{"id":808,"date":"2010-12-21T08:27:06","date_gmt":"2010-12-21T08:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/redletters\/2010\/12\/what-child-is-this.html"},"modified":"2010-12-21T08:27:06","modified_gmt":"2010-12-21T08:27:06","slug":"what-child-is-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/12\/what-child-is-this.html","title":{"rendered":"What Child is This?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I love the title of this song because this may be the most important question in the history of our world. It is certainly the most important question in my life. How you answer this question will change the course of your life.<\/p>\n<p>What child is this?<\/p>\n<p>Is he the born-out-of-wedlock human son of young Jewish couple? Sure, he would grow up to display moral purity and a passion for compassion. But is he more?<\/p>\n<p>The song&#8217;s chorus answers the question posted by its title:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>This, this is Christ the King,<br \/>\n<\/i><br \/><i>Whom shepherds guard and angels sing:<br \/>\n<\/i><br \/><i>Haste, haste to bring him laud,<br \/>\n<\/i><br \/><i>The Babe, the Son of Mary!<br \/>\n<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If Jesus is the Christ, then everything He says and teaches has eternal importance for us. If he is God, in human form, teaching us how to be more holy and live more justly, then how could we ignore?<\/p>\n<p>There are many moral teachers whose ideas I can ignore. They may be profitable, but in the last analysis they are not-essential in the grand scheme of things.<\/p>\n<p>Jesus spends 3 years laying out the blueprint for what we&#8217;re supposed to do. Love others with as much gusto as we love ourselves. Serve the world with our strength. Bind up the sick and brokenhearted, and feed the poor. <\/p>\n<p>The first glimpses of Jesus were as an insignificant newborn child. Someone that we&#8217;d ignore. A dirty kid in a manger, so what? <\/p>\n<p>I find it ironic and perhaps indicting that Jesus spends so much of His ministry pointing His followers BACK to those same people&#8211;the downtrodden, the outcast, the unlovable, and the insignificant. <\/p>\n<p><i>Christ the King, lead us in your Kingdom&#8217;s work. Open our eyes to those you came to save, and heal, and set free. We apologize for the times we&#8217;ve lost focus and made your Kingdom about something else&#8230;something other than following you. This Advent, draw us closer to your heart and send us farther out into the world to bring your love where it is needed most.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love the title of this song because this may be the most important question in the history of our world. It is certainly the most important question in my life. How you answer this question will change the course of your life. What child is this? Is he the born-out-of-wedlock human son of young&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-swaziland"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What Child is This? - Red Letters<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/12\/what-child-is-this.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Child is This? - Red Letters\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I love the title of this song because this may be the most important question in the history of our world. It is certainly the most important question in my life. How you answer this question will change the course of your life. What child is this? Is he the born-out-of-wedlock human son of young&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/12\/what-child-is-this.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Red Letters\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-12-21T08:27:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tom Davis\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What Child is This? - Red Letters","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2010\/12\/what-child-is-this.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What Child is This? - Red Letters","og_description":"I love the title of this song because this may be the most important question in the history of our world. 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A tireless advocate for fatherless children, Davis has spent most of his adult life calling U.S. believers to become the hands and feet of Jesus Christ to the 143 million orphans living around the world. Through those connections, thousands of orphans now have the bright and hopeful future--one that is filled with opportunities and the love of the one true Father. Davis speaks hundreds of times each year at churches and conferences, mobilizing the church to action on behalf of the poor. He is the author of four books. His most recent novel, SCARED is a fictionalized account of his first-hand experiencing living and working with orphans in Swaziland, Africa. Davis' blog is the premier resource for the latest developments in Christian orphan ministry. Davis also currently teaches courses as adjunct professor at George Fox University in Newberg, OR. When not traveling the globe, Davis resides in the mountains of Colorado in the small community of Palmer Lake. He and his wife Emily have seven children, including two adopted daughters from Russia.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/author\/tdavis"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}