Before we begin, I wanted to invite you to download the free Advent resource from Red Letter Christians called God With Us: Faith in the Face of Genocide which features the voices of our Palestinian Christian kin alongside prayers from allies. Together, we’ll listen, lament, hope, and stand in solidarity with those bearing witness in the face of violence and oppression. I was honoured to contribute one prayer to the project.

Why Everything You Know About the Nativity is Probably Wrong

Sometimes it is terrifying and disorienting to realize you got something wrong about God or theology or scripture.

And then other times, it’s pure joy.

Almost ten years ago now, I reorganized my understanding of the nativity story. And that has been an experience in the latter.

Isn’t it nice to know that there is still so much to learn in this old world? That there is so much we don’t know or can’t know? I used to feel sad when I went to bookstores or libraries because, well, look at all the books I won’t ever get to read! But if there is one gift that deconstruction/reconstruction/reimagining continues to give to me, it is the opportunity to be wrong (or at least incomplete or unexpectedly unaware) and to embrace the joy of learning again. Now faith feels like standing in that same bookstore and thinking, “Look at how much I still have to learn!”

As a woman who has given birth a time or four, I have long been able to fully attest that there are aspects of the Christmas story we know and love that do not - let’s say it gently - quite line up with reality. I suppose this is the problem when most of our interpretations of the Christmas story are filtered through specific experiences - and for too long those experiences were primarily dominantly western and dominantly male.

And we miss so much if we only think like westerners and we only think like men. Especially at Christmastime.

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