It lies in our power to put God into our lives or to deny God's presence

BACK DURING THE ATHEISM FAD OF THE OO'S,  after the sci-ranger-neo-atheists were disappointed to find out that I believe in evolution and even the speculation that all life is descended from an original organism (though they just hated to have it pointed out that that last one was based on absolutely no evidence because you would need the remains of that, specific individual organism to know anything of the sort,  they'd get on the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth.

I could have, to annoy them, said that there is actually more evidence for both of those than there is any statement made about the conjectural first organism in the line of life on Earth.  if I really wanted to piss them off I could have pointed out there is actually more evidence for the them than there is for any contention that even one species evolved by natural selection.   There is massive physical evidence that life evolved,  the actual reason for that happening is simply not in evidence because it happened over too many millennia, with too little evidence to show why and how it happened in even one actual species evolving from another one and there is absolutely no way to know if there was one reason and way it happened or if, perhaps, the evolution of every species is sui generis. 

As it's the second day of Advent I'll say that I choose to believe that something happened to give rise to the stories of the Virgin Birth of Jesus because no one wanting to get a new faith accepted would invent such a story which was bound,  from the start, to provoke ridicule and mockery and the kind of 12-year-old boy stuff that is probably still popular among the sci-rangers and out of fashion neo-atheists though I'd guess that even among their stunted sensibilities,  that got old as, in fact, the new atheism got old fast.  

Of the two canonical stories,  I like Luke's better though that one and the one found in Matthew are not incompatible,  they deal with different events.   There's no reason to believe the Shepherds got the news first and they are the first to go pay regard and respect to Jesus and his mother and father and that,  depending on their astrology, the wise-men came far later.   I would not be entirely unprepared to find that the paternity of Jesus was unique and the consequence of God choosing to enter directly into human history as a Human.   I choose to believe that because I think Jesus was unique among human beings even as he was truly one of us - Paul says like us in everything but that he didn't sin,  something I'm ready to believe, a well. 

Why do I choose to believe that?  Because I choose to believe we are divinely ordered to do so many things that are  against our natural or humanly chosen desires but which have the result of making things better.  Loving our neighbors as ourselves, loving or enemies and praying for those who persecute us (you can do it if you choose to practice those,  it takes a lot of years to start for it to work but it is possible),  to feed the hungry,  clothe and house those without those,  treat the sick,  visit those in prison (I'm without transport so those are kind of out for me) and,  if we really want to be perfect to sell everything we have and give the money to the poor and take up a cross and follow.    I'd like to live that way knowing it would probably get me killed,  I'd like to be that courageous as Jesus was when he went to Jerusalem knowing what was going to happen there, as the Scriptures told him and his followers what happened to Prophets in that city.  If you can't do it all you should at least do as much of it as you can.  And I'm still working up to it.  

In the late John McNeill's memoir, Taking a Chance On God,  in the first chapter where he talks about his experience as a WWII soldier fighting against Nazism and fascism and as a prisoner of war under the Nazis he tells this story: taken from Heinz Heger's book The Men With The Pink Triangle 

"Toward the end of February, 1940, a priest arrived in our block, a man some 60 years of age, tall and with distinguished features.  We later discovered that he came from Sudetenland, from an aristocratic German family. 

He found the torment of the arrival procedure especially trying, particularly the long wait naked and barefoot outside the block [remember this is in a German winter].  When his tonsure was discovered after the shower, the SS corporal in charge took a razor and said;  "I'll go to work on this one's head myself, and extend his tonsure a bit. " And he shaved the priest's head with the razor, taking little trouble to avoid cutting his scalp.  Quite the contrary. 

The priest returned to the day-room in our block with his head cut open and blood streaming down.  His face was ashen and his eyes stared uncomprehendingly into the distance.  He sat down on a bench, folded his hands in his lap and said softly,  more to himself than anyone else: "And yet man is good, he is a creature of God!"

I was sitting beside him,  and said softly but firmly:  "Not all men;  there are also beasts in human form, whom the devil must have made."

The priest paid no attentionto my words, he just prayed silently, erey moving his lips.  I was ddeply moved, even though I was by then already numbed by all the suffering I had so often seen, and indeed experienced myself.  But I had always had a great respect fo priests,  so that his silent pray this mut appeal to God, whom he called on for help and strength in his bodily pain and mental torment, went straighy to my heart.

Our block Capo, however, a repulsive and brutal "green,"  must have reported the priests praying to the SS, for our block Sargent suddenly burst into the day-room accompanied by a second NCO,  seizing the terrified priest for from the bench and punching and insulting him.  The priest bore the beating and abuse without complaint,  and just stared at the two SS men with wide, astonished eyes.  This must simply have made them angrier,  for they now took one of the benches and tied the priest to it. 

They started to beat him indiscriminately with their sticks, on his stomach, his belly and sexual organs.  They seemed to get more and more ecstatic and gloated;  We'll drive the prayer out of you! You bum-fucker! bum-fucker!"

The priest collapsed into unconsciousness,  was shaken awake and then fell unconscious again.

Finally the two SS sadists ceased their blows and left the day-room, though not without scornfully calling back to the man they had now quite destroyed:  "OK, you randy old rat-bag,  you can piss with your arese-hole in future."

The priest just rattled and groaned.  We released him and laid him in his bed.  He tried to raise his hand in thanks, but he hadn't the strength, and his voice gave out when he tried to say "thank you."  He just lay without stirring, his eyes open, each movement contorting his face with pain.   

I felt I was witnessing the crucifixion of Christ in modern guise.  Instead of Roman soldiers, Hitler's SS thugs, and a bench instead of a cross.  The torment of the Saviour, however, was scarcely greater than that inflicted on one of his representatives nineteen hundred years later here in Sachsenhausen. 

The next morning, when we marched to the parade-ground we had almost to carry the priest,  who seemed about to collapse again from pain and weakness  When our block senior reported to the SS bock sergeant  the later came over to the priest and shouted:  "Can't you stand up,  you arese-hole," adding:  "You filthy queer, you filthy swine, say what you are!"  The priest was supposed to repeat the insults but no sound came from the lips of the broken man.  The SS man angrily fell on him and was about to start beating him again  

Suddenly the unimaginable happened, something that is still inexplicable to me and that I could only see as a miracle,  the finger of God.

From the overcast sky a sudden ray of sunshine that illuminated the priests battered face.

Out of the thousands of assembled prisoners,  only him, and at the very moment when e was going to be beaten again .    There was a remarkable silence, and all present started fixedly at the sky, astonished by what had happened.  The SS sergeant himself looked up at the clouds in wonder for a few seconds then let his hand raised for a beating, sink slowly to his side, and walked away wordlessly away to take up his position at the end of our ranks.  

The priest bowed his head and murmured with a dying voice;  "Thank you Lord . . . I know that my time has come. . . "

He was still with us for the evening parade  But we o longer needed to carry him,  we laid him down at the end of the line with the other dead of the day,  so that our numbers would be complete for the roll-call no matter whether living or dead." 

Heinz Heger  The Men With The Pink Triangle,  translated by David Fernbach Alyson Publications 1980

You can choose to believe that story, told from eye witness, or you can choose not to.  I believe it.   Just as we choose what we believe in, we also choose what we don't want to believe in - though that's not a point I ever remember an atheist admitting.  

John McNeill, the former Jesuit, kicked out of his order for writing controversially on the Bible's mentions of same-sex sex,  recommended this anonymous priest-martyr and ended with a prayer:

We gays and lesbians have a model and a patron in this anonymous priest who was martyred because he dared to be both gay and a man of prayer.

Almighty God, help us, your lesbian daughters and gay sons, to grow and mature in our faith.  Free us from the spirit of fear and cowardice.  Grant that all the suffering and pain experienced in the past by those who were persecuted because they were gay or lesbian will not have been in vain,  but will help win for us and for all our people in the future the grace of true liberation.  Fill our hearts with a deep awareness of your love for us so that we may be free to love one another in the spirit of gratitude.  Amen

Later in the book he said: 

We lesbian and gay believers must ask for the grace to be intensely aware that in all human encounters God is present.  We must keep in mind Mary's fiat:  Let what you have said be done to me [You never get far from the Advent literature, in which the baby was born on his way to the cross.]  It lies in our power to put God into our lives or to deny God's presence  God will be in our lives insofar as we are ready to live lives of unselfish love as a response of gratitude for the love God has shown us in Jesus.