The dangerous turf near the manger

Memo to presidential candidates: Merry Christmas wishes are fine. Keep it generic. Do not, repeat, do not mention the name of that babe in the manger. And God forbid, don’t allow bookshelves to intersect behind you. No intersecting. Got it?

Apparently, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee didn’t, because his Christmas TV ad — which is drawing hellfire and brimstone from some media pundits and the Jesus-phobes among us — goes so far as to note that Christmas is a celebration of — are you ready? — “the birth of Christ.”

Can you hear that pin drop yet?

It gets more sinister: A few seconds into the ad, as the camera pans across Huckabee’s talking head toward a Christmas tree, a cross-like shape is discernable by the unfortunate intersecting of bookshelf columns a few feet behind Huckabee.

Commenting on the ads of presidential candidates on MSNBC’s “Hardball” program for host Chris Matthews, Madison Avenue guru Donnie Deutsche said of Huckebee’s ad: “That is one of the most frightening things I’ve seen in a long time, I gotta say.”

The host of MSNBC’s “The Big Idea” program, Deutsche said Huckabee’s ad might play well in some of the more “narrow” parts of the country, but the ad is on “dangerous turf.”

Dangerous turf?

The ad is debatable, but the outcry from the offended parties proves a point: Two-thousand years after the Messiah arrived with no earthly fanfare in a Bethlehem stable, a good number of people still view him as a threat, not as something glorious but as something terrible; not as good news, but the worst possible news.

And those who had the most to lose in the first century by his coming?the greedy, the self indulgent, the powerful, the self righteous?are not unlike those who have the most to lose today by his kingship and his rightful claim on their hearts.

Guys like Donnie Deutsche are not uncommon. They are threatened, as we all were in our trespasses and sins, by the one who would be the king of their hearts.

But Jesus has always been a divisive figure. He knew it. We should know it.

He said he came to turn family member against family member, not in some wishful sense, but as the inevitable result of conversion (Matthew 10:35). And Paul reminds us that to those who are perishing, the witness of Christ is the aroma of death, but to those who are being saved, it is the aroma of life (2 Corinthians 2:16).

The fuss over Christmas signals a threshold has been broken: that of stale sentiment. Perhaps the bookshelf was Providential TV at its best. Whatever the case, it’s a good reminder that the babe in the manger is still the most controversial figure in history.

If you think about it this Christmas, pray for Donnie Deutsche and others like him who see the danger, not the joy, in the Savior’s birth. It need not be that way.