Christians and Halloween

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Halloween – I’m not going to write a new rant on Halloween this year, click here to read the one I wrote last year.  After reading the post, be sure to read at least the first two comments; I probably should amend the post by including those footnotes in the article.

Christians – Here’s another thought to keep in mind: we should be Christ-like toward each other.  If you have Christian friends, co-workers or relatives that do not celebrate Halloween, please don’t study up on it and accost them.  Don’t e-mail someone a link to my blog and brag about how right you are/wrong they are, etc.  If I saw a Christian brother who was putting his marriage in danger by spending too much time with a female friend, then I have an obligation to say something.  Maybe he doesn’t even realize, or perhaps he assumes no one has or will notice.  That would be one thing.  If my neighbor does not hand out candy on Halloween, then that’s another entirely.  I have to respect his doing what he feels is best for his family.

If you read those first two comments on that post I linked, you will be reminded that celebrating Easter and Christmas are extra-biblical.  So many details about how to live as Christians in our particular culture have to be worked out by each believer. We are all on the same side.  Christians should not be cannibalistic and apt to devour our own.  Infighting hurts the witness and testimony of us all.  If we can’t love each other, how can we love those in the world?  The un-saved and un-churched need to see Christians treat each other the way we would each like to be treated.

What I’m Reading: Jesus Died for This?

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I’m currently reading Jesus Died for This? by Christian satirist Becky Garrison.  In this volume Garrison humorously takes a critical view of the foolish things we do in the name of Christ.  Not since the writings of Michael Spencer has the evangelical circus looked so ridiculous.  From souvenir shops in the Holy Land to product pushing publishers, Garrison begs the question “Is that what Jesus died for, to be hacked by vendors like a ball park hotdog?”  I expect to finish the book and publish a full review this weekend.

Bible Survey: The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

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After 5 posts on Abraham I have decided it’s time to move on.  There are a lot more stories there, but Bible Survey kind of turned into a lifetime in Genesis on me.  Perhaps I should write a book on Abraham; can’t imagine that making the New York Times Bestseller List.

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob looks at two aspects of that title.  When the Bible uses that phrase (15 times in the ESV) it is for one of two reasons; to either remind the Hebrews who they are and whose they are, or to explain to others outside the Hebrew nation which God it is we are talking about.  Head over to Bible Survey and check it out.

This Just In…

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There are two things I never do; one is over react in a restaurant if my order isn’t right.  I rarely send anything back, and when I do it’s with a lot of respect for the kitchen staff and multiple apologies.  You should never act like a jerk to the people who are spitting in preparing your food.  The other thing I don’t do is complain about the postal service.  No matter how bad it gets, keep your mouth shut if you ever want to see your mail again.  It’s not like they have competition.

Becky Garrison’s new book Jesus Died for This? went on sale in August.  A batch of our local mail was misdirected, and just discovered this morning.  The postmark on what would have been my advanced copy was July 21.  I’m not bitter, I just bring it up to say this: I’m reading it now, and will post a review as soon as I’m able.  Keep in mind that Garrison is a satirist, not a theologian.  Her books combine hard-hitting journalism and good common sense with frequent LOL’s.  Read more about the book and author here, and perhaps purchase a copy for $14.99.  There is also an audio download and e-book available as well.  My review will be up in a few days.

I was introduced to Becky Garrison when I reviewed The New Atheist Crusaders and Their Unholy Grail for the Internet Monk.  You can read that review here.

The Body of Christ

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John Lennon’s quote that “we are more popular than Jesus” sparked controversy and protest once it reached the United States.  That statement, part of a much larger discourse, was taken terribly out of context.  Here’s what Lennon really said:

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.

Lennon was commenting on the decline of Christianity in England (and all of Europe for that matter) and over there no one even got upset.  In it’s context, what Lennon was saying was true. Continue reading →

More Popular than Jesus

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Update: this is a very good introduction.  Read the whole thing here.

Yesterday, Oct. 9, would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday.  Huge crowds gathered across the street from his former New York apartment, at the appropriately named Strawberry Fields Park.  He’s still fondly remembered, both here and in the UK, some 30 years after his death.  Google honored his birthday with their first animated doodle.

Back in 1966, protests and violence erupted in the United States after Datebook quoted Lennon on the cover of their magazine saying that the Beatles had become “more popular than Jesus.”  Concerts were cancelled, KKK members rallied, the Fab Four once thought they were the target of gunfire.  Well… here’s what Lennon had really said:

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.

We still remember Lennon 30 years later; and despite what you see on the covers of Time, U.S. News & World Report and so on every Easter, Christians still remember Jesus some 2,000 years later.  Lennon had studied many religions extensively.  There are much more vocal enemies of Christian faith today than anything he said back then.  Perhaps he was just ahead of his time.

“His disciples were thick and ordinary.”  Yes they were; and yes we are.  And we the body of Christ.  That my friends is the Gospel.

Who Is Jesus?

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Who is Jesus?  Sounds simple.  And you could answer simply.  But no matter how you respond to the question, we all know that in reality it just isn’t that simple.  Everyone has a default image that comes to mind when we hear the name Jesus.  The question becomes “Which Jesus are we talking about?”  That my friend is the right question.

UPDATE: I’ve removed the link to the Who’s Jesus website because that blog has been deleted by it’s author.

Who is Jesus is also the title of a blog I’ve just been reading.  The author identifies himself/herself only as C.  You don’t learn a lot about C by reading the blog, but I already know a lot by the clues that are given. Continue reading →

Theological Trivia: Did Animals Talk in the Garden of Eden?

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I used to post occasionally on some of the wacky search terms that led people to my blog, and also what I call trivia question theology.  Questions like “Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?” or “Can God make a rock so big he can’t move it?”  Okay, maybe those aren’t real questions, but here is a question that a reader entered into a search engine that was sent to my blog looking for answers.

Could animals talk before the fall?

That’s a legitimate question.  Because Genesis describes the serpent as the most subtle of all the animals in the garden.  That’s why Satan came to Eve in that form.  Eve doesn’t seem surprised when the serpent begins speaking to her.  There is a joke that goes like this: Two muffins where sitting next to each other in an oven.  When one said “Whew, it sure is getting hot in here” the other said “Whoa!  A talking muffin!”  If animals did not talk to humans before the fall, it stands to reason that Eve would have reacted differently at the sight of a talking snake rather than carry on a casual conversation with it.  When Moses witnessed the burning bush in the wilderness he turned aside to see why the bush was not consumed.  It was a curious thing that got his attention.

I try to be real careful about not making the Bible say something it doesn’t say.  The Bible does not say the animals could talk.  But we do have Eve carrying on a conversation with it instead of either finding Adam and telling him he has to see this, or simply freaking out.  We also know that the resulting curse changed things.  The relationships between men and women changed, man’s relationship with God changed.  Perhaps the animals did talk casually to people before the fall; God did.

We Need to Remind Each Other

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Last week I said that it’s good to remember, but we need to be reminded (full story here).  In summary, Joshua had the Hebrews take 12 stones from the Jordan River to set up as a memorial.  We take the Lord’s Supper because he said “Do this in remembrance of me.”  It’s good for our faith to remember what God has already done for us.  But we often need reminded.  Our nature – just like the Old Testament Hebrews and Jesus’s own disciples – is to forget.

We also need to remind each other. In the ESV, the word exhort is used 15 times in the New Testament.  10 of those refer to a person that was exhorting and 5 are instructions for us to exhort each other.  Heb 3:13 says “exhort one another every day…”  We need to build each other up, and offer encouragement.  Nichole Nordeman says we all need an ata’ boy or ata’ girl once in a while.  When things are going badly, it may be hard to read the scriptures and remind ourselves of God’s promises.  If we’re a little down, we may not feel like praying.  As a community, Christians ought to be lifting one another up.  There’s enough junk in the world – stress at work, traffic on the road, bad on the news, bills in the mailbox, moral decay on television – to bring us down.  We certainly don’t need to be cannibalistic and devour our own kind.

So, don’t just IM an lol to your friends this week.  Remind them God loves them as well.  Some of us still have telephones, you know the kind that plugs into a phone jack?  And of course smiles are contagious, and still free.

🙂

That didn’t hurt a bit.

There Is No Christian Nation

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I read an e-mail just moments ago that started with these words: “A Christian Nation cannot put up a Christmas scene of the baby Jesus in  a public place, but the Muslims can stop normal traffic every Friday afternoon by worshiping in the streets.”   After a couple more paragraphs, several images are shown of Muslims bowing to pray on Madison Ave. in New York.  I’m trying hard to ignore certain things so that I can focus on having a coherent point and not go off on some tangent rant.  Such as pointing out there is no such thing as “normal traffic” in New York City.  The Muslims haven’t stopped traffic from moving; New Yorkers did that back in the 70’s.

Where is this so-called Christian Nation? Because we don’t live in one. Continue reading →