We’re heading into the holidays. Soon you will start hearing Christmas music in the stores. Listen to it closely. Most of it will be secular. Santa, Rudolf, snow, and so on. What you won’t hear this Christmas is Christian Christmas music……..The First Noel, Silent Night, The Little Drummer Boy. This is also happening on TV. Watch the Hallmark channel. They run a series of Christmas shows……pretty much year round. But, the themes of these shows are “the magic of Christmas” or romances set around the holidays……lots of Christmas trees and snow. But, Christ is not a big part of the Christmas shows that are aired on TV.

Why?

Because, as Christians, we have been run out of the public forum. A small minority of vocal atheists have complained so much that businesses and the media have intentionally excluded our music. This is no accident. In a word, these businesses, not to mention our own government actively discriminate against us.

Recently, I was staying at a resort. There was a singer performing in the lobby one Sunday evening and she chose a set of Christian themed songs. It was so nice to hear this music……..my music……in public. But it was so unusual that it was remarkable. Then I realized that……as a Christian…..throughout my country……I have been subjected to anti-Christian bias. The idea of “separation of church and state” has grown into the concept that Christians are not allowed any place in public to be heard. It’s ok for us to talk to each other in church……..but in public we are expected to sit down and shut up. I once read a book on Christianity by an ex-president and he said as much.

I’m not asking that every song and every show sound like a church service. But, it would be nice if we were not completely excluded either. It would be nice to hear a religious Christmas song every now and then at the mall.

In a way, Christians are being treated the way blacks and gays were treated when I was young. You never saw a TV show about a black family. You never heard a song about a gay person on the radio. Fortunately, the treatment of blacks and gays in the media and in the public forum has improved. Maybe it’s time to allow Christians a place back in the public forum as well. Equal billing would be great.

So……… I’m going to say thanks when I see or hear a business or the government publicly recognize me as a Christian. And I’m going to go out of my way to support businesses that play Christian christmas music this winter.

A guy I know came to church.

This guy believes in Christ. He is a stand up guy, a great husband and a great father. If I was marooned on a desert island and could pick one man to be with me, it would be him. He just doesn’t attend church. This is probably because of experiences that he has had with toxic christians over the years. I have been trying for about 10 years to get him to start bringing his family to our church, which is a really great one.

One day, he told me he’d be coming to church on Sunday. I said a prayer of thanks and was there to meet him. He brought his daughter. He showed up on a really cold day wearing his warmest jacket…..a black leather “motorcycle jacket”. As he was walking in, he was feeding his daughter a hard boiled egg. She doesn’t eat well and he feeds her protein whenever and wherever he can. He doesn’t sleep well and he probably looked a little rough.

As he walked in, his first encounter was with another man. This man gave him the “look”. The look said, “you are no good and you don’t belong here”. In 10 seconds that “Christian” undid 10 years of my work.

We often pass judgement on people based on incomplete or even bad information. We must realize that there are things going on in the other guy’s life that we know nothing about. This isn’t just sometimes true…….it is always true.

The moral is this. We all need to operate based on a simple rule that I have tried to follow for most of my life (not always successfully).

NEVER ALLOW YOURSELF THE LUXURY OF BELIEVING THAT YOU ARE, IN ANY MEANINGFUL WAY, BETTER THAN THE OTHER GUY……….. BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT.

There is no more effective way to undo God’s work in this world than to pass judgement on the other guy.

There is no more effective way to promote God’s work in this world than to love the people that you meet……right where they are…….no matter what.

Imagine living in Israel in 580 bc. You are a small poor country. You are only a few years removed from wandering around the desert in tents. Your main city, Jerusalem, has been destroyed. Most of your countrymen have been hauled off into slavery. You are barely getting by.

To the south is Egypt, a 2000 year old empire that was fabulously wealthy and powerful. To the north is Assyria, a rich powerful 1000 year old empire. To the east is Babylon, a rich powerful 1000 year old empire. To the west are Phoenicia and Philistia, rich and powerful 1000 year old empires.These giants can crush you, rob you and enslave you any time they want…….. and they do from time to time.

You pick up a book at the bookstore one day and it contains predictions of the future:

Egypt will be destroyed
Assyria will be destroyed
Babylon will be destroyed
Philistia will be destroyed
Phoenecia will be destroyed

They will wind up as 3rd world backwaters and you, Israel, will prosper and dominate the region.

You would have laughed. You would say that the author(s) were crazy. Imagine a 21st century pundit predicting that the U.S., China, Russia, Japan, and Great Britain would become 3rd world backwaters and that Croatia would prosper and become a major world power. Impossible you might say.

And yet it happened…….all of it.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

If you had known in advance that all of those utterly ridiculous predictions were going to come true, I bet you’d have read that book very closely. You’d probably assume that the writers were geniuses or that they had a source of “inside information”. You would listen very carefully to what they had to say. You might even change your plans based on what they said.

The book, of course, is the old testament.

From where we stand today it’s easy to lose perspective. It’s easy to think that the old testament is a qaint collection of fictional stories. But, if you look at it from the perspective of the people to whom it was addressed, it is amazingly accurate in its foresight…….inspired you might say.

So, when the old testament predicted a messiah, the Israelites took it very seriously.

We should too.

A friend was recently told by a pastor that she could not join our church unless she was baptized by immersion. Sprinkling just won’t do. She did not get immersed. She has not become a member of our church. She is a solid Christian and a good person.

Another friend is gay……. and many gays don’t attend church at all.

What is getting in between them and God?

In both cases, it is rules that are standing in their way. Rules are interfering with their approach to God. Paradoxically……… the old testament is in their way.

So…… how do we balance the old testament rules with the need to draw people closer to Christ?

The rules must be important…… after all, the old testament is full of them………. 613 in the Torah alone. Spreading the faith is also important. But which is more important…….. the rules or spreading the faith.

You may not like this.

The answer is: “it depends”……….and what it depends on is where you are in your walk…….with, toward, or away from God.

When a rule clearly leads a person toward God, there is no problem. For example: don’t worship idols. Things get muddy when a rule stands in the way of somebody’s approach to God. Clearly, the immersion rule is impeding my first friend’s progress. With my second friend, things are a little murkier. The bible clearly and repeatedly says that sex is for husbands and wives. Based on the clarity and repetition of this rule, it must be important. And yet, it is impeding many LGBT people from approaching God.

I think that the best approach is to develop a “my rules/your rules” strategy. In other words, how I apply the rules has to depend on where I am and where the other person is………in their walk. For myself, I will honor as many of the 600 some odd rules as I can. For others, perhaps friends who are just dipping a toe into the water, I will keep it to “love God/ love your neighbor”.

It would be a tragedy for somebody I know to miss out on paradise because I beat them up over one of the rules from the old testament.

It would be a tragedy if somebody walked away from a great church because of a technical disagreement over baptism.

It would be a tragedy to lose an entire group of people over a rule about sex. I’m not saying that we should abandon our rules. I am saying that with others, we should sell “love for God and our neighbors” first. We can worry about rule #7 later, maybe a lot later.

The way I see it, I have my hands full managing my own behavior…….. my own compliance with the rules. I don’t have the energy to oversee the other guy’s situation. I don’t claim the moral superiority to judge him. I won’t conduct an argument that puts an impediment in his way. Because win or lose, the argument alone will drive him away. I’d rather “agree to disagree” if that will remove a barrier between my gay friends and God.

So what do I say to my gay friends if they ask about their practices? I would say that the old testament has rules. So does the new testament……it says that God loves you and so do I……… and for now that’s good enough for me.

The key idea here is that we cannot alienate people by trying to stuff all of the rules down their throat. Start with “love God/ love your neighbor”.

God will take care of the rest.