December 11, 2009
From a post by Sinclair Ferguson.
“The Western world gives itself over annually to its Claus-mass or commerce-mass. We celebrate a reworked pagan Saturnalia of epic proportions, one in which the only connection with the incarnation is semantic. Santa is worshiped, not the Savior; pilgrims go to the stores with credit cards, not to the manger with gifts. It is the feast of indulgence, not of the incarnation.
It is always easier to lament and critique the new paganism of secularism’s blatant idolatry than to see how easily the church — and we ourselves — twist or dilute the message of the incarnation in order to suit our own tastes. But, sadly, we have various ways of turning the Savior into a kind of Santa Claus.”
Read the whole thing.
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Posted by joshuaotte
December 7, 2006
“Christmas, then, is not a dream, a moment of escapism. Christmas is the reality, which shows up the rest of ‘reality.’ And for Christmas, here, read Christianity. Either Jesus is the Lord of the world, and all reality makes sense in his light, or he is dangerously irrelevant to the problems and possibilities of today’s world. There is no middle ground. Either Jesus was, and is, the Word of God, or he, and the stories Christians tell about him, are lies.”
N.T. Wright, For All God’s Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church, p.2.
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Posted by joshuaotte