Once upon a time there lived a pair of twins, a boy and a girl, whose parents decided to teach them survival skills. What they were told was, “It’s a jungle out there. You have to be ready for it. You need to be tough. You need to learn to defend yourselves — or your enemies will devour you.”
And so, the twins grew up learning to follow their parents’ often-repeated advice: “Trust no one; suspect everyone.” One consequence of this training was that the twins were always on the defensive. They tended to be argumentative with those who tried to befriend them. They became judgmental in the extreme, since neither of them could ever be sure that others were people of good will. And they tended to become xenophobic — highly suspicious of people who were not like them. Not surprisingly, they saw the same attitudes, patterns, and behaviors in their parents.
Once the two youngsters graduated from high school and left home, they took different paths. The young woman continued to nurture an adversarial relationship with nearly everyone she met. She developed a few close friends, but they were all of the same mind as was she. When they got together socially, it was like being in an echo chamber. They were all of the same mind, and their times together only reinforced their shared opinions.
The young man ended up in a work environment with so much diversity that he soon had to confront his own world view. Few of his colleagues shared it. In time, he began to think differently. He realized that some of those who became his best friends had points of view completely different from his. And yet, they liked him, respected his opinions, and even taught him to laugh at himself once in a while.
Then the inevitable happened. The twins came home for Thanksgiving dinner at their parents’ home. Quickly it became obvious it was going to be three-against-one. Parents and daughter took on their son and his “errant, revisionist ideas” and savaged him mercilessly. There was ridicule, scorn, sarcasm — the full package. The young man considered ditching his family and walking out before the meal was even served. But he thought of his new friends at work, and then he did something remarkable.
To his family he said, “You know what? I’ve encountered some very wise people in my journey through life so far. And one of them pointed out that when people talk like and behave you do — like I used to do — they’re really prisoners of their primitive brain, the reptilian part that knows how to fight or run from people who are their enemies. But living like that is a dead end. It’s like living in a jungle. There’s nothing fulfilling about it. You’re never going to grow and learn and make the world a better place.”
His parents and sister stared at him in disbelief. He said, “You don’t have to agree with me, and you don’t have to serve me Thanksgiving dinner if you don’t want to. But this is who I am now. And I don’t want to live in the jungle anymore.”
What does this imaginary tale have to do with the season of Advent? Just this: It is our nature, as human beings, to want to deceive ourselves into believing that the world is a jungle, and that people who are not like us are out to get us. Even those of us within Christian congregations find ourselves slipping into this pattern at times. Other people don’t have the truth, but we do. Other people don’t know how to worship properly, but we do. Other people don’t think or look or even smell like we do, so they probably “wouldn’t be comfortable” in our congregation.
It is our nature to gravitate toward “jungle thinking.” It can cripple our lives and impoverish our souls. To give in to such “primitive brain behavior” is to descend into a very dark place.
Into such a world comes John the Baptist, announcing the coming into our darkness of One who is and who brings transforming, life-giving light. John was not the Light, but came to bear witness to the Light, we are told in the Fourth gospel. What does that mean?
Jesus comes to us with a better way. Instead of us cowering in the darkness, he calls us to embrace the light. Instead of judging others out of hand, he calls us to open ourselves to them, and to take the chance that we might discover the humanity within them. Instead of hating what is unfamiliar and seemingly threatening, he calls us to learn to celebrate the diversity in our world, because God is a God of diversity and obviously loves it enough to have created and embraced it.
Jesus comes to us with an invitation. Let us step out of our cave, our smug self-righteousness, our dark night of false security, and embrace the life God has prepared for us. John the gospel writer summarizes where the Light leads and what it promises to create. Jesus, as the gospel writer describes him, declares, “I have come that you may have life — in all its abundance” (John 10:10).
It needs to be recognized that viewing other people with openness, trust, and compassion — rather than with suspicion and fear — is counterintuitive. There’s nothing normal about it. Nobody would automatically choose to view the world that way. The reason is clear. Our primitive brain is powerful. It tends to override our more benevolent instincts. Given that reality, there is no good reason to believe that what William Shakespeare so poetically called ‘the better angels of our nature’ will ever take charge. And that explains why we need an intervention.
That intervention has already happened, and it continues to happen. Our dark path gets interrupted in the most unexpected way. There is no logical reason in the world that we human beings should be given a surprise alternative to our own worst instincts. But that’s what we have. Our natural inclination is to swim in a dark swamp. But now we have an option. There’s a path into a bright future. There’s a jungle out there — and there’s also a light-filled, hopeful, healthy alternative.
Let us get out of the jungle! Let us embrace the light, because the light is ready and eager to embrace us. When that happens, there will be a transformation — and our lives will never be the same again.
Rejoice and be glad!