♫ Santa Claus ain't coming to town ♫

♫ No need to watch out. ♫
♫ You might as well cry. ♫
♫ Go on and pout, I'm telling you why. ♫
♫ Santa Claus ain't coming to town. ♫
♫ There won't be any reindeer, or sleigh for you to see. ♫
♫ We've banned them all so we can prove our great sensitivity. ♫

It's no joke! The North Pole's favorite son was banned from his annual appearance at the Hollings Cancer Center in South Carolina. Said spokeswoman Vicki Agnew: "Because of our state affiliation, we decided not to have a Santa presence this year." The Center, Agnew continued, wanted to be "more secular and respectful to all beliefs. People who are Muslim or Jewish or have no religious beliefs come here for treatment."

Doesn't that make perfect sense? We can't have the State promoting biblical characters like Santa Claus, now can we? After all, according to the Book of Blitzen, Chapter Three, it was Santa Claus who led the Israelites out of the Arctic Circle, parting Rudolph the Red-nosed Sea along the way. And the Gospel according to Comet tells how Santa came to grant strength to the lame, sight to the blind, and knowledge to the foolish.

Ms. Agnew contends the decision wasn't "meant to be cold." If that's true, then it was meant to be stupid; it's the only other plausible explanation. What a shame Vicki Agnew wasn’t there when Santa was bringing knowledge to the foolish; she could use a miracle.

Oh well, 'tis the season. America has come to herald each Christmas with renewed assaults on common sense. We ban Santa Claus and prohibit nativity displays. We purchase "holiday" trees from big box stores whose clerks are instructed to greet us with the innocuous "happy holidays." Schoolchildren participate in "winter celebrations" rather than Christmas plays. And we endure it all so as not offend the perpetually offended. Has Christmas ever genuinely insulted anyone who wasn't seeking insult to begin with?

Frank Cloyes, the Center's volunteer Santa, wonders when all this politically correct nonsense will end. "Let's have a little joy in our lives," he said.

Mr. Cloyes can take some solace. The Hollings Center revisited their lunacy after South Carolinians revolted. However, his fundamental complaint remains unresolved. Political correctness is the antithesis of joy, existing only to prevent joy and prohibit fun at every turn. Life must universally suck for PC multiculturalists to be satisfied. And the nonsense won't end until enough people summon the courage to tell hand-wringing busybodies like Vicki Agnew to go jump in a hole. In the meantime the Priests of High-minded Sanctimony will continue sacrificing America's cultural and spiritual traditions to political correctness, their god most high.

♫ So you better not count on seasonal cheer. ♫
♫ It hasn't a chance with bureaucrats near. ♫
♫ Santa Claus ain't coming, ♫
♫ Santa Claus ain't coming, ♫
♫ Santa Claus ain't coming to town. ♫

What was it like on the outskirts of Bethlehem?

Modern living provides numerous luxuries and activities. An endless parade of entertainment, distraction and diversion is at our beck and call. Shopping centers and malls abound, a cadre of restaurants surrounding each. There’s a club meeting one night, the kid’s practice the next and the church’s covered-dish supper the night after that.

Satellite television beams hundreds of crystal clear channels into our living rooms. A few are even worth watching. Movies, music, and information stream from high-speed Internet. A universe of information and entertainment is a mouse click away. Ours is a different world. The changes in the last forty years alone are staggering.

During my childhood, dining out meant a trip to the local café or fish camp. There were few, if any, family steakhouses. And there certainly wasn’t a restaurant in every corner of the mall parking lot. In fact, there wasn’t even a mall.

In the late 1960s the Internet was a military secret. Television stations were few and color sets were uncommon. I watched Neill Armstrong take “one giant leap for mankind” . . . and I watched it in black and white. Our set could tune two VHF channels.

Just as today’s world has surpassed my childhood, so had that time advanced over the previous generations, when television itself was rare or nonexistent. People received their entertainment from the radio voices of Amos and Andy and the Jack Benny Show. Their information came from newspapers, books and magazines. The 20th Century was change, with less than 100 years separating the heyday of the buckboard from the reusable spacecraft.

Now, you may wonder what this walk down nostalgia lane has to do with Bethlehem. Very little, in a direct sense. But it does serve to compare the rapid advancement in our lifestyles with the primitive shepherds’ experience, recorded in Luke’s Gospel, that first Christmas night. The thought came to me as I read the story for the umpteenth time, not that you can read it too often.

Some Bible translations place the shepherds “in the same country”; others say they were “in the fields nearby.” Either way it is evident that they were on the outskirts of Bethlehem, which had nothing in common with modern suburbia. There was no reflection of Bethlehem’s lights against the night sky. There was only a darkness that today’s suburbanite can’t comprehend.

The shepherds may have kindled a small campfire and lit a torch or two. But they wouldn’t have stayed very close to that light. It would have compromised their night vision, making it difficult to spot thieves and predators, which was their purpose for being there. The only prevailing light came from the stars and the moon.

No distant train whistle pierced the silence. No car horns honked and no jets passed overhead. There were no blaring boom boxes, blinding televisions, or ringing cell phones. The only sound was the shepherds’ conversation and the soft bleats from the flocks. They are alone on a dark and silent night.

Without warning a celestial being illuminated the night sky. The angel Gabriel declared the long-awaited Messiah’s arrival to the accompaniment of an angelic chorus. How would those shepherds, unaccustomed to such brilliant displays, have reacted? Luke tells us they were “sore afraid.”

Considering the societal transformations and technological advancements we’ve experienced it is difficult, if not impossible, for us to relate to the lives of those shepherds. We think black and white television is archaic and cell phones are indispensable. It’s unlikely we can appreciate the scene that long ago night on Bethlehem’s hillside pastures.

Feast, my friends, this Christmas Day! Gather by the fire. Unwrap the gifts. Amidst the celebration save a minute to ponder the shepherd’s experience. Our lives are so accustomed to sound, light, and distraction, perhaps we can’t comprehend the powerful, majestic display that long ago night. But we can try.

A Merry Christmas to all . . . no offense intended.

‘Tis the season for common sense, culture, heritage and tradition to take its annual backseat to politically correct nonsense. Each Christmas the PC police are bolder than ever. Nativity scenes can’t be displayed here and angels can’t be heard on high over there. Phrases and icons that reference the central reason for the “holiday season” are squelched so not to offend the perpetually offended.

A few years ago, the Seattle, WA airport authority displayed the gutlessness of Decembers present. Twenty-five years of displaying Christmas trees at the airport’s entrances came to a halt with one complaint. According to airport spokeswoman Terri-Ann Betancourt the trees were removed “because we didn’t want to be exclusive.” Next were the big retailers, whose zeal for a “non-threatening” shopping experience prompted employees to wish shoppers “happy holidays” or “season’s greetings” in lieu of “Merry Christmas.” Christmas trees became “holiday” trees.

The idea of these faith-neutral terms and phrases is to avoid the seeming preference of Christianity over other religions. But Christmas trees? How does calling a Christmas tree what it is sanctify one belief over another? Thoughts on the origin of Christmas trees are as diverse as the kinds of trees used. In fact, the religious meaning of Christmas trees is debated even within Christianity.

The Christmas tree’s root, if you’ll pardon the pun, could rise from the Ancient Romans, who decorated trees with strips of metal during a festival honoring Saturnus, their god of agriculture. Perhaps modern Christmas trees date to 16th Century Germany, where small fir trees were decorated with apples and nuts. On December 25th the ornamental treats were given to the children. The Feast of Adam and Eve, where the “original sin” was reenacted on December 24th, may be the source for our tree. An evergreen, hung with apples, was used as a prop for the play.

Christmas trees are but one example of how the ever-offended are attempting to transform a season of joy and happiness into one of anxiety and misery. Flaps over “holiday trees,” corporate policies governing the greetings retail cashiers can offer and idiocy like that at Seattle’s airport prove that political correctness and “sensitivity” have run amok.

Do Christmas greetings and traditions truly offend people? Or, are offended people simply seeking reasons for offense? Our world is filled with verified misery: war, famine, pestilence and violent crime. Why would expressions of hope and happiness offend any rational person? Frankly, it's because the offended aren’t rational at all. They’re so consumed with their manic despair that they cannot suffer cheerfulness. The joyous message of Merry Christmas reminds them of their empty, bitter souls.

Let's put this in perspective. If a Jewish man were to greet me with “Happy Hanukkah,” I would accept his wishes in the spirit they were offered. I would not become mortally offended, allowing the good wishes to be overshadowed because the greeting reflected a holiday not of my own faith. The proper response is to thank the Jewish gentleman for his gesture and respond with a cheerful “Merry Christmas.” If his expression to me is sincere he will accept my greeting without reservation.

Ironically, our society condones crass vulgarities in the name of diversity, yet is vulnerable to traditional courtesy, and that vulnerability is magnified at Christmas. The very reason there is a season to greet is sacrificed so as not to offend the most intolerant of people. It’s shameful that the phrase “Merry Christmas” is yielding to a tide of politically correct multiculturalism.

Christmas commemorates Christ’s birth, make no mistake about it. So what? America has a Christian heritage whether the PC police believe it or not. As such we are entirely within the realm of good taste and etiquette to wish “Merry Christmas” to anyone, even if that person is of another faith or of no faith at all.

The nonsense must stop sometime. Let it end today, now, this minute. I sincerely wish peace, safety and a Merry Christmas to you. This greeting is extended without apology to the Christian, the Jew, the Muslim, the Hindu, the Sikh, the Buddhist, the Wiccan, the Scientologist, the Taoist, the agnostic, the atheist, the environmentalist, the Jehovah’s Witness, the Mormon, the Branch Davidian and whoever else happens to be out there. If you are a rational person you will accept these good wishes in the spirit they are offered.

However, if you are offended, please feel free to have a Miserable Christmas. I’m confident your New Year will be just as dismal as your outlook on life.

Game of the Week: God vs. the Physicists

When a renowned physicist like Stephen Hawking speaks people will listen, and Stephen Hawking has declared that God did not create the universe. He argues in a soon-to-be-released book that the law of gravity enabled the universe to create itself from nothing. However, it seems that Mr. Hawking has contradicted his discipline.

Physicists can’t agree on the concept of nothing, on whether “nothing” is even possible, or even if “something” has an opposite. That is to say that nothing cannot exist where there is something and something is ever-present. If there weren’t something there would be nothing, which doesn’t exist. So while Mr. Hawking says the universe self-generated from nothing, other physicists believe there’s never been “nothing”, even at the beginning.

Whatever I just wrote can likely be expressed in an intricate equation that resembles Egyptian hieroglyphics on steroids. Therefore, I have no intention of crossing swords with mathematicians and physicists who might produce an overly technical conglomeration of signs, symbols and letters that prove I really don’t exist. I can only counter their equation with the words of Descartes, “I think, therefore I am.” But do I really think? Or, do I merely believe that I am thinking? Perhaps I only exist within my own imagination, which should stand for something.

So goes the universe, swirling, spinning and expanding in a way that only God knows. Except for one small flaw; Stephen Hawking has declared that God is a nonessential factor, if He exists at all. So, is it not fair to wonder if Stephen Hawking exists? Perhaps the Stephen Hawking the world knows, or thinks it knows, lives only in the voice simulations his computer system generates. Who knows but what those simulations are manipulated?

I don’t mean to minimalize Mr. Hawking’s physical impairments. But, if the messages attributed to him aren’t his own, what could he do to correct it? He can’t speak. He can barely move, if at all. Were his persona manipulated against his will he could do nothing to clarify his position.

The laws of physics unquestionably exist. Anyone needing proof can look at how splitting atoms affected Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But when it comes to ideas like time travel (Hawking suggests it’s possible), cosmic radiation a few billion light years from Earth and what lies beyond the universe (If the universe ends there is nothing beyond, and nothing can’t exist, remember?) I remain skeptical. The answers exist only within the theories and equations emanating from the human mind.

When a believer points to God, the physicist demands hard evidence to prove God’s existence. Well, if time travel exists send me to Philadelphia on July 4, 1776 so I can watch John Hancock sign the Declaration of Independence. Or to next February so I can return in time to bet on the Super Bowl. Take me to the center of the universe, or to one of the 30 billion trillion visible stars.

Since we can’t accomplish those tasks I’m left to take the physicist’s word that they are possible. In other words, I must have faith that physicists know what they’re talking about. And that word, faith, sticks in the scientist’s craw like rotten seeds. To have faith means to believe in something for which there’s reasonable doubt.

For example, if we view a star that is said to be two billions light years from earth, is it still there? I must have faith that the star still exists, since our view is from two billion years ago, and much can transpire over two billion years. What’s more, since stars can’t think must we conclude that they are not?

Yes, I’m rambling. But there is a point. Mr. Hawking’s disciples are as committed to his defense, and to defending astrophysical theories, as are Creationists to defending God’s seminal role in our existence. To question scientific declarations on the universe and how it began are as much heresy to the science community as questioning Genesis is to the Creationist.

Faith is required to believe Mr. Hawking, just as faith is required to believe God. Yet God encourages faith whereas physicists expect humanity to abandon the very quality required to believe them. Therefore, I must conclude that physicists present the greatest contradiction. Score a point for God.

Placing the mosque on the other foot

The Ground Zero Mosque has generated a commentarial swirl commensurate to the controversy over its location. Central to that debate is the religious element. Mosque opponents, regardless of their motivations, are accused of bigotry based on religious preference, primarily Christianity. But those charges are inapplicable.

Governments can legitimately recognize cultural norms through the honoring of religious expressions. However, unless a person worships government they won’t need government to defend their god. Furthermore, when a religion seeks government’s endorsement to legitimize their religious loyalties their worship has been compromised. This is true of any religion, especially Christianity, which is more a faith than a religion.

The fact is that constructing a mosque in New York isn’t what generated the protests and opposition. There are 100 mosques in New York City right now and thousands more across the United States. None sparked the outrage that the planned Cordoba Mosque and Islamic Cultural Center has created. It’s not the building; it’s the location, plain and simple.

The propriety of a mosque near the World Trade Center site has been sufficiently addressed and rebuffed. Ample polling data exists to prove that mosque opponents are mainstream Americans, not the bigoted “Islamophobes” the left portrays. Claiming otherwise is sheer political spin.

However, an interesting element that’s received scant attention is the left’s sudden willingness to defend religious liberty, a freedom for which they have great disdain under most circumstances. What if the controversy surrounded a different house of worship, at a different site? Would the left and their media allies be so supportive of religious freedom then? Doubtful.

Enter Matthew Shepard, the homosexual man who was robbed, beaten and tied to a fence outside Laramie, Wyoming in October, 1998. He died a few days later, becoming a symbol of homophobia and a rallying cry for gay activists. The fact that money and drugs, not homosexuality, motivated Shepard’s murderers didn’t matter. He remained a focal point for gay activists . . . and a target for Fred Phelps.

Phelps leads the Westboro Church in Topeka, Kansas. He and his group are infamous for protesting funerals and carrying “God hates fags” signs. Now suppose Phelps and his congregation decided to construct a church--under the guise of building a bridge to the gay community--across the road from where Matthew Shepard’s body was found?

The same leftists who decry intolerance among Ground Zero Mosque opponents would condemn Phelps’ plans. In fact, I’ll wager that leftists would spare no expense in halting construction. Why? For the same reasons Americans oppose the Ground Zero Mosque.

The left would claim that a Phelps church near where Shepard died would exploit his memory and offend homosexuals. A Phelps congregation at that spot, the left would argue, would be insensitive and inappropriate. So why can’t mosque defenders see the reasons mosque opponents hold the opinions they hold?

Granted, Phelps is an authentic nutcase. But Feisal Abdul Rauf--who will lead the controversial mosque--has skeletons in his closet, too. He blames the United States, at least in part, for Islamic terrorism and for Muslim hostility toward the West. He refuses to recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization. Plus, there is a much closer tie between violence and mainstream Islam than between Fred Phelps and mainstream Christianity.

And the debate doesn’t end with Phelps. If any Christian church that considers homosexuality immoral were to build near where Shepard was found there’s little doubt the left would protest, claiming the church’s opposition to homosexuality renders their presence inappropriate. But Christians didn’t plan, participate in, or celebrate Shepard’s death. Muslims around the world celebrated the collapse of the World Trade Center. The difference is distinct.

The left’s use of religious freedom to defend the Ground Zero Mosque is decidedly empty. In fact, it is reprehensible. They have no interest in defending Muslims’ religious liberties. Leftists are merely using Muslims and religious freedom to further their agenda, which is pro-anything that is anti-Western Civilization.

Gay weddings in D.C.: A sign of the times

So the District of Columbia is the latest U.S. enclave to recognize homosexual marriages. This will draw ire from social conservatives and evangelical Christians just as surely as a lightning rod attracts static electricity. However, those criticisms may be ignoring the larger problems.

Marriage is more a religious than legal institution. Religion, expressed in true faith, answers to a higher authority than government since legality isn’t necessarily synonymous with spirituality. Therefore, unless homosexual couples admit to worshipping government as their “higher authority” they can make no claim to marriage. And if they worship government they have adopted a false god, which renders their religion and their unions invalid.

Irony being what it is the first couple to plunge into D.C.’s gay marriage pond was two female reverends. Darlene Garner and Candy Holmes are leaders in the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), a church dedicated to canonizing the gay and lesbian community. What’s more, their ceremony was conducted at the offices of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), an influential lobby for the gay rights movement.

To say that MCC and HRC are biased is an understatement. In any other situation their partiality would result in their legitimacy being questioned. However, political correctness has deemed all things homosexual beyond reproach. Therefore all questions must come from a different angle, the religious angle.

How can Garner, Holmes and the MCC reconcile their ceremonies with the Bible they claim to believe? Biblical text, from beginning to end, contains vivid denouncements of homosexual activity. The Apostle Paul explicitly addressed homosexuality in his letter to the Romans, calling it “unseemly” and “vile affections.” Furthermore, Paul declared that people who commit homosexual acts realize their error but take pleasure in it anyway. The Mosaic book of Leviticus refers to same-sex relations as abominable. Moses taught that anyone engaging in such acts will face consequences.

The Metropolitan Community Church isn’t deterred. The MCC has rationalized these passages until the text fits both their sexual preference and civil agenda. An MCC ad campaign considers Christ’s healing of the centurion’s servant in Matthew’s eighth chapter as the divine endorsement of a gay couple. Another ad claims that Ruth entered into a lesbian relationship with her mother-in-law, Naomi.

I have no doubt that Christ will forgive sinners; that is the basis for Christianity. In John, chapter eight, Jesus forgave a woman caught in the act of adultery, which could’ve resulted in the woman being stoned. He will likewise forgive the homosexual. But Christ’s forgiveness isn’t unconditional; repentance is required. Jesus also told the adulterous woman, “go, and sin no more.”

The MCC not only shuns repentance, ignores sin and promotes unsound doctrines but also twists the Scriptures to condone their positions.

Jesus himself spoke of such false prophets. The New Testament repeatedly warns of apostates, people with knowledge of the truth who have turned from it and taught others to do likewise. It’s difficult to view “Rev.” Garner, “Rev.” Holmes, and the Metropolitan Community Churches as anything but wolves in sheep’s clothing.

This is where many Christians make a mistake. We assume that government can rescue us from our moral descent. That change must begin in the hearts of men, which means in the church itself. Is that likely when churches publicly reject biblical teachings and cling to unsound doctrines?

We have all sinned. Yet there’s quite a distinction between repeating a sin and explaining it away. Christians cannot influence the world when the Christian witness is compromised and basic morals are ignored.

The answer to our cultural abyss doesn’t lie in governmental legislation or decree. It lies in the individual Christian’s witness and that of the church overall. I fear we’re failing that obligation.

Pray for Independence on Independence Day

We don’t celebrate the 4th of July on July 4th. We celebrate Independence Day. Our Founding Fathers, having grown weary of their subjected status, tossed the shackles of tyranny and declared independence from the British crown. Ultimately they established a government wherein people are largely independent of both their fellow man and their government.

This presents a quandary for the human spirit. While mankind naturally desires freedom, we are a somewhat dependent creature. Therefore, independence from man and government demands a substitute, a dependence on a higher authority. That authority is our preeminent Creator, as recognized in our glorious founding document, the Declaration of Independence.

Only when our reliance rests on God can we be fully free of mankind’s oppression and government tyranny.

The Founding Fathers certainly didn’t intend to create a Christian theocracy. That idea doesn’t even make sense. Christianity is a personal commitment to faith, a relationship with Christ. Therefore authentic Christianity cannot be spread through force, coercion, or other manipulative method. In fact, any faith or religious practice that can spread in these ways is, at best, weak and meaningless.

There is a difference between America being a Christian theocracy and being a Christian nation. There is no law through which Americans are compelled to become Christian, neither today nor in our infancy. There’s also no law through which Americans are prevented from being Christians, at least not yet.

However, it is true that our nation was founded upon Christian morality by men who received guidance predominantly from the Christian faith. It is, therefore, not only legitimate for Christians to influence our society, it is imperative.

Whenever people, individually or collectively, abandon their dependence on their Heavenly Father they will naturally substitute for that dependency. Government or humanism (man-made morality) is more than ready to fill that void. The liberty we once enjoyed quickly succumbs to the tyranny of man, which usually manifests in larger and more oppressive government.

That doesn’t mean that all government is a substitute for God or that government is altogether unnecessary. Certainly a government of just laws enacted for the purpose of protecting liberty is based on sound doctrine. Rules that expose and restrain the invader and plunderer are essential to liberty. Such rules, ironically, are found throughout the Pentateuch.

Just as human liberties are self-evident, as our Founders knew so well, independence is also self-evident. Somehow we’ve lost sight of that conviction. We’ve shunned our dependence on our Heavenly Father in favor of dependence on man-made institutions, such as government programs in various forms.

We’re unquestionably witnessing the result of our dependence in the decline of the family unit, increased government bureaucracies that usurp the natural role of the charitable church and sundry welfare programs--both personal and corporate. We cannot remain a free people under these circumstances. We can only retain the delusion of freedom, wherein liberty exists in our mind but not in reality.

Isn’t it time we recaptured our Founding Fathers’ visionary spirit? Let’s embrace liberty once more. And let us forever acknowledge the source of our freedom. Liberty is the inalienable desire of the human spirit, engraved eternally on our hearts by the hand of the Heavenly Creator.

Without regard to contemporary historical revisionism, our Founding Fathers recognized God’s hand in freedom’s establishment. They discussed and debated the concept in their parlors, town halls, taverns and yes, even their churches. The voice of liberty should again ring in those churches.

Let liberty be rekindled in dependence on the Sovereign and Almighty God. Celebrate Independence Day with a reverent and prayerful spirit. Let’s show America that God’s people are serious about reclaiming our dwindling birthright.

Visit http://prayforindependenceday.blogspot.com/ and get your church involved.