The Joy of Glory

Discovering endless joy in the boundless glory of God…

Category: Holidays

December 10, 2013

The Pagan Roots of Christmas?

*Disclaimer: I use the word “pagan” a lot in this blog. This is not meant as slander against anyone of any religious belief. It is a “catch-all” term for ancient poly-theistic religions.

Every December, all my social media feeds seem to fill up with various quotes, articles, and arguments that could all be summed up the same: Christmas has pagan origins, therefore Christians should not celebrate it!

Now, I’m not about to make fun of anyone who has done research, prayed, and come to this conclusion for their family. I respect your decision to disengage from a holiday that you believe is not actually a “holy-day.” However, on behalf of the many who may feel confused and torn as to whether or not Christmas celebrations equal pagan adoration… I wish to share a few thoughts that will hopefully bring some clarity to this yule time disparity (I promise I’ll stop the rhyming now).

Is Christmas Pagan?Matters of history are very complex, and one’s conclusions are often based on their interpretation of the evidence rather than bare-faced-facts. Such is the case when determining whether or not Christmas has pagan origins. As you research, you will quickly find that all scholars do not answer this question in the same way.

Some will say that pagan celebrations (primarily surrounding the winter solstice) pre-dated Christmas. Thus, Christians developed Christmas as a replacement for this false worship. Others will say that although there were pagan holidays surrounding December 25th, they were not actually large celebrations within the pagan world until after Christians began making a big deal out of the birth of Jesus. Then, in response to Christmas, pagans amped up their celebrations. It’s kind of like the whole chicken versus the egg situation.

mistletoeJust for the sake of argument, I want us to assume that Christmas did originate as a replacement for pagan celebrations (which is the most popular theory). I will also acknowledge that various Christmas symbols have roots in pagan worship…for example the yule log, mistletoe, and even the O’ Christmas tree with its lovely branches. So, the question is…if we acknowledge pagan roots for Christmas and much of its content, is it ok for Christians to still celebrate this holiday?

In a word…yes. At least I believe so.

I’m not saying that believers in Jesus HAVE to celebrate Christmas! If you have come to a different conviction, I trust that you will follow the Holy Spirit’s leading for your family. But, if you are on the fence or have nothing to say when people bring up the pagan origins of Christmas… I would like to give you a little food for thought.

There are four basic things that have led me to the conviction that it is ok for Christians to observe Christmas. 1) The nature of Christianity in relation to paganism, 2) The practice of Jesus, 3) The value of sacred time, and 4) The fact that Christmas doesn’t have pagan origins (just hang-on…I will explain).

1) The nature of Christianity in relation to paganism.
Our God created all things, therefore, all things belong to him. God doesn’t hijack what belongs to pagans… pagans hijack what belongs to God. All throughout Scripture, God is constantly taking back things that have become a part of pagan worship, conquering them, redeeming them and using them to display his own glory! We see this from the very beginning of the Bible. The creation story of Genesis 1 is told in the typical form of an ancient creation myth. Does this mean that the writers of Scripture are not very creative and have to rip off story-telling forms from other nations like Babylon? No. God takes false stories from competing world-views and redefines them with truth!

We can also see this principle in the Israelites Exodus from Egypt. God brings ten plagues upon the Egyptians before Pharaoh is willing to release the Hebrews, and each plague is designed to reveal God’s power over one (or more) of the Egyptian gods. The Lord is conquering/taking back Egyptian religious symbolism and using it to display his own sovereign power!

Again, we could look at something like the tabernacle/temple and the system of sacrifices set in place by God’s law. There, we find many parallels with pagan temple worship, but God has completely redefined their meaning. Instead of a system where worshippers try to work their way towards appeasing some far-off, impersonal deity, God PROVIDES a way for sinful people to approach him in his holiness and know him intimately-lovingly-and personably.

Disc_Sol_BM_GR1899.12-1.2Again and again, we see God taking things which “belonged” to the pagan world and redefining them with truth. Christmas fits this pattern. A pagan festival celebrating the birth of Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun, was conquered by the truly unconquerable SON and redefined to celebrate his birth! Christmas isn’t a surrender to paganism, but a conquering of it! Christmas replaces lies with the loving truth of Christ! It replaces the worship of false gods with the wonder of true glory… the glory of Jesus!

ChristmasTreeFurther, the fact that “pagan” symbols have been redefined with Christian meaning is not syncretistic (the blending of two religions) as is often alleged. No. It would be syncretism if Christians used Christmas to celebrate the birth of Jesus while simultaneously bowing down before their Christmas tree to pay homage to mother earth for the eternal life she gives represented by the evergreen! However, it is not syncretistic to redefine the Christmas tree to symbolize that Jesus, the light of the world, would come and give his life on a tree (the cross) and turn that tree into a symbol of light and life.

If it is not ok to redefine pagan symbols in this way, then we may need to reconsider our use of the cross itself as it originally stood as a symbol of death for traitors against a pagan empire. Christmas is a glorious celebration of the fact that Jesus has won is currently ruling, seated at the right hand of God “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And [God] put all things under [Jesus’] feet and gave him as head over all things…” (Ephesians 1:20-22)

2) The practice of Jesus.
I’ve heard some people express concern over celebrating Christmas because it is not in the Bible. The events are there, but the celebration is not… mind you the same thing is true about Easter (and it also has pre-dating pagan Spring-time celebrations, but that’s a whole different blog).

menorah1All this is true. However, even Jesus observed holiday celebrations that were not commanded by God in Scripture. In John 10:22 we read, “At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter…” Anyone want to guess the Hebrew word for “dedication”? That’s right…Chanukah! This winter feast has its roots in events that took place between the Old and New Testaments. It is not one of the feasts that God laid out for his people in the law. Yet, Jesus traveled to Jerusalem at this time and like all other Jews, he would have participated in the festivities. Why? That leads me to the next thought…

3) The value of sacred time.
It is true that every moment of our lives is sacred to the Lord. However, we all find it useful to set aside certain times for specific focuses. For instance, every day my wife and I strive to better our marriage, but we also set aside specific time to go away together and really invest in one another. We also have special days of celebration within our marriage… like our anniversary. These are very valuable times of focus for us. Likewise, I believe there is value in setting aside special times for specific focuses in our relationship with Christ.

This is what Advent/Christmas is for me and my family. It is a set-aside, sacred time in which we focus on Christ’s first advent and look forward to his second advent. This has an awesome impact on my daily living throughout the year. This is the way Old Testament feasts were designed by the Lord, namely, to serve as intense reminders for his people of particular events and truths they needed to continually set before themselves year after year. I think this is why Jesus himself would not have had an issue with Chanukah. Even though it was not commanded by the Lord, it was a time when Jews reminded themselves of God’s faithfulness… something that none of us need to forget.

I believe Advent is a wonderful, yearly reminder to live in light of the coming of Christ. He came and he shall come again! Live in light of both his comings!

4) Christmas doesn’t have pagan origins.
christ centered christmasAnd now the one you have been waiting for or perhaps you skipped down to read first. Here is what I mean by “Christmas doesn’t have pagan origins…”

No matter what kind of festivals predated Christmas, and no matter what practices were incorporated into the Noel celebration…the origin, the beginning, the root of the Christian celebration of Christmas has always been a desire to refocus time on Jesus. The beginning of Christmas itself was always Christ. Does that make sense?

It doesn’t matter what once happened on December 25th in the pagan world… that is not the origin of celebrating Jesus’ birth. It may have affected the choice of date and some of the symbols, but the origin, the starting point, the beginning place was and is a desire to lift up Jesus as the only true king and savior of the world.

So, from my family to yours, I hope you feel free to celebrate the savior on December 25th… for one day, in the future, he will be the only one celebrated on every day that has ever been the set aside for a pagan worship… and everything that has ever served as a pagan symbol will be redeemed for its original purpose of pointing to the glories of the God who took on flesh, was born, lived, died, buried, and is alive forevermore… Jesus!

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June 16, 2013

A Nagaland Father’s Day…

*In 2010, I was on mission in India during Father’s day. The following is a reflection I wrote shortly after what I experienced that morning…

Being away from your family stinks. Being away from your family on Father’s Day really, really bites. Thus, I found myself throwing a pity party as I sat down on the back row of Naga Christian Fellowship in Pune, India… nearly half-a-world away from my beautiful wife and two, precious, little ones.

It was hot and humid inside the old church building. The sound of the worship leader was being pumped through a system that was not fitted for the room we were in, and, as a result, I couldn’t really understand anything that was being sung or said. I found it hard to focus, so my mind occupied itself with thoughts of my family.

I was completely oblivious as to what was happening when the Pastor called for all the fathers to come to the front in order to be recognized. My friends immediately began encouraging me to go forward, but I declined… of course this was nothing more than a sulking expression of my self-pity… in which I was wallowing.

Then, Eddie Aldape, the father of the missionary family with whom I am staying, motioned for me to follow him down the center aisle. What choice did I have now? I hobbled out of my row and began the long, dreary walk to the front of the room. Each step was fraught with agonizing pain as I had just completed a fundraising 100km-walk-a-thon the day before. Further, I was embarrassed to be standing in front of complete strangers… I simply felt out of place.

Then everything changed…

Naga spearsA young Naga girl approached me with a pin of some type. I thought to myself, “Great! A stereo-typical Father’s Day flower.” Yet, as she pinned it upon my shirt I could tell that this was no flower. There, attached to the top of my shirt-pocket, were two decorative spears fastened across one another. Eddie leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Those are Naga spears.”

“They’re what?” I asked. Eddie repeated himself and began to explain to me the meaning behind the small pendant that was resting upon my chest.

Nagaland is a state of Northeast India. The Naga people were originally tribal headhunters and were greatly feared. In the late 1800’s there were a number of missionaries trying to travel into China, but were prevented for one reason or another. Instead of giving up, many brought the gospel of Christ to the people of Northern India.

Some of these missionaries set their hearts upon the headhunters of Nagaland. Without regard for their own lives, these men and women of faith took the Gospel to people who normally removed the heads of outsiders. They shared the love of Christ and the message of the Gospel… many Nagas believed.

As I stood at the front of that church, hearing that story… my eyes were slowly opened to what was truly happening in that room. There I stood, before a gathering of nearly 400 Naga believers lifting their hearts to the one true God… and the reason for it all was pinned upon my chest.

Because faithful men and women of God took the gospel into the midst of danger… because they did not count their lives to be of greater value than the furtherance of the gospel… because they abandoned all this world has to offer for the sake of Christ… because they did not fear the spears of the Nagas… because God worked through them by his power to bring many Nagas to faith… because of all of this, I was in that place… over a hundred years later… caught in the midst of rapturous worship with Naga spears, now a symbol of friendship, fixed over my heart.

I began to fight back tears as I heard a chorus playing softly in the background… “Thank you for the gift you gave.” This song had been playing since I left my seat, but I had not noticed its lyrics until that moment. My heart cried out to the Lord… “Yes! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for the gift you gave! Thank you for the gift of your Son, Jesus, whom you gave for the world! Thank you for the gift of the missionaries you sent to the Naga people! Thank you gift of my brothers and sisters with whom I am worshipping right now! Thank you! Thank you!”

My attention was brought back down to earth for a moment as I heard the Pastor read from Psalm 22:4, “In You our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them.” He began to talk about how great of a testimony it was for David to be able to proclaim such words about his forbearers and we should desire that our children be able to say the same of us.

While I greatly appreciated the thoughts he was sharing, my mind journeyed in a slightly different direction. I began to praise the Lord for my faithful fathers in the faith. For those who have taken the gospel in to the deepest, darkest, and most dangerous places on earth. I stood among a church whose very existence testified to the faithfulness of my spiritual fathers… and more importantly… their presence testified to the faithfulness of my heavenly Father.

He is faithful to use his Gospel to transform people… He used it to transform Nagaland… and He has used it to transform me.

In that moment… I realized that I was not away from my family on Father’s day… I was standing in their very midst. I am nearly brought to tears now, in the midst of typing, as I think about the astounding reality that I am eternally bound to these believers through the one Savior of all mankind, Jesus Christ. I have never felt the bond of spiritual brotherhood so strongly as in that moment. Jesus’ words from Matthew 12, which I had read that very morning, flooded into my mind…

“‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’”

I was completely overwhelmed by the sense of family in that room. I still missed my wife and children, but now I missed them for a new reason. I did not miss them because we are bound together on some molecular level by DNA… no. Now I missed them because the very blood of Jesus Christ has cemented our hearts together as part of a world-wide spiritual family with one Father over us all. My heart longed to share this moment, this reality with them.

The Pastor prayed for all of the fathers standing before him and we headed back to our seats. I found that I couldn’t quit looking at the two small spears resting upon my shirt. In them I saw an eternal bond that I shared with these people I barley knew… and I now felt a new, deeper bond with those to whom I am the closest.

I walked all the way back down the aisle, but now I had forgotten the pain in my feet… my mind was occupied with thoughts of my beautiful wife and two precious children. I felt as though my love for them had grown deeper in ways that I did not think possible. At the same time, I was overwhelmed by the fact that this newfound love seemed to be spreading outside of biological boundaries and engulfing all of my brothers and sisters in Christ.

I shuffled down my row… no longer thinking of myself, for my pity had been replaced by joy. With my stereo-typical smirk, I sat down… surrounded by my family.

 

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May 30, 2013

Dads of Steel

*Disclaimer: I am by not a perfect father! Far from it! In the post below, I do not mean to portray myself as the perfect dad or even as an expert on fatherhood. These are thoughts from one broken father to others.

fathers-day-2011I’ve been thinking about fatherhood a lot lately. And that makes sense…I mean my third baby just entered the world! On top of that, father’s day is just around the corner (June 16).

Growing up within the church, father’s day was always somewhat confusing for me…especially when compared with mother’s day. Perhaps it was my own limited experience, but it always seemed like mother’s day was devoted to the praise/encouragement of mothers…while father’s day was equally devoted to pointing out the failures/scolding fathers.

Even as a kid I felt like this was little unfair. Something was amiss and needed to be rectified. I honestly do not believe the remedy to the situation is simply to turn father’s day into a time to praise/encourage fathers in the same way we do for mothers. When it comes to time the gathered church spends together, our focus should always be Christ!

I’ve seen way too many mother’s/father’s day services (and many other holidays for that matter) that were void of Jesus! I am not saying that we do not even acknowledge holidays, but we should do so in a way that points people to Jesus. We need to point mothers and fathers (and everyone else present) to the sufficiency of Christ in all things, including parenting! Jesus must remain the center of our worship!

I think this is the real problem with father’s day…we have put fathers in the place reserved for Jesus, and whenever we do that they will always fail and we will always feel the need to scold them!

We have come to expect dads to be the hero when there is only one hero…Jesus!

man-of-steel-logoI do not believe it is a coincidence that the highly  anticipated summer blockbuster “Man of Steel” is releasing on June 14th…two days before father’s day. A fun movie about the superhero of superheroes…superman. This is just the kind of movie a dad might take his kids to see (depending on their age of course), and there has always been an emphasis on father figures in the superman mythos via Jor-El and Jonathan Kent.

The real irony of this movie’s release coinciding with father’s day is that, I believe, it highlights the problematic “Christian” view of fatherhood. We expect dads to be supermen. They are to be their kids hero! Perfect men of incredible spiritual stature!

We expect dads of steel!

Most kids naturally look up to their dads as if they are superhuman and, all too often, the “Christian” version of fatherhood only feeds this notion. Yet, all fathers are far from perfect and so having “superman” expectations only sets them up for failure. So what can be done? What should dad’s do? And, what should we do? What should the church be encouraging and calling fathers toward?

The true calling of fatherhood is not to be a hero, but to point to the only hero…Jesus.

I try to consistently acknowledge my shortcomings to my children, be honest when I fail, ask for forgiveness, and then point them to the one who will never fail them! Father’s should turn the shortcomings into opportunities to point to the one who never falls short! This is truly fathering your children towards the perfect heavenly father.

We need to tell our fathers…you don’t have to be a dad of steel! Just be a dad who is real! Real about who you are and who Jesus is!

I think that if  men heard the message, the call (on father’s day and everyday) that you’re not to be the perfect hero for your kids, but you are to point the one who is, then we would see fathers move from feeling discouraged and defeated to energized and empowered! Fathers need to hear that they are not supposed to rely on their own strength to be dads of steel, but that God has provided his strength, through the Holy Spirit, for them to be dads who are real.

IMG_0786Through his power, they can be fathers who really love Jesus, fathers who really love their kids, fathers who really admit when they’re wrong and ask for forgiveness, fathers who really love their wives, fathers who really are committed, fathers who really show vulnerability, fathers who really pray, fathers who really know that true fatherhood is not perfection, but pointing to Jesus.

Be encouraged fathers! We don’t need dads of steel…we need dads who are real.

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