate, it gets magnified. The depression feels deeper and lonelier, and it just gets darker. Why do you think that happens in certain seasons?

Jared C. Wilson:

Well, I think there’s a couple of reasons for that as well. One, I think is that we usually are reflecting in a more spiritual way or just in a more personal way than just the busyness of life. Most people have time off at Christmas, even if it’s busy, they’re not usually thinking the same way they are about work and other things. And so, they’re thinking about family and they’re thinking about their life, and to some extent, thinking about the end of the year as a kind of point of rest and relaxation. We look at Christmastime as kind of like the annual holiday vacation, the same way we look at the weekend during the rest of the year or even our vacation days. If I could just get to Friday and I can put this stuff behind me and things will be great and I can find a relax. Or if I can just get to the beach in Florida that week in July, then I’ll be able to reset and decompress and all those sorts of things.

And then we get there and we realize, man, the stuff that we’ve been carrying after that point, it was so heavy and so big that it takes longer. The week doesn’t do what we thought it would do. Or if you’re like me, it takes a few days even to get into vacation mode. I usually have to add a few days on the front or back end of a vacation to even actually enjoy it.

So you get to Christmas and the expectation is, “Oh, I’ll finally feel… I can rest, I can let my hair down, I can relax.” And what happens is all of the weight of the things we’ve been avoiding or kind of kicking down, kicking the can down the road a little bit during the year, suddenly we have time to think about. And when you have to think about things and face your thoughts about things, you start to feel real feelings. You can’t quite medicate those things anymore.

And then the other reason, of course is I think we expect Christmas to somehow make us feel better. Christmas is supposed to be fun, celebratory, joyous, etc. And so the contrast, we may not be actually more sad than we normally are, it’s just in contrast of how we think we should feel at Christmastime, we feel more sad. Because we think this is the time where I should not be sad or this is the time where I should feel hopeful. And it only exacerbates our sense of loneliness or even anxiety or things like that.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s a great way of putting it, where it’s like these two almost opposite ends. We finally get a chance to stop and rest and think and gather our thoughts. And all the things we’ve been carrying all year, finally catch up to us. And then we have this expectation that we’re supposed to be happy and filled with joy and the Christmas lights and all the stuff. And it’s like, “Oh man, those are polar opposites.” And that’s hard to deal with.

I see that. I mean for me, especially when it starts to snow and things get very quiet and you can just kind of… When you go for a walk and it’s just everything’s deadened, and I just love the peacefulness of the snow. And I see so much of God in nature. But what are some things that we can help young people with then? So Christmas is coming and we’re going to have an opportunity to stop, to rest, but things are going to catch up to us. What’s a healthy way for us to engage with what comes when we finally take a moment to unplug?

Jared C. Wilson:

Yeah, somewhat counterintuitively, I would say don’t give into the instinct to cover up or medicate that feeling. Probably the worst thing that we could do when we have time alone with our thoughts or just time to actually face our thoughts, is to kind of run away from it, to jump back into what’s going on on our phones or whatever else, which is what we normally do. And then if we have more time over the holidays, we just do it even more. I’m going to have my nose in social media or something like that to kind of distract me. That’s what our impulse says to do, but that will actually only in the end, make things worse.

The best thing to do is to actually first of all, face the issue, feel what you feel. Your feelings aren’t everything, and certainly feelings shouldn’t be the steering wheel of our lives or even of our thinking, but they tell us something important. And we don’t need to run away from those feelings. The first thing is to, in a way, interrogate, to name it. “What is it that I’m feeling? Well, I feel alone and that makes me feel disconnected and that makes me feel lonely. And that makes me feel maybe forgotten or overlooked, or that makes me feel like people don’t love me maybe or…” Just press into what the feeling is first of all, name it and then really interrogate it. “Is this correct? Is it telling me the whole story?”, because chances are the feeling isn’t telling us the whole truth about things. It’s telling us some little truths about ourselves or our situation, but usually not the entire truth.

And then the most important thing perhaps, after we’ve actually tried to get our arms around this feeling, we name it and interrogate it, is we turn it over to the Lord. We ask God, “Help me with this. I don’t know what to do.” Maybe there’s not a practical solution. Maybe you’re alone because actually physically you’re apart from family, or your friends have all gone to their families for Christmas or something like that. There may not be a practical solution to that. But knowing that there is a God who knows you and loves you and from whom you could never be separated, knowing that he’s with you, you can turn it over to him and say, “Help me with this Lord. I don’t know what to do with this feeling. It is threatening to rule my heart. It’s threatening to make me lose hope.” Whatever the case is, we have so many biblical evidences of the reality that we can turn any of our negative feelings over to God. He can be trusted with those things and he can take them.

Andrew Marcus:

He’s not afraid of them. He’s not afraid of us to be real.

Jared C. Wilson:

No, that’s exactly right.

Andrew Marcus:

When you read the Psalms and you read how David, he’s expressed, “This is how I feel.” He’s not afraid of our deepest emotions and thoughts and feelings. That’s a good word. What practices do you think we can help people incorporate in their lives this Christmas season to help them stay connected and cling closer to Christ and maybe less to, or bringing their feelings to Christ and less being consumed with all the other stuff that will leave them empty at the end of the season?

Jared C. Wilson:

Yeah. I mean, the most important thing is that we carve out time to sit and be still. What often happens is some of us have more time, more margin during the holidays, and we just very eagerly fill that with fun things or to-do items. We’ve got Christmas parties coming up and family coming into town and Christmas shopping to do and all those sorts of things. And we start to fill in all the gaps with stuff. And it may not be work, it may be more fun things, but it’s still, we’re filling it up and it’s actually keeping us from just being still, taking intentional moments to meditate on the good news.

And so there’s no magic formula. There’s no magic beans to feeling the bigness of Christmas in a way you ought to. It’s the tried and true means of reading God’s word and spending time in prayer. And you don’t need to reinvent the wheel here and you don’t need to, I don’t think even bite off more than you can chew just to be intentional and to actually make a time. Set apart a time that’s intentionally and purposely for this. Don’t think, “Oh, I’ll get around to it. Or when the spiritual feelings come, I’ll do that. Or with the leftover time, I’ll have.”

No. Make a plan to say, for 30 minutes in the morning or an hour in the evening, whatever it is, put it into your mental calendar or in your actual calendar to say, “This is when I’m going to slow down. I’m going to be still, I’m going to ask the Lord to help me. I’m going to read his word. I’m going to seek to apply that to my heart.” I think that’s the major problem we have at Christmastime, is a holiday should be a time of rest in some ways and feasting. And it is I guess in some ways, but we just turn it into something so busy and so hurry that it actually works at cross purposes with what it’s really all about.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah. So instead of hurry and busy and chaos, stop, dwell, rest, opposite. So we have to be very counter-cultural as believers ’cause it’s so easy to get sucked into what culture has created Christmas to be. Do you have any specific things that you do with your family that helps you guys stay in line with healthy rhythms?

Jared C. Wilson:

Yeah, I think one of the more difficult things is knowing what to opt out of when there’s just so many opportunities, there’s so many things to do. And they may not even be cultural things that, worldly things, I guess I should say. They’re not necessarily bad things, it’s just there’s so many things that are offered, sometimes you have to disappoint people by saying no, in order to protect the time you have as a family. So we’ve done this not just at Christmas, but at other times as well from when our kids were little is, we prioritize the life of the church over even other important things like school calendar and other things like that. So if there’s an event that the school is putting on and it happens to interfere with Sunday services or something like that, we say no. I mean, our first priority is the people of God. And that may be a good and important thing that we have an opportunity to do otherwise. But it comes second to being with the people of God.

But there are other things as well. Maybe you just have a big family and there’s so many opportunities and there’s so many invitations. And you feel guilty at some point of having to say no. But if it means protecting your immediate family, certainly if it means protecting your soul to not be so busy. I know we hate saying no to good things, but sometimes we have to say no to good things in order to protect the priority of the best thing of the God thing in our lives. So, that’s kind of something I think we ought to look at.

And certainly just along the lines of prioritizing church, make time to gather with the people of God. It’s likely that your church will have a Christmas Eve service. It’s likely that your church will meet on Christmas Eve morning, even if it’s in a shortened way because of the holiday. Don’t short shrift that. Remember that being with the people of God, exalting the risen Christ, celebrating the incarnation of God with the people that he has created as the new humanity, that’s more important actually than even opening presents or any of those things.

Andrew Marcus:

Absolutely, man. That’s so good. And I love how you talk about it’s not just a Christmas thing. Even when we talk about consumerism last week and materialism and just getting so caught up in stuff, we’re learning more and more, it’s not a Christmas issue, it’s just our issue that maybe gets a little bit magnified during the Christmas season, but we actually struggle with all year. Same thing applies when it comes to resting, stopping, dwelling, observing, having healthy practices. We can do them now during the Christmas season. But like you were saying with your family, there are some things that you’ve done. It’s not just a Christmas thing, it’s really an all-year tradition and an all-year environment of making sure we’re on the right track 365 days, not just leading up to Christmas Eve. And so how can a slow and steady beholding of Jesus through prayer, through Scripture, how does that impact us? How does that experience impact us in Christmas, but also all year? Why is that so important?

Jared C. Wilson:

Yeah, this is really amazing, the spiritual dynamic at play because if you’re looking in particular at the New Testament, although there’s of course some Old Testament references and allusions to this dynamic as well. But if you’re looking at the New Testament, how it lays out the way people are changed, the way, well, to use an Old Testament reference, the Psalmist talks about his heart was enlarged. Right? Today we talk about your heart enlarging, that’s a medical condition. But he’s speaking spiritually that his heart would have an enlarged capacity for worship and for beholding the glory of Jesus.

Well, in the New Testament, we get some specifics about how that takes place. How do I get a bigger heart for God? How do I become transformed in the kind of way that I need to be transformed spiritually? Paul says for instance, in Second Corinthians chapter three, that “It’s by beholding the glory of Christ that we are transformed from one degree of glory into into the same likeness.” In other words, somehow beholding Jesus helps us become like Jesus. Beholding is becoming, in some way.

So to intentionally stare at the glory of Christ, to really slow down and intentionally look at Jesus, to look intently at Jesus is how we become more like Jesus. It’s not going to happen by osmosis just sort of going through the motions and on some kind of discipleship autopilot. We have to actually intentionally gaze upon the beauty of Christ. And there’s a thousand different ways to do that, of course. But in the scriptures, in the worship gathering, just in our own hearts, in our own mind’s eye, to be able to think about and contemplate the wonder of who Jesus is and what he has done for us on the cross and out of the tomb. Thinking about that, mulling that over stewing in that, that’s the mechanism by which the Bible says that we get bigger ourselves, we become more glorious ourselves.

Andrew Marcus:

Oh, man. So beautiful. So for the people who are struggling with loneliness this year, what are some practical things that we can tell some of the young people who are watching today?

Jared C. Wilson:

Yeah. Well, I’ll give one practical thing we can do and then one kind of spiritual reflection, I think, about it. The practical thing, what a lot of people will say is, “Just don’t be alone. Go with other people.” And certainly that’s important. It is good to be with others, and it’s good to spend time with family and friends. For a long time, there was the cliche was that at Christmastime, at holidays, the number of people who take their own lives increases and those sorts of things. And what we’ve learned is that that’s actually not true because people are with others more. They’re with family, they’re with friends, a little more intently.

But what we also know is being with others, the first idea is, “well, just don’t be alone.” But what we also know is just being with other people doesn’t solve the feeling of loneliness, does it? In fact, sometimes it can exacerbate it, depending on who we’re spending time with. And in some ways being with others may heighten our sense of feeling alone or our sense of loneliness, especially if we don’t feel known by those people or if we don’t feel safe with those people. If it’s not okay to be vulnerable with those people, it can actually make our sense of loneliness get bigger or feel worse.

So, here’s my practical suggestion, is not just to be with other people, I do think that’s good, but it’s to be with other people in a way that is helping others, a way of serving others. Find an outlet for service, whether that’s with people you know, like in your church or in some ministry you’re connected to, or people you don’t know. Maybe in your neighborhood or maybe an impoverished neighborhood that you can find a way to serve meals, find a way to practically serve older folks maybe in your neighborhood or others. Are there people who need help putting up decorations or with baking or with yard work or something like that? Is there a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter or some other place where you can serve?

There’s something about the work of service that kind of gets us outside of ourselves. And at the same time, I think the Lord has put in our hearts, a pleasure center about de-centering ourselves. It goes against our flesh, but when we, in the spirit of Christ, serve others, it actually gives us a feeling of satisfaction, a feeling of joy. So, that would be my practical thing, is to somehow get outside of yourself a little bit. Sacrifice something to serve other people, to love others.

The spiritual reflection is simply this, your feelings are important, like I said earlier. And it doesn’t do to deny that. It’s not the right thing to do, if you feel lonely, anxious, even depressed, the spiritual thing is not to sort of grin and bear it or to fake it until you make it, or just put a happy face on and act like you’re not depressed or something like that. But actually to face that feeling and remember that the feeling isn’t everything, that the Lord is near you. Whether you feel him or not, the Bible says, “He is closer than our next breath.” It’s in him that we live and move and have our being.

And I just want to remind anyone who feels that way or any negative feeling, the Lord is not controlled by your negative feelings. And He’s not determined by your negative feelings. And there’s no amount of fear or loneliness or depression or despair or anger or anything like that that we can feel that would put him at even arm’s length from us, much less miles and miles from us. He is always close, he is always near. He is always God with us, and He cares for us. He really does. He’s not turned off by our feelings like others might be, and others often are. We can’t run him off, which in my experience, is good news. Because I’ve run off a lot of people just by being me. But I can’t get rid of God. He’s made of stronger stuff than that. He’s actually not made of anything, but he’s stronger than that.

Andrew Marcus:

Amen.

Jared C. Wilson:

And he’ll stick by you, no matter what.

Andrew Marcus:

Amen. Praise God, man. We really appreciate your time. Thank you for making time for us and we pray all the best for your ministry, pastorally, all your writings. I pray a blessing over you and your family this Christmas season. And thank you so much for spending time with us today.

Jared C. Wilson:

Yeah, thank you, brother. I was glad to do it.

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, thanks so much for joining us today. For more great content, check out THE INDOBUT SHOW on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you stream your podcasts. We hope you enjoyed it today. Feel free to check out indoubt.ca. We have some great resources available to you. Have an awesome day.

Hey, this is Andrew from THE INDOUBT SHOW. It is December, and what does that mean for us as a ministry? This is our calendar year-end. It is our goal to raise $45,000 by the end of this year. What is that going to do? It’s going to help prepare for another solid year of ministry and resourcing young people with truth. And so, we would love to encourage you to give and be a part of what God is doing with this ministry. You can give at indoubt.ca. Thank you so much. God bless you.