cent hits the T-fan

Because it's just not Christmas without a good bit of controversy here at the blog, and today's the last day of 2007, I'm going to comment on the comments a of a fella named Turretinfan (T-Fan for short) and his opinions about the celebration of Christmas, as summed up in his last comment on the subject here at the blog. He can have the last word in the meta after I give him the business here.

As we kick this off, let me say this: one is not a damned sinner if one doesn't celebrate Christmas. One is simply a killjoy – someone who is afraid of enjoying the Gospel because someone might confuse that with the sins of prostitutes, publicans or (in the case of T-Fan) Catholics.

Now, to contest that, he says this:

If your own weekly services are not really joyful, don't assume that the same is true for us.

I view your remarks on joy as base slander, though I'm sure you don't intend them that way.

No, I intend them to say that your view is top-heavy at best, and baseless at worst, seeing sin where there is none, and has stripped down the cultural implications of the Gospel to the place where every day is just its own thing – in spite of your protestations (below) to the contrary.

"Don't make me celebrate Christmas" is one of the most bizarre allegedly-theological conclusions that has come out of the so-called internet "puritan" movement.

However, in the spirit of giving T-Fan the last word, I offer him the opportunity to tell us how to make every day a celebration of the birth of Christ which is actually a "celebration" and not a "slogan".

I don't know from where you made up your list of other things we'd have to stop doing. Number 2 on your list (well, what would be number 2, if you numbered your list) is out, because (a) Rome itself no longer emphasizes Sunday worship, and (b) Scripture requires it.

For those who didn't follow the meta, I said this to T-Fan there:

Your post from Friday at 6:50 really stuns me. Here's a short list of things that we have to stop doing if we have to stop doing all the things "Rome" does to make sure we don't confuse people about what the Gospel is:

-- stop calling our list of holy books "the Bible"
-- stop worshipping on Sundays
-- eradicate all iconography of crosses from our architecture and art

Do those strike you are a little over the top? If so, why?

Now, in that, Rome authoritatively says this (esp. paragraphs 1166-1167) and this (esp. paragraph 1343) about worshipping on Sundays. And it is important to note that Rome views "Sunday" as beginning the night before, so services conducted anytime between Saturday evening and Sunday morning are wholly in-line with this catechetical teaching. That's half of his argument lost simply on misinformation.

As to his point of Scripture "requiring" Sunday worship, it does no such thing. Scripture underscores by repetition the relationship of the "first day" to Christ's resurrection repeatedly, but never mandates that the Christian assembly be made primarily on the first day. Moreover, Acts 5 indicates that the disciples were meeting "every day"; Acts 16 indicates that Paul and his traveling companions assembled on Saturday to pray (which you may dismiss as a remnant of their Judaism, but it speaks to when those first believers would join together as "not only on Sunday"); 1 Cor 11 makes no mention of how often the church is to come together for the Lord's supper, and certainly mentions no day on which to do so; likewise 1 Cor 14 does not name a day in which the church should assemble for preaching and edification.

Let me say this as carefully as possible: I am well aware that Dr. John MacArthur makes a very vigorous case for why we do assemble on Sundays for preaching and singing and "church" (to use short hand). But his argument there is anti-sabbatarian, and stands firmly on the ground that we are doing something in selecting the day which underscores what God has done and not because there is a scriptural command to meet on this day.

What this leaves T-Fan with is his affirmation and no evidence. Is it good to assemble on Sundays? I think it is – but since it is not commanded by Scripture, and it does lead to confusion with the Catholic rite which is conducted on the same day ever week, why do we not abandon that to avoid confusion with Catholicism?

I'd be interested in his explanation, if he has one.

As to Number 1, there is already a relatively clear notion in the public's mind that the "Protestant Bible" and the "Catholic Bible" are two different things. No real concern of confusion there.

I'd be willing to concede such a thing if that's what these different sets of books were called – on the cover or whatever. But that's not hardly the case.

Factually, I can tell you that Ingram Books (the #1 distributor of books to retail, and the largest distributor of Christian books through its subsidiary Spring Arbor) carries in-stock over 4100 distinct bibles. Of those, 244 are designated "catholic" by CPC category, but only 100 actually have the word "catholic" on the front cover.

Whatever the "public" believes is "clear", what is true is that to say that someone wants to read the "Bible" is somewhat open to misunderstanding – at least as much as celebrating with parties and presents can be misunderstood to be bending a knee to Roman pontifical edicts. This is the root of my question to T-Fan, and it seems that he thinks that saying, "well, I think most people know the difference" is satisfactory for the Bible – that is, whether or not one has an actual Bible, which is a critical notion for those who espouse sola scriptura – but not satisfactory when it comes to celebrating the incarnation of Christ.

It's an interesting opinion. It needs some work to be credible. Especially when you tack on this bit of speculation:

Also, there is a problem that there is not really a substitute word in English. We could use the term "Scriptures" but that word is also used by the Catholics.

One would think that if the problem of confusion is such a massive issue as to impose upon one's conscience for the sake of not getting the Gospel confused, one needs to be a little more innovative. "Bible" only means "Book", and its Latin name – Biblia Sancta – means "holy book". We could call it the "Holy Book" with absolutely no innovative energy being expended – and doing that would follow the same premise as T-Fan's logic for abandoning Christmas.

I wonder why he doesn’t advocate for something like that? Could it be that he sees how preposterous that example is, but he can't bring himself to admit that abandoning Christmas is frankly the same kind of error in judgment?

See: what's at stake in these two first examples is the question of "what are the mediums of culture which exist for us to say what we mean rather than just mutter on in Greek?" When we say "Bible", people hear "holy book"; when we say Christmas, T-Fan says they hear, "holy day of obligation mandated by the Pope for the sake of performing the Mass," when in fact they hear, "Good tidings to you and all of your kin" – and we know this because they are out there buying stuff for parties and gift-giving, not staying at home fasting to make sure they can take the host on an empty stomach.

As to Number 3, I don't see any particular problem eliminating the iconography of the cross from our architecture. Our art? I'm not sure what you mean there. Plenty of both Reformed and Fundamentalist non-Reformed Baptistic churches avoid the iconography of the cross.

Since you don't know "what I mean here", let me work it out for you.

What we could do is canvass all the small, unintentional churches we can find – the ones which have a rented building that is in a shopping strip, or are in a temporary building which they are borrowing until they can buy a plot of land to build a worship center, and we could use that to say, "wow – there are no crosses on 95% of these buildings!"

Or we could look at 100 intentional examples of protestant architecture – places where someone built a church building for the sake of putting a church in it for the assembly of the believers. Like these:


Shadow Hills Baptist


First Redeemer

Or on the smaller scale:





You know: the cross. Not a crucifix with a shattered man on it: the cross. The most ancient symbol of our faith. Should we remove it from the public eye by removing it from our churches in order to make sure no one confuses us with those pesky Catholics?

It is your answer to that question, and the ones above it, which leads me to accuse you of mopery. So when you say this:

Your assertion, sir, that: "You are, in fact, wanting mopery in order to avoid popery. You want no sign that we smile, and no opportunity by which we can show people something they can taste and see as goodness -- especially if it's a time when they would have been enjoying themselves."

is false. I repudiate that sentiment, and if you continue to repeat your assertion that such is my position, you are illustrating that you are not hearing what I'm saying.

That's very daunting language, I am sure – the problem is that you do advance mopery – you advance the elimination of all kinds of cultural and social means of interaction in order to do what Jesus told us to do.

I'd encourage you to reconsider putting words in my mouth, let alone avatars in my avatar window.

There's no need to put words in your mouth: you say everything that needs to be said in order to discredit your view. The clowning merely points out that you are unwilling to see how bad your logic works out in real time and space.

Happy New Year – unless the Catholics are having mandatory mass tomorrow, in which case forget I said anything. We don’t want to be confused with them, right?

On-going meta format issues

Here's the deal: technologically-useful browsers (Opera, Safari, Firefox) allow the web-designer to define a "div" element with a "minHeight" attribute, so if the "div" object has content that is, say, less than a certain number of characters, it doesn't collapse into wicked obsurity and devastate the layout. MSIE 6.x doesn't.

The way MSIE works around that is that the attribute "height" actually operates as a "height not less than" attribute, and if the content is larger than the height, the height exands. Problematically, no other modern browser is that lazy. "Height: 90px;" in firefox gives you a box which is 90px high, and if your content goes to 91px, it crunches your content.

This has nothing to do with the Gospel. This has to do with web design.

Anyway, it is now working in MSIE. The question is if it now works in other browsers. You be the judge.

...for example...

The world is watching, and a fist fight breaks out.

Nice. Good thing they were working on Christmas.

The Christmas thing

This topic just kills me – because it goes completely haywire! I mean, that's why I posted the Piper link: who's going to argue with Piper?

Well, obviously somebody. And this feels like explaining the punch line of a joke to me, so if I seem a little put out by this, I am.

[1] It is frankly bizarre to associate what happens these days on December 25th (and the 4-ish weeks prior to 12/25) in the English-speaking world with Roman Catholicism in the theological, ecclesiological, or worshipological senses. That is: there's nobody I know who's celebrating Christmas because the day itself turns out to be more holy – except, of course, some Catholics. The rest of us are considering that Christ, in order to die for our sins in accordance with Scripture, had to be born. Which leads me to ...

[2] ... the obvious objection that taking a day and setting it apart to reconsider the birth of Christ is making something holy which God does not – it's a sort of Regulative principle objection. But here's the problem: if one doesn’t read the whole Bible every day and think about the whole thing every day, one is doing by default what one is criticizing others for doing with intention.

You know: you can't mull over the whole of biblical and systematic theology in any kind of thorough or even careful way in the 14 hours you're awake one day and then repeat the process again tomorrow and (for example) hold down a job or take a bath. So breaking the particulars of Biblical and systematic theology up over time – for example, into 52 weeks like the Heidelberg Catechism, or into a "church year", or into a daily reading plan – makes practical sense.

Because you have a human brain with human constraints, you're going to cause each day to be different in some way because you really don’t have a choice. The question turns out to be whether or not you're going to have an intentional way of, as the Bible says, being transformed by the renewal of your mind, or if you're just going to sort of stumble through it.

[3] And then the question comes up, "well, are you saying I must celebrate Christmas? Isn’t that legalism and violating my Christian liberty?" I think the fair comparison – the clear-sighted comparison – is to evangelism, because ultimately that's what I am talking about here (which we will get to in a minute).

You know: when you're standing in the waiting line at the Olive Garden with your family or whatever, I have no qualms saying that you should talk to someone there and try to get the Gospel in as much as it is possible. You should. My guess – and you can argue about the statistics behind this guess if you're that kind of person – is that someone in that waiting line is a lost person who has a sin problem that ends up being a hell problem, and is someone the Gospel is given to be declared to. If you believe in hell and in the only savior of men, you should find a way to talk about the Gospel.

Should. Expresses obligation, propriety, or expediency. Disciples of Christ have an obligation to express the Gospel. Even at the Olive Garden, which may or may not have some historical association with the Roman Catholic church particularly by being an Italian restaurant [sic].

Now, if that's true – and I'd love to see the person who's willing to say that Christians do not have this kind of obligation – how much more obvious is this same obligation on a day which, in the English-speaking world, bears the name of Christ and the whole world is frankly stopped because of it. Last year I published a harmony of the Gospels here at the blog – what if we intentionally gathered as families with both the saved and the sinners and read something like that rather than treating the day as if it's just another day, just like every other day, even though Wall Street and the banks are closed and everyone is frankly looking for something to do?

Opportunities like that don’t just fall out of the sky, especially in a post-Christian culture.

[4] And to connect the dots here between [2] and [3], one might say, "well, cent, I actually do read the Heidelberg Catechism to my kids and we follow the three forms of unity, so my obligation to bringing up my children in the way they should go – evangelizing them, if you will – is taken care of, so your beat-down on me for not observing this day is uncalled for."

Yeah, no. And pay attention, because this is where you imaginary objectors really get my goat.

Paul said this:

"All things are lawful," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful," but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.

and again:

For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

I agree with you that one perfectly "lawful" means of doing your Christian life is the consideration (as in our example) of the Heidelberg Catechism. Where I part company with the imaginary objector is that you are straining out gnats and swallowing camels, and you have a really big problem if Rob Bell understands something which you do not.

I want you to imagine something: imagine that the whole English-speaking world stops for one day – and by "stops" I mean that there's not even any sports on the TV worth mentioning. Everybody stops working for one day. And for the most part, everyone has this yearning to be with family – even the most weird feel like this day bears some kind of meaning in that it would be good to be with family just this one day.

And on that day, the disciples of Christ get up in the morning, read Heidelberg Catechism Week 51 (ironically, "about the Lord's Day", speaking of holding one day above another), and wander off to work to show those idolatrous Catholics we don't bend a knee to the Pope, carn-sarn it.

Let me suggest to you that this is not only an avoidance of a right-minded "should" for a sort of smug and intellectually-selfish "ought", but it is completely tone-deaf to the real spirit of Christ who became flesh and took up residence among us, himself God, who is in closest fellowship with the Father, who has made God known.

Christmas is the opportunity to make God known, people – particularly, to make Christ known. You have the liberty to do that in an obscure or untranslatable way, and you have the liberty to do that in a public and sort of lavish and joyous way – one which reflects your personal response to this God who poured Himself out, took on the form of a servant, allowed himself to be laid in a feeding trough, and came to die for people who deserved themselves to be put to death.

You can play baseball when the sun is shining, or you can play your PSP in your basement and wonder why you don’t know any real people. What you can't do is pretend that your liberty is more valuable than spending your liberty on your responsibilities.

[5] And that leads to my last point (because this is page 3 in WORD), which is to make it clear that what's at stake here is the declaration of the Gospel of God to the lost by all means possible. That's the real "culture war". You have to consider what it means to have a public faith at some point in your travels through sanctification.

Some people want to tell you that the only meaningful way to have a public faith is by church-community and church-worship. That is: somehow the only way, or perhaps the most efficacious way, of demonstrating a public faith is in liturgy in community. And we have to grant something here: depending on what you mean by "liturgy" and "efficacious", and depending on how important you rate the Lord's table and baptism, they have a point.

But if our worship stops at the last pew in the chapel, so to speak, we're just fans. We're not playing the game: we're just watching it.

You are called to do more than watch the game, reader. You are called to run the race, and fight the good fight, and be someone who's not just shadow-boxing in vain. You are called to be a spectacle for the sake of the Gospel, and that doesn’t happened behind closed doors.

Merry Christmas.

PROGRAMMING NOTE

The Meta is going to behave strangely for the next 24 hours or so as I try to fix the issues with the "PREVIEW" button. You will find that the meta alternates between a generic blank template and the one with the exciting comic art background.

Do not be alarmed. No comments will be injured.

Should Christians celebrate Christmas?

Piper on Christmas.

I sympathize with those who want to be rigorously and distinctly Christian, who want to be disentangled from the world and any pagan roots that might lie beneath our celebration of Christmas, but I don't go that route on this matter because I think there comes a point where the roots are so far gone that the present meaning doesn't carry the pagan connotation anymore. I'm more concerned about a new paganism that gets layered on top of Christian holidays.

Here's the example I use: All language has roots somewhere. Most of our days of the week—if not all—grew out of pagan names too. So should we stop using the word "Sunday" because it may have related to the worship of the sun once upon a time? In modern English "Sunday" doesn't carry that connotation, and that's the very nature of language. In a sense, holidays are like chronological language.

Christmas now means that we mark, in Christian ways, the birth of Jesus Christ. I think the birth, death and resurrection of Christ are the most important events in human history. Not to mark them in some way, by way of special celebration, would be folly it seems to me.

I remember I lived next door to somebody back in seminary who didn't celebrate birthdays for their kid. The idea was, partly, that all days were special for their kid. But if all days are special then it probably means that there are no special days. Yet some things are so good and precious—like anniversaries, birthdays, and even deaths—that they are worthy of being marked. How much more the birth and death of Jesus Christ!

It's really worth the risk, even if the date of December 25 was chosen because of its proximity to some kind of pagan festival. Let's just take it, sanctify it, and make the most of it, because Christ is worthy of being celebrated in his birth.

There is no point in choosing any other date. It won't work.

You oughta know better

So I'm in my bookstore on Christmas Eve day, and we're rockin'. I mean, best day before Christmas ever from a purely angels-get-their-wings standpoint, if you follow the cultural idiom. And I'm busy personally – helping people, encouraging them, being nice to them.

And as people are throw money at me and I'm throwing merchandise at them – in a nice way – these two women walk into the bookstore with a little girl. My help greets them, and I notice them because they don’t act like middle-class people. They burp when they talk, they talk too loud, that kind of stuff. You know: which happens in Arkansas (no offense to anybody).

Eventually, the wave of business subsides, and I catch a breather, and I take a walk around the store to check on the people who are still browsing – because people usually appreciate that. As I chat with the handful of people still in the store, I notice the two women and the little girl still browsing, and I ask them if they need any help. They don't, but as I trade service talk with them, I notice that they need a bath more than they need a book. They also prolly need to give up the half-pack of butts they smoked driving over here, but I ignore that and move on. I've come out in public when I've been no prize, either.

So I go about my business, and one of the women comes to the desk to ask for some help, the little girl in tow. We chat some more, and the more I talk to her, the less I am impressed with her social skills, and I start to get a little antsy about her parenting skills. She's not smacking the kid around or anything, but I'm pretty sure I have never talked to my kids that way unless they were on the verse of being crucified – which is an interesting word to use there, but it's the one that came to mind as I was sort of forced to eavesdrop on this slice of life. Not unless I was on the verge of crucifying them.

And I start to think to myself, "How can she not know better?" So she puts this book about Christmas on the counter along with a Bible and some other junk, and I look at the Christmas book, thinking about the Sunday School lessons I have been teaching the last 3 weeks.

Because the Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We saw his glory – the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, who came from the Father. We have all received from his fullness one gracious gift after another. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came about through Jesus Christ.

No one has ever seen God. The only one, himself God, who is in closest fellowship with the Father, has made God known.

That is, God has made himself know to those of us who prolly need more than a bath and to give up a half-pack of cigarettes, and know better than to talk to our children as if we were about to crucify them. The One who did crucify His one and only son has made Himself known.

I'm the one who ought to know better. Especially at Christmas.

gingerbread man

This weekend as we were building up to the big thing tomorrow, my wife pulled out a bag of gingerbread mix (listen: if you add the eggs and milk and whatever, it's home made) and my kids started cheering. They love the gingerbread stuff -- the house, the people, the tree.

"So you're going to make the gingerbread this year?" I asked her, trying not to imply anything.

"Nobody'll care after we frost it," she said, trying not to concede anything, and I realized I had the headline for my Darrin Patrick post.

Now, don't get me wrong, OK? I liked all of his 3 talks at Covenant Seminary, and especially liked his talk which he called "the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" of the emergent church. But after listening to part 3 there, I sorta felt like he thought that if he layered on enough rhetorical frosting, nobody would care that he was really telling the radical edges of the ECM that they were preaching a different gospel, and that they needed to get over others pointing that out because that's the only way to resolve the differences.

I mean: that's how he pretty much ended that talk, and I was sort of blown away by how frank he was about it. And if you listened to only, say, the last 10 minutes of the talk (prior to the Q&A portion), you probably will get a very different impression of what he intimates about that movement than if you sit through all the "good" part, and even through the "bad" part. His description of the "ugly" is spot-on, even if it's covered in all kinds of other things to sweeten it up.

There where were moments in part 3 where I had to pull out a pen and scribble down a note or two. For example, it was a little sheepish (trying to avoid saying "coy") to use Justin Taylor as a cover for the "bad" segment of the talk. Sure: JT was plainly the source of that segment, and good on Pastor Darrin for citing his source. But it seemed to me that he was trying to avoid being the bad guy by pretty much reading what JT wrote on the subject of the ECM word for word.

Another moment was when Pastor Patrick followed a rabbit about what it means to preach to the culture -- you'll find it in the section where he says he wants to be preaching to "dudes", among other "cultures".

Here's what I don't disagree with: I think we have to context our churches in a way that the people to whom we are reaching out will give us a listen. You know: I'm the guy with the comic book blog, right? I don't think Fuller-brush door-to-door evangelism is useful today, and I think it is more useful to find social forms which people today can relate to in order to present the Gospel to them there.

But here's my problem with where I think Darrin's talk leads to: I think it leads to a place where we forget that the Gospel is (sing it with me) the solution to culture. That is: it's fine to get to the "dudes" and the "DINCs" and the farmers and so on by having some kind of way of talking with them and to them. It's another altogether when we avoid, because it is hard, the fact that the Gospel is supposed to reconcile races and cultures and all kinds of men not just to Christ but to each other -- that is, that all kinds of men are (not will be) reconciled to each other because they are reconciled to Christ.

I think that's the fundamental challenge to the current iteration of "missional" thinking -- failing to make reconciliation a real issue for people. It seems to me -- and people are welcome to knock this one down if they can -- that making "dude" churches (as one example) overlooks the fact in Scripture that "dudes" need older people to have a complete body of Christ, and vice versa. It's not enough just to say that your church is part of the greater, invisible church.

So that said, I enjoyed Darrin Patrick's impression of the gingerbread man. You may have a different opinion, and you now have the full-fledged version of haloscan into which to express it.

And have a napkin -- you have some frosting on your lip.

shepherd in the field

Our buddy johnMark interviewed these church plant pastors, and it's worth reading. Don't go out and get a tat for your new favorite doctrine, but think about supporting gospel workers among the poorest of the poor.

Christmas list

Yeah, you are waiting for a long list of stuff from Centu Claus:

• the Darrin Patrick talk
• Kent's subsequent merciless beating
• I just got a preview copy of Driscoll's new book Vintage Jesus

There may be something else you want. This is all I'm going to have time for.

And maybe some 'nog and a cookie.

So you have something to comment on, 'k? I know you don't have anything else to do.