December
23
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An Open Letter to Christmas Scrooge
[Note: So there is no confusion, this was written in December, 2011. At the time, we were attending Radford Fellowship, a church plant of Paul Washer and HeartCry missionary society. The attitude described below was not characteristic of simply one man…..]
Last Sunday I was at church and remarked how much I admired a young man’s hat. I went so far as to declare “Man, I really like that hat. Maybe I’ll get something like that for Christmas!” It was a compliment, not covetousness.
The response from someone nearby surprised me.
With a straight face, not even a hint of a smile, the reply was “Well….maybe you can ask the tooth fairy, or Santa.” And with a completely disrespectful, condescending glare from a young man half-my age, he whisked his child away from my, apparently, heretical speech. No smile, no hint of good-humored fellowship, much less of friendship in Christ.
Shockingly, I held my tongue.
The young man who wore the hat simply smiled uncomfortably, as if he wasn’t sure what to say.
Well I do.
Attitudes like that have no place in the Church of Jesus Christ.
Parents, regardless of how you view Christmas, there is always room for fellowship with those who differ from your views. If there is not, I am certain there is pietistic pride in your heart that needs to be mortified.
This is not a post, per se, about Christmas, but about arrogance in spirituality. Quite frankly, I’m currently in the heart of it.
Listen, I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday, and in my 50 years of experience with Church and people in it, I’ve learned this much:
When you disrespect your elders in front of your own child – elders, not in the Presbyterian sense – but those who are older than you – you do your child a great disservice and set a poor, pathetic example of Christian charity and fellowship.
You are teaching your child:
- It’s ok to condescend those older than you.
- It’s ok to disrespect a Christian man and not address him as ‘Mr.’
- It’s ok to despise the person and their views on Christmas
- It’s ok, even if that man is a pastor-teacher, to walk away holier-than-thou and to disdain a man who, maybe, perhaps, possibly may be one who possesses wisdom you don’t want.
When that kind of attitude is taken, and your child is being pushed along by your loving , protective hands away from someone who may, maybe, be a help to you spiritually, it might be the case that you need to stop worshipping your current spiritual hero, and just lighten up and go back to viewing the Word of God as your authority.
Merry Christmas.
5 Pt. Salt 
So…men wear headcoverings in your church? 🙂
I noticed the same kind of thing in church, and I also noticed something else about it….by the time the children of these kinds of parents become teenagers, they are disrespectful to even their OWN parents. Seems you can’t teach kids to selectively respect authority.
Pictured: Joel’s inner Sasquatch.
Those two rascals need a good switch!
Great post! I agree totally. In the Body of Christ, even if we disagree with one another, we must learn to respond in a Christ-like manner. Thank you for your stand on this subject and other subjects of importance in the church.
I may not always agree with your opinions, but I find that they are always factual and well thought out. You have caused me to stop and think several times.
What a missed opportunity to tell teach our child we can disagree and love one another. we do have to be careful with the blanket respect for elders thing because most predators use some variation of that on kids/teens.
Terrible story but unfortunately that sort of thing can happen. I completely agree with your conclusion. It was definitely a missed opportunity to teach his children to be loving and respectful while instead being disrespectful to an elder man in Christ.
Joel –
Could not agree with you more. Sadly, this person is probably not even emulating a spiritual hero; they are probably just reflective of the culture they are immersed in.
We see it all around us. People who are so stilted in their own sense of security; of what they can endure that they cannot abide the presence of anyone who might say anything that they do not agree with.
When I was a child, we used to have this saying; ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never harm me!’
I do not know what happened to the wisdom behind this child’s simple retort. These days people seem to think it is their civic duty to unleash a withering stream of invective against anyone who dares disagree with their point of view, or might have an opinion that they do not share.
When I was a kid, in general we were united as Americans; in the church I attended we were united as a family. Men called each other ‘brother’; women, ‘sister’.
We are so divided now. Anyone who is a stranger appears a potential enemy; one who might invade ‘our space’ with their foreign values.
We see it in our schools, our politics, our television and radio programs, and sadly we see it in our churches where we ought to know better how to behave toward each other.