Category: Culture & Society

When you have decided as a family not to participate in the Santa Claus phenomena, the ubiquity of the jolly old fat man and the gravitational pull he exerts on all yuletide conversations — public and private — becomes even more noticeable. (See this article for more).

Don’t worry: our four children have never believed there was a Santa Claus. They still receive presents at Christmas. They are not freaks.

I was picking up a few last minute items at the local market prepping for our church Christmas party. The cashier asked “Are you ready for Santa?” Note, at this point, I have none of the aforementioned Santa-challenged children with me: a grown woman was asking me, a grown man, about Santa — even adults seemingly cannot converse about the season of Christ’s advent without resort to a commercialized mythical elf. I muttered a few unintelligible syllables while fumbling for some cash when she encouraged me: “Surely you’ve been good?”

It was simply too much. I responded “No, I have not been good. Nor have you been good. Nor have any of the children who believes in Santa Claus been good. Which is precisely the problem. None of us are good, and if we were to truly rely upon that measure to ensure that a benign being with supernatural power to give gifts to men is nice to us, then we would all be sorely disappointed. Instead, I trust that God does not count our badness against us, but has counted it against Jesus Christ, and through him those who repent and believe enjoy all the glories of heaven in the eternal state.”

I didn’t really say that. I wish I had. Or something similar. I wish everyone would realize that Santa’s standards are impossible to attain, whether he is jolly or not.

When I did not play along with her line of yuletide cross-examination, the cashier tried to salvage some assurance that I — a fellow traveller on this celestial ball and dependent to the mercies of Santa — had some semblance of Christmas spirit: “Have you decorated your tree?”

As if proof of our Christmas spirit is perpetuating the Santa Claus myth, or that of Rudolph or spying elves, or drinking egg nog or decorating trees…how dreadfully weak is the testimony of Christians to the true spirit of Christmas.

Not that they would seek it at this point, but one wonders whether any of Herman Cain’s accusers are believers, whether they are members of a gospel-saturated congregation, and if so, whether they sought pastoral counsel — either at the time of the alleged offense or regarding their present actions.

Because one would have to say that if something happened between them and Cain in the past, pastoral counsel would have certainly included the admonition and encouragement to pray for their enemy, to forgive, to seek reconciliation, to rest in the grace and comfort of God rather than in any conciliatory action by Cain.

Certainly there are occasions in which confrontation with an offender — and legal action — is appropriate. Yet biblical counseling and even its more responsible secular counterparts would recommend that confrontation occur sooner, rather than later, and except for extreme circumstances, that it occur privately, rather than publicly.

Would any wise counsel recommend that one cling to an offense, wait years for the offender to attain prominence, then proclaim the offense on perhaps the largest public stage possible, when true reconciliation is likely impossible?

If Herman Cain committed punishable offenses, he should bear the consequences. Yet our sin nature clouds from our view the too-familiar desire in all of us for “karma” or “what-goes-around-comes-around” to right wrongs, preferably when the dish has become cold.

There is only One who rights wrongs. And our overarching concern should be not how other men’s wrongs against us will be righted, but how our wrongs against Him will be righted. They are righted, but only for those who repent and believe in Jesus Christ.

A boy living life as a girl has been given the green light to join the Girl Scouts in Colorado.

What this incident further illustrates is the boundary-less-ness so desired by the human heart. No one, we say, should put limits on another’s desire and behavior, and we go to great lengths to remove any such boundaries, often couching our efforts in terms of “unconditional love.”

The phenomenon looks something like this: I want to join the Boy Scouts. But you’re a girl. No I’m not. You look like a girl. Appearances of gender are the result of a social construct foisted on the masses by religious ignoramuses. But, you’re a girl. I desire, therefore, I am, and I desire not to be a girl, but to be a Boy Scout, and to play with those cool camp stoves. But you can’t do boy stuff. You’re supposed to love everyone unconditionally, and I desire to be a boy, so you should affirm and support me in all my desires. Oh, alright…here’s your compass.

Imagine if the same logic were applied to other areas: Come on, Saddam, we’re taking you to jail. But I don’t want to go to jail. You’ve committed crimes against humanity. I don’t feel like a criminal. Quit trying to escape. My desire is to be free, and captivity is the social construct of the imperialist oppressor. Oh, alright…here are your WMDs.

What’s worse than a boy living life as a girl and forcing an organization to redefine itself to permit his admission to it is the attitude of alleged grown-ups about the situation. One of the news shows hosted a debate between “experts” who held opposing views regarding the Girl Scouts’ decision. The pro-Scout expert suggested that the decision was a wonderful example of how-things-ought-to-be, because what children of this age need is not parents telling them what they can’t do — be a girl, if you’re a boy — but parents who affirm and support children in their desires, who love them “unconditionally”.

This posits a view of love that does not set boundaries. But parental love for children is nothing if not boundary-setting: you can’t eat poison; you can’t play with knives; you can’t run in traffic; you must defecate in the toilet; you must wear clothes in public.

Biblical love, also, necessarily involves the use of (gasp!) authority and the setting of boundaries. God certainly loved Adam and Eve, but also put boundaries on their behavior: don’t eat the fruit of one, particular tree. They rebelled against that authority — asserting their right to “unconditional love” — and believed that God should affirm their desires whatever they might be. They were wrong, and God’s love then required the exercise of his authority.

Parents are called to love children biblically, not unconditionally, and act as agents of God’s authority.

We’ve all heard it before. “Churches are full of hypocrites.”

Perhaps we’ve said it, too, and if not, we’ve certainly thought it — at least about certain people in the church.

To an extent, it’s true that there are hypocrites in church. But the point is whether we avoid church altogether because of it.

Many unbelievers cite as the reason they don’t consider church attendance in general or the claims of the gospel in particular is that those who attend and those who believe are hypocrites. Translated, this usually means that Mr. Jones claims to be a saint on Sunday and lives like the devil Monday through Saturday.

Many believers, too, avoid organized fellowship and worship because they don’t want to be around the “hypocrites.”

NEWS FLASH: If you manage to find yourself free of hypocrites, you are likely dead. I don’t say that you have likely died and gone to heaven, because I don’t think there are any hypocrites in hell, either, and it’s quite possible that you have gone there, instead.

Even the best of men, the most sincere Christ-followers, the holiest of saints will act with hypocrisy from time to time. And despite a congregation’s best efforts, it is quite likely that some among them are not even believers, Mr. Jones’ protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

Those who have repented and believed in Christ are commanded in Scripture to regularly meet with others for fellowship, teaching and worship. We aren’t excused from this because some who participate live like the devil when they leave. And unbelievers, hypocrites in the church won’t keep you from meeting God. Jesus made the Temple obsolete in part so that men — even hypocritical men — can’t keep you from the Father (Mark 11:1-25).

The cure for hypocrisy is not to steer clear of hypocrites, but to come to the One who can make you true, in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The misuse of the Hitler comparison has become so widespread that comparing someone to Hitler carries almost no meaning. If everyone is Hitler…

Leave it to a country singer to rescue us from our analogy fog and use the comparison correctly.

Singer Hank Williams, Jr. said of the House Speaker John Boehner/President Barack Obama golf outing that it was like Nazi Adolf Hitler playing golf with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

What is so astounding is that almost everyone who has weighed in to comment on this assumes that Williams was comparing Obama to Hitler. But let’s take a look at what was being said:

Adolf Hitler : Benjamin Netanyahu

Murderer of Jews : Jewish promoter of Israel

Killer : Killed

Extreme on one end : Extreme on the other end

What armchair philospher Williams was attempting to demonstrate was the inherent absurdity of those holding to diametrically opposed worldviews and philosophical systems getting together to participate in an comparitively mundane and inane (alleged) sport.

Williams’ critics negelect to consider that if he intended a one-to-one comparison, Williams might have been saying that Boehner was Hitler. Or that Williams might have been saying that either Obama or Boehner is dead or a ghost, since Hitler is pushing daisies and Netanyahu is pushing respect for Israel.

And whether Williams intended Boehner as Netanyahu and Obama as Hitler (or vice versa, or neither) is not relevant to the point.

The point is that the picture of President Obama and Speaker Boehner golfing together leaves their respective followers with questions as to whether there is any real difference between them. We know that is not true, therefore golfing together was dumb.

Sure, the Hitler card is overplayed. Saying that Obama = Hitler (or Bush = Hitler, or CEOs = Hitler, or whatever) is dumb, and fairly useless as a communication device. But comparing a situation to a hypothetical with Hitler is not necessarily out of bounds, and we shouldn’t be so quick to assume the worst.

Let’s put on our thinking caps, and our charity pants, and communicate.