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Should Christians celebrate holidays with pagan origins? Season 3: Episode 11
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Are Easter eggs evil? What drugs are we using this pollen season? Is Christianity a mythological mashup?
Well, hey, welcome into this week's edition of Live at Liberty. This is our pollinated edition, and uh we are uh heavily into yellow spring. And uh Austin, you texted in this morning, you weren't even gonna be on here because you're afraid your eyes look weird or something like that.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, well, they do, but it's just my own insecurity. It it's not as bad when one of them is or excuse me, it's not as bad when both of them are like equally swollen, but like I woke up and this one just had a whole lot more going on than the other did. And I'm like, I don't I don't want to be like that today. But uh it was touch and go for a minute, got some eye drops, uh little product plug. Here we go. On the way in if you're suffering the spring season, this this part of the podcast is called What You Using. Yeah, uh these seem to do the trick. What is that? They're allergy relief items.
SPEAKER_03Oh, okay. Yeah. So yeah, I'm I'm uh big on the uh this time of year. What's the what's the nasal spray with the green thing on it? Nasal court. Flonase. Oh yeah. Sorry. I mean, grew up. Yeah, that's a boy, like every night. I can't breathe at night during this time of year, all this kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_06So flonase is a secret weapon for uh for a lot of things. Like if you have an ear stopped up, I kid you not, we have a ear, nose, and throat doctor friend who for for like two or three weeks, Val couldn't hear well out of one of her ears, and he said, Once a day, do the nose spray and aim it towards that ear when you do it. And sure enough, it cleared it up. And I was like, that stuff can work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm like, Yeah, you gotta do it up and to the back. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05It's a whole complicated system in there. That sounds like chiropractor. I see the videos of thiropractors like, all right, twisting this crazy way, and then they're just like, crack.
SPEAKER_03I'm gonna put you in the nose, but you never worked into the ear.
SPEAKER_01Hey now, so Joel's real big into the sinus wash, like where you hold it over.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I have seen that like a neti pot.
SPEAKER_01I can't then yeah, the netty pot. No, I did that one time and I must have tilted the wrong way because I instantly felt my ear fill up.
SPEAKER_03Like, and so I haven't done it since. Isn't that almost like waterboarding? Yeah. It seems pretty torturous, pretty bad.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but yeah, how they invented it. I don't know.
SPEAKER_03All these uh eat this honey, drink this juice, you know. And the funny thing about that is even though everybody's been taught every year, everybody gives you, hey, you need to you need a cup of this or whatever, everybody's still sick.
SPEAKER_06So apparently none of that stuff works. But yeah. Somebody's making money though.
SPEAKER_05Somebody's making some money. When you got a nose that looks like this, look at this profile, yeah, you're you're gonna suck up all the pollen in a 3.5 mile radius. So it doesn't matter what you take. It's just I just wake up and want to call my eyes out and it's that time of year, man.
SPEAKER_03Here we go. It's a car wash every week right now. All right. So here's what we're gonna talk about in this episode. Do Christian holidays have pagan origins and should we celebrate them? Especially coming up on Easter here. Are we pagans for having an egg hunt for the little kids, right? And uh also gonna give you some news and notes, and then Laura Beth's gonna do our birthdays and anniversaries. So let's do some news and notes real quick. Uh a whole lot of sports going on in the church. So we're gonna say, first of all, congratulations to Deacon Amos, who had a double double in his basketball game on Sunday. 13 points, 11 rebounds on his way to helping the fourth grade Christian Heritage School Lions basketball team take home the championship in the Scenic City League. So, how about that? Way go deep go, man.
SPEAKER_06And he's got great hair too. I'm glad you explained more about what all that was because I was happy for him, but I'm just I learned something every week. Do you know what a double double was? No, a double double is like two shots of espresso for me.
SPEAKER_03And only and only superior to that, to the double double, is the triple double, which is where you have double digits in three statistical categories. You're going too far above my head.
SPEAKER_05In N Out Burger, that means a very different thing.
SPEAKER_03That's right. So let's talk about Liberty Bowling. Liberty One defeated Valley. Liberty Two took down life gate. We've not had a whole lot of weeks where we have a both teams win. That's pretty good. What go, guys?
SPEAKER_01That's pretty good.
SPEAKER_03So uh Father Abraham and James Pilcher led the scores again this week with a 199 and a 189. But Coach Jimmy, he sends in um he basically says there's two weeks to go in the season. And his words, and I quote, we are gonna need Moses to come part the waters and lead us to the promised land of the playoffs. Amen. In other words, they need a miracle. He just needs to do a little disco.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know what I mean? That's right. It'll probably solve a lot of things. Yeah, go back to season one if you need to know more about Jimmy.
SPEAKER_06I'll forever reference this, so you might as well go watch it.
SPEAKER_03There you go. Softball got underway last night. Not a good start.
SPEAKER_05Uh well, it didn't be perspective.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, apparently depleted rosters, a lot of sickness and injury.
SPEAKER_05Hey man, look, I'll tell you this. I am sore as all get out today, but I had fun last night. It was cold and it was windy, uh, and we lost uh handedly in both games. But uh man, it was fun. I had a good time.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so uh apparently the scores were so bad. Bryson said, I don't have the scores, they don't turn them in till after lunch. So I'm like, I don't even want to first get it.
SPEAKER_01It's a good thing though that we signed up some subs. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Hey, look, the this the second game was was pretty close. Um and look, if anything, uh just got a shout out to my boy Danny. Uh I wish Jody was on here. He said, Look, you gotta vouch for me because my wife will never believe me. He jacked two home runs back to back and uh not not little home runs, like he he smacked it. And I thought he was gonna hit a third one. It uh it went to the fence and he got a double off that one, but he was uh he was MVP of our of our losing games.
SPEAKER_03So back to back means in two consecutive at bats for him. Oh yeah. So is that in the same game?
SPEAKER_05Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_03All right, we we played two games, but in one game he just back got fired. Really cool, man. So hey, uh, next Monday night, the team plays again at 8:30 p.m. out at Riverside Park. We're gonna try to promote when the team plays and try to get some people out there to watch the game. Be a fun church activity. Okay. So uh, all right, so that's enough of the news and notes and sports and all that kind of stuff going on. So let's kick it over to Laura Beth. We get our birthdays and anniversaries, and then we're gonna come back and talk about are the Christian origins of pagan or of holidays pagan and should we celebrate them? Laura Beth.
SPEAKER_00We've got some birthdays this week. We have Carter Reynolds on March 26th, Lee Joseph, March 27th, we have Abby Clara McAfee on March 28th, Susan Harrison, March 29th, and Gary Abraham, March 30th. We've got a birthday every day. Happy birthday to you guys. We have one anniversary. It's Ronnie and Darla Jackson. They are celebrating their anniversary on March 30th. Happy anniversary. We have lots of announcements happening on our calendar right now. So make sure you're keeping up on that Liberty app and you're scrolling through those announcements. There's tons of events on the what's happening at Liberty. So we have our Easter Sunday. There's going to be two services that Sunday, a 9 a.m. and an 11 a.m. So you can choose one that works best for your family. But make sure that you're inviting people so that way we can celebrate the hope of resurrection together. Uh we have the Spring Place campus Easter um celebration, and they're going to be collecting candy for their Easter egg hunt. The bin is out in the foyer, and we are going to be collecting candy um through Sunday, March 29th. So please help us bring in peanut-free candy for that Easter egg hunt. We are currently doing the Annie Armstrong Easter offering. It's going to begin this coming Sunday and it's going to continue all throughout April. Um, the offering supports the missionaries in North America so that way they can plant churches and share the gospel throughout the United States and through Canada. Uh the envelopes for that um offering are in the back of the chairs in the sanctuary. We're gonna have a cemetery cleanup so you can join the trustees to go and clean up our cemetery at our old campus. The address for that is on Tibbsbridge Road where Liberty used to be. So come and bring all the yard equipment that you have and help with that cleanup. The Liberty Adult Softball League is gonna start March 16th and the games are gonna be played on Monday night through early June. The team roster is currently full, but we're looking for substitute players that are 18 and older. Um, so if anyone is willing to be on call if someone can't make it to a game, just make sure you talk to somebody or click on the registry link that's in the What's Happening at Liberty. The Doc is hosting the Easter jam, very similar to our jingle jam, and it's gonna be so fun. It is called Run and Tell It, and it's a family experience for everybody. The color run is gonna be on Sunday, March 29th. It's gonna start at 5 p.m. So we're gonna start in the sanctuary at tables, having a family discipleship time to talk about the resurrection and talk about Easter and Palm Sunday. And then after that, we're gonna transition outside and we're gonna do a color run around the building. And we're just gonna be covered in the colors that represent Easter and learn all about what they stand for and Jesus' story. And then we're gonna end with some gospel and some worship underneath the awning, and it's gonna be so fun and just a great way to welcome in Palm Sunday. So please come for that. It's gonna be amazing. We are currently in the middle of our 90-day tithing challenge. The challenge is to cut 10% from your budget and give it through um May 3rd and just see what God will do in your life. Um, I'm already seeing a lot of change in our budget, and I'm hearing a lot of stories about people being blessed through that. So definitely try to cut that 10% somewhere and give it to the church, give it to God and see what he'll do with it. The Celebrate Recovery Golf Tournament is coming up. The registration is in the What's Happening at Liberty page on the app. Um, the golf tournament is going to be on April 25th. The rain date for that is gonna be May 2nd. But y'all, this is so important. It's where they get their funding for their amazing programs through CR. Um, and if you haven't been on a Thursday, it's amazing. They need that funding to keep doing the amazing things that they're doing so far. You can also buy T signs if you want to support that way and not necessarily play in the tournament. So that is all that is happening at Liberty. Back to you, Brian.
SPEAKER_03Let someone send in a question this week on the Truth Over Trend series. Are Christian holidays, do they have pagan origins? And if so, uh, should we celebrate them? And so I uh got this, got this one. So I went online, just kind of I like to kind of find some of the videos that people may be getting these things from. And so here's basically what you're gonna hear in these accusations that Christmas was borrowed from either Saturnalia or Soul Invictus, which was celebrated on the 25th of December. Uh, and it was kind of a the Sun of the Sun God worship, right? Easter, uh, they say was borrowed from fertility festivals. The resurrection story was copied from dying and raising pagan gods, the pagan mythologies kind of have these stories of gods being killed uh and raising from the dead. Um that the accusation is that Christianity itself is a mashup of ancient pagan myths. Uh Seth Andrews is kind of one of the popular proponents of this idea in social media circles and also on the the uh debate circuit. And then um the other idea is that church leaders in the fourth century are really the ones who came up with these holidays. And so let's uh let's take those on. You're gonna find those in online videos, social media debates, uh popular skeptical literature. An example of that would be a video called The True Pagan Origins of Easter uh by ancient architects who has six hundred and thirty-three thousand subscribers. We're gonna get there one day, and uh 167,000 views. I think we're at like 103 now. So I mean we gotta start somewhere.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. Hey, you can get you can get your own personal uh URL after 100.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we were only 500 and something thousands. Hey, a year ago we had zero. Let him cook. Let him cook. We have a long way to go. We got another YouTube certification.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, there it is. Multi-platinum.
SPEAKER_03All right, so let's let's kind of take this on uh from a couple of different angles. The first one I want to bring up is that um God is the one who gave us holidays, right? We use the word holiday, but God gave us the holy days. And the word holiday is actually from the ancient Latin and Old English holy days, right? So um before um before we take this, before we talk about the holidays, let's think about the ones that God put in the Bible in the Old Testament. You have Passover, which is obviously falling around the Easter time, and that's going to figure into what we say about Easter here in a minute. You got the Feast of Weeks, you've got the Feast of Tabernacles, the Sabbath was always a holy day. Yep. Uh and then you had the Jubilee cycles, which would be every seven years, and then every 70 years they would do different things. So the reason uh God gave the people those holy days, especially the Sabbath, was to prevent us from becoming slaves of work. God did not want work to enslave humanity. So God built the cycles of rest and celebration into covenant life. You can go and look at Exodus chapter 23 on that. And then also God gave us those um kind of pauses in the calendar so that we would remember our story. He wanted He wanted the people telling the story of redemption and what he had done to bring them out of the thing about Passover, to bring them out of Egypt, um uh the Feast of Tabernacles, the idea of them tabernacling with God as they they crossed uh they crossed the wilderness and some things about that. Deuteronomy chapter six is where he tells, man, you tell these things to your children. And so uh that was a really important part of the holidays. So um the real question is not whether or not Christians have holidays. The question we ought to be asking is what do these holidays point to? What are what are their meanings that we have? And so kind of kind of keep that one in your forefront of your thinking on this. So let's take on kind of these Christmas and Easter accusations, right? So the pagan myth accusation um is interesting because this is one that comes up in cycles. It uh it comes up about every seems like every 50 years, this has arisen and been debunked over and over again. So just because it's brushing up on social media doesn't mean this is new. This isn't this isn't let's put it like this. This is an old act from Wringling Brothers.
SPEAKER_02It's been part of the circus for a long time.
SPEAKER_03Also makes me sneeze. Yes. Are you saying there's nothing new under the sun? There's nothing new under the sun in the circus. It does stink a little bit. But anyway, if you've uh the to put it in theological terms, if you've been going to the theological circus of debates for a long time, this is not a new act, all right? So um even skeptical scholars like Bart Ehrman, who is an atheist, who is an ancient doc he's uh his proficiency is an ancient documents, even he debunks the Christological myth idea that Christianity arose out of that. Um the resurrection belief uh appears extremely early in ancient Christian writing. And here's the other thing the resurrection idea, the incarnation idea, is prophesied all the way through the Old Testament. It's not like Christians went, oh, we gotta go get us one of those two, right? So you know, it just it really doesn't stand on a firm foundation. Um you're gonna hear and see videos where they will say maybe it's the Egyptian god Osiris, or man, there's any number of different gods they borrowed from that parallel these accounts, whether it's sacrifice for sinners, or whether it's raising from the dead, or whether it's a virgin birth. But when you actually go read these stories, they really don't parallel at all. They're it's a stretch to say that the Christians have have taken these stories and adopted them as their own.
SPEAKER_05Did you see where the guy it was it was years ago now, but he at um it was uh it was for a while, he offered a hundred thousand dollars. It was like a challenge to anybody who made these claims. He said, Um, if you can find some primary source documents to show how these are related, because what he what he found was a lot of people were parroting these these conspiracy theories and things like that, but there was no primary source evidence. Like you said, it comes up in loops, and somebody knew will say it in this generation, this generation, this generation. Uh but he offered for years and nobody nobody could give him a primary source document that said, here's how this ancient pagan God story matches the story of Christ. It just didn't exist. It's funny.
SPEAKER_03It just doesn't work. And and here and it's a good transition. And the next thing here, if you apply the same standard to these accusations in their ancient documents, in the source text, all that kind of stuff that scholars do to establishing the Bible, the veracity of the Bible, the integrity of Scripture, the authenticity of Scripture, if you apply the same standard to all of that that they do to this, it all completely falls apart. This always stands. No contest. So think about it like this. Here's you a good example. We have thousands of New Testament uh copies of the documents. If you go to a Bard Ehrman debate, I've sat in a room, listen to them talk about it. He'll use the words copies of the copies of the copies of the copies. We've got lots of copies. Does any does anybody watching or anybody at this table doubt that Julius Caesar existed?
unknownNo, I don't know.
SPEAKER_03So we have ten ancient documents of Julius Caesar. People will say, Well, Jesus really didn't write a book of the Bible. Well, Julius Caesar didn't write a book either. But here's the other thing. Most of what we have of Julius Caesar is written 200 years after his life. So if you apply the same standard that we apply to the Bible to the accusations, it quickly falls apart. Not even close. Um there is scant ancient evidence that Christians were adopting pagan holidays. If they were, they would have probably been writing about it. That we took this idea and all this kind of stuff. You you don't you don't see you you don't even see an accusation of the Romans going the Christians are adopting our holidays, right? You don't you don't see any kind of of ancient document that would historically substantiate that kind of an accusation. Um much of the modern myth accusation of uh I can e I can't pronounce this right. E-O-S-T-R-E. Yostra? Is that how you pronounce it? Sure. It's where the one's my favorite. Cafe Ostra. Ostra or whatever. Which is where they say the word Easter comes from. I've always heard it comes from Ishtar, right? Yeah. But um so but that this is the one that's circulating a lot on social media right there, right now. That accusation comes mostly from a guy named Jacob Grimm who wrote a book in the 1800s. That's not ancient. All right. The 1800s, historically speaking, was not that long ago. So again, that this is an old act. It comes up over and over and over. And another problem is when you watch these videos, you will see them accusing Christians of borrowing mythologies from, I mean, literally hundreds of gods. I mean, I I just don't think the ancient Christians were that thorough in their in their trying to uh plagiarize um other other uh mythology. So anyway, um given the nature of early Christianity and ancient Judaism, it just wasn't the nature of them to do that. When you think about how the Jews regarded the prophets, how they regarded the writings, how carefully the scribes would work, it just it just doesn't stack up with the nature of how things were done when the Bible was being written as God was revealing his history, so all those sorts of things.
SPEAKER_05So and if any of the early churches were doing anything weird, they're getting a letter from Paul saying, Hey fellas, uh you ain't doing this right. You're getting tied up in this, but here's what's about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, he was real quick to kind of call them down, and mostly what he was calling down was the attempt of what we call either Judaizers or Gnostics that were trying to kind of take it a gospel mashup. So that those sorts of ideas were confronted, but you don't see him confronting all these other things that that uh we're being accused of. So really good point right there. All right. So now here's a question. Let's strip all that away. Let's let's strip away all the ancient mythologies and all the accusations and all that question, uh, those things. NASA's question. Does the Bible say enough for Christians to regard the incarnation as important and the resurrection as important?
SPEAKER_05Only of utmost importance.
SPEAKER_03If all they had was the Bible, they don't need all these other things, right? So you you go to the Nativity Account. Accounts, Matthew 1 and 2, Luke 1 and 2, man, those give reason to reflect. Um, and here's what's interesting about that. Clement of Alexandria writes in 200 AD that Christians were trying to mark the date of Jesus' birth so that they could acknowledge it on the calendar. 200 A.D., that's pretty early on, right? That they're trying to do that. Remember the accusation. None of these holidays came about until the fourth century. Right? So Clement is already talking about in 200 AD that they'd like to know, hey, what was the season or the date of Christ's birth so that we can reflect on that. Origin, mid-third century, says that Christians did not celebrate births like pagans did. Now, here's if we go back to the question, did you know birthdays is an ancient pagan celebration? Now, I'm gonna tell you, nobody watching is gonna go, hey, we're getting rid of my birthday party, right?
SPEAKER_06I was gonna say, call me a pagan. I love my birthday. It's the one day of the year I don't feel bad for being selfish. Hey man, we're gonna trash Easter, but you're gonna take me idea for my birthday pagan or not, right?
SPEAKER_02So, anyways, October 5th. Yeah, this is this is so this is interesting.
SPEAKER_03Origin, again, mid-third century says Christians did not celebrate births like pagans did, but were deeply meditative on the incarnation. Think about that. Deeply meditative on the incarnation. Man, they're thinking about the meaning of it and the application of it. They're going through scripture, getting it in their mind and their heart. So we also have to realize that early on it would have been difficult to impossible for Christians to celebrate holy days. And why would that be? Persecution. Persecution, yeah. So Christians are persecuted in the Roman Empire from 64 A.D. until 313 A.D., the Edict of Milan under Constantine, which might explain why you didn't see a whole lot of Christian holidays until the fourth century. Because you ain't out there uh having your Christmas tree decorated in the second century, marking yourself to be persecuted, right? So anyway, uh I digress. All right. So the Easter story alone, um, let's take just what's in scripture. 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Man, you you got the resurrection accounts that are right there. Um, one of the oldest ancient texts that we have in the Bible is Philippians 2. Philippians 2 has the incarnation, the resurrection, and the exaltation of Christ, which tells you this this was not something they invented 200 years after Jesus. Philippians 2 is probably a hymn that they were singing in worship just within decades of the resurrection of Christ. So you have these old accounts of that that are in the Bible. Early Christians observed what was called Pasca, which was the resurrection celebration, um uh well before the later church kind of uh formalized that. That's that's still what it is in in Spanish. I guess it comes from the Latin. Feliz Pascuas. It's also that in Orthodox uh Christianity. They still call it that. So uh maybe we we should and get rid of the Easter thing, but if it's gonna be all mashed up. But uh early Christians did observe that um well before uh the calendar formalized it, it was called Pasca until the seventh and eighth century. The Anglo-Saxons are the ones who changed it over to Easter. And the reason for that is they had a month on the calendar that was very similar to the word Easter anyway. Um so there's only talking about the Eostre, which is that uh God, if I'm saying it right, there is only one ancient document that even mentions that goddess. And there is massive scholarly questions as to whether she was ever celebrated in a festival.
SPEAKER_05And the same name just comes from the word East, right? And uh, you know, if they're celebrating the sun, sunrise in the East, like I feel like it's people are always trying to connect dots that may not be there. Have you seen those um those um it's like a plottic chart or like graphs that have two completely random things, but the graphs line up exactly like it was something like uh Donna Summer number one hit singles and um you know unsolved murders in New York City between 1973. Like, but the but the the graphs look exactly the same, and so you're like, oh, look at this. It must this must be correlated, you know. Yeah, I think people do the same thing with those.
SPEAKER_03Correlation is not necessarily uh not necessarily correspondence, right? It doesn't it doesn't mean that it it's or not causation call correlation is not causation, right? That's what I'm trying to say. Ostray, that sounds like Easter.
SPEAKER_05Dun dun dun.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and and here's the thing. So if you take this from a purely logical thing and you say, okay, the Christians must have borrowed from the celebration of this goddess and turned it into Easter. If you take one step further, you have a hard time establishing that anybody ever had a festival for her to begin with. That that's kind of what I'm I'm really challenging people with this series is you got to go a little deeper in your research on some of this stuff rather than just kind of flipping a video and seeing it. So um here's the other thing if if we go into the the resurrection. If you take the gospel accounts of the resurrection that are here, what's really interesting about the gospel accounts is they're incredibly detailed. The the tomb is not just a tomb, it's Joseph's tomb. So you have people that are mentioned who are eyewitnesses, you have the burial location, you have the women who are witnesses, you have the public proclamation of Jesus in Jerusalem, you have guards at the tomb, right? It there's even if you tried to fabricate it, it's so easily easy to debunk early on because the Bible has so many details. And then the most astounding evidence of the resurrection is you have these guys who when Jesus is being arrested, flee. After the resurrection, these guys are willing to die for what they believe. You don't die for a lie, right? So these are not men of just some incredible courage before the resurrection, but boy, after the resurrection, they are willing to, and I'm gonna tell you this, not just die a martyr's death, but die some pretty gruesome, painful deaths the way that they went. So you got to think about that as well. Now, let's let's do talk about what Christians likely did historically with these holidays. They likely infused redemption into the dark winter seasons. Man, the Roman winter festivals. Um, we've talked about Sol Invictus, it was on uh the 25th. Uh Saturnalia would be celebrated, I think it was like for five or six days up until December the 23rd. One of the, and those were very um seasons of debauchery and darkness and depravity. Um, I do think that that Christians may have used if you take Sol Invictus, the Sun God, and they're trying to tell you, hey, this is the real Son of God, right? To to kind of counteract some of those things that may have been going on in the culture in that time. Let us show you hope. Let us show you what real light in the darkness looks like. Um they infused the gospel into uh spring symbolism. Instead of it being these ancient pagan festivals of just renewal and growth, they're trying to show, hey, the resurrection of Christ. And so it's not just nature, but there's a resurrection that can really give you uh true life. So now let's kind of land on this. So, how do we treat these holidays today? One, it's hard to, again, it's hard to establish that our holidays come from that. We know that we acknowledge the birth of Christ, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ simply based on what the scripture says. But it's funny that that we come to this discussion today because on Sunday I brought up Colossians chapter 2, verses 16 and 17, right? Where he he uh, well, that's Philippians chapter two. So let's make sure we're on the right passage here because it's gonna sound very different. But he says in Colossians 2, 16, therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food or drink with regard to festival or new moon or sabbath. These are a shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. I think it's really interesting that he uses the words shadow and substance right there. At best, even when a holiday is celebrated to its fullest, it's always going to be a shadow. No matter what you do with it. And you've got to get to the substance of Christ. This is what I keep kind of appealing to in this study right here. I hope, I hope that we're not just watching these videos and going, let me send them another question to answer to the neglect of you actually getting in the Bible and reading it. Man, I I I I mean, there's answers upon answers upon answers to questions upon questions upon questions. But man, to know Christ through his word is the substance of what we are we are aiming at.
SPEAKER_05I've been I've been thinking about that for for weeks. You you said it in in one of the messages, and you were talking about how you can't substitute um even Christian content with time with Christ, and about how I I love to nerd out. I love to know the history, I love to know the the the language, the original language. Like the Bible is so cool to me, and I can I can get very heady with it and academically study the scripture and be and have that academic itch satisfied um and miss time with my risen savior. And so I've been I've been thinking about that for a long time of these videos, even even good things like Bible study or studying to teach the Bible to others and missing personal time with Christ and how um I don't know it that that's just been it's been weighing on me in in a good way and making me be much more intentional about spending time with Christ since he's the substance and not the shadow.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. You know, I think so much of what you've been talking about lately, whether it's on the podcast or we've been talking about on Sunday mornings, uh what it goes back to is knowing Christ. And that's really where you'll you'll find your peace, your satisfaction, um you'll find the truth. And um, you know, I was having a conversation with Val at home a couple days ago just about how, and I have to be really careful how I say this, because like there are a lot of people that I love that um I think they have the right heart, and you know, I certainly don't have all the right answers all the time and everything like that, but um there are times in my life where I went through sort of these different phases where people would try to kind of do the thing where it's like Christ plus this or Christ plus that, and there are things that you still don't understand, and there are things that you can understand, and and um and none of that ever really led to whether it was like um going into a place of like, oh well we still we still have to keep the law and that and that's how you're gonna find peace with Christ, uh which totally neglects the fact that Christ perfectly kept the law for us. And I know that's kind of a whole probably different podcast and everything, but um you know, then it was in other instances it was like, well, there's just this next level of Holy Spirit hyper-spiritualism that you don't understand. And I'm not saying that I understand how the Holy Spirit works, that's not what I'm suggesting. But it's when those things suggest that through Christ and through salvation there's still something that you're missing that that you're in the dark on that really can rob you of your peace. And so I mean, in all of this, it's like uh that that really is the point. It's like it you will find your peace and even peace with not having all the answers in this life if you just know Christ. There it is.
SPEAKER_03There it is. So let's uh you know, let's throw this out on the table. So it is well established that rabbits do not produce eggs. You got rabbits if they if any of the medics.
SPEAKER_01We do have rabbits, no eggs.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so there you go. The eggs still come from chickens last time I checked, right? So it it is well established that the rabbit egg correlation comes from paganism. No doubt that that is not a Christian in in Cadbury has uh promoted it, right? Like Coca, what Coca-Cola has done for Christmas, Cadbury has done for Easter eggs. More of a Kinder Bueno guy. So here's the question I'm with you. Should you do egg hunts? If it is well established that that this can't, and here's something really interesting too. When you do the Seder Supper, um, which is is kind of that Passover feast, and you've got that plate, one of the things that appears on that Seder plate is an egg. And and uh, you know, I I heard a a uh messianic Jew one time say, we really don't know where this came from or how it made its way in there. So sometimes those things make their way in there. So here's the question should you be should you be uh hunting eggs at Christmas? If it is clearly a pagan or at Easter, you nobody would hunt them at Christmas. I am this year now.
SPEAKER_02You just want the problem, we need to move heads. Uh just get your red rider BB gun out of making it at Christmas.
SPEAKER_06I know it's 32 degrees outside, but here's a basket. We don't have to hard bull them this year, they're frozen.
SPEAKER_03So what do y'all think? Well, how would you advise that? And Melissa, you're you work with children and family, so what would you say to that?
SPEAKER_01So as far as that goes, the Easter egg hunt, because we're gonna have one here right after service, the Easter egg hunt is an activity. If that was all I did, then absolutely no. But if that if I take out the whole pointing to Christ, the resurrection, and just have the activity and it replaces the meaning, then absolutely not. We should not hunt eggs.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So, you know, and and I think you could go on the biblical uh grounds in the book of Romans uh and also in some of the other letters, basically Paul says, hey, if it offends you, or if it offends a brother, get rid of it. It's not worth it. It's kind of like that same meat that, you know, he's like, man, if if eating meat offends a brother because it came from a pagan temple, then just don't bring your brother to it, right? Yeah. So don't invite him to the egg hunt, or don't do an egg hunt in his yard, or you know, you can you can kind of put it like that. But I think I think the real question we've got to ask is are we doing with the holidays what God originally designed them for? Push pause, get together with family, tell the story of the meaning of the gospel and all these kind of things, and and also to to seek the Lord in those seasons, just kind of a reminder, you need him uh in in the story of your life. And I think that's where it really where we lose it.
SPEAKER_01Um Yeah, when the traditions become just this, we're doing it because we've always done it, and the storytelling stops, yeah, that's when if all we're doing is hunting eggs, right, then you're missing it. Right.
SPEAKER_06And I think too, just especially like in the way that we in modern day America treat like Christmas. I mean, it we do have to, you know, kind of check ourselves like are are we just going, you know, all out for presents and like it's just like are you know putting stuff on credit cards just to try to make people happy for five minutes and then our kids throw things out and they're bored. I mean are are we going are we extending ourselves to such lengths that we completely miss the point? And I think sometimes the answer is yes. Yeah, when the gifts replace the incarnation, you know, you don't want to be legalistic about it, but at the same time you also don't want to, you know, just do do whatever to, you know, and just follow the culture blindly, I guess.
SPEAKER_05And that's really kind of I I've learned that as as I've as I've had a family, like we didn't do traditional stuff. Like I didn't grow up with with traditional, like I don't know, holidays are sometimes weird um to me, even even birthdays and stuff like that, just because you you tie them with past experiences and things like that. Um but I I am big on purpose. I am big on the why. Why do we do what we do? And a lot of times, like you said, if if we're missing the purpose, if the purpose was for us to sit back and reflect and tell stories and give testimony and bring glory to God, and I look around at sometimes what the holidays uh are to us, it's you know, it's so much more stress than it is rest, or it's it's all about I gotta get this done and this done and this done, check, check this box, and this box, and this box, and and please all these people, and then you're really just waiting for it to be over and and there's more strife and then and and you miss it uh instead of an opportunity to tell the gospel story or or talk about the incarnation of the resurrection and give glory to God. Um I think we do have to check ourselves starting starting here, you know.
SPEAKER_03If Origin is saying in the third century that Christians are deeply meditative on the incarnation, I think that's what you got to be asking is if you're at your house it's become all about Santa Claus and there's no real worship, there's no meditation of the incarnation, there's no there's no reflection on what does that incarnational life look like for me, for me to to live out the gospel of Christ in me, I think then you're missing it, right? That's not that's not what what God wanted us to tell the story again.
SPEAKER_06I would say if your Christmas as a Christian looks just like or your Easter looks just like that of a non-believer, I would say it's time to kind of evaluate things. Good way to put it.
SPEAKER_03Man, if anything, I'm having I'm having trouble with Halloween. You know, early on I didn't I didn't struggle with Halloween. You mean Reformation Day? Well, so I'm totally gonna put a picture of the stuff. There's you another podcast, right, for that one. So uh I think that's what we've tried to start calling it now Reformation, David. I'm gonna tell you, man, even when I was a kid, it I mean I know Halloween is very pagan in its order. There's no Christian correlation. We haven't even tried, right, without. Of course, we have the fall festivals and all that kind of stuff. But I'm gonna tell you, man, the culture now and people I see more now, more people connecting Halloween with evil, like overtly. Just this is a day of debauchery. This is a day of evil. We're gonna celebrate darkness. I I just I really didn't see that as much until maybe the last 20 years or so. But that's one I'm really struggling with of like, man, I I would be on the border of going, man, I don't know that Christians need to have anything to do with that because of how dark it really is getting and just unapologetically dark.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Well, and what I I I think what I forgot that I started talking about a second ago because my brain does that, but I realize as I get older, I don't have to do the same thing as everybody else. Yeah. Like I I can make my own family traditions. We didn't grow up with with you know normal traditions and stuff with holidays, but like we we do things differently with Zoe than than when I was a kid. So just because everybody does XYZ on Easter or Halloween or Christmas, like my family doesn't have to do that. Um we don't have to make it all about this or all about that. We can we can tell the story of the gospel. We can we can do like we do resurrection eggs with Zoe on um and we make our own little resurrection eggs. She likes crafts and stuff like that. When we do her advent thing, it's not just a little chocolate that's in there, it's got a scripture, and we try to make it like um uh something to do with family, not just a little treat that she gets, but it's it's counting down, and we're anticipating you know, talking about the advent, the the coming of Christ, and you you can make it in your family about Jesus and not Yeah, because kids remember repetitive things.
SPEAKER_01So when you start a tradition like that, you're gonna read scripture before you hunt eggs, you're going to you're gonna tell the story before you open gifts or whatever. That's the kind of things that kids remember is the repetitive things.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, presence is not the first thing we do on Christmas morning. We get up and we we have like breakfast as a family and we we make sure we we try to make sure because we're we're all prone to that flesh of of wanting to make it a materialistic thing. But we have breakfast together and spend time together and do crack open you know the scriptures and and gifts aren't primary.
SPEAKER_06And here's here's one thing I would say too is you know, there there being this sort of questioning of like whether these things are actually appropriate for Christians to celebrate, period. So you see the rise, increasing rise in materialism with Christmas. You see, you know, all the distractions that Easter can become about. And I don't think that that is just purely non-spiritual, just surface level human distraction. I mean so what I think that suggests is that Satan's probably working overtime to create more and more distraction, more and more uh diversion of purpose and meaning behind these things because there is something sacred and holy about these things if we treat them right. So I mean I I think that evidence goes to show, you know, that not that that's the only evidence, but it's like obviously the enemy is working overtime to cause people to do all the things that are really about anything but. Christ at the at the core of them. And I and I don't think that that means you can't go on eggs or whatever and get somebody something for Christmas. But people always want to take extremes. People want to go all out this way, or you know, we can't have any part of it. And there's really no opportunity for growth or conversation or maturity unless you're willing to kind of study where is the balance in this.
SPEAKER_05But it makes sense too that's is the two times a year when people are more prone to come to church or to to be responsive to things like uh the gospel or the incarnation resurrection at these times. So it makes sense there'd be all that spiritual activity.
SPEAKER_01That's a good point because you can't you can't come to church two times a year and that be the only time you hear of the resurrection and the incarnation. Like I mean, we gotta remember too, as parents, like that starts with us at home too, with our little ones. Um we've got to make sure, just like we were talking about, the stories told. So those traditions that we're gonna set forth with our kids are gonna carry forward with their families, our grandkids, and so forth. So that's we can't we can't miss we can't miss the story.
SPEAKER_03Man, uh we we kind of end on this note. The resurrection was so important. Uh early on, the Christians acknowledged the incarnation of Christ. I mean, obviously that's in scripture, but the early Christians were resurrection people. So if you look at at the Old Testament, obviously the Sabbath is Saturday. The reason they worshiped on Saturday was because that's the day God rested. They identified with the God who completed creation through his word and he rested on the Sabbath. So they identified. These are the people who follow the God who did that. And then the early Christians, all of a sudden, not only did they do Sabbath because they were Jewish, but they also began worshiping, the Bible says, on the first day of the week, the day Christ rose. Right. So, so even just going to church on a Sunday, the witness of that to your neighbors of this takes precedence in our life. This is the priority that every Sunday Jesus rose from the dead. We are going to rise, and we are going to give the first part of our day in worship. That kind of a marker and that kind of a storytelling is what a holy day, every every Sunday in the Christian's life ought to be a holy day. We're we're uh uh celebrating the resurrection. So anyway, good things to talk about. So please keep sending in your uh trends that you see online. Uh boy, we got one I sent out to the staff the other day. It's a doozy, y'all. I think uh I think I'm gonna sit out that week.
SPEAKER_02I think we're all gonna sit out that week.
SPEAKER_01I sort of say I got this week. Jody, you can have next week.
SPEAKER_03We may just send everybody a video go, hey, watch this. But uh anyway, it's a doozy. But uh, we're trying to get to all of them. But y'all send us your trends and we will try to answer them on the podcast. We will have an episode next week, and then the following week is spring break for everybody. So we will not have holy day. It will be a holy day of spring breaking.
SPEAKER_06That's right, that's how I like the British. They they say, or maybe it's everybody else but America, you know. Going a holiday. U.S. versus metric system. The holiday going on holiday. Everyone take a holiday. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So anyway, we'll see you uh see you again next week on Live at Liberty.