COOKIE, THE CHRISTMAS DOG
Years ago, my wife and I had a dog named Cookie. She was a delight. I still miss her. Cookie was our Christmas dog. She loved Christmas. One year my wife and I returned home to find that Cookie had opened some of the Christmas presents! Suffice it to say, it was necessary for us to do some re-packaging.
There is some Christmas re-packaging going on in churches these days. This re-packaging is both unnecessary and wrong. Let me explain.
Most church leaders want to see their churches grow in membership and in attendance. To see this happen, some churches are willing to go to almost any extreme, willing to do anything to see their churches grow.
Church Leaders often start asking this question: What can we do to get our church to grow?
The answer they come up with is, We must get people to like us. If people like us, they will want to be around us, and if they want to be around us, they will come to church.
That, of course, leads them to another question: What can we do to get people to like us?
To them the answer is simple: We must give people what they want and stop giving them things they don’t want.
It doesn’t take a lot of research to determine that people these days don’t want to hear about sin, judgment, or a man dying on a cross. Some church leaders think it is time to re-package church and get rid of these things!
For centuries sin, judgment, and the Cross were considered to be the Gospel. These teachings were considered to be: THE ESSENTIAL, NON-NEGOTIABLE CORE OF CHRISTIANITY. Many churches today, however, believe that we must re-package Christianity into something that is more marketable.
When the re-packaging is done, we have a Christianity that is more like a successful living philosophy than Biblical Christianity.
It is a mistake to tell people to believe in Jesus so they can be happy in this life. There are plenty of non-Christians who are very happy with their lives. When we tell them to accept Jesus to be happy, they simply smile and say: ‘No, thank you. We’re already quite happy without Jesus. You may need him, but we don’t. So keep him to yourself.’
The truth of the matter is that many today are re-packaging the Christian message in such a way that they are giving people a perfectly good reason for rejecting it.
The church today finds herself in the peculiar position of telling people they need Jesus as their Savior after she, the church, has removed from her teaching any reason for people to need a Savior.
As we approach the Christmas season again, we would do well to reflect deeply on the words the angel spoke to Joseph: ‘ … you shall call His name JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins’ Matthew 1:21
Only sinners need saving. Since we are all sinners (Romans 3:23)
we all need saving. The good news of Christmas is that the Savior has come. His name is Jesus, and he will save all those who see the reality and enormity of their sins and come to him for saving.
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