As every kid will tell you, Santa “knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows when you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake.” Good for goodness sake? Really? So Santa is up there tallying up our good and bad deeds so we should keep track of the good ones and hope they outweigh the bad ones? There’s no gospel there.
What does Jesus say? He says:
“I lay down my life for the sheep” (John 10:15).
“Whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6:37).
Jesus is the reason for the season because the truth is that none of us has been a good little boy or girl this year, and we need a savior not something in our stockings.
My younger brother, serving our country in Iraq, writes about what the mission looks like these days. Surprisingly, it looks less like a war and more like everyday life:
In 2006 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Muhammad Yunus for his work in giving micro-grants to people needing a little help to improve their small businesses. He showed the world how grants as little as $1,000 could change the lives of those (high-potential, low income) people. This week, I began handing out micro-grant applications to local sheiks (who will help me find and nominate the best candidates from the area).
I wish I could say that I thought of the idea. I am merely helping to facilitate the program in our area. The idea is simple yet powerful: meaningful growth and improvement can come from humble beginnings. This isn’t just an Iraqi phenomenon either; this micro-grant program is growing in the United States as well (see http://www.microgrants.net).
The types of applications I’ll be looking for will buy tools for that small engine repair shop; it will buy refrigeration for the local butcher to keep his products safe and hygienic. It will add a sewing machine to the local clothing shop, it will add workers to these shops, it will expand the economic base and capacity of this area.
As my brother writes, none of this kind of work would be possible without first securing the area. So, in other words, there has been significant progress made in Iraq. When you hear about reporters throwing their shoes at the president of the United States, remember that there’s more news out there than what gets on the network.
The heart of the tale, though, lies in this simple conversation that is had, and this is no exaggeration, probably 200 or 300 times throughout the book:
Her: “I love you, you’re so beautiful and perfect.”
Him: “Yes, I am.”Her: “But I’m so clumsy!”
Him: “Yes, you are, and I love you.”
Her: “I love you, you’re so beautiful and perfect. And cold.”
Him: stares off in the distance, looking like a model.
If you cut that conversation out of the book it would probably be twenty pages long. And probably no better. There’s also the sad commentary on how teenage girls LOVE this book, and how this girl decides to completely give up her friends, family, personality and everything else to be in a relationship with a rich, good-looking guy who treats her terribly. I hope my daughters read this when they get older and learn that valuable lesson.
Andy’s full review is at the link, but that pretty much covers it. This review was confirmed by my pretween son, who somehow was tricked into reading it thinking it had some kind of noble fighting to wash out the taste of obsessed teen love. He was wrong and now is disgusted that he picked the book up in the first place.
Matt Perman, over at What’s Best Next, nailed me today with a post about avoiding the temptation to complain. It’s an easy thing to do, and I am the chief among sinners. In fact, I am already considering this as one of my resolutions for 2009. Don’t do resolutions, you say? That could be another post.
Anyway, read Matt’s post, digest it, think about it, repent for being a complainer (like me) and then do something about it. I like what Matt said:
Fight the frustration of life by working on behalf of others, even when it doesn’t come easy (or it may not be “your” job). Try to figure out something you can do, even if it’s not obvious at first.
Thank you, Matt, I needed that. God is good. And, if you ask, who then can we complain to, since life often seems not fair. Try this: Tell your complaint to God.
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. — Psalm 118:24
Do you know people like this? Is this you?
I love that verse. There is a lot of suffering and doubt in Psalms, but there is a lot of hope, too. People who know me here that verse a lot from me. For one thing, I love it because it tells me that a) God made this day and everything I’ll experience in it and b) he wants me to be happy about it and trust Him. Also, I take it as a command: Be happy.
Now, there are some of you, like the Grinch over there, who say: “Why should I rejoice? What do my feelings have to do with anything?” Or maybe you think that your emotions are something that comes and goes, but it’s your duty and sense of responsibility that really matter. Oh really? Does the Bible back you up? Does God really command how we should feel?
John Piper addresses just such a thing in a sermon on Romans 12:9-13:
(There) is a deeply defective way of seeing God and of understanding your own emotions. The truth is that God does have a right to command that we feel anything we ought to feel. If we ought to feel joy in the Lord, he commands, “Rejoice in the Lord” (Philippians 4:4). If we ought to feel the sorrow of sympathy, he commands, “Weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). If we ought to feel gratitude for a great gift, he commands, “Be thankful” (Colossians 3:15). If we should feel remorse for our sin, he commands, “Be miserable and mourn and weep” (James 4:9). If we should feel fear of sin, he commands, “Fear the one who after he has killed has the power to cast into hell” (Luke 12:5). And so on.
The fact that our hearts are so distorted by sin that we don’t feel what we ought to feel does not mean that God cannot command what is right and good and fitting for us to feel. We are responsible to feel what God commands us to feel. So I plead with you, be more serious when you read these commands than you might be if you thought God has no right to tell you what you should feel toward others, and that you have no accountability for your emotions.
So, back to the beginning: How do we do something we don’t feel? Again, Piper helps us here by giving us 15 things we can do to “Fight for joy” and not be a Grinch:
1. Realize that authentic joy in God is a gift.
2. Realize that joy must be fought for relentlessly.
3. Resolve to attack all known sin in your life.
4. Learn the secret of gutsy guilt – how to fight like a justified sinner.
5. Realize that the battle is primarily a fight to see God for who he is.
6. Meditate on the Word of God day and night.
7. Pray earnestly and continually for open heart-eyes and an inclination for God.
8. Learn to preach to yourself rather than listen to yourself.
9. Spend time with God-saturated people who help you see God and fight the fight.
10. Be patient in the night of God’s seeming absence.
11. Get the rest and exercise proper diet that your body was designed by God to have.
12. Make a proper use of God’s revelation in nature.
13. Read great books about God and biographies of great saints.
14. Do the hard and loving thing for the sake of others (witness and mercy).
15. Get a global vision for the cause of Christ and pour yourself out for the unreached.
It is not good that there are unhappy people anywhere. For some, it may be a medical issue that they have no control over and for them we must extend grace and help them. But there is hope. God does not command what he won’t help us to do. Seek God. Go with God.
There is a divide in this country, and you can almost discern it based on the question, “How do we help the
How do we help the poor?
poor?” Politically, there is a divide for sure, but even within the church there is divergence on this question. To be sure, the Bible instructs us that we are to care for the poor, but even that point is debated as one group emphasizes responsibility and another justice.
In his essay, Keller explores from the position that the church is commanded to help the poor, yet this is not the primacy of the gospel:
So what does it mean to be committed to the primacy of the gospel? It means first that the gospel must be proclaimed. Many today denigrate the importance of this. Instead, they say, the only true apologetic is a loving community; people cannot be reasoned into the kingdom, they can only be loved. “Preach the gospel. Use words if necessary.” But while Christian community is indeed a crucial and powerful witness to the truth of the gospel, it cannot replace preaching and proclamation. Nevertheless, the primacy of the gospel also means that it is the basis and mainspring for Christian practice, individually and corporately, inside the church and outside. Gospel ministry is not only proclaiming it to people so that they will embrace and believe it; it is also teaching and shepherding believers with it so that it shapes the entirety of their lives, so that they can “live it out.” And one of the most prominent areas that the gospel effects is our relationship to the poor.
It is a lengthy read, but well worth your time. For conservatives, it is a good reminder that merely proclamation of the gospel while failing to help the poor and needy shows a lack of understanding of the gospel. For liberals, it is a good reminder that giving aid is not an end in itself.
Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Lisa Miller, religion editor at Newsweek, were recently guests on NPR’s Talk of the Nation Program. The program’s topic, “What’s The Word? The Bible on Gay Marriage” was discussed in the context of Miller’s recent cover story for Newsweek, “The Biblical Case for Gay Marriage.” You can listen to the program here.
There’s this growing idea that religion is the thing that makes the world an awful place, that somehow if people lived without religion, we would all get along better and be happier. It has been tried throughout history, but it doesn’t help. At this time of year, we even put that effort in the form of a person called Santa Claus. This is what John Piper says about that and how the effort fails to help us:
If there is going to be any salvation at all, there must be a divine revelation. God must reveal these things to us or we perish. We can’t find them out from television or radio or medicine or psychology or art. We learn the truth about ourselves from the Word of God. And once our eyes are opened to the truth that God reveals, then we can see confirmations of it in virtually all the sciences and arts.
Santa Claus and Religion
But if we don’t start with God’s interpretation of who we are, we will be like blind people who go on developing elaborate theories to prove that there really is no such thing as vision, and that color and light and perspective are the inventions pious imaginations projecting onto reality their own dissatisfaction with the dark. “Religion is the opiate of the people.”
That statement is not simply classic Marxism. It is classic American materialism. The difference is that American materialism doesn’t outlaw religion; it imitates it and then uses it. That is the real meaning of Santa Claus.
The true meaning of Christmas—that God sent his Son into the world to save us from our evil hearts of sin (Matthew 1:21), and to destroy the works of the devil in our habits and homes and schools and workplaces (1 John 3:8), and to rescue us from the wrath to come (1 Thessalonians 1:10)—that meaning of Christmas is unacceptable to the spirit of this world. But the impact of the truth of the incarnation is so undeniable after 2,000 years of influence, that the god of this world behind American materialism cannot oppose it outright, but simply imitates it with Santa Claus and a hundred other trappings in order to direct the religious impulses of the masses into economically profitable channels.
Does that mean you sit Christmas out completely? Listen to Piper explain how Christmas Day looked at their house when their kids were growing up:
Greg Koukl, who does the Stand to Reason radio broadcast — also available as a podcast — gives three questions we should ask when reading Newsweek’s “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage”:
1. What do they want you to believe?
2. What are the reasons they offer in support of this idea they want you to believe?
3. Are the reasons good ones?
Koukl reviews the article and goes through these questions on the podcast.
Rockstanding 
You must be logged in to post a comment.