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Should I Celebrate Christmas?

A reader just wrote in enquiring on this topic. He had been googling the question, and had been led particularly to Romans 14:5-6.  For what it’s worth, our reply was as below:

It’s very clear that both Christmas and Easter are originally pagan festivals and that they have no basis at all in Scripture. The Santa Claus people love derives from an American political cartoonist and advertising by Coca-Cola. And it’s very clear that Christmas today is overwhelmingly a materialistic celebration. Nothing here for a Christian to get excited about; rather the reverse. So, in essence, we don’t celebrate it. But . . . . .

It’s also a time when families get together, which is good. It’s a time when people mostly relax, and are perhaps warmer towards others than at other times. And if the whole world around you is full of people involved in it, it’s difficult to not be involved. Also, if one takes a stern attitude of non-involvement, one looks like a killjoy, and it’s not a great witness for Christ. So we “go with the flow” without making a big thing of it. We don’t do a tree (another pagan symbol!) or decorations. It happens we are away from home this year. We go to public Christmas events as we would to any other pleasant public event. We’ve left a present for our elderly, housebound, next-door neighbour at home since he will be having a dull day. (And obviously, given openings to share the Gospel we do so; we don’t push it, since our experience indicates that doesn’t help.)

If we were in India at Diwali we would be flowing along with that as well. It doesn’t mean we have any regard for Hindu gods. It’s just being a part of the culture and getting along with others. In short, all quite pragmatic.

I think what Paul is saying basically is that we are not to judge others for their variation in the details of what they believe and what they practise. Elsewhere, he talks of being “all things to all men” in order that he might save some. What really matters is the Gospel, and that after receiving it we move on to work out our Salvation. Which is exactly what you are doing right now!

So, I think one should hold fast to the fundamentals of our Faith, and hold the rest rather gently. Remember that God is a Loving Father, not a slave-driver with a whip. He loves to watch his children grow, just as any earthly father loves to watch his toddler improve his walking skills, including when the wee one falls on his backside!

I should add that we don’t have young children, so don’t have to face the additional issues which that would raise.

Dare I say, in the light of all the above, have a Happy Christmas?

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Predestination 101

 

Yes, You have a spirit!

But how did you get it?

Predestination? Let’s start from a different angle:

The belief in the existence of a Human Spirit in each one of us is widely held across many belief systems, and, of course, is also Biblical. Ideas about the Spirit after death are also commonplace. But what about before birth? How does the human spirit come in to a human body? Where, if anywhere, was it before? These are obvious questions, but questions which nobody seems to ask, never mind answer.

All agree that the Spirit is eternal. For our purpose here it is enough to accept that “eternal” means beyond time and beyond the material world.

Logically, there are only a limited number of possible answers to the questions above :

1 The spirit existed before it became part of a person

2 The spirit came into existence when the person did.

3 People’s spirits attach to them randomly.

4 People’s spirits are placed in them by God’s decision.

The answers here have a powerful bearing on what the Bible says about Predestination. Calvin’s views on this are widely accepted by Churchgoers and Atheists alike, and naturally used by the latter to portray God as an ogre. But Calvinistic views are blasphemous – they present God as cruel and unjust, when the Bible makes it clear that though He may ultimately punish, He is overwhelmingly loving, patient and forgiving.

I am certain that answers one and four above are correct and provide a proper understanding of Predestination; that is, the Spirit existed before it became part of a person, and people’s spirits are placed in them by God’s decision. Firstly, the Scripture tells us that God has “foreknowledge”. This is often taken to mean that He knows exactly what will happen in all cases ahead of time. In reality it simply means that he knows each spirit in much the same way that we know other people. We cannot predict exactly what they will do and when, but we have a good idea of the sort of thing they will do; we know if someone is honest or dishonest, whether they are selfish or generous, and so on. Given our knowledge of their motivations and thinking, we have a fair idea of what they are likely to do in any given situation. Because of God’s infinitely greater understanding, and because He sees the “naked spirit”, not clothed and camouflaged in a human body, His ability to predict future actions is streets ahead of ours. Notice that this analysis is completely compatible with Free Will. The fact that God has foreknowledge of a spirits’ inclinations before He places it in a human body in no way effects that spirit’s Free Will.

The debate about whether men have Free Will or not should never have taken place in a Biblical context. Since God is both Just, and also punishes men for wrongdoing, the conclusion that men must have Free Will is unavoidable. Those who do not accept Free Will must deny that God is Just. They are making an error that is roundly condemned by almost the oldest book in the Bible, the Book of Job. It is a long and difficult book, but those who take the time to read it properly will discover that it has a very strong message: Do not ever question the Justice of God.

The second part of the answer, that God chooses the Spirit for each new-born, completes the understanding of Predestination. God not only has deep knowledge of each individual spirit, but he also chooses the time and place that it will live on Earth. This does not mean that every single act or incident is either laid down or known in advance; but that the particular desires of each person/spirit, added to the particular environment in which it lives, makes for a highly predictable path through life.

This also explains how God justly punishes the sons of God-hating fathers to the third and fourth generations, while showing love to a thousand generations of those who love Him. For those who love God, part of the blessing is to have descendants who will receive God-loving spirits. For those who hate God, part of the punishment is to have descendants who will receive rebellious spirits. Thus everybody (every spirit) ultimately receives punishment for their own wrongdoing; there is nothing of naturally righteous people taking a beating because of what Great-Granddad did. However, because the love descends for thousands of generations, it seems a lot of rebellious spirits will be blessed on Earth in ways they don’t deserve.

See also Free Will and Predestination: No Contradiction!

 

 

 

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Hats for Women in Church? Why?

Many denominations accept without question that a woman should wear a hat in Church, or even wear some kind of bonnet at all times. The justification for this is said to be found in Corinthians 11:

4 Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head.

5 But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven.

6 For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered.

7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.

8 For the man is not of the woman: but the woman of the man.

9 Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.

10 For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels.

11 Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.

12 For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God.

13 Judge in yourselves: is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered?

14 Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?

15 But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.

16 But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God.

Paul here talks about a “covering”. The word “hat” is never used. The Greek used is katakalupto. Kalupto means covered, the prefix kata suggests “well covered” or “going down”. This is often taken to mean a veil, in which case a hat does not fit the bill. But 80% of the way through this passage Paul suddenly starts talking about “hair”, with no indication at all that he is switching to a different topic, or why. The simple answer to this apparent change is that there is no change. Paul has been talking about hair all along.  He even says “ her hair is given her for a covering”. He also asks “ Doth not even nature itself teach you” that a woman should have long hair and a man should have short hair? Nature itself does indeed teach that. Even for non-Christians it seems simply natural that women should have long hair and men should wear it short. Even though pop groups popularised long hair for men in the 1960’s, it didn’t catch on. Even though feminism and fashion promotes similarity of hair and dress for men and women, the long/short, female/male division remains the norm. Paul is actually saying something very simple, that the God-given differences between men and women should be preserved, not destroyed. Also, earlier in the passage Paul refers to it being a “shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven”; this too we should recognise as obvious. Following wars, women accused of having relations with the enemy have often had their hair shaved. For a woman it is an obvious sign of shame. In short, long hair is the only covering a woman needs.

The implications of this go well beyond the wearing of a hat in church. If a woman who is Saved wears a hat in church because she believes that is right, it is not necessarily a problem for her personally. However, the fact that this plain and simple passage is misinterpreted so consistently by so many churches shows that they are not following Scripture, but tradition. It is but one example of where the Churches and Authentic Christianity divide.

On the individual level, any person who is genuinely Christian should be leaving behind these misinterpretations as they work out their Salvation; any person whose Christianity is merely cultural will remain content with the traditions, and content with Church.

See Sorting Churchgoing Christians from Churchgoing Churchgoers for more on the divergence of Church teachings from the Bible, and its implications.

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Calvinism or Arminianism? It’s the Wrong Question!

For some people in churches who actually care about what they believe, an often heard debate is between Calvinism and Arminianisn. The question being, which is correct? It’s the wrong question for several reasons.

Firstly, both viewpoints are an attempt to put God in a box, to reduce the way He works to some simple formula that anyone can understand. We simply do not have the intelligence to fully fathom God. If we did, people would give up rock climbing or singing and design new Universes for a hobby; but most people don’t even begin to understand the Periodic Table of the Elements, never mind have the ability to design it from scratch. We are not asked to understand God, but to trust Him. If you have a five-year-old, you don’t expect it to understand everything that you do, but simply to trust you and be obedient. And the difference between your understanding and a five-year-old’s is pretty small compared to the difference between yours and God’s. We only see through a glass darkly; we should never try to reduce God to simplistic or human terms.

Second, Arminius and Calvin are mere men who lived fifteen hundred years after Christ. That’s nearly as far away in time from the Crucifixion as we are now. And as mere men, post-Biblical writers, they lack the Authority of Scripture.

Third, this type of debate invariably involves the flinging of Biblical references back and forth. This leads people to spend time reading such references along with the post-Biblical writers concerned. Their time would be far better spent reading the whole of Scripture without the thoughts of post-Biblical sources in their heads. The latter course provides a sense of what Scripture says as a whole. Such a feel for the whole of Scripture is essential, since any sound doctrine must resonate with the whole of Scripture, not just a number of verses; never mind verses which may not be accurate translations, nor quoted in proper context.

Fourth, Calvin should never be viewed as a valid commentator on the Bible, both on account of his executions of people he disagreed with and also on account of his predestination theory being blasphemous. See Calvin the Murdering Blasphemer for more on this, and more on Predestination here.

William Tyndale, who risked his life for the sake of Bible translation and ultimately gave it up burning at the stake, said he wished that “every plough boy would read it.” It doesn’t take great intelligence to walk behind a plough, but to read the Bible one would obviously need to be able to read. Tyndale clearly did not feel that any qualification was necessary to read the Bible beyond basic literacy. In these days of near universal literacy, this puts us all on the spot. God didn’t put seven-hundred and fifty thousand words into Scripture for us to pick out the ones we liked, and Tyndale didn’t give his life so that a man in a dog collar could tell us what it says. It is vital both to read the whole of Scripture for yourself, and also to avoid entanglements with the numerous and multiplying post-Biblical sources.

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GEOLOGY: The Rocks Really do Cry Out!

You will find a link below to a very short video (fourteen minutes) made by French geologist Guy Berthault over twenty years ago. Part of its significance is that it brings repeatable laboratory experiments to Geology, a science that is mainly reduced to forensic science. Forensic science, which we normally associate with crime, is science done after the event. It inevitably involves conjecture, and can never have the reliability of true science, which is entirely based on repeatable experiments. The video looks at the formation of sedimentary rock, the rock that makes up 75% of the Earth’s Crust. Sedimentary rock commonly exhibits coarse or fine stratification, also called lamination or simply stripes. This can be seen on a small scale in a single piece of rock, or on a large scale in a cliff or mountainside.

The key question about sedimentary rock is how those lines form. The standard explanation is that each line or layer is laid down separately over huge periods of time, eventually building up to several miles of thickness of rock in the Earth’s Crust. The insurmountable problem with this theory is that at all times during this supposed long period there is an exposed soft surface. This soft surface will suffer action from plants, animals, rain, frost heave, water currents or anything else happening on that surface, and therefore the neat lines will be disturbed. This standard explanation is therefore untenable. What Guy Berthault’s experiments show is that this stratification happens instantly, giving a totally opposite understanding to the standard theory. The only common ground between the two views is that the vast majority of sedimentary rocks are laid down in water. Take a little time (14 minutes) to watch the video:

The image below is the key takeaway from the video. You have now seen clearly how stratification happens instantly.

In addition to the experimental evidence, rapid formation of stratified sedimentary rock has also been observed at the site of the Mount St Helen’s Volcanic eruption in Washington State in 1980. The eruption is sometimes called “God’s Gift to Creationists” due to the clarity with which it demonstrates this.

For the big picture here, we should look at something vast like the Grand Canyon:

Here you can see sedimentary rock layers that were laid down in water, over a mile deep and extending over hundreds of miles. Globally, geologists see the same rock layers extending half way round the Earth. (These layers have been named as Jurassic, Carboniferous, etc, by Uniformitarian Geologists, who think they were formed extremely slowly during different ages.) When you add to that the fact of spontaneous stratification it should be apparent that the rocks are indeed crying out, but not about millions of years. They are testimony to a massive global flood. Jesus said that if people keep quiet, the rocks will cry out.

See more information on Mount St Helen’s and other Creation/Evolution issues see the Creation Science sites listed  here. When you have time, a good video both for revision and first-time exposure to Creation Science is the One Hundred Reasons Evolution is Stupid video, or the less humorous but more heavily scientific Evolution’s Achilles’ Heels film – three minute trailer here. Full film on the Science Page here.