Ep. 255: A COVID Christmas

Speaker 1:

Welcome to The indoubt podcast, where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life, and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s word. For more info on indoubt visit indoubt.ca.

Ben Lowell:

Hi, this is Ben Lowell, I’m CEO of Back to the Bible Canada, which includes the young adult ministry, indoubt. And today we’re going to have a very special Christmas episode talking about Christmas, talking about the things of Christmas, our experiences of Christmas, particularly in our day and age today, when so many things are being impacted by this pandemic. And I have some great, very special guests and you’ll understand why I’m hosting in a minute when I introduce my guests. My first guest is the Bible teacher for Back to the Bible Canada, delighted to have him, a great Bible teacher, Dr. John Neufeld. John, thanks for being with us today.

Dr. John Neufeld:

Thanks for having me Ben, delighted to be here.

Ben Lowell:

Great stuff. And then, our other guests that we’ll include in the conversation are your regular hosts of indoubt, Isaac Dagneau and Daniel Markin, guys, great to have you here.

Isaac Dagneau:

Happy to be here.

Daniel Markin:

Great to be here.

Ben Lowell:

So here we are, and we’re going to be discussing Christmas. So guys give me a perspective. You all come from a different places in life, actually right now. John, you’re married, you have grown children, you have grandchildren, so you come from a unique perspective. Isaac, you have a beautiful young family, and Daniel, you’re a newlywed. When did you get married?

Daniel Markin:

I got married last November 1st. So my wife and I just celebrated our first year of marriage, and most of that marriage happened through a pandemic, which was a great little story to tell people.

Ben Lowell:

Well, my understanding is if your marriage can survive a pandemic, you’re doing well.

Daniel Markin:

Absolutely.

Ben Lowell:

And so that’s great. So we’re excited about that, but you’re in an interesting perspective or have an interesting perspective because you’re a young couple and you’re having to deal with all of these unique requirements of living through a pandemic. So it’s interesting to get that perspective as well. So tell me guys, how are you dealing with this? What does Christmas look like for you guys, and Isaac, for you for your church, what does it look like?

Isaac Dagneau:

I think sometimes we look at our church family and our biological family a little differently when it comes to Christmas, and the holidays, and things like that. When it comes to my own personal family, I know every province has different policies and restrictions, and so on and so forth, but in BC we have quite strict rules in place until at least December 7th, but it probably is going to go beyond, I would imagine. So our home life will look a little bit different. However, I just want to make a point saying for those that listen, that are single or are living alone, it’s a lot different. I have young children and a wife and oftentimes the joy of Christmas comes from those little kids.

Isaac Dagneau:

So it’s going to be loud and happening on our Christmas morning at our place. So it’s definitely going to feel a lot different for those that are unable to do that. But when it comes to church reality, this season is less about gathering with your family and celebrating, that’s the tradition, that’s the holiday aspect, nothing wrong with that, but it’s really about celebrating with your church family of the coming of Christ into this world, which we can’t do the same way. So for our church, we’re going to gather in our cars and hopefully do some carols and do a little message in our parking lot, so no one has to get out, but it will look different, but we’ll make it work.

Ben Lowell:

Great. Daniel, like I said, you’re a young married couple with you and your wife and you’ve got also a unique perspective for young adults as well. How do you see this season and having to deal with this pandemic at this time?

Daniel Markin:

I think a lot of young adults are feeling the weight of the loneliness. So whether they’re single, or living alone, or working at a job in a new city, I think a lot of young adults were looking forward to being able to travel back and be with their families. And for some of them that means getting on a plane, like Alyssa and I were planning on flying back to be with her family in Saskatchewan. And because of all the protocols and the new restrictions, we’re sitting with our flights, and we have to sit open-handed here and say, we might not actually be able to go back to Saskatchewan, which is very frustrating.

Daniel Markin:

So I think a lot of young adults resonate with what I’m saying with this idea that we don’t know if we’re going to be able to go and actually be with our families physically for Christmas, which is frustrating. And that is what a lot of young adults need right now, is they want that community, they want to be with their family and have at least some sense of normalcy as they have in the rhythms of their life, whether they’re coming back from university after their semester and being able to be together once again. So that’s probably the biggest thing that we’re facing.

Ben Lowell:

For sure. And John, like I said, you and I come perhaps from similar perspectives on what’s going on right now, but how do you see this Christmas unfolding? What do we need to pay attention to?

Dr. John Neufeld:

I’m assuming that our kids won’t be able to come home along with our grandkids. I know that might not resonate with young adults, but it should because I’m the dad that the young adults come home to. And so, it’s not going to happen. Usually, Christmas has been a time where we have a grand table, everybody eats, and grandkids are shouting and lots of stuff is going on and it’s chaos all over the place, and I just love that stuff going on, and none of that’s going to happen, I don’t think. I’ve mentioned that my wife is a nurse, and so, I want to take a special care to care for her safety during this time. There’s all sorts of reasons why I think that we’re going to do some zooming, but for the most part, it’s just going to be my wife and I, we’re going to be alone, and that’s how we’re going to do Christmas.

Ben Lowell:

It’s interesting. The pandemic obviously has changed our lives completely, but we come up to this Christmas season and typically everything would be a full go and everybody would be celebrating, everybody would be planning parties, office parties, family parties, travel, the whole nine yards, and yet this pandemic has made everything stop. And I’m wondering, we recognize that God is sovereign, and so this isn’t coming to him by surprise, but is there a perspective for us there as Christians. Isaac, can I start with you? Is there a perspective for us as Christians when it comes to what’s going on?

Isaac Dagneau:

Yeah, we don’t know the whole purposes of God, especially his hidden will, we don’t know, we have to trust that as part of our faith in him and dependence on him. But one of the things that I would think about is, think about Mary and Joseph, they were not in ideal circumstances on the first Christmas, you could say. The realities that they were going through, it wasn’t pretty, and they had some visitors, but still they didn’t stay for a long time, they came and left, and there was lots going on.

Isaac Dagneau:

And I think about Christmas is really about God or the father sending his son into this world in the fullness of time, at the proper time in history to bring light into this world, to bring the Messiah, to bring justice and salvation to Israel and the world. And when we gather a normal time, so 2019 Christmas, 2018 Christmas, all the Christmases past, many of them, it’s really a joyful time, not for everybody obviously, but for a lot of people it’s a very joyful time.

Isaac Dagneau:

We talked about feasting, excitement, and that’s all good, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s funny how Christmas morning comes and we’re all having such a great time, everyone’s happy, and then this is about Jesus coming into this dark world. It doesn’t look very dark right now though, around us because it looks exciting. So I think the perspective is I think we could consider this unique Christmas, this rare Christmas, where we are alone as a time to really see that yes, Christ has come into this dark world, and this is the world that we’re living in right now, and we can rejoice together whether it’s alone or whether with your wife or whatever, we can rejoice that Christ is coming to this dark world like we’re facing right now.

Ben Lowell:

That’s great. Daniel, we chatted earlier off air. You had a unique perspective in respect to, perhaps what is God doing in this season?

Daniel Markin:

The thing that I’ve been reflecting and thinking a lot about is the idea of longing and all of us are longing for life to go back to normal, all of us are longing for us to maybe actually have a real Christmas, a normal Christmas. And it seems to me that, as we just acknowledged, none of this is an accident in God’s eyes. In fact, he knew this was coming, in fact, he allowed it to come, in fact, he’s caused a lot of the things to turn out this way.

Daniel Markin:

And I think it’s important to step back and think, what could he be teaching us through that? And so, again, I come back to that idea of longing. Could it be that the Lord is withholding all of these good things, so that we feel the sense of longing for Christmas, the sense of longing for normalcy in the same way that the people of Israel longed for their savior, and in the same way that we as Christians long for that day where Christ will come again?

Daniel Markin:

And so, I think we are feeling some of the heart of God here when he’s longing for that day… Creation is groaning right now for our savior to come back and restore all things. And so, I think we’re experiencing some of that longing. So to me, could it be that God is actually using this time to teach us about this longing that creation has for all things to be made new. That was some of the things going around in my head that I’ve been reflecting on that’s been giving me a lot of hope.

Daniel Markin:

This idea too that while we might not be feasting with our families right now, this longing we have is for the ultimate feast that we will have with Christ in heaven, when all things are made new and we sit at the great banquet table and we feast with Christ, that’s what we’re looking forward to. So this sense of longing, it hurts and it aches, but let’s not forget that there’s purpose in that, and that it’s actually good for us and for our sanctification and making us more like Christ.

Ben Lowell:

That’s fantastic. One of the things, John, you say this relatively often, you talk about the long-term good. Is it possible that what we’re seeing right now, because we do, I think particularly of young adults and I can even remember being young guys, but I think particularly as young adults, everything is very immediate, everything is very temporal. It’s like what’s going on right now, how is that going to benefit my experience, even my experience of God? And yet we find ourselves in a circumstance right now where maybe that expression you use for our longterm good. Perhaps this is what’s going on, is that a possibility?

Dr. John Neufeld:

Ben, I’d like to bring maybe a historical perspective from this. We need to ask ourselves this unique bubble that the Western world has lived in for the last 70 years with this unprecedented peace and prosperity. We’ve brought this into Christmas so that we’ve expected Christmas to be this outflow of abundance, which we all have rather than this longing as has been mentioned here, this hopefulness.

Dr. John Neufeld:

My perspective is that I’m always reminded that my grandfather was tortured to death for his faith. I have an uncle that I never met, who died of malnutrition because there was not enough food. My father says he remembers one of the most precious Christmases he ever had, he was given a comb, there was enough money that he could get a comb for his hair.

Dr. John Neufeld:

And you contrast that to what we’ve been experiencing throughout our lifetimes and it’s not just one present Ben, it’s been 10, 20 of them. One after another, after another, so that Christmas seems to us like, “Wow, look at all the good gifts that God gives us,” rather than this sense that this world is so broken, it’s so dark, it’s so black, it’s so sin-soaked that nothing but nothing could save this world outside of God bringing his son into the world to be an atoning sacrifice for us. And this understanding of Christmas, how desperate we are in need of a savior, and one day the savior will come and make all things new, that should be there. And maybe, just maybe, we might think of Christmas in that fashion when we see it’s a bit more barren and that’s how it’s supposed to feel.

Ben Lowell:

That’s interesting. It’s like God has interrupted our moment in Christian history, perhaps through this pandemic, and all of a sudden we’re being confronted with what is really critical, what is really important, what really serves our longterm good. Daniel, and give me a perspective on this, I get that and I get what John is saying, and I feel that, and I’m experiencing some of that myself, but for the young adult who sees their life ahead of them, as opposed to John and I are looking back a little bit and saying, “Look at all that’s happened.” It’s got to be more difficult, doesn’t it? To get that kind of perspective that God is interrupting us with this thing and he’s interrupting my life and it doesn’t seem fair, it doesn’t seem right. For you and your wife, “I’ve just started a new marriage, why are things going sideways?”

Ben Lowell:

Isaac, I got to say, and we’ve been saying this for years, I remember saying it when I was newly married, “Oh my goodness, what am I bringing my child into?” That whole perspective. But Danny, what do you think? How is a young person receiving what’s going on?

Daniel Markin:

I think we’re probably having a hard time with it and this would perhaps extend beyond just young adults. But I think just tying in what John mentioned about us living in a time prosperity, I think we view the Christian life as God only giving us good things, that God is only going to bring prosperity to our lives, whether or not we want to call ourselves prosperity, gospel people, I don’t think that we are, but that consumeristic Western worldview lens that we just are born with living in the Western world. We just tend to think that things are actually going to be prosperous.

Daniel Markin:

And right now that’s a worldview clash because one tiny virus seems to have all of that in jeopardy, when you consider the economy, you consider health, you consider mental health. This all feels like it’s up in jeopardy and it is sobering to think about… And it’s almost a wake-up call to think, “Oh wow, we have almost been lied to at the fact that we don’t live in this bright hugs and muffins sunshine world,” that sin is black, and we live in this dark world, we’re living in the land of death, and that’s an interesting realization for all of us to consider.

Ben Lowell:

My wife mentioned yesterday, she was talking to somebody who said to her, “Can you imagine if you were born in the late 1800s, you would have gone through wars, and plagues, and more wars, and more plagues, and depression and all these things.” And to be honest with you, and I speak for myself, I’m a child of the ’60s, but we just haven’t seen that ongoing just what seems to be anyways, we were sheltered from it in some respects, the devastation in Western society of these types of things. And now all of a sudden we’re being confronted by something that really, when you think about it, and I hear this response too is are you really so upset about these restrictions when other people have lost their lives for freedom and things of that nature? Is this really the things you’re crying about? Isaac, bringing up a young family, what are you thinking?

Isaac Dagneau:

There’s lots to think about. And just to tag what John said and then Daniel went on this privileged society that we live in, and this extends to young families, because I think for young families, Christmas becomes such a… Especially with Instagram and everything, you want to do what everyone else is doing, you’ve got to keep up with the Joneses when it comes to family photos and you got to send your Christmas cards out, and you got to get all this.

Isaac Dagneau:

And I think for lots of people that COVID has thrown a wrench in that and they might think, “Oh, we don’t deserve this, this is unfair.” We usually think of the hard life, the life where there’s restrictions, and persecution, and so on and so forth as the life that you can choose to do if you want to, but if you don’t want to, then you can just be safe.

Isaac Dagneau:

I think about my wife and I have been reading through To the Golden Shore. It’s the life of Adoniram Judson, a fascinating story. And right before he went to Myanma, now it’s Myanma, it was Burma at the time, he was offered this associate pastor role right in Boston. It would have been magnificent. He was a very, very, very smart, intelligent man, and this would have been a great, comfortable, happy living in the city sociopath with this massive church would be awesome, and he chose to go to Myanma, where reading the story is just crazy to read, it’s heartbreaking in many ways.

Isaac Dagneau:

So we often think of it though like, here I have my privilege comfortable life, but if I choose to do something that’s harder, but right now all of us, we don’t get the choice, we all have to face it right now. And I think it’s actually a wake-up call in many ways. This is the world that we live in. The Western world is not perfect, we can’t keep up with the Joneses, we have to actually face the tragedies that come. And in many ways, this isn’t a tragedy, but to our minds to many people it is. So for us as a family, we’re not too worried about it, and we realized that this is the world that we live in, and just like Daniel said at the beginning, we long for that time when Christ comes again.

Ben Lowell:

Daniel, a few weeks back, you had an interview with Andrew Marcus that I thought was great. And one of the things he talked about in that was we asked about, what worship was like now and how worship is being experienced during the pandemic. He said something interesting, he said, “I hope we never go back to worshiping like we were before the pandemic.” So there’s this sense that something needs to change, our focus needs to change, our purpose needs to change. And John, I’m just wondering, give me a perspective on that, do you think this is calling us to maybe rethink who we are as Christians, our purposes?

Dr. John Neufeld:

All right, this is a gift of God. I do think that so much of our energy has been taken up in the feeling of Christmas. Christmas is supposed to feel a certain way, and if it doesn’t feel that way, we think we’ve canceled Christmas. I have to ask myself how in the world we got to that view of Christmas, and this pandemic can be God’s gift to us to recapture what we’re really supposed to think about when we think about Christmas.

Dr. John Neufeld:

Ben, this is not about Christmas, but this is about Thanksgiving. The most popular hymn of Thanksgiving has been Now Thank We All Our God, and that hymn was written after the 30 years war by a German pastor who had had a pandemic in his city, he had buried his fellow pastors, he had buried, I can’t remember how many people per day, came to the point where he couldn’t actually do it anymore, he lost his own wife.

Dr. John Neufeld:

It just goes on and on. The city was devastated, famine was raging in the place, and when they got to the other end and the pandemic was over, he wrote the song, Now Thank We All Our God with heart, and hands, and voices, who wondrous things has done in whom this world rejoices. These are the histories of our faith, and this is the world that the Christian message came into. This is why the Christ child came. If we don’t recapture that, we’ve wasted this pandemic. If all we do is say, “Oh, we can’t have it the way we did,” and rather than what was Christmas supposed to be, then we’ve wasted it and not learned the lesson God had for us during this time. Daniel was right, this is God’s sovereignty sending it to us, may we learn from him.

Ben Lowell:

I love what you just said, we’ve wasted this pandemic. I’m not sure too many people have thought about that in that way, because they’ve been wanting it so desirous to be over, get it over, get it over, instead of looking and saying, “Hey, what is God doing?” And so guys, give me a hand in the last few minutes of our program, give me a sense of what is God doing, what is some hope you want to express to our listeners about what we’re going through as we arrive on this Christmas season? Isaac, maybe I can start with you.

Isaac Dagneau:

I think just like you said, off John, don’t waste this pandemic. I think hope that we can give to one another is to really challenge each other, to take this time when you’re going to be more alone to focus on prayer, to focus on meditation in the word. I think about Paul, and John, you can correct me if my exegesis is wrong here, but Paul, when he’s talking about marriage in first Corinthians, seven, he says, perhaps sometimes it’s good to separate for a little bit, just to focus in on prayer and a time, and then come back together again as well, so that the enemy don’t have a foothold in your life.

Isaac Dagneau:

But I think using that kind of same metaphor idea, yes, this is a providential time where it’s not ideal, but God sent it and let’s use it, and maybe this is a time when we can separate and focus on our relationship with the Lord. I think especially in a consumeristic culture, our Christianity becomes very much just this consumer base. You go to a place on Sundays, you receive it, and you leave and you just live your own life. But this is now a chance where that’s all stripped away and you’re forced now to grow in your own friendship with the Lord. I think about Paul when he went over to Arabia and he was alone for a long time. Jesus has times alone. I think this might be a good time for us to be alone with our little families and just focusing on the Lord.

Ben Lowell:

That’s fantastic. Daniel, give me a perspective, give me a message of hope here for our listeners.

Daniel Markin:

Well, I’m looking at the lyrics right now of, O Holy Night, which funny enough, Google’s attributing that to Mariah Carey, which I don’t think is quite correct, I don’t think she quite wrote that song. The lyrics in O Holy Night says long lay the world in sin and error pining, till he appeared and the soul felt its worth, a thrill of hope the weary world rejoices for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Daniel Markin:

And this song often will bring tears to my eyes, and I’m sure seeing it this year, it will as well. And that idea of a weary world, we all actually resonate with that probably more than ever, and yet we read here that a weary world rejoices. And I’d mentioned before, in Romans, creation is groaning, and we are all feeling this, and through this moment of Christmas, this is the beginning of this entering into our world, Heaven breaking into our tiny little world with our tiny little people, so insignificant in the cosmic scope of universe, yet Christ condescends comes and begins the work that will bring the restoration of not only the souls of the saints, but of the entire creation, and that for me is something that brings a lot of hope.

Ben Lowell:

That’s fantastic. John, share a few words with us.

Dr. John Neufeld:

Well, just like that. Well, I do think that we should be asking the listener to have a very Merry Christmas, reread the Christmas account, spend some time giving thanks that even though the world has broken now, God has made a promise to us through his son, Jesus, that one day he will restore all things. And therefore, there’s every reason in the world to have hope, genuine hope, not hope that’s premised on this passing fancy of this world, but a hope in eternal things. So let’s have a Christmas like that.

Ben Lowell:

That’s fantastic. You guys have opened my eyes a little bit to some of these thoughts and I am more encouraged now about the season that we’re in. And I think one of the things that I go away with from you guys is that we need to be considering as Christians, not what’s being taken away, but what we’re receiving as a result of this season and what we can gain from the season. I’ve talked to a number of people, and I’m sure you guys have, that are really feeling loneliness, and depression, and disappointments, and all these types of things and yet God is wanting to do something significant in this moment of time. So I want to encourage all of our listeners, we thank you so much for being part of our indoubt family. Just a special thanks to Dr. John Neufeld, thanks for being with us John.

Dr. John Neufeld:

Thank you, it’s been a joy to be with you.

Ben Lowell:

And Isaac and your family, God bless you guys, Merry Christmas to you.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yes, Merry Christmas to you and to everyone listening.

Ben Lowell:

And Daniel, thanks so much for being with us, and you and your wife have a Merry, Merry Christmas.

Daniel Markin:

Yes, thank you Ben. A Merry Christmas, or as they say in England, a happy Christmas.

Ben Lowell:

There you go, have a happy Christmas, that’s great. Thanks again guys, God bless you and don’t forget to join us again next week right here on indoubt where we’ll have more guests that talk about important issues of life, faith, and culture. God bless you and have a Merry Christmas.

Speaker 1:

Thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear more, subscribe on iTunes, or Spotify, or visit us online at indoubt.ca or indoubt.com. We’re also on social media, so make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Ben Lowell:

Hi, Ben Lowell, CEO of Back to the Bible Canada’s indoubt. If you listened to today’s program, you’re either a young person looking to understand how the Bible speaks to current issues of life, faith, and culture, or you’re somewhat passionate to see young people grow in their walk with Jesus and understand the Bible. We want to thank you for being with us and encourage you to touch base by emailing info@indoubt.ca or in the US info@indoubt.com. Also, we want to let you know that indoubt is a ministry that only exists through the support of donors, so every gift of any amount means so much. For more information visit indoubt.ca or in the US indoubt.com.