Belated Thoughts On Christmas: “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas”
December 1, 2011
I’m full of anticipation. Today is the day that we will clean the house and I will begin to put up the Christmas decorations. Please take note of the two pronouns we and I in the previously written sentence. Originally, the anticipation was just me, myself, and I. In our new home, it appears that I am singular in feeling absolutely juvenile and crazy about Christmas. Not store bought Christmas, but my way of celebrating Christmas. What a surprise when Paul woke me up early with coffee and announced: “After the house is cleaned, I’ll help you with the decorations.” Shut my mouth and call me speechless!
In my first marriage to Wayne, we had Christmas secrets, allowed Christmas lies, Christmas hiding places, and Christmas traditions were brought from our two families, as well as many we created ourselves. Some rules about Christmas were made up on the spot, but there were two rules that never changed: Christmas doesn’t happen until the house is clean, and if you find the Christmas hiding places and see your presents before Christmas Day, you cannot play with them until January 25th. My three boys who are now 24, 21, and 15 had great joy telling Paul’s son how they worked the whole Christmas scenario. You find the hiding places but keep your mouth shut. Then on Christmas Day you give an Oscar winning performance to Mom and Dad expressing extreme happiness and surprise.
House cleaning ended up being just the living room where the Christmas presents were located. How they cleaned their own rooms is a story in itself. One Christmas, I worked so hard at finding Christmas hiding places I forgot where I hid the stocking stuffers. I came across them accidentally a few months later. They became Easter basket surprises.
The one tradition I particularly love and will keep on doing until the day I die, or the Lord returns, is the selecting of Christmas ornaments. Every year I find a Christmas ornament for each family member that reflects a special accomplishment, event, or quirky thing that happened that year. For example, one year Ben was fascinated with wolves. I made curtains for his bedroom from a wolf print fabric. He had wolf wall paper, and had “adopted” a wolf and had its poster on the wall of his room. A beautiful Belgian handcrafted wolf head ornament was found at an out of the way shop in Beavercreek. Every year we find that special spot on the tree for the wolf and repeat the many funny and sentimental stories about Ben’s love for wolves. It was my oldest son, Tim’s delight to ask for his ornaments last Christmas to decorate the first tree he and his new bride would have. I have to say, there were so many ornaments they may have to get a bigger tree in the future. (I have their special ornament for this year ready to be wrapped.)
So, in the midst of the yawns and “here we go again” comments, what’s all of this hoop-la about, any way? Well, friends it’s about remembering and anticipation, two very biblical concepts. In the Old Testament when a significant event happened, a memorial was erected. The feasts and special days were established as memorials, remembering what God had done, and also as anticipatory celebrations, looking forward to what God was going to do for the nation of Israel. The animal sacrifice requirements were set into practice in order to help His people remember their sinfulness, their total dependency upon Jehovah, and to create an anticipation for the coming Messiah/Redeemer.
My way of celebrating Christmas can be compared to the celebrating of the feasts and memorials in the Old Testament—remembering and anticipation. As the ornaments are hung years of memories unfold. Not all of the memories are happy ones. There are sad and lonely memories, hopeful as well as hopeless ones. But it causes me to remember His faithfulness throughout the years. It fills my heart with anticipation. I look ahead to what He is going to do for us tomorrow and throughout this coming year. I anticipate His blessings and His return. The ornaments I hang and decorations I arrange are my memorials of remembrance and anticipation. I hope your Christmas will be a truly memorable one and the New Year is full of anticipation for you and your family! susan
Post Script:
It’s Beginning to Still Look a Lot Like Christmas!
January 12, 2012
Here it is almost the middle of January and all of our Christmas decorations are still up! Paul wants me to keep them up until at least February. He claims that he is going to make plans for elaborate outdoor decorations for next year! What a change from when were still dating during Christmas last year and I couldn’t get any help or enthusiasm about the holidays. I really don’t mind the decorations still being up, but elaborate outdoor decorations are up for lots of negotiation.
susan
According to New Calvinist Jean Larroux, This is What Christians Are:
This is who you are:
And this is the song that you sing:
I was searching for something I could not describe
So I stared at the sun till the tears filled my eyes
Well I thought I was empty so I paid the cost
But now that I’m found I miss being lost
I opened my heart and I let Jesus in
With the promise that I would be free of my sins
But I only felt guilty that he died on the cross
Now that I’m found I miss being lost
I don’t wanna suffer and I don’t wanna die
I want the clouds parted in an endless, blue sky
But someone up there has a different plan
Now that I’m saved I wish I was damned
The New Calvinist Takeover of Southwood Presbyterian Church, Part 22: Movies, Songs, Stories, and Denial of the New Birth
“Hence, because we are supposedly just as wicked as we were before the salvation that is completely outside of us, we can only dance with Jesus or Clem Snide…. dancing to the desire for damnation and an escape from being saved. I am incredulous that intelligent people who name the name of Christ allow this man to stand behind the sacred desk under their roof of worship.”
On January 8, JL3 continued his series on “Scandalous Obedience.” I look forward to the privilege of critiquing tomorrow’s message as well. Is that the one where a visitor is going to come and lie about how mission works flow from the unfinished work of justification? I’m not sure.
Regarding the January 8 message on Romans 6:15-23, the text is not exegeted. The message is a constant string of movies, stories, songs, and one TV show from beginning to end. And biblical concepts are reframed to produce desired outcomes. For example, “obedience” which is rarely, if ever used with a modifier in the Scriptures, is now “Scandalous Obedience.” What’s that? That’s obedience that flows from contemplating “grace” and is supposedly soooooooo much more radical than what the Bible would tell us to do subjectively via pesky imperatives. Like the sultans of New Covenant Theology constantly say: “You just can’t leap from the command to obedience.” If you let obedience be a “mere natural flow” from learning about grace in the Scriptures—your obedience will be a “Crazy Love” directly from the heart of Jesus and not the “dead letters of the law.”
No, no, we can’t have such leaping. As JL3 states in this message, obedience “flows” from focusing on “grace,” and, don’t miss this: JL3 is not called to “give you exact marching orders” in regard to what your “love” (radical obedience) “looks like.” We can only watch to see what happens after we use the Scriptures to “hear the voice of Jesus,” and “connect to His heart.” Jesus’ straightforward approach in the Sermon on the Mount of hearing the word, learning the word, and applying the word is replaced with, “hearing the voice of Jesus,” “connecting to Jesus’ heart,” and as pontificated constantly throughout the message; obedience is reframed as “dancing with Jesus.”
JL3 makes it clear in this message—there are only two kinds of dancing that Southwood parishioners can do: dancing with Jesus (his version of biblical obedience), or dancing according to who we really are as Christians. He uses the lyrics from the following song to illustrate who we are as Christians:
I was searching for something I could not describe
So I stared at the sun till the tears filled my eyes
Well I thought I was empty so I paid the cost
But now that I’m found I miss being lost
I opened my heart and I let Jesus in
With the promise that I would be free of my sins
But I only felt guilty that he died on the cross
Now that I’m found I miss being lost
I don’t wanna suffer and I don’t wanna die
I want the clouds parted in an endless, blue sky
But someone up there has a different plan
Now that I’m saved I wish I was damned
JL3 makes it clear after citing these lyrics from the song Jews for Jesus Blues by Clem Snide that this is the theology that we Christians dance to. He also said that his stories cited in this same message are further evidence of “how twisted and sick our hearts are.” Hence, because we are supposedly just as wicked as we were before the salvation that is completely outside of us, we can only dance with Jesus or Clem Snide. And how do we dance with Jesus? According to JL3: “Grace is the name on your dance card.” In other words, obedience by grace alone. The only other alternative is dancing to the tune of who we really are with the name of Clem Snide on our dance card—dancing to the desire for damnation and an escape from being saved. I am incredulous that intelligent people who name the name of Christ allow this man to stand behind the sacred desk under their roof of worship.
In an unbelievably lame attempt to manipulate the congregation, JL3 defends what he is teaching in this “sermon”; supposedly from the text, as NOT being legalism! It is clear that he thinks this congregation is all but completely brain-dead, or sees himself as intellectually superior, or both.
In the same way that he did in the first message, JL3 preys on the normative experience of most Christians in our American culture: attempting to do the right thing the wrong way, ie., stupid obedience verses intelligent obedience. JL3, in this message and many others, often refers to the Christian experience of continually falling into the same patterns of sin. Ie., stupid obedience. Of course, JL3’s ungodly teachings foster this experience further, and then enables him to use it as a citation for proof to further his evil agenda.
Not surprisingly, JL3 closed with another story. I am not going to rehearse the story, but it is a typical New Calvinist motif:
Oh well, we are all vile sinners saved by grace. You mean you won’t forgive your Christian wife for plotting to have you murdered for insurance money? Oh my! You must not understand grace and how much you have been forgiven. If you did, you would say, “I’m glad my wife tried to have me murdered; it reminds me that I would do the same thing if there was a life insurance policy on her.” No wonder you expect your elders to be perfect and object to us teaching antinomianism!
JL3 also closed with yet another either/or prism: either grace, or guilt. This goes along with New Calvinist tenet of the total depravity of the saints . We should reject guilt; grace is the answer. This is indicative of the severe danger this doctrine poses for Christians. The Bible continually presents guilt as a valuable tool in sanctification and a motivator to take objective action as a result. The cure for guilt is corrective action and a biblically trained mind, not “preaching the gospel to ourselves until we understand grace enough to vanquish guilt.” Dangerously, many New Calvinists teach that guilt is proof of a lack of understanding in regard to grace. Supposedly, if we truly understand the depths of God’s grace and the power of His forgiveness, we should never feel guilty. Guilt is a result of “living by lists,” etc. I cannot even begin to articulate how dangerous this teaching is.
This is my prayer: “Oh God, deliver the church from this evil anti-word (Romans 6:19) doctrine.”
paul
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