A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE FROM GOD

Christmas is coming around again, my children on planet earth, and I don't want you to think I have forgotten you. You know I have a lot to do, considering there are billions of other galaxies and suns and habitable planets, and lots of my other creations are out there. Now don't you worry none, I love you all, have faith, and I say this with truth to all my people, and I mean it. But I am busy, I hope you will honor and respect that fact, in case you think I am not paying enough attention.

I can do all this because I am omniscient, which means I see everything and know everything (and that means everything, your every thought and feeling and action), and omnipotent, which means I am all powerful, and can do anything. For example I made this whole universe, and your Hubble telescope is beginning to see the full extent of it. Actually, the universe I made goes on forever, and the number of my creatures is expanding at a great rate, but in case you have any doubt, believe me--- I am still able to keep up with it all. Not to worry.

I want to review a few things with you so that you can focus your attention on what's important. This is a good thing to do at Christmastime. I don't need to remind you that Christmas is the anniversary of the day I came down to earth and became one of you. It may be interesting to you how and why I did it just the way I did. I thought it over and decided after a millennium that I might have been too hard on Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. I have to admit that.

I made them a nice garden, after I made the sky and the sea and the dry land, and filled it with beautiful animals and fish and birds and flowers. Very nice. And then I made Adam and then I made Eve, and I hoped they would get along and everybody would be happy. But no. All I asked, I tell you, all I asked is that they don't eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Is that too much to ask? Tell me. But I have to admit, I gave them free will, and so they would have a mind of their own, and so they had a choice not to listen to me. I cannot imagine why they would not, but whatever... they wanted to exercise the intelligence and consciousness I gave them. Cannot fault them for that!

And so, however it happened, they disobeyed me, and tried to lie their way out of it, but I see everything and know everything and they were not going to get away with it. I have to admit it angered me, after all I gave them. Like Shakespeare said, how it hurts like a bite from a serpent's tooth, the ingratitude of a child, so even though I am omniscient and omnipotent and the creator, I threw a fit and cast them out of my beautiful garden and gave all their descendants work and shame and childbirth pain.

You are their descendants and you called it 'original sin' and made a big deal out of it, but I was having a bad day and did not realize you were so sensitive. I made you so you can cope with work and shame and childbirth pain, and you did. Only disobeying me and getting punished for it made you angry and rebellious and you became corrupt and had orgies and you gave me no choice but to smite you right and left from time to time.

Frankly, my children, my beloved children, I got tired of all this smiting and punishment and you talking about the Wrath of God, and even though I am omniscient and omnipotent, I realized that maybe I made a mistake in the Garden of Eden and was too rough, expected too much. All I wanted was for you to be good, but in my initial effort to make everything, a total and complete world, I had to make my dark side, the devil, something for you to cope with, to use your intelligence and free will. And you children were tempted by him and did all sorts of nasty things and blamed it on him. That's not quite what I had in mind, but I gave you free will and you used it.

So like I said, I had enough of the smiting and the punishments and the resulting loss of faith, so I decided to come down to earth myself and preach my own gospel more effectively. But I still had all these other planets to think of and I was busy, so I came up with an ingenious plan, I must admit, to take care of the universe and still try to fix things on planet earth.

Here's my ingenious plan. The way I was going to come down to earth and become one of you, in order to be more effective and convincing, so much so that you would listen to me instead of the devil, instead of your own small ideas, was to impregnate a virgin, and I would come down as a babe on Christmas day. Now this had to be just right and special, to be unique and distinctive from all the other babies that were coming into the world. I sent down my angel, Gabriel, to warn Mary that something special was going to happen, and that she shouldn't worry. I picked a nice Jewish girl who was a virgin and had only clean thoughts in her head, even though she was going with Joseph. Joseph was a nice boy too. I wanted there to be good parenting, Mary and Joseph would be role models.

I gave her an immaculate conception, very clean, a spiritual one. After all, she was as good as married to Joseph. Immaculate means clean, and the people had this idea that sex was dirty, but they didn't get it from me. Sex is my gift, and it is only natural. Anyway, in those days it was really special to be pregnant without having sex, and the Jews (my Chosen People) simply did not believe it. (How could a virgin be pregnant?) Just because they were The People of the Book, they thought they knew everything, but there were some things beyond their ken. Still, among all the peoples of the time, the Jews were the best behaved, because of Moses and the Ten Commandments. It took them forty years wandering the desert to get my point. Only Ten Commandments! Some of them thought it was too many. At that time I thought the Ten Commandments were enough to get my children to behave and obey their heavenly Father, but with the devil and free will, it was still a problem.

So it came to pass that as the New Me I was born on Christmas day. There were prophesies and stars and wise men and gifts, it was really a special time. The main thing was, I was Father and I was Son too, and as Son, I would go around and preach and try to get my children to be good. Is that asking so much?

The first thing, in order to be good, you have to have very special parenting. And since I was now known as the Savior and the Messiah and your Redeemer, I was treated very well as a baby. I was adored. They gave me gifts. They wanted I should be comfortable, so they never let me cry. My mother, Mary, nursed me and held me and cuddled me and caressed me and talked to me and played with me and made me very happy. That's what I want for all my children. That is the basis for being good. And feeling good. And wanting everybody else to be good and feel good.

I was glad that the great painters of the Renaissance made thousands of wonderful and glorious portraits of me as a baby with my mother, Mary, and how close and loving she was, so everybody could see. But still they didn't see, and babies were neglected and abused, like now. There was a German doctor, Sigmund Freud, who came to Italy as a young man and saw what I wanted him to see in the cathedrals and museums, painting after beautiful painting, showing the importance of the mother child love bond, which is the basis of all human love. This deep and true and natural love is based on the model of the holy mother and me as a babe.

And Freud wrote a brilliant psychology about the importance of the mother-infant loving bond, but only a few people looked and listened, and he was discredited. Too bad, that Freud, he had a lot of good things to say, but when he started talking about sex in childhood, it turned a lot of people off. Understandably, because the people thought I said that sex was bad, except in holy matrimony and to make babies, but I am in the process of changing my mind. If I invented it, it must be good, and if I gave so much pleasure with it, it must be natural and wholesome and healthy, but like so many other things, mere mortals get carried away. They have to learn to be more responsible. Adam and Eve should have just listened to me instead of eating the fruit... They wanted carnal knowledge!

When I was a baby, living with Mary and Joseph, I grew up as a nice Jewish boy. I was circumcised just like all the other baby boys, (a bris, they call it), went to Hebrew school, got my Bar Mitzvah and went to work as a carpenter, so I would know work and get to know my people better. They said I wandered the desert, but I was doing what every good Talmudic scholar did, studied the Torah, (which I dictated as the Father), so I would do a good job preaching as the Son. After a while, I went forth and preached, but the main message was Love Thy Neighbor and The Golden Rule.

You know the rest. As the Son I was scorned and rejected and eventually crucified, but you cannot kill God. I 'died' but lived again, and that gave the wonderful promise to all my children of Everlasting Life.