this post was originally about the observation of the "holiday" that many seemingly sane people celebrate every October 31st. it served to question our culture's preoccupation with death and even discuss a few (of the many) pagan vestiges now commonplace in our everyday lives - customs absorbed largely by the catholic church's extremely deficient approach (and that's putting it nicely) of "evangelizing" ancient cultures by simply altering pagan character names and feast days in an effort to annex their lands and build a global (or, in the greek, katholikos) kingdom at any cost. it's pretty interesting stuff, really. finally, it concluded with my thoughts on the apparent surge in popularity of the tenets of paganism (if not paganism overtly) in America and where we might be headed in a very short time as a country - not solely because of these issues but, simply illustrating that they are symptoms of something far worse.
then i realized that is was just too heavy. i'm sure (all two of) my readers didn't want to trudge through all that stuff. thankfully, i can edit these little posties. so, i now conclude with the scariest thing i've ever seen in my entire life... and that's right here.
10.31.2007
let's celebrate!
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Right on brother. Although, you didn't really expound, you hit the nail head. Every year, I'm amazed all over again at exactly how excited people get about this day.
Well, all "three" of us believe and know that Christ was born. When is more the question that arises in this post in dealing with celebration. How do you feel about "Christmas" and the winter solstice/festivals and all of that?
well, see, for me the solstice or Christ's mass or Christmas is really exactly the same thing but for entirely different reasons. i don't judge anyone for observing these days (as Paul instructs us not to) and i don't feel the Church needs any more division than it already suffers from. my only wish is that Christ's followers would research their faith and the faiths of others and gain a better understanding of why we behave the way we do. everyone wins, really. i'm sure it won't translate well as a comment on a blog but, we can try it out and go deeper if you guys want.
Christmas, is a product of the exact same mechanism that brought us halloween - catholic ambition. all of it's trappings: the tree, wreaths, mistletoe, yule log, jolly old elf, 12 days, etc. can very easily be traced back to Druidic or other customs the catholic church absorbed in an effort to dominate indigenous people groups under the guise of building a "holy empire". from Yul to Tammuz to the sun itself, there are any number of gods worshipped by ancient cultures during the winter solstice that became "Christ" and later, even santa, once the catholics had their program under way. it's torture trying to articulate this in text for me as i've had this discussion with countless people and it works much better in a question and answer format. we can definitely go deeper if you guys are interested. and i'm not hurt at all if it's not revisited.
one thing i should point out is that i'm very "pro" Christmas in secular circles and "anti" in Christian circles - i'll expalin. i completely support any type of Christmas display, be it santa or a nativity scene or whatever, in the public arena. i think that Muslims should be able to put up Ead decorations if they want, Jews should put up Hanukkah displays and Christians or non-Christians should put up whatever they like. while i might not agree with the particular ideas those holidays are based on, i'm far from approving of the ridiculous and unconstitutional stunts the ACLU and their ilk try to pull in the name of tolerance or whatever they choose to call it that week. when speaking to a believer, i share what i believe about Messiah and Christams, not in a legalistic or judgemental way but, in a way that might cause them to challenge their own beliefs - or even mine - in an effort to get them to go deeper in their faith - in Truth.
i should also probably say that we as a family celebrate Yom Yeshua (roughly, Jesus Day)every year at the time of Christams. it's essentially our celebration of the Magi seeking Messiah and bestowing gifts on him. it's a great platform for us to discuss Yeshua through the eyes of scripture and prophecy with our daughter and she basically gets the best of both worlds. i can go into some of the things we do if you guys are interested but, long story short is - we're not lying to our child about some omniscient being who she can't see, who keeps record of, and rewards good and evil, can traverse the entire earth in one night, knows when you're awake or asleep and then, having her learn that this very God-like figure is a complete lie built on centuries of pagan customs - only to find out later that she might have trouble believing in God. it's sick to me that parents, or any adult (in the name of "fun") would tamper with a child's innocence and faith like that. if they want the child to experience a "magical" childhood, teach them about the Magi (where the word comes from)and about the secret things of Father and our glorious Messiah. teach them things they can build their lives upon - not pagan fables. life's too short and God is too good to us for us to have any place in our lives for paganism and the occult. that's my take on it in brief - you guys take it from here.
Naw Luke it's good. I appreciate the commentary very much.
That's what's up about Yom Yeshua. I hear you on all of these points. My bringing it up was simply because many people speak of Halloween without knowing about the winter solstice/festival/catholic imperialism ish that deals with Dec. 25. I felt like you knew about that so I was wondering how you felt about it. Word!
cool, thanks Brother. yeah anytime on that stuff. not in judgement - just Truth y'know? i've been steeped in hot debates for the last week (and these are mostly friends from church giving me hassles) - it's nuts. God is sovereign and will be magnified. Yeshua is King to the uttermost, either way.
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