THE POWER OF ONE DAY

There's one day of the year that exerts a power like no other. It's so powerful that rulers, legislattors, dictators, educators, corporations, and businesses fear it with a vengeance and with such strength we might classify it as a seasonal phobia that comes every December around the world--a Christmasphobia. The very word itself strikes fear into the hearts of the aforementioned. 

We see the fear in any country in which communist rulers clench their iron fists to crush the day. The reason for that is because to celebrate or even say the word, "Christmas" is to say that there is a power higher than the states they rule. Embedded in the word is "Christ." 

THE PHOBIA IN ALBANIA 

 Beginning in 1945, Albania was under the communist regime of Enver Hoxha. In 1967, Albania became the first officially declared atheist country in the world. All religions were prohibited, places of worship were closed and / or destroyed, clergy were persecuted, tortured, and / or imprisoned. 

Religious practices being forbidden, religious celebrations were also removed from the calendar and replaced by festivities in honor of the communist party. (There can be no power higher than the state.) Christmas was replaced by New Year’s Day. Celebrated on December 31st and January 1st, New Year’s Day got all aspects of the Christmas festivities while erasing the religious aspects. Santa Claus was no longer Saint Nicholas, he was, "Grandfather of the New Year." The Christmas tree became the "New Year's Tree."

Only a few children, those of the elite, received gifts for New Year or a basket containing fruits and dried fruits. Nevertheless, braving the laws, many believers celebrated Christmas secretly within families, running the risk of being arrested or imprisoned. For almost 25 years Albania was deprived of Christmas, until 1990, when religion was again allowed and places of worship were reopened and rebuilt.

THE PHOBIA IN NORTH KOREA

The North Korean government works hard to ensure information about religious holidays doesn't enter the "Hermit Kingdom," so its citizens remain unaware that people are eating cookies, gorging on pecan pies, and singing Christmas carols across the West.

This is because inside North Korea – a country widely deemed to be one of the most hostile and repressive towards organized religion – you can be imprisoned, tortured or executed for celebrating Christmas. The fear of Christmas among the leaders is that strong.

Kang Jimin, who grew up on the ghostly grey concrete streets of the capital of Pyongyang, says he remained wholly oblivious to Christmas while living there.

“There is no Christmas in North Korea. I didn't know what it was,” he said in an interview.( He was 31 years-old at the time.)

He went on to say, "Christmas is Jesus Christ’s birthday but North Korea is a communist country so people do not know who Jesus Christ is. They do not know who God is. The Kim family is their god.” (I. e., "The government is their god.")

In a strange quirk, Christmas trees adorned with baubles and Christmas lights can be found in Pyongyang, but are there all year round and citizens are unlikely to be aware of the message they bear.

But this doesn't mean the North Korean government was happy with the Christmas tree-shaped tower the South Korean government constructed near the border with the North.

The tower – which was about two miles from the border and had in the past been lit up at Christmas – could be seen by North Koreans living in nearby towns. Incensed by it, the North threatened to shoot it down back in 2014, saying it constituted “psychological warfare." Talk about having a fear of Christmas!

But while Christmas is forbidden in North Korea, celebrating the birthday of Kim Jong-Suk – the deceased grandmother of Kim Jong Un – is not. People mark the revolutionary idol’s birthday, which falls on Christmas Eve, by making pilgrimages to a town in the north-east called Hoeryong (her birthplace).

“The birthday of Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong Un – the men – is more important, but Kim Jong-Suk’s birthday was celebrated. People come together and have a drink and sometimes drink too much,” he said.

Kang says he didn't know any Christians when he was living in North Korea, adding: “I did not know any Christians or anyone who believed in God. The North Korean government controls all of the media and the Internet, and people I met don't know who Jesus is.”

He was aware of the stark punishments enforced on those who dared practice religion in the atheist state.

“You can’t say you are Christian. If you do, they will send you to a prison camp,” he says. “I heard about a family who believed in God and the secret police caught them. They are now all dead – even the children – a 10-year-old and a seven-year-old.” (The terror of the state for anything or anyone higher than the state results in murdering children, women, and men.)

THE PHOBIA IN RUSSIA

Stalin hated the idea that his people might believe in a power greater than his own. Christmas says that there is. When the Bolsheviks—Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin with comrades—took power in Russia, the Christmas tree had to go.

While Lenin was alive, the tree was used as a New Year Eve feature. After him, in order to dress up what was now called a “New Year spruce” for public display, you needed the government’s permission. In the banning of his rule, Stalin sent government officials into homes to see if they had dared to erect a Christmas tree. The fear of Christmas results in government agents bursting into the homes of the people. 

THE PHOBIA IN AMERICA

Among the movers and shakers of our society there is a Christmasphobia. Among the many instances of this terror,  a Michigan elementary school's principal issued a directive specifically forbidding references to God, Christianity, or the birth of Jesus Christ. 

Advertisers fear using the word "Christmas"-- instead, there are the ubiquitous wishes, "Happy Holidays" and "Seasons Greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas." Schools no longer have the Christmas Holidays," but instead the observe a "Winter Break" Is it not strange that advertisers have no fear of saying, "Happy Hanukkah," but can't say, "Merry Christmas?"

The President of the United States was afraid to say the name "Jesus" in a recent address. From the news report we learn that he said, "How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given,” Biden began, as he delivered his address to reporters at the White House. The president spoke about a “child” born on Christmas but didn't speak the child’s name. “We look to the sky to a lone star, shining brighter than all the rest guiding us to the birth of a child, a child that Christians believe to be the Son of God,” he said.

In addition to fearing to say, "Jesus," the careful reader will note the statement, "The child that Christians believe to be the Son of God." The implication is, "He's not the Son of God, but Christians believe He is."

And now for a personal example: I was in line to check out at a store when the clerk, a person who appeared to be in her late teens or early, very early, 20s finished with the customer in front of me, said, "Happy holidays," to which he replied, "Merry Christmas." She then responded, "Merry Christmas." 

When my turn came, as she finished, she said, "Happy Holidays," and I said, "You shouldn't be afraid to say, "Merry Christmas." She then said, "Merry Christmas."

Go figure.  

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WHY WE CAN'T TALK TO EACH OTHER

We're living in a terrible time spiritually. It's an age that's been called "a post-truth age" which, according to the dictionary, means, “a situation in which people are more likely to accept an argument based on their emotions and beliefs, rather than one based on facts.” 

We see this when we hear people talking about  "my truth" and "your truth." This reflects the idea that there is no objective standard by which we can know the truth. Those words the warp and woof of a “post-truth” society as it replaces an “objective truth” with many "truths" based on individual emotions and feelings.

I saw this in full view at the University of Missouri where there was this well-known speaker was to give a lecture open to the public, students, faculty, and anyone. This speaker was to present a lecture on controversial topics like the objective fact that there are two sexes, male and female, subjects like that. 

As he started speaking, a group of students stood up and started chanting, "Shame! Shame! Shame!" over and over and over again. They were so loud that the speaker couldn't be heard with the result that he couldn't continue. I would add that some of them were making obscene gestures at him as they chanted. The students were wild-eyed and in the grip of their frenzied emotions run amuck. 

As an aside, their actions were not courageous. They knew absolutely nothing was going to happen to them. They weren't going to be expelled or sanctioned in any way for the disruption of an approved meeting on state property. There would be no consequences. The adults on the faculty who were there would not criticize them; they would approve their actions, thinking that they, as their teachers, had taught them well. They were letting the inmates run the asylum. 

This is what a post-truth age is like: Instead of emotions being formed by objective truth, those emotions become “my truth.”This was what was on full, raging display at the University Missouri. The hecklers had worked themselves into an emotional display on steroids. Thus, the hecklers' veto carried the day. The frenzied herd can get so frenetic that the campus police have to escort the speaker out of the room for his or her own protection of life and limb. It's happening repeatedly on campuses.

There can be no rational conversation with chanters bellowing the same word or words over and over again. The students had become a mindless herd which can could manipulated through feelings. In actuality what was happening in Missouri was that, by the frenzied chanting of "their truth," they couldn't be confronted by "the truth." It was impossible.

That's what these "safe spaces" on college campuses are all about: they teach the immature to avoid facts that would promote rational thought and conversations leading to objective truth. Those who hold to "my truth"--they are people with whom you cannot reason. You cannot meaningfully communicate with chanters of slogans. Society begins to break down. 

It's like a cancer, it brings its corrupting influence on our politics; it's dividing families as incompatible “my truth” worlds come up against each other.

The post-truth age isn't new, read the book of Judges, chapters 1-21 and watch a nation descends into chaos as each person has his own "my truth." 

LIVING WITH JOHN CALVIN

History is one fascinating subject whether it be American history (Bunker Hill, The Alamo, et al.) or church history. Church history is the redheaded stepchild of many a Christian's ranking of what's what in the past, but fascinating it is. 

For example, what was it like to live in Geneva, John Calvin's "New Israel," AKA Geneva? You don't have to wonder, we have the receipts. 

In time, with the authority of the Geneva city council, Calvin became the religious dictator of Protestant Geneva, empowered to root out all manifestations of Catholicism and immorality. And root he did.

His was an overt totalitarian regime. Calvin instituted a kind of religion police that he and the city council empowered to inspect people’s houses to ascertain if they behaved according to Calvin’s ordinances. (Could you live with those inspectors and their inspections?)

The council said, "No way" to having Rosaries and relics in your domicile, and it became illegal to name children after saints. (Could live with city officials telling you the approved names for your children?)

Next, your choice of reading material came under Calvin's purview. “Immoral” or Catholic books were locked down; art, music with instruments, dancing, and theater were not allowed. 

Then your dinner table came under his watchful eye. There were regulations for the amounts of the edibles allowed at your table, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 

Next came your wardrobe which included the prescribed colors of clothing. What about your hair style? That was fair game too.  Gambling, drunkenness, adultery, promiscuity, immodest dress, profane songs, idolatry, heresy, and speaking ill of the clergy were punished, often by exile or execution. (I sort of like that "no speaking ill of the clergy" idea, but that's just me.)

They censored the press, and severely so. Education, which Calvin regarded as inseparable from religion, was carefully regulated. New schools were established, with emphasis on arithmetic, writing, and history in primary school, and Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in secondary schools to facilitate study of the Bible. They eliminated begging by having the government regulate charity.

Fifty-eight people were executed during the first five years of Calvin’s rule, and seventy-six exiled. Most notorious was the case of Michael Servetus, the scientist and theologian with whom Calvin had corresponded earlier but they disagreed on religious dogma. 

Specifically, Servetus (indeed a heretic) denied the existence of the Trinity. On his way to Italy he made the fatal error of passing through Geneva, was arrested, tried for heresy by the city council, and condemned to death. 

Calvin agreed with the sentence and wanted him beheaded. But the council decided to have him slowly roasted at the stake in a fire made expressly of green wood so that it would burn more slowly and prolong his agony.

One author states, "John Calvin’s Geneva, represented the ultimate in repression. The city-state of Geneva, which became known as the Protestant Rome, was also, in effect, a police state, ruled by a Consistory of five pastors and twelve lay elders, with the bloodless figure of the dictator looming over all. In physique, temperament, and conviction, Calvin (1509–1564) was frail, thin, short, and lightly bearded, with ruthless, penetrating eyes, he was humorless and short-tempered."

The slightest criticism enraged him. Those who questioned his theology he called “pigs,” “donkeys,” “riffraff,” “dogs,” “idiots,” and “stinking beasts.” One morning he found a poster on his pulpit accusing him of “Gross Hypocrisy.” A suspect was arrested. No one produced any evidence as to his guilt, but he was tortured day and night for a month untill he confessed. Screaming with pain, he was lashed to a wooden stake. His feet were nailed to the wood; ultimately he was decapitated.

Now here's a thought: had Calvin been a classical dispensationalist, those 58 people would have lived; those 76 could have stayed at home. The classical dispensationalist distinguished Israel from the church and that would have made all the difference in the world.

Any takers to move to 16th century Geneva and live with John Calvin?

THE FLAG

 It happened in the historic city of Boston in a courthouse. The news reported the story: "The city of Boston has agreed to pay more than $2.1 million to the Christian legal organization that backed a court challenge after the city refused to fly a Christian flag outside City Hall, a case that made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

"The settlement announced Tuesday by Liberty Counsel covers attorneys' fees and other costs associated with the legal battle that started in 2017 when city resident Hal Shurtleff and his Camp Constitution group asked to hoist the flag on one of three poles on City Hall Plaza to mark Constitution Day.

"The Christian flag — which is white, with a red cross on a blue background in the upper left corner —finally flew for a couple of hours outside City  Hall on August 3, 2022, as activists cheered and sang songs of praise,"

A five-year battle, over two million dollars, all for a couple of hours? And for what purpose? It will be forgotten tomorrow. 

But there's a question: Why? What's the purpose? The courthouse isn't Christian and has nothing to do with Christianity. In fact, many of their decisions have been flat-out anti-Christian. 

Freedom of speech? Yes, that's true. But, again, why? Is this a line in the sand you're willing to die for? 

For those 120 minutes, was the city government of Boston Christianized? Did Boston's colleges such as MIT, Harvard, and Boston College profess the name of Christ? Did the culture change in any way? Of course not.

The issue goes deeper than that. God ordained the state because of sin. Its concern is for all people. God ordained the church for the community of the saved. 

The state cannot be Christianized, certainly not by a flag flying for a few hours.  

Five long years of legal wrangling. Over $2 million spent. Why  on earth?