John 1: 15: John testifies concerning Him. He cries out saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me’”

Dear Jesus, I hear John’s words in my heart each day as he reminds me: “I must decrease so that you might increase.” I struggle so with allowing you to increase in me. I find it so difficult to allow you to be the center of my words and my life and my choices. Please teach me this Advent to become less and less so that you might become more and more. Amen

John wholeheartedly believed that Jesus existed before he was born. In other words, he was able to surrender to the teachings of Jesus precisely because He understood Jesus as Eternal Transcendent Truth which existed from eternity past. If a man were 100 years old, and had all his faculties in tack, most of us would believe we could learn a thing or two from him. If a man were 1000 years old, and had all his faculties about him, I would dare say we would look to this man for wisdom and guidance just based on the quantity of experiences he had been able to learn from. If a man were the age of eternity, I would imagine we would stop our lives and pick his brain whenever we could, only to long for the same opportunity tomorrow. John testified of just such a man, and John instructs us to listen. Advent is about hearing the Truth from the one who is the source of all Truth.

In recent years this faith in absolute Truth has begun to waver. It needs to be understood that this cultural event has happened for good reasons and bad. We are beginning to understand that the faith we placed in progress, materialism, and scientific advancement, did not solve the most important issues in life, things like personal significance, meaning and purpose, health and security, contentment and peace of mind. However, even though these questions remained largely unanswered in the masses, we have come to believe and embrace the value of personal truth and private interpretations of truth. Though we do this to our own peril, we do this as a form of protest to the declaration that science and progress have the answers we need. The postmodern world is discovering this is not true, and that we cannot make sense of life and discover meaning in life apart from the exploration of the spiritual. However, the spiritual realm being explored is subject to post-modern rules, which assign the highest value to a person’s right to explore and express truth within the cultural environment they have grown to value and embrace. Spiritual Truth is still ultimately decided by those who are living it, not by Someone who lives outside the limitations of our cultural context. 

In the postmodern world we are beginning to question both the futility of a random universe and the sheer folly of our past interpretations of the data available to us. We have begun to realize that there is Truth beyond what science and technology proclaim. There is a renewed commitment to the questions of “why”, “where are we going”, and “what is our purpose for being here?” Spirituality is on the rise, which is not the same thing as saying that Biblical Christianity is on the rise. We have not abandoned our faith in personal preference and private truth, we have simply surrendered our faith to something other than the scientific method in the discovery of our truth. The environment where truth is found has shifted from the laboratory, the class room, and the newspapers; to the truth which is found on face book, twitter, and other powerful social networks. Culture has become the primary container for truth, and each individual is left to connect herself to whatever version of truth which makes the most sense to each individual person. 

John has a word for us, as he rises from his locust and honey gourmet meal, long enough to shed some light on Advent for us. “He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.” Lets look back before we take another step forward. Gaze back into the corridors of time and history and you will find the One who stands behind it all, the One who created it all, the One who is shaping history and time into a Kingdom we celebrate each time faith becomes real and Truth guides our life. Gaze toward The Advent once again, and find the face of the Son of God, who existed before we arrived, and who will take us toward that which He has been planning all along – The bosom of His loving Father.