THE SHADOWLANDS: GOD IN THE CAVE
By Alister McGrath

It’s always nice to learn something new. I was talking to some Lebanese students in London recently. They were looking forward to returning home for Christmas, and celebrating this great feast in traditional Lebanese style. In the West, we think of Christ lying in a manger in a stable. In Lebanon, I was told, Christians depict the nativity as taking place in a cave. The reasons for this are lost in the mists of time. Yet the image of Jesus being born in a cave is rich and suggestive.

As we reflect on what Christmas means for billions of Christians across the world, this image can help us unlock some of its themes, and help us understand why it is seen as being so significant.

Let us hold in our mind’s eye the image of a cave – a dark place, isolated from the rest of the world. It is an image familiar to readers of Plato’s Republic. Plato asks us to imagine a group of people in a cave. They have lived there all their lives, and know of no other reality. Somewhere behind them, a fire burns, casting flickering shadows on the walls around them. This is their world, the only reality that they know – what C.S. Lewis famously called “the shadowlands.”

It is a powerful image, easily developed to make some powerful and incisive philosophical points. Yet it also resonates deeply with the Christian narrative, and casts light on its significance. To appreciate this point, we need to enter into the image, and work its angles.

Somewhere outside the cave is a real world of sunlight, blue skies, and fresh air. It is a world that we know, and take for granted. What seems to the cave-dwellers to be the best of all worlds pales into insignificance compared with another land, which presently lies beyond their reach and knowledge. Yet those imprisoned inside the cave know nothing of this – we know this, they don’t. For them, the world consists of whisps of smoke and flickering shadows. What you see is what you get.

So how, we might wonder, could these people come to realize that there is a better world? A world of sunlight, trees, lakes, and flowers? How might they discover life beyond the dark shadows of the cave? How can they realize that their world is a gaol, a place of constriction and limitation, when compared with the boundless and beautiful realms that lie beyond it?

One answer immediately suggests itself. Maybe there are clues in the cave itself. Perhaps there are carvings on its walls, drawn by previous occupants as they left its gloomy confines. Or perhaps the structure of the cave itself points to something beyond its shadows.

Or, again, perhaps the occupants of the cave have some deep intuition that there has to be more to life than the drab and dull world they have always known. Surely there must be something better than this? Perhaps they experience a deep sense of restlessness, or a profound longing for another world – a world that they have never seen, but which seems to haunt their memories and hopes.

But the best answer of all lies outside their control. What if someone from the better world were to enter their shadowlands? What if he entered their world, not by accident but by design, in order to bring them to a better place – a place that was always meant to be theirs? What if she were to gain their confidence, and gradually help them to realize that something more wonderful lies beyond the cave? He might use analogies drawn from their own world to tell them of this strange new world, and its values. While sharing their world, he would point beyond it.

And perhaps best of all, she might speak in whispered tones of taking them there, irrespective of its cost to her, of opening a door to this new world so that they might leave smoke and shadows behind, and breathe its fresh air and take in its brilliant vistas. More than that, they would not be trespassing into this land, but would be welcome and expected guests of its Lord. This is where they really belong. They are returning home, like the exiled people of Jerusalem after the defeat of the Babylonians.

Sure, the analogy is flawed, and fails to tell the full story. Yet it offers a framework for beginning to make sense of the Christmas story, and understand why it is so powerful and imaginatively compelling. It immediately moves us far beyond any notion of Christmas as the celebration of biological fertility, a common way of reducing the event to a convenient secular platitude. Rather, it points to God entering into the messy, fallen world that we inhabit. In invites us to think of God opening a window into his true nature, and a door into his living presence. And how does he do this? And when does he do this? The New Testament tells us that it is in and through that remarkable person we call “Jesus of Nazareth.”

So why do Christians celebrate Christmas Day? In part, of course, to mark the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, which Christians have chosen to celebrate on this day, even through the precise date of his birth is now unknown. Yet the real significance of Christmas lies in the greater story of meaning within which this specific event is set.

It is about the realization of the love of a God who chose to enter into the place of our habitation in order to bring us to another, better place, where we truly belong. Above all, it is about the halting, stumbling, yet ultimately triumphant declaration of the Christian church that human existence and meaning is not limited to this transient world.

Rather, we belong somewhere else. And someone has come to bring us home. We can go home, precisely because there is a home to go to – somewhere where we belong, where we are wanted, and where are welcomed.

For Christians, then, Christmas is not simply the marking of the birth of a significant individual. It is about the affirmation of the greater framework within which it is set – which, if true, changes everything. The great story it tells has the capacity to intersect with, illuminate, and transform our own stories, stories which are small in one sense, yet which matter to use intensely precisely because they are ours.

Yet Christians do celebrate Christmas, rejoicing in its imaginative richness and narrative power. Let me end this brief reflection on the themes of Christmas by recalling what is now its most famous embodiment – the service of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge. This service opens with a “Bidding Prayer,” which introduces the readings and carols by setting them in a framework which gives them both structure and meaning.

“Beloved in Christ, be it this Christmas Eve our care and delight to prepare ourselves to hear again the message of the angels: in heart and mind to go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass, and with the shepherds and the wise men adore the Child lying in his Mother’s arms.”

One phrase in the prayer is often singled out for its verbal beauty and theological insight:
“Let us read and mark in Holy Scripture the tale of the loving purposes of God from the first days of our disobedience unto the glorious Redemption brought us by this Holy Child.”

The long, complex and wonderful story set out in the pages of Scripture speaks of a loving God’s quest to find a lost humanity, and restore them to his tender care.

Yes, we live in a smoky, dark cave. But we don’t really belong here. And we don’t have to stay there either. Marking Christmas allows us to anticipate the day when we enter into a better and brighter world, full of freshness and colour – a world in which we really belong.

Christmas affirms the anchoring of God in the realities of our world as a prelude to, and surety of, our entry into the realities of God’s realm.

In the meantime, there are things to get on with in this world – to feed the hungry, clothe the poor and needy, and work for a better future. Yet we journey in hope, looking onwards and upwards as we anticipate journey’s end.

Alister McGrath is Professor of Theology at King’s College, University of London. His next book is entitled “Why God Won’t Go Away: Engaging the ‘New Atheism'” (to be published by SPCK in February 2011).

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2010/12/22/3099170.htm?topic1=&topic2=