The Valley of the Shadow

No story is so well known, nor any so little understood, as the birth of Jesus. Its mystique steals into every heart as days shorten into winter. And commercialism’s thickening veneer has neither quieted the cry of every soul, nor stilled its urge to penetrate through it all to an understanding of this most magnificent event in all creation.

In Holy Scripture much loved by the ancients until the fifth century of our own era, the wise sage said of God, “He has put eternity into man’s mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Eccles 3,11). These words were written during the period of human development when the splendor of ancient prophecy had faded and the shades of Sheol, the underworld one experienced at death, were deepening. It was for humanity truly the “valley of the shadow of death” and of the “dry bones.” In the midst of that valley, according to Luke, Zechariah, filled with the Holy Spirit, prophesies that his infant son John shall “give light to those who sit in ... the shadow of death.” Yet ere those shades fell, and even as they were falling, the prophets had spoken of the days when humanity would rise again to a more divine insight.

And at the very depths of that valley, the valley of human development, there came to a people in pregnant expectancy an event they could only feel, not understand. And so it has been to this very day.

But we are at the time of a new nativity, a time when a new understanding must enter into human evolution. Exploding intellectual development and reliance upon ever increasing materiality is starving the very roots of what we once felt so instinctively. We cannot hope to regain what was lost through mere sentimentality. Those days in our development have passed just as childhood, ever in memory, cannot be reclaimed in advancing age. This reality is built into each of our individual lives, and so is the reality built into human development that it goes from stage to stage. We have reached the time when, according to Paul, we must put away childish speaking, thinking and reasoning and look with maturity on this most important event in human existence.

We are on the threshold of Christianity’s adulthood. A clear parallel can be seen between its centuries and the development of an individual human being up to adulthood. For instance, the infancy of the church up to the time of its recognition as the Roman Catholic Church (roughly 0 to 300) compares to the child who at three years of age recognizes its own identity and begins to say “I play” instead of “Johnny play.” From 0 to 700, the period the Church was guided by the Church Fathers, compares to the child until second dentition at seven years of age; from 700 to 1400, the period of the Holy Roman Empire, to later childhood; from 1400 to 2100, to the period of rebellion and conflict within the Church—its period of youth or adolescence; and from 2100 onwards, the flourishing of true Christianity in its adulthood. Christianity’s twenty-first century is upon us.

The seed for that adult understanding was sown in the first quarter of our century. But it has lain germinating in its original German language. Only in the last few years has its tender shoot pierced through to any exposure in America. I speak of the spiritual revelations of the Austrian Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Characteristic of the truly prophetic, it was not widely recognized in its time or place. Its germinating seed lay hidden until now when, at its right time, it has broken forth in newness of life.

Just as there was no room in the inn for Luke’s Jesus child, so also has our scientific, commercial and warlike century had no room for the type of knowledge and wisdom that reveals the deep secrets of the birth of Jesus. In truth, save for an instinctive understanding, now passing away, humanity has not been ready for this knowledge since the day of that holy birth. As Jesus told us in John’s Gospel, there were many things that humanity simply was not ready for then. They were to be revealed to it when the time was right, just as some things can come into understanding only as one grows into adulthood.