Category: theological rant

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An Open Letter to the Halloween Protest Organizer Yesterday.

I am having a hard time figuring out your target audience.  Jesus providentially didn’t have me stop at that intersection, as I’d have probably gotten out and never made it where I was going, but the signs I got a glimpse of at 40 MPH were:

Christmas = Jesus, Easter = Jesus, Halloween = ???

and

Avoid any appearance of evil: (didn’t catch the rest of it)

It looks to me like you are trying to convince Christians to not celebrate Halloween.  Thus making the busy intersection on Patton Avenue a less than stellar place to have the conversation.

I’d love to defend why my son is going to be dressing up (like a overly-cute giraffe) and asking the neighbors for candy this weekend, but your condescending signs that have about a 5th grade level understanding of Scripture make it difficult for me to get into the conversation.  Honestly, I have to continually check myself not to just totally blast you in this conversation.  I’m trying to love you.

Because, after all, we’re family.

I’m not mad at the participants in your little protest.  This letter is not to them.  I’m talking to the guy who organized it.  The guy who came up with (or gave the thumbs-up to) the smug, arrogant slogans on the signs, and arranged the carpool.

What is your motive, brother?  Do you want people to meet Jesus, or just become irritating religious punks?  What would be “success” for your little rally yesterday?  If people closed their doors, turned out the lights, and went to church on the only night this year that dozens of their neighbors are going to willingly ring their doorbell?  Or would success be folks pulling over to join you in your crusade against candy?

Here’s the thing.  I know that Halloween has some dubious underpinnings, and there’s a lot of occult things associated with it.  I got that.  But, to my knowledge, none of the 6-year-olds that are going to come to my house are going to head back home to sacrifice a kitten on their front lawn, or participate in a seance.  And even if they did, I could never point to my own actions as anything better.  There are two teams in this contest: (1) Bad, twisted sinners and (2) Jesus.  I’ll let you guess which team you and I are on.  For me to pretend that my not participating in the occult ritual makes me any better of a person is to totally miss the gospel.

I should further clarify.  I am OK if you feel called not to celebrate Halloween (I too was that guy once.)  What I object to is your trying to enforce what is clearly a personal conviction on others as though it were a biblical mandate, and printing signs and yelling on a street corner.  If we’d put the same amount of time, energy, and money into really engaging the non-Christians in our neighborhoods with the gospel (that Jesus has conquered sin, death, and hell on our behalf), imagine the outcome!

As for us this weekend, as long as we’ve got neighbors coming to our house, we’re going to give them candy.  And we aren’t going to skimp on it either.  We’ve got Snickers.  I’d love it if some of my non-believing neighbors’ kids were to head back home and say “That house over there gives out the best candy!”  As Christians, we ought to have the reputation of being the sweetest.  After all, our sins have been paid for by the most loving act in the history of the world.

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I’m anxious enough to sing.

I was driving today, listening to conservative talk radio (because it’s as funny as Jon Stewart during the Bush years) and all the flailing and panicking and minor-key interludes that accompany advertisements for reseeding packets and buying gold.  Then, I turned off the radio, and looked over the tops of the brilliantly colored red and yellow leaves to notice a hawk flying high on a background of white, wispy clouds.

Despite what is clearly an attack on our way of life, and the worst economic meltdown of the century, and the rise of fascist dictatorships, and eminent inflation, and the end of life as we have known it, and the rolling over of the founding fathers in their graves (according to the show I had just turned off), it was strangely peaceful.

Almost as if God is not worried.

Almost as if the designer of the beautiful leaves and amazing blue sky didn’t stop painting and creating long enough to fret about his kids worrying and thinking he’d left the throne.

God is so worried that he started painting.  Maybe we should take that hint.  We Christians ought to be so vexed and perplexed that we start singing.  The tomb is empty.

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"Negative, Depressing, and Discouraging" Verse of the Day.

One of the reasons I can’t get wholly behind Christian radio is that they often whitewash the troubling doctrines and the tough-to-swallow parts about Christianity, when they could be contextualizing those difficult doctrines and glorifying God for them.

By taking verses like Philippians 4:13 out of their horrific context (the reason you can do all things through Christ is because he was beaten half to death by religious people like me in the worst hate-crime ever perpetrated) they rob them of the gospel, and turn them into pithy truisms. And I’d argue that’s not very “safe for the whole family.”

With that in mind, periodically over the next few days and weeks I’ll be posting some verses I’ve found that will likely never be featured on your local “positive, upbeat, and encouraging” affiliate, along with reasons I think they should.

Today’s “upbeat verse” (mouse over to read the text)

Nahum 3:5-6

The fact that the Lord is against the Ninevites ought to give us great encouragement. In fact, anybody who doesn’t publicly speak out against a city like Nineveh, one “completely full of lies and pillage” ought not ever claim even partial righteousness, much less perfect holiness.

God, perfect in holiness, promises in this seemingly horrific verse to someday completely rid the world of places like Nineveh.

Then He does it in the most surprising way. God sets Christ up as a spectacle, and throws filth on him. God lifts Jesus’ “skirt” over his face, and shows to the nations his nakedness. Jesus pays the penalty for people as wicked as the Ninevites. People like me.

And by his stripes we are healed.

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Negative, Downbeat, Discouraging Verse of the day.

I started yesterday with Nahum 3:5-6

Today we’ll keep it in the Old Testament with another seemingly non-uplifting verse:

Exodus 22:22-24

There are tons of these types of verses in the books of the law that are never going to see time in a top ten list of encouraging verses.  But they should.  The encouraging thing about a provision in the law specifically calling for the protection of orphans and widows?  Those are the most marginalized segments of society.  Nobody can read that kind of provision and then turn around and say “God doesn’t care about me.”  In fact, God cares so deeply for his people that he will kill with the sword anyone who doesn’t care for even the least of them.

But the real encouragement in this verse is again that it points to Christ.  All of us, at some point in our lives, have failed to care for (and have thereby afflicted) widows and orphans.  This verse would be crushing, apart from Christ, because we find ourselves on the receiving end of God’s death penalty.  But God’s wrath was kindled against Christ, and he killed him.

And we get credited Christ’s righteousness.

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A Downright Inappropriate Verse.

This is another in my latest series (that started out as one ginormous post I decided to break into several) on verses that will never be read on Christian radio.

This one is a verse that, if you are reading out loud to your underage children, (a practice I wholeheartedly discourage with any of my writing) I’d stop.

(mouse over the verse to read it)

Ezekiel 23:20

We are not likely to see much at all from this section of Ezekiel make it to the air on Christian radio.  It’s really racy.  The translators make the wording a little softer, here, but let’s face it, Zeke was not afraid to shoot straight with the people of Israel.  He crosses well over the line of propriety and decency.  But we here in the Evangelical camp are committed to all of Scripture being God-breathed and profitable. Even the parts that make us blush.

I love (is that a weird word in this context?) this verse because in it I find a God who is not afraid to tell his prophets all the dirty stuff going on in the hearts of his people.  God doesn’t pretend like the junk isn’t there.  This is a prophecy that most commentators agree is about Israel and Judah, the chosen people of God.  And yet God doesn’t go through and clean up the storefront so that the nations won’t find out how bad things are.  No, things are pretty rough when this type of lusting is going on.  And God includes details in this verse that he could have left out.  But he didn’t. 

When Christ came and died, he was aware of what he was paying the penalty for.  All of the sin, evil and brokenness in the world.  He didn’t just pay generally for general sins.  He paid for that specific act of lust, for those specific acts of unfaithfulness.  What a Savior.

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