Sam Chan’s The Missing Peace: How Christmas Brings the Calm We Crave shows the religiously uninformed the goodness and truth of Jesus’ incarnation in thirty-five entertaining pages. Stylistically, this is like a series of five talks which Rebecca McLaughlin describes as “characteristically disarming” in the blurb. With his characteristic humour and approachable style Chan uses anecdotes, stories, quotes from famous celebrities of the 90s and 2000s, and Bible quotes that together create an easy-to-read introduction to the true meaning and telos of Christmas.
Christmas Demolition Derby
Contemporary life is full of demands, stresses, and deadlines. Christmas is no different for most. Demands for family Christmas parties, stress from family conflict, and Christmas shopping deadlines that makes demolition derby look innocent. Chan steps into that breach and introduces readers to the Jesus who came for them to free them from the crushing stress and aimlessness of life.
The Missing Peace: How Christmas Brings the Calm We Crave
Sam Chan
“Peace on earth” is a crucial part of the Christmas message and a reality we’d all love to experience. But when we look around or listen to the news, it seems like an empty promise. Our world is not at peace, and often our lives and relationships are not peaceful either.
A Five-Part Journey
Chapter one, ‘Why We Lie Awake’, opens with the near dystopian narratives that have come to consume the 2020s:
War feels much more possible than before, and politics is increasingly fractured. These are problems outside us. But on the inside, we’re tired, exhausted, restless, wandering, searching, uncertain, unsettled. (p. 4)
Chan puts his finger on the pulse of this faux-disaster age. Things outside us and especially inside us keep us awake at night. We’re living our own disaster class with no hero to save. “We wish for peace but find it hard to locate peace” (p. 5). Christmas mostly seems to dial up the stress with all the extra end-of-year parties and hosting demands. But Chan invites readers to imagine the happiness and peace that Christmas offers.
In chapter two Chan identifies our need for an umpire who can lead us out of our self-induced mess. We want peace but we cannot create it for ourselves, whether individually or as a society. We’re all acting like we are in charge and this means no one can break through and bring peace to the chaos. “Christmas says there is a God, who sent his Son as the prince of peace” (p. 8). Jesus is the prince of peace, as umpire, righter of wrongs, and guide (p. 11). Jesus is the “kind of person you would want to babysit your kids, and thus the umpire who can be trusted to adjudicate rightly” (p. 16, 18).
‘Sin is Not Another False Alarm’, says chapter three. Our uncontrolled moments of anger are not something we just bounce back from, they show a deeper malaise. “[A]ll have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (p. 25, quoting Rom 3:23). People are in a fire they can’t see and the Bible sounds the alarm. “Jesus’ name is the promise of rescue from the fire” (p. 26). Christmas is in fact God’s once-a-year intervention when we “see our need for peace because we’ve become oblivious to our own brokenness, blemishes, and blame” (p. 27).
The good news of chapter four is that people are ‘Seen, Loved, Safe’ (p. 33). In God there is peace on offer that transcends our sin; peace that stays even when we’re not completely ok; peace because Jesus washed away our sins and brings us into loving relationship with God.
‘Christmas Is For You’ states the final chapter. Chan calls on readers to admit to their sin, believe and commit to Jesus, then delight in his abundant goodness. “Do this, and the endless cycle of stress, anxiety, and feeling bleh will be broken. You’ll have a fresh start. God will shine his face upon you” (p. 40).
Critiques
While the overall message is right, Chan does not acknowledge the ongoing struggles Christians experience. The book ends with a triumphant call to hand one’s stress and anxiety to Jesus. The gifts of the gospel are rightly and winsomely extolled throughout. But the call of the gospel to live like the Saviour, which includes suffering for him, is not explained, however. Suffering is not saleable. Most (all?) evangelistic books do not pick up this point. There is more you’ll need to tell your new disciple. Additionally, they might not be instantly healed of their depression, stress will still be a part of life, and some problems are just so dogged.
This risk of a book like Chan’s is the triumphalism a person may deduce. When people are converted, they initially do feel a great sense of triumphant liberation: “Jesus is what I’ve been looking for all this time!” This sense of euphoria is usually soon corrected by the reality of the “narrow road” (Matt 7:13–4) and the ongoing difficulties of living in a fallen world. But the big difference for a Christian convert facing new (and old) struggles is that there’s a light at the end of the road: life forever with Jesus. The risk is this book might create false impressions. This can be remedied through discipleship on the other side of a conversion experience. Still, this book is open to the charge of using a bait-and-switch tactic.
Some illustrations will probably be quite niche in five years. The Russia–Ukraine war is one of the opening examples for conflict in our world, which means the book is quite timebound. The same goes for the references to David Beckham and Gary Neville, though if you’re a long-suffering United fan or watched the Becks documentary, you’ll relate right now.
This is the book to give the ‘C&E Christians’ who stumble through the doors of your church this Christmas but may not yet be open to engage with an evangelistic course like Taste & See or Christianity Explored. On the back cover, Rico Tice writes that he “will certainly be giving it to friends and family this Christmas.” In a period of (at least perceived) chaos, this book promises the peace everyone craves through the only person who can give peace: Jesus, who was born of a woman at just the right time.
