“The Christmas message rests on the staggering fact the child in the manger was—God.â€â€”J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1993).
If you could be a little fly on the wall, in most churches spread across this great nation of ours, during the Advent Season, you might hear the Pastor speak words such as these: “Welcome to our church this morning! We are celebrating that Jesus humbled himself to be born a baby. Although Jesus was God, he took on the form of man, so that he could die for our sins, so that we might be saved.†If you heard this, you might not think anything about it, and just continue on your “merry†Christmas way, celebrating the season and the birth of the Christ-Child. But, I’d like you to take a moment to ponder what we are really celebrating at this time of year.
Every Halloween when I see all the faux tombstones in stores and yard scenes that have “R.I.P.” on them, it causes me to ponder the irony of them.
The dominant religion of the U.S. is Christianity. And Christianity as we all know has the dominant belief that man is inherently immortal and goes off to either the good place (i.e. Heaven), or the bad place (i.e. Hell).
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This weekend we have one of the biggest celebrated holidays of the year. Halloween is deeply routed in the american culture and has been for a very long time. Many fathers and mothers will dress their sons and daughters in costumes and go trick or treating with them while the other parent stays home to hand out candy to their neighbors children as they come to there door.
Before they know it, their children will not need them to help with the costumes nor need (or want) their supervision while they practice these Halloween traditions.
Plea’s from much christian leadership are viewed as legalistic, stubborn, extremist, etc. The arguments from the christians are old, repetitive and at this point dull.
I thought I would do a 2-for-1 for this post. The first is raising the question, who raised Jesus from the dead? This almost seems like a trick question. I recently came across an article by this title on the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals web site. For those of us who believe that the Scriptures teach one God, the answer is quite simple. It gets a little more complicated if you believe in the trinity. Here is an excerpt from that article:
I believe Jesus was born in the late summer/fall. Yet this is the time of the year that most folks talk about the birth of the Messiah, so I thought I would post this interesting article on Isaiah 9:6. You can find it originally posted at “koinonia.” The bold lettering is my doing. I found these statements to be particularly insightful.
WHAT IS IN A NAME? (ISAIAH 9:6)
by John H. Walton
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The Holiday season has snuck up on us again. A time of year when… well you know. This was a popular video last year that made the rounds in our circles and since we are creatures who tend to forget, I thought it might warrant re-viewing. It sums up the origins of many of the Christmas traditions as we know them now and exposes where we got them from. (note: the first two minutes of the video are an advertisement…feel free to fast forward)
Some questions we may ask ourselves after we watch are:
Should we “Christianize” a pagan Holiday?
If we do, should we leave out the old pagan elements?
Every Halloween when I see all the faux tombstones in stores and yard scenes that have “R.I.P.” on them, it causes me to ponder the irony of them.