Merry Christmas!

Is there a “war on Christmas?” Fox News’ John Gibson has done the research and concluded in the affirmative. Whether it is the banning in Denver of a church group who wanted an overtly Christian float to represent them in the “holiday parade” or the prohibition of the colors red and green and candy canes from public schools, those who insist that they are simply enforcing the constitutional separation of church and state have been at this game for decades.

I attended a public school until 8th grade. I still have a program from my sixth grade Christmas concert from 1970. We got to sing “Silent Night” and “O Come, All ye Faithful” and “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” People may think of the 60’s and early 70’s as a time of anti-cultural hippiedom, but the Woodstock generation really didn’t take over the culture while they had more important things to do (like protesting Vietnam, doing drugs, and having unrestrained sex). When the hippie generation became college professors and lawyers for the ACLU, that’s when big changes started to occur.

This year, prior to the Christmas shopping season, retail giant Wal-Mart announced that its employees would be encouraged to say “Happy holidays” and not “Merry Christmas.” Almost instantly, large organizations of Christians decided to take a stand, threatening a boycott. One Wal-Mart customer received an e-mail from a “customer service” employee explaining the company’s decision in this way:

"The colors associated with Christmas red and white are actually a representation of the aminita mascera (sic) mushroom. Santa is also borrowed from the Caucuses, mistletoe from the Celts, yule log from the Goths, the time from the Visigoth and the tree from the worship of Baal. It is a wide wide world,"

When this became public, however, the employee was fired, Wal-Mart changed its policy, and the boycott was lifted. The other night, I even was wished a “Merry Christmas” by an employee as I left Wal-Mart.

What kind of person would get upset at the wishing of a “Merry Christmas?” Most people, including this Jewish rabbi, are not offended. There are, however, overt atheists out there who oppose any ingress to their stubborn rejection of the very existence of God, and they seem to be the ones driving the lawsuits to eliminate “under God” from the pledge of allegiance and “Christ” from “holidays.” This article from nobelief advises the observation of Winter Solstice, since the Catholic church “obviously” stole December 25 from the pagans. This one advises people to celebrate Festivus, a Seinfeld-concocted holiday featuring a bare aluminum pole, the airing of grievances, and the feats of strength. I love Seinfeld, but I can’t believe there are really people out there who are celebrating “Festivus” today on the basis of an 8-year-old sitcom segment!

I believe that the whole “Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays” controversy is one more tool of the enemy to distract believers from the true meaning of the miracle of Christmas. The more we get hung up on whether a clerk in a store greets us with “Merry Christmas,” the less likely we are to display love in our own words and actions, and display the “good will toward men” so essential to the angelic proclamation in the Bethlehem sky. As challenging as it is in a commercialized environment, God’s people must take the time to ponder the miracle of the incarnation. Think of it—the eternal son of God humbled himself by willingly laying aside the full and complete use of his divine attributes, so that he could take on human flesh in the womb of a virgin mother. This he did solely by grace; this he did solely to become the substitute for sinners. The word became flesh so that he could live as a human, subject to the law in all its demands yet perfect in his obedience, and so that he could die in the place of all humans, bearing the guilt and punishment for our sins.

Have a blessed Christmas as you ponder in your heart the miracle that God loved you and became man for you, despite that fact that we have all been “naughty” and “bad” and deserve the spiritual equivalent of hot coals forever. Don’t obsess about the external things like greetings and gifts, and ignore the spiritual miracle.

Will "Tookie" pay the ultimate penalty?

Time is running out for Tookie Williams, one of the co-founders of the Crips gang in Los Angeles. Unless Governor Schwarzenegger decides to grant clemency, Williams will be executed at 12:01 AM on Tuesday, December 13, for the murder of four people. Many Hollywood stars are making “Save Tookie” their cause du jour, and make the case that he deserves mercy because he has redeemed himself and is no longer the violent man he once was. As proof of this, they cite the many childrens’ books he has co-authored that attempt to discourage kids from joining gangs and getting in serious trouble with the law. But is Tookie Williams genuinely repentant for the murders for which he is to be executed? Despite overwhelming evidence, he has denied even committing the murders. He has shown no remorse for his crime, nor has he apologized to the victims’ families. He refuses to cooperate with police in tracking down Crips members who are suspects in criminal investigations. Yet his supporters point to his nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize and all of his books as evidence that Tookie must live. LA Police and the murder victims’ families see things quite differently.

Recently, a Virginia man, Kenneth Lee Boyd, became the 1,000th death row inmate to be executed since the Supreme Court re-instituted the death penalty in 1977. Boyd had brutally murdered his estranged wife and her father. There seems to be a certain morbid fascination on some of the media’s part with these milestones—the 1000th execution, the 2000th death in Iraq, as though the sheer numbers are evidence that these are practices that should be abolished. Indeed, the milestone execution has provoked, once again, a flurry of debate on whether capital punishment is barbaric, practiced only in dictatorships like the Congo and China, or whether it is the ultimate application of justice. “Civilized” nations like Germany and France do not have the death penalty, and the fact that America has it and uses it reinforces their stereotypes of the US and of its citizens as violent, gun-toting cowboys, led by the worst of all, Mr. Execution himself, George W. Bush.

Many years ago, when I lived in Lubbock, Texas, I was called for jury duty for a capital murder trial. A man had clubbed an 85-year-old woman to death with a baseball bat. Each potential juror (and there were about 200 in the jury pool) was interviewed by counsel for both prosecution and defense. Each side’s attorney could strike three potential jurors from the 12 (+two alternates) that would eventually hear evidence and render a verdict. When interviewed, I stated that I was a senior pastor at Shepherd of the Plains Lutheran Church. When asked about my views regarding capital punishment, I said that although I didn’t oppose its use by the state, I also believed that a person is granted a time of grace to repent of their sins, and that I personally would have a difficult time being the de facto executioner and voting to put someone to death. I became one of the prosecution’s strikes, because I could not be relied upon to vote for the death penalty.

Capital punishment is an issue about which Christians may disagree. There are certainly passages from the Old Testament that are similar to ones recorded in the Code of Hammurabi, for example, that seem to indicate that the civil law of Israel provided ample application of the death penalty for a wide variety of sins and crimes against the community and against God’s holiness. But we do not live under the Old Testament Civil Law any more than we live under its ceremonial requirements to avoid eating pork or to sacrifice animals on an altar. The New Testament does not prescribe penalties to be applied by the government; rather, it speaks to the Christian as an individual and to believers as a community. In Romans 13, Paul writes that we are to obey the governing authorities because they do not bear the sword for nothing. They are God’s agent for executing justice in the world. Certainly we are well aware of what the “sword” was used for by the Romans—for execution and for military defense. Therefore, it is undeniable that God’s Word grants to human government the power to punish with whatever force is deemed necessary, including capital punishment. If a state decides that it doesn’t want to use this ultimate punishment, then so be it. “The sword” then takes the form of life in prison.

Many people believe that, in order to be consistent, if you are pro-life in defending the unborn, then you must be anti-capital punishment. I disagree. Only a fool would equate preborn humans with the Kenneth Lee Boyds of this world. I would submit instead that capital punishment is also God’s way of expressing His views regarding the protection of human life. If “whoever sheds man’s blood, by man will his blood be shed,” then perhaps that deterrent will end up saving lives that might otherwise have become innocent victims of violent and vicious vermin like Tookie Williams.

What are your views? Have they changed as you have grown older? Should Tookie live? Express yourself in the comment section.

UPDATE Gov. Schwarzenegger refused Williams' plea for clemency, and the convicted murderer and founder of the Crips gang met the ultimate judge at 12:36 AM on Tuesday morning.