Christmas, Version 2.0 Xmas Eve ‘94

What do Christmas and computers have to do with each other? Well, if you’ll listen for the next few minutes, I’ll try to explain.

Many of you have seen commercials for Intel, the company that makes those little microprocessors that go into your home computer. Maybe you have a computer that has a sticker on it that says “Intel Inside”.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, the Intel Company came up with a problem. Someone discovered that there is a bug in Intel’s latest microprocessor, which is called the Pentium. Apparently, there is an error in the instruction set that is microscopically etched on that tiny silicon chip. That error means that, in certain situations, Pentium-powered computers may not do math calculations properly.

A computer that can’t count is definitely a problem!

Now it turns out that the Intel Company knew about this problem long before anyone said anything about it. In fact, they had taken steps to correct it in the latest batches of Pentium chips they were making.

But Intel hadn’t planned to say anything about the defective processors that they had already sold. That is, until somebody blew the whistle on them a couple of weeks ago. That’s when Intel ended up with egg all over its corporate face.

The company’s reputation—and its stock price—have taken a beating because of the way they handled this fiasco.

Everybody in the computer industry knows that when you release a product, even though you’ve tried your best to get it right the first time, it’s probably going to have some bugs in it. Now the proper thing to do, when you find a bug, is to own up to it and fix it. You release a new version of the product, with the bugs ironed out.

Next time you go into a computer store looking for software, have a look at the version number of the product. It’s usually printed right on the package. Version 1.0 or Version 2.0, or 3.5. And the general rule of thumb is that the later the version, the more bug-free and powerful the software is.

Now why am I telling you all this? Because after 2,000 years of being out there in the marketplace, we’re still on Version 1.0 of the Christmas story. There haven’t been any upgrades, or bug-fixes, or new releases of the Christmas story since it hit the public back in 4 BC. There hasn’t been a Christmas Version 2.0. Oh, there have been numerous attempts, but they’ve all fallen by the wayside in short order.

Now the longevity of Christmas Ver. 1.0 is pretty amazing, especially when you look at the feature-set of the original Christmas story. Take the central feature of the story, for example.

If you were trying to come up with a believable story, would you invent a plot in which the principal character was born of a virgin? Can there be anything more universally known among human beings than the fact that women do not have babies all by themselves?

And yet the entire Christmas story—and everything that flows from it— rests on a contradiction of that very basic fact.

Suppose, as many people do, that Christmas was just a clever story invented by zealous Christians to explain the origins of their faith. Would it not seem reasonable that, down through the ages, that story would have been refined?

That it would have been re-written? That some of the embarrassing and outlandish details—the bugs, in other words—would have been ironed out? That it would have evolved into something a lot smoother and more polished?

Would it not have been better—especially if you were hoping that this story would spread all over the world— to make it a little less incredible, and a little more believable by dumping such preposterous ideas as a baby being born of a virgin?

But today, 2,000 years after the story got started, we find no evidence that any revision has taken the place of the original. There has been no Christmas Version 2.0. The Christmas story we read today is the same in every detail as it was in the first century AD. We have the early manuscripts to prove it.

Which is one of the main reasons why I believe that it is true. The very implausibility of Christmas speaks of its truth. Christmas is not the kind of story that you would invent in the hope that it would gain currency.

The fact that it has not been tampered with or conveniently edited over a period of 2,000 years indicates that what we have in Christmas is not a mere myth or a legend that has evolved, but the account of an historical event—an improbable, implausible, and miraculous event—but one which really happened.

And if it really happened—if God really came here as a virgin-born baby and grew up to be a man—then it must be worth finding out why he came. But that’s the subject of another sermon; the one that I’ll give you at Easter.

Christmas is a season that is full of magic. But at the center of all the magic is a hard historical fact. And it’s up to you to decide how you’re going to deal with it.