I don’t usually post my responses to private emails online, but I think this one might be worthwhile to some. It’ll at least make somebody mad, which I seem to be good at doing lately. <\/p>\n
Yesterday I sent out a newsletter for BiblePlaces.com which featured photos related to the Christmas Story. (I think my timing was bad because with this Nativity Story movie out now, everyone’s standard for realistic depiction has risen beyond what this non-Hollywood-budget guy is able to produce.) In any case, I got a couple of replies from people unhappy that I celebrate Christmas. Here’s my very fast and unstudied reply.<\/p>\n
\nI do not celebrate any “mass,” I do not celebrate any pagan holiday, and I do not try to change the time. I have not adapted any heathen holiday. In fact the shepherds and the wise men were the first to celebrate Jesus’ birth and I think their practice is a wise one to follow. Jesus’ incarnation was one of the most glorious of all of God’s doings in human history, and the Lord was careful to give us many details about the birth of His Son, indicating a great concern for the event. I am sorry that you hate the festival. There are certain non-Christian aspects to its celebration which I do not embrace, but I am most happy to teach my children about the coming of Yeshua into the world and its significance for our lives. <\/p>\n
I believe there are many more important issues that the Lord would have us to address, and many more important false teachings that are important to denounce. I think Satan loves to sidetrack us with discussions of minute significance. If you lived in a country where Christianity was the minority, I think it would help you to separate the issues of greater importance from the issues of lesser importance. Believers here are sometimes persecuted for their faith, and whether or not we sing songs about Jesus’ birth on December 25 is really a non-issue between us.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I don’t usually post my responses to private emails online, but I think this one might be worthwhile to some. It’ll at least make somebody mad, which I seem to be good at doing lately. Yesterday I sent out a newsletter for BiblePlaces.com which featured photos related to the Christmas Story. (I think my timing\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}