Don’t Give up the Truth
Just Because Some Misuse and Abuse it
Could we ever be guilty of “throwing the baby out with the bath
water”? Of course nobody would literally throw a baby out with the water it
was bathed in. But somebody must have done it at some time. We could not account
for the existence of the saying otherwise. If it happened
it must have been carelessness – surely such a thing would not have
been deliberate. If you were going to throw the baby out, why go to the bother
of cleaning it up first? This and other equivalent sayings point up the very
real danger of throwing away the good with the bad, discarding truth along with
associated error – sometimes
carelessly and sometime deliberately. It is often done in religion, especially
in the Christian religion.
A few examples will serve to illustrate the point. People sometimes give
up the Christian religion because they don’t like some parts of it. Homosexual
men and women, and other sexually immoral people, are willing to toss out the
Bible because it condemns homosexual sins (Romans 1:26-27), fornication,
adultery, and all other sexual sins of all people (1 Corinthians 6:9, 18). The
guilty will often give up the Bible and God
rather than admit they are wrong. Some people refuse to believe in a God
who will not allow endless divorce for any cause and remarriage with any
consenting person. Some want and will only accept a God whose sole
function is to make them “happy,” so they must reject the God of the Bible.
Because there is such widespread abuse of the scripture, even among professing
Christians, many refuse to accept it at all. They throw the Bible away along
with the abuses, misunderstandings, and misapplications of it.
We ourselves, in the church of Christ, may come dangerously close to
throwing the baby out with the bath water – giving up the church and the New
Testament of the Bible because both are so often and so easily abused. Certain
biblical doctrines have been badly compromised by religious groups who have
departed from scripture, leaving out parts they do not like and adding some
things they want (Revelation 22:18-19), even though their concoctions cannot be
validated by scripture and are actually perversions of scripture (Galatians
1:6-9). To say a thing is not scriptural is equivalent to saying it is not of God. The so-called “holiest days of the Christian
calendar” are cases in point.
The first of the two holiest days on the calendar of nominal churches –
not first on the calendar but first in the chronological order of actual events
– is called Christmas. It is
celebrated on December 25th in most parts of the world where the influence of
Roman Catholicism has been felt.
In this case people are abusing the doctrine
about the birth of Jesus. There is widespread confusion about the time of
the Lord’s birth and how to celebrate it. We do not know on what day of the
year he was born, but it was most assuredly not
the 25th of December. The corrupt Roman church appointed the celebration of his
birth to coincide with pagan festivals in which the sun
was worshiped, after the winter solstice, which arrives typically on December
21st. The celebration gradually combined elements of pagan sun worship in all
cultures: sacred trees, lights, mistletoe, and eventually the whole Santa Claus
mythology as well. None of these have anything at all to do with Jesus Christ,
nor should they have anything to do with Christian people and the church.
Some people are so “turned off” by the abuse that they refuse to have
anything to do with “Christmas” in any way, and will not celebrate the birth
of Christ at all, ever. That certainly seems to be throwing the baby out with
the bath water. What if Jesus had not been born? How could he have died for us?
Where would our sins be, had he not lived and died? They would still be with us!
We can sing songs about the birth of Christ any time. We can preach on the birth
of Jesus any time. But when we do it at times other than “the Christmas
season,” some people will think we aren’t paying proper attention to the
Calendar. Christians should give up all the unbiblical nonsense – especially
the pagan mythological elements – associated with the world’s celebration of
“Christmas,” but they must not give up the Christ himself. Had he not yet
been born believers in the Old Testament would still be looking for him to come.
However, with so many centuries having passed by without him, it would be
difficult bordering on impossible to maintain any hope that he would come. Those
who say they observe Christmas only as a family holiday and an occasion for
gift-giving or as “Santa Claus Day” but not as a religious “holy day”
would be hard pressed to convince any Bible believer of the propriety of their
celebration. If it is not a celebration of Christ, why not remove from it all
references or allusions to Jesus or the events surrounding his birth?
Another event misused and misapplied by the nominal Christian world is the
death and resurrection of Jesus. The day of his resurrection is commonly but
improperly called “Easter.”
Because Jesus is called “our Passover” (1 Corinthians 5:7), the traditional
observance is thought to be related to the Jewish Feast of the Passover. Jews
celebrate Passover on the 14th of Nisan, first month of their ancient calendar,
based upon the movements and positions of the moon. The Passover and “Easter
Sunday” hardly ever coincide. To maintain the biblical tradition of
celebrating the resurrection on the first day of week, the Roman church decreed,
and it was accepted after a few hundred years of dissension and division, that
the first Sunday after the full
moon
following the vernal equinox (first day of Spring) would be the time of the
Christian celebration of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. It can
come as early as March 22 and as late as April 25. All the other days and
seasons added to the celebration of the “Easter season” – “Fat
Tuesday” (Mardi Gras), Lent, Palm
Sunday, Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and so on, were appointed
much later. None of it is found in the
words of scripture or in the example of the apostolic church. The King James
Version, following church tradition mistranslates Acts 12:4 as “Easter”
rather than Passover (all other translations of scripture correct this mistake).
Let’s go a step more and talk about some of the mythological nonsense that has
grown up around the “Easter” celebration.
The name Easter comes from Eostre,
the Saxon/Norse goddess of spring. She was a fertility goddess identified with
Ashtoreth and Asherah, the female counterpart and consort of Baal, the male
fertility god. Together they represented and were worshipped as “the
personified reproductive power and process of nature.”
No other idols were ever so attractive or so troublesome to Israel. The
rabbits, chickens, eggs, etc. that are associated with Easter are fertility
symbols too. The resurgence (resurrection) of nature’s fecundity after the
death of winter was celebrated with a spring fertility ritual that has become a
completely improper part of the “church calendar.” None of it has anything
to do with either the Passover or the Christ. Even though most nominal
Christians celebrate Christ’s resurrection annually on “Easter Sunday,” it
is properly observed on every Sunday, the first day of every week. Some who say
there’s nothing to it, that there is nothing sacred or
religious about the Easter tradition will still observe it. And they
wouldn’t dream of having an “Easter egg hunt” in August or December. They
say they don’t do it as a religious observance. Why then must it be associated
with Christ and improperly associated with his resurrection? Those who
understand and practice what the Bible teaches about the death, burial, and
resurrection of Christ will disregard all parts of the traditional Easter
celebration as pagan nonsense and have nothing to do with it. But in throwing
out the nonsense of the world’s celebration of Easter, let’s be sure we
don’t give up the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. If he had not
died, we would still be in sin. If he had not been raised from the dead, we
would be without hope or assurance that we too will be raised with him to be in
the kingdom of God, and eventually in God’s heaven.
The world, instigated and encouraged by Satan, will continue to abuse not
only the scripture but the whole doctrine of God, even denying His existence.
The majority will continue to reject Jesus as true deity, as the Son of God.
They will continue to misunderstand and abuse the doctrine of the Holy Spirit,
and will make preposterous claims that the Bible simply will not support about
the Spirit’s relationship to God and to God’s people. But let us not follow
such persons to the perdition God has reserved for them. Let us not give up God
and His Word. Let us not deny the Christ. No matter how badly the truth may be
abused by some, let us resolve not to give it up and join its enemies.
– Gerald Cowan