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Reveling in Pagan Holidays

December 1, 2011 in Grace, Life with 11 Comments

We should all revel in Pagan holidays. Why? Because Pagan holidays are so revealing.

Most Christians want to stay as far away from Pagan holidays as they can, thinking that participating in pagan holidays is participation with the world. They believe that instead, we should only participate in Christian holidays like Easter and Christmas.

Ironically, those are two of the biggest Pagan holidays that exist.

Pagan Holidays

I don’t mean that they have become Pagan, and we must “put Christ back into Christmas” to retake the holiday for Jesus. No, I mean that they were originally Pagan holidays, which became Christian holidays. Yes, in some ways they are becoming pagan again, but this is no reason to be scared of them, but to revel in them all the more.

Why? Here is why:

Pagan Holidays Point to Christ

I believe that Pagan holidays and pagan rituals and pagan beliefs, and all the old stories and tales and myths from pagan religions are actually the cry of the divine image of God in man to return to what was lost. They reveal a longing for what was lost. A desire for the reconnection of God with man.

And the only “religion” in the world which does the best job of taking all these longings, dreams, desires, and ideas, and bringing them to fruition and fulfillment, is Christianity. Let me rephrase that. Not Christianity, but Christ.

Nearly all of the old pagan stories hint at the gods returning to earth, becoming human, sharing life on earth with us, and some of them even loving humans so much that they sacrifice themselves for us.

Does any of that sound familiar? Of course. All of these stories sound strikingly similar to what happened within Jesus Christ. This is one reason why critics say that the Gospels are not true. They say that the Gospel stories are just rehashed pagan myths, where some of the details and the names of the characters are changed.

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What is Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit?

May 17, 2011 in Grace, Pneumatology with 17 Comments

blasphemy against the Holy SpiritI get a lot of emails and Google search hits about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and the unpardonable sin.

One of the more popular search strings has been “Is adultery the unpardonable sin?”

Let me answer that question quickly:

NO. Adultery is not the Unpardonable Sin

And while I’m at it, neither is suicide.

But please, don’t do either of these things. If you are thinking about doing either, and fear of hell is the only thing keeping you from doing it, please contact me by email and let’s talk: jmyers AT tillhecomes.org.

Now, on with the post.

Though I have never really blogged about the Unpardonable Sin or the Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, I think I get emails and searches about it because I preached a sermon and wrote a few papers on this topic about ten years ago. They were posted on a version of Till He Comes that is ten years old. (Ah for the good ol’ days of html and Microsoft Front Page).

Here is a link to the shorter paper I wrote on the subject:  The Unpardonable Sin and Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Below is an excerpt from this paper:
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Giving God Crap

May 16, 2011 in Grace, Hamartiology with 14 Comments

You know what God wants from you? Not your holiness. Not your perfection. Not your righteousness. All these things He gives to you as a result of faith in Jesus. They are not things we give to Him.

Even our love, obedience, and worship are tainted and twisted with selfishness and pride. All our righteous acts are like menstrual cloths (Isa 64:6). Yes, that is what the verse says.

So what can we give God? The only things we have: our crap.

The pain, anger, suffering, frustration, disappointment, and fears we face in life. God wants that.

He also wants the addictions, the failures, the mistakes, and the sin.

We often think that God wants us to stop sinning, but what He really wants is for us to give our sin to Him. We will not and cannot stop sinning until we do so.

Here is how it works:

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Coked-up Whore

April 13, 2011 in Grace, Human Trafficking, Jesus, Mission with 12 Comments

She’s just a coked-up whore,
Strung out and lying on the floor, abandoned, forsaken, forgotten, ignored.

She’s just a coked-up whore,
While a fat man with foul breath pants and heaves and rips at her dress.

She’s just a coked-up whore,
Sold for the highest bid, which wasn’t much…barely more than you’d pay for lunch.

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Grace Wholesalers

November 7, 2007 in Church Planting, Grace with 2 Comments

Grace wholesalers

Vince Antonucci on Grace Wholesalers

I read over 40 blogs every day through Google Reader. One of my favorite is by Vince Antonucci, who is planting a church in Virigina Beach (2011 Update: He is now planting a church in Las Vegas). He wrote a post today I have been thinking about for a long time, so rather than put my own thoughts down, I figured I would just paste his post here:

I want to take some time to talk about one of the main things that keep Christians and churches from reaching out to lost people. (By the way, recently I suggested reading, “No Perfect People Allowed” by John Burke. Some of the ideas I’m going to express in these next few posts come from his book. He says them so well in there, I can’t really improve on them.)

So one of the seven core values at our church is: “Grace Wholesalers. We love people unconditionally and help them onto the road to healing and wholeness in Christ.” As you know, grace means to get the opposite of what you deserve. It’s unmerited love. A wholesaler (like B.J.’s , Sam’s Club or Costco) is someone who only gives in bulk. The idea is that at Forefront we give grace, love, hope, healing, acceptance, friendship in bulk. In huge quantities – you can’t just get a little.

Why is this one of our core values? Well, first of all, because God is a grace wholesaler. The Bible says that that’s how God treats us, with amazing grace. The reason we have Christ, the reason we’re saved, the reason we grow, the reason we live, the reason we’ll spend eternity in Heaven is because of God’s grace.

Second, Jesus came and exactly represented God the Father while He was on earth, and Jesus was a grace wholesaler. This is why when you read the gospels you find that the people who were drawn to Jesus were the worst of sinners. Why? Because they knew they needed grace. And He’s the one who gave it in bulk. We see Jesus condemn no one (except religious people who felt no need for grace). Jesus was the ultimate grace wholesaler. So why are we grace wholesalers? Because we have no choice! The church is called to be the body of Christ. As Jesus exactly represented God the Father, we are to exactly represent Jesus. And so Christians, Churches must be grace wholesalers.

In fact, this should be the distinctive of Christians and of Churches. I love how an author named Gordon MacDonald put it, “The world can do almost anything as well as or better than the church. You need not be a Christian to build houses, feed the hungry, or heal the sick. There is only one thing the world cannot do. It cannot offer grace.” Grace is what separates Christianity from the world. Grace is also what separates Christianity from other world religions. There are a lot of similarities amongst the world religions, but only Christianity offers grace. Only Christianity says you get the opposite of what you deserve from God. Only Christianity says God wants to offer you unmerited love.

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