DEAR SAINT NICHOLAS:
Sorry I haven’t wrote you in a while; I’ve been much busy studying at college. Some of my little friends there say that the stories the pastor tells me about Christmas are fairy tales; and they say that I’m much too old to believe in fairy tales.
Please tell me the truth; can I believe in Christmas?
VIRGINIA
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VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. Perhaps they have been affected by the scepticism of American Atheists? I hope not. They do not seem to believe anything unless they have scientific evidence. But when you ask them to justify that belief with scientific evidence, they argue round in circles. They believe that Christianity is very wicked, and that churches make people do terrible things. But when you ask them to provide scientific evidence for things like “right” and “wrong”, their heads hurt a little, so they change the subject.
Is there a God? You may not glance out the window and see him; but you can see his work. You see everything that he has designed, and everything that he guides, sustains and watches over. You might have noticed that sense and sight do not directly reveal what matters to you most: the particles and forces which sustain you and your world are only known by their effects. Brains may produce thoughts and dreams and wishes, but these are all immaterial things which cannot be located and measured. You know that others have them because they speak and act.
Physicists are captivated by all the wonders of the world, especially those which are unseen and unseeable. Yes, they can tear back the veil which covers this unseen world with their instruments, so that it can be described in the language of mathematics. But why can this unseeable world, which makes yours possible, be described by scientific laws? Why do particles and forces exist? Why do you, and the stars and the sea and sky, exist to be studied? American Atheists cannot ultimately explain this ‘happy accident’. But if God exists, the astonishing order in the universe becomes explicable. A seemingly infinite list of facts is explained by the action of one all-powerful mind.
So, yes, Virgina, God exists. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. Haven’t you noticed all those things that you “must” do? Have you observed that there are many acts which you “ought not” to do? Now, there are many sensible goals that you might pursue with your life. You might wish to be a great business-woman, or an artist, or a politician, or a soldier. Yet, no matter how reasonable your ambitions, they must all take second place to what is right. Not all goals are created equal: moral values trump all others. Why is this so?
Have you also noticed that every single person is precious? We should not torment an innocent child, even if this harm would bring a benefit to billions. Why can one baby’s life matter more than the desires of multitudes? Why can we not decide to strip that child of its value? If atheism is true, then we are unplanned and insignificant on a cosmic scale. If atheism is true, then the only value that we have is the value that we choose to give to ourselves. And what the human race gives, the human race can take away.
Morality comes at a cost: all these rules demand that you make sacrifices, and some of those will be in vain. You must uphold the moral law when everyone around us profits from corruption and cheating. Many will be indifferent to your kindness, and some will even exploit it. How can such practices be rational? If the material world is the only world why should you bother?
How does God answer any of these questions? He certainly explains why it is a fact (not an opinion!) that each individual human has enormous value. We have a great value because we are significant to God: you were made to be like him, to know him and to be known by him. If God is valuable, it follows that you are valuable. And everyone would agree that, as a matter of sheer brute fact, the creator of everything else would be as valuable as it gets!
Does God invent “right” and “wrong”? Does he create them as you might arbitrarily lay down the rules of a new game? Of course not. The moral value of the individual is not contrived by God; it flows logically from the facts about who he is and the universe he has created. Some of your little friends might have heard of book called Euthyphro, and think that I am making a mistake that is noted in that book; but if they think that, they haven’t been paying attention. In this letter, I have not said that God is the only source of every important fact about morality; I have not argued that there would be no moral values in the absence of God.
I have only said that God best explains three important features of morality. He explains why individuals have great intrinsic value and why the moral life is a rational life and why you have obligations. If theism is true then you live in a moral universe and his love will abound to give to your life its highest beauty and joy. God would have the knowledge, the character and the power to be the perfect moral authority. You don’t have duties to ideas or principles: you have them to persons, and God would have “property rights” over his creation. This fact would explain why obligations exist and are binding; God’s instructions (revealed to conscience and reason) become our duties.
So you are old enough to know that God exists; but are you too old to believe in fairy tales? You are too old to believe that they are all true, Virginia. I think all children know that Santa is an exciting game of make-believe. Even when our parents admit to themselves no game can last forever, and confess to you that the time has come for everyone to stop playing, the make believe does not really end. You will still get excited on Christmas Eve; you can never stop listening for sleigh-bells once you have started.
A horribly mistaken, but well-meaning, newspaper editor once tried to convince a younger girl than you that Santa was as real as a fairy and a day-dream. I love fairy-tales and day dreams as much as any child, Virginia. But we only love them because they are games; you love them because they allow your mind to escape the facts and the seriousness of the world. If Santa was real, Virginia, no-one would really be having fun on Christmas Eve. I do wonder sometimes, when adults claw at one another for toys and extend their overdrafts, if parents aren’t taking the game much too seriously.
However, you must never stop believing in their power of fairy stories, Virginia. Fairy tales capture and preserve the wonder and excitement of childhood. And all hearts, whether they be adult’s or child’s, are small and liable to despair. You will need hope and love as much as you need food and air; good stories will let us taste the things you need and teach you to hunger for them. But it is more important that you never forget the gravity of the truth. The facts will always weigh most in the end; sooner or later, you will run into them if you are wrong.
But what if the facts of history told a tale which sated your thirst for love and hope? That would grab you with a greater force than poetry or romance. Fairy tales speak of magic; Christmas speaks of miracles. Myths live in stories; Jesus walked in a time and place, where he claimed to be the Son of God. This is not a dying and rising god of pagan myth: Christmas happened in Bethlehem, not in an ethereal heavenly realm. The people of Israel were confronted by a Messiah who offered to change history, not the cycles of nature. And Jesus was not locked into a cycle of life and death, like a fertility god. The facts of history testify that the tomb was empty, and that the Son of Man rose, never to die again.
No, Christmas is true, Virginia! Thank God that Jesus lives, and he lives forever. And a thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of anyone who will listen to his voice.
St Nicholas