Category: Entertainment

It’s Time for the Great Pumpkin!

For some reason, I always identified with Charlie Brown. I always understood his plight. Nothing ever seemed to work out for him, and he always seemed to be laughed at.

Which is one reason why, when Halloween rolled around, I always enjoyed watching “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”

The show was whimsical and full of childhood experiences with ironic twists. In a time designed to scare people, it was just plain fun.

Which is what the Halloween holiday has become in our culture… just plain fun.

Kids dress up in costume and “play-pretend.” Sometimes, even adults dress up as well… not just for the children’s Halloween party later that day, but for work as well. Walk into any insurance office, and you may find Elsa from Frozen, the Wicked Witch of the West, or Morticia Adams.

The objective for the kids is simple… leverage your Halloween costume as best as possible for as much candy as possible. In the words of Sally from the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, “Get while the gettin’s good.”

That will be the objective this evening, as a trunk or treat will be held in the parking lot of Spieker Stadium before tonight’s game between Hermleigh and Ira.

It may seem like good clean fun, but is it?

While the face paint is being applied, and costumes are being fitted, blogs and social media posts from various individuals and groups are criticizing Halloween as a satanic holiday and urging people not to participate, even in fall festivals and trunk or treats.

Are they correct?

To explore this, we’ll look to two sources. Bro. Ray Brooks, who served as president of Texas Baptist Institute-Seminary, and Romans 14.

It was approximately 21 years ago, on the morning following Halloween. Apparently, none of us had the nerve to celebrate the holiday around campus or in student housing. I vividly remember panicking when my classmate and next-door neighbor, Mike Gribble, caught me in the act of making a Jack-O-Lantern.

Mike, great man of God that he is, and gracious as he is, gave me a devotional about how the transformation of the pumpkin into a Jack-O-Lantern is similar to our transformation in Christ. Thus, I could now legitimately make a Jack-O-Lantern (my favorite activity of Halloween.)

Almost all of us were married with children, living in seminary-owned apartments and houses. Some of us stayed home. Some went to fall festivals hosted by our respective churches. Apparently, no one took their kids trick or treating around the neighborhood, and absolutely no one took their kids trick or treating to the president’s door.

He expressed his disappointment the following day in chapel, telling us to “let the kids have fun.”

The argument against Halloween centers on the holiday’s pagan roots. Yet, I don’t believe anyone can say with a straight face that a young girl dressed up as Princess Elsa, or a young boy dressed up as Chewbacca, are really trying to engage in spiritualism or the worship of the occult. And worshipping the occult and summoning satan is not something you do accidentally.

The holiday may have been rooted in the occult centuries ago, but the modern version centers around costumes, imagination, play-pretend, and candy. There’s no spiritualism to it. It’s just good plain fun.

If pagan roots are to deter us from celebrating holidays, then we have to wipe Christmas and Easter off the calendar as well. Both were created as the Catholic church co-opted pagan holidays and rebranded them as Christian in order to convert pagan tribes to Christianity.

But, when Christians celebrate Christmas, they’re not celebrating a pagan season. They’re celebrating the birth of Christ. When they celebrate Easter, they’re not celebrating a Norse god, but rather the resurrection of Christ. (The eggs and bunnies are just an excuse to eat more chocolate.)

While some have taken the step of refraining from celebrating Christmas and Easter, others understand that the holiday is what you make it, and meanings change over time.

Christmas may have started as a pagan holiday, but Christians made it their holiday, and Coca-Cola made it a retail holiday. The Christians I know center that day and the entire month on the birth of Christ.

Easter may have started out as a pagan holiday, but Christians made it their holiday, and Hershey, Mars and Nestle made it a chocolate holiday.

And Halloween may have been a pagan holiday, but Americans turned it into a chocolate and candy corn holiday.

Basically, what you celebrate is determined by what’s in your heart. Are you celebrating Christ, cola, new toys, debunked ancient gods, or chocolate?

In the case of Halloween, it’s chocolate.

Now, all of this sounds good, but where’s the scripture?

Romans 14:1-8 says, “Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations. ²For one believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth herbs. ³Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him. ⁴Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand. ⁵One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. ⁶He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks. ⁷For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. ⁸For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.

In all truth, the context of these verses deal with the Old Testament Jewish feasts and festivals. Still, the concept remains. Some eat, some don’t. Some celebrate holidays, some don’t. The ones who eat, do so with thanksgiving and eat unto the Lord. The ones who don’t, refrain from eating in order to honor the Lord.

Those who celebrate holidays do so for the Lord. Those who don’t celebrate refrain for the Lord.

So, regardless of which camp we fall in, we belong to the Lord and we live for the Lord.

The point to Romans 14 is that we are to leave each other alone and allow each other to live for the Lord in a way that our conscience can be settled.

So, at Christmas, if you want to celebrate Jesus’ birthday, please do so with your whole heart. And if you’d rather not celebrate Christmas, then honor God with your non-observance.

At Easter, if you want to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, then do so and glorify God by proclaiming the Gospel. If you want to refrain from celebrating Easter, then honor God by regarding every Sunday as resurrection day.

And at Halloween, if you want to play dress-up and eat candy, have fun! For God never forbad fun. But, if you’re uncomfortable participating, then you are honoring God with your abstention.

But no matter what you do, recognize that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. That we are all honoring and living for God as best we know how, and that there are times that we need to step back and let God work the relationship between Himself and His people. Meanwhile, we keep our fellowship between each other.

But… one hill I will die on… unless you are a severe diabetic, chocolate is always appropriate.

May God bless you with a wonderful evening this evening, and a beautiful autumn weekend.

Broken People: How the Flaws of the Bible Patriarchs Turned Jordan Peterson toward the Bible

Why are some people successful, while others fail? Beyond work ethic, why do some seem to have a natural ability to connect with others, negotiate, identify the right path forward, and succeed? Meanwhile, others struggle just to get through the day?

What is truth? How can we learn through scientific process the answers to these questions?

Such has been the life’s mission of Jordan Peterson, a psychologist who teaches courses at several universities including the University of Toronto, who’s also written several books and is currently hosting a podcast series for the Daily Wire.

Peterson rose to fame while doing a BBC interview about one of his books, in which the interviewer repeatedly asked pointed questions in an attempt to be able to discredit him as a misogynist or a racist. His fame continued to grow as videos of his college lectures, his public lecture series, and a podcast series on the Bible began to go viral online.

While the controversial BBC interview launched him to fame, the logic, academic approach to psychology and human nature, and the conclusions he articulates have kept him in the spotlight, so much so that he took a sabbatical and no one noticed due to the ubiquity of this content online.

Peterson looked to the Bible for psychology. He looked to the Bible to learn behavioral patterns, learn lessons, and map out a framework for how to tackle life’s challenges, taking object lessons from the Old Testament patriarchs. What he found was truth. Moreover, Peterson found that all truth is preconditioned on the Bible.

He went so far as to say, “Without the Bible, there can be no truth.”

So, how does an atheistic psychologist who preached secularism come to a faith in the truth of the Bible, and go on to a faith in the existence of God (per his statements in his videos)?

In a video lecture before a university audience, the question was posed, “Do you believe that the Bible is true?” To which Peterson responded, “If not the Bible, then what is true?”

Peterson went on to make the case that, in reading the Bible, you read about the lives of the patriarchs, and the scriptures include not only their stories of victory, but also their failures.

Peterson noted how many of these failures were major, and some of the patriarchs were rotten people, and did rotten things. He pointed out that for religious texts, this is unusual.

In this video, which I can no longer find on YouTube, Peterson said that most religious texts portray the good side of the founders of the religion, and hide their flaws and failures. The Bible, on the other hand, showed the patriarchs of the Christian faith for who they were, including their frailties, failures, and brokenness. The result was an honest, transparent representation of the Christian faith, and furthermore, an amazing demonstration of God’s power.

God was able to work through the brokenness of man to accomplish His will. That resonated with Peterson, who began to explore the Bible more, and has now embarked on a podcast series to explore the Bible more deeply.

As a result of God working through the brokenness of man thousands of years ago, you have a secular professor exploring the Bible, going so far as to declare that it is the precondition for all truth, and calling on people to turn to God or face His wrath. While his views and doctrine may not line up with ours, I believe that, for the sake of the Gospel, we can see how a man whose primary audience includes college students and intellectual leaders can benefit the Kingdom of God greatly through his scholarly presentations of scripture.

Students today are generally guided away from the Bible, away from God, and toward their own subjective perceptions of truth, which the intellectual left seeks to shape through media, entertainment and education. Peterson, on the other hand, is leading students to go back to the Bible as the foundation of all truth, if not the very foundation of our society itself.

And his journey down this road began when he discovered how God worked through the brokenness of Abraham, Jacob, David, among others.

God works through broken people, and He is glorified through His work through the lives of broken people. He is glorified in that His name is made known, His power is shown, and people are faced with His undeniable truth.

God works through broken people. So we need not be discouraged when we find ourselves struggling with brokenness, neither do we need to be disillusioned when those whom we admire fail. God works through the brokenness to bring about His glory, and the blessings He has promised.

The Jesus Revolution’s Frisbee Problem

Let’s face it… for fans of The Chosen, Jonathan Roumie sold The Jesus Revolution. Roumie’s portrayal of Jesus in The Chosen has earned him a following, a ministry, and has contributed to a national conversation about Jesus, leading many to seek the truth about Jesus, and many have professed faith in Christ as a result.

So, it comes with a bit of irony that in The Jesus Revolution, Roumie portrays a young Lonnie Frisbee, whose emotionally compassionate outreach and charismatic preaching sparked The Jesus Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, thus sparking a national conversation about Jesus which led to many salvations.

Neither man (Roumie or Frisbee) is without controversy, as is neither character portrayed. Jesus was controversial in His day, and remains so to this day. And with a resurgence of post-morten fame on the heels of Jesus Revolution, Frisbee finds himself in the middle of controversy as well.

At the center of Frisbee’s controversy are his theatrical antics, and his struggles with homosexuality. Critics point to the former to discredit his ministry, and they point out the latter to discredit Christianity in general.

To their credit, the filmmakers of The Jesus Revolution were open about the character flaws of each of the leaders of the movement. Smith was a bit opportunistic and judgmental, and struggled with seeing the church blossom under someone else’s leadership. Laurie struggled with drugs early on and struggled with faith toward the end of the movie.

Frisbee demanded the spotlight, neglected his wife, and stormed out in a hissy fit when the spotlight was taken away. Yes, his struggles with homosexuality were omitted from the movie, but were not an issue during the time portrayed in the movie.

Frisbee was raped as a child, and as many who endure that atrocity do, experimented with homosexuality during his adolescence and early adulthood. Frisbee reported coming out of that lifestyle when he came to know Jesus, but relapsed in the 1980s. Frisbee confessed that his behaviors were sin, and were as sinful (but no more than) other sins.

When confronted, Frisbee confessed. He prayed for forgiveness. He tried to help others find forgiveness. He did not cling to the lifestyle, and did not advocate that others live the lifestyle.

It would be sinful and unproductive to try to determine Frisbee’s salvation status, or whether his faith was real, and his ministry motivated by faith and a genuine heart for the Lord. We leave the judging of the living and the dead to God.

However, a quick internet search into Frisbee’s life reveals a struggle with sin which is not unlike the struggle with pornography, addiction, anger, gluttony (I confess that!), hate, covetousness or dishonesty.

As Christians, we often find ourselves easily ensnared in sin that rapidly gets out of hand and gruesome pretty quickly. Sometimes we deceive ourselves into thinking that our sin isn’t that big of a deal, but it is.

And we can usually find a worse sinner to point out to make ourselves feel better about our sin. And in this case, that worse sinner is Frisbee.

However, the political fireball surrounding his sin neither discredits the Bible, the Gospel, nor the film, because all three uphold the fact that God works through the broken, and through weakness we are made strong.

Frisbee struggled with homosexuality, but Abraham committed adultery, Jacob was a crook, Judah hired a prostitute, King David committed adultery and murder, and Solomon dabbled in idolatry. Yet, Scripture holds those men up as patriarchs of the faith, and some even wrote scripture.

Scripture does not affirm their behavior, but God used them in spite of their brokenness, and God uses us in spite of our brokenness.

Why would God do that? He does that because the premise of the Gospel is that the broken can be healed, the sinner can be cleansed, and the condemned can be redeemed. Further, this all happens not because of how great the person is, but because of how graceful and powerful God is.

And that’s the power of the Gospel, that the death and condemnation of our sins was placed on Christ when He hung on that cross, and when He died, that death and condemnation were sent to Hell instead of us.

And because of that redemption, because Jesus took it all on our behalf, we can go free. We can place our faith in Him and make ourselves available for God to use to do big things… or maybe small and simple things. Either way, it’s a blessing.

So I’m not offended that one of my favorite actors portrayed a man who struggled in homosexuality, and I’m not discouraged that such a man was a key figure in a national revival, because I have routinely seen God use broken people, including myself, to lead others to redemption and healing.

God uses the broken to advance the Gospel, and He is glorified in it. Or as the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 3, “For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner?”

So let’s review. God is good. Redemption is real. The Gospel saves. The Jesus Revolution is a good movie. And God has used the broken to spark a national conversation about Jesus. Let’s have that conversation, and point people to the redemption in Christ Jesus that is found at the cross, and not let ourselves be distracted by one man’s sin from 40 years ago.

Breaking down the #HeGetsUs campaign

Easily the most talked about, and most controversial commercial during the Super Bowl was a product of the #HeGetUs campaign. The marquee ad, entitled, “Love Your Enemies,” ran during the second half, as all the parties would have settled into the game and begun contemplating who would emerge as winner.

As you can see above, the ad featured 60 seconds of photos of conflict underlied by a soulful bluesy song by John “The Ragin’ Cajun” Jones called “I’m Only Human After All.”

The most controversial aspects of the ad are hard to determine. The fact that an organization is running ads to promote Jesus proved to be in and of itself controversial, as pundits across the spectrum questioned whether Jesus would have bought a Super Bowl ad, and whether the money could’ve been better spent feeding the poor.

While the Bible teaches mercy and benevolence toward the poor, those who have actually read the Bible know that in the New Testament, Jesus set the spread of the Gospel and the making of disciples as the top priority for the churches.

Such criticisms have even led many to call for taxing churches. However, the funds for the ads did not come from churches, but rather came from David Green, founder of Hobby Lobby, who literally made his fortune selling beads to hippies and soccer moms, and who gives half of the profits of Hobby Lobby away every year to organizations who spread the Gospel and provide relief to those in need.

Would Jesus buy a Super Bowl ad? I don’t know. But I do know that He would be pleased His name was proclaimed to millions without the neglect for the poor.

The second point of controversy was the confrontational aspect of the ad. The images of protest and conflict conjured up emotions of rage toward those on opposite sides of the political spectrum from us, then the message blindsided us with “Jesus loved those we hate.”

This message refers back to the words of Christ spoken during the Sermon on the Mount, and echoed by Dr. Martin Luther King, that we are to love our enemies. Love your opponents, and those who work against you.

The objective in loving our enemies is twofold, (1) To identify ourselves as God’s people and (2) to see our enemies redeemed.

This concept goes against our human nature, so we find it offensive. Yet, it’s not only Biblical, it was mandated by the Lord Himself, in the red letters, in the New Testament. There’s no getting around it. We are supposed to love our enemies.

Thus, there was an implied call to repentance in the ad. And that will always draw backlash.

Perhaps the final, and most controversial aspect of the ad was this… that Jesus loves those we hate. We have been conditioned to think that our enemies, our opponents, those different from us, are inherently evil and should be defeated and destroyed.

That is why our political discourse is as inciteful and incendiary as it is today. It’s not enough to defeat your opponent in a debate or in an election, you must also destroy his life so that evil can be vanquished and peace can permeate the world.

This mindset is wrong, because it’s false (opponents need to be won over, not destroyed) and based on a faulty premise. The wrath of man cannot bring the will of God, nor can it generate His peace.

However, when cable news, columnists and talk radio have convinced you that the other side is the embodiment of evil, the idea that Jesus could love them is startling.

Furthermore, if Jesus loves them like He loves me, then could He side with them also? Could Jesus possibly disagree with me?

And those questions drive the faith community, which easily drifts into self-righteousness, crazy.

A Jesus that disagrees with us is a Jesus that we still need to repent and turn toward, whose views we still need to conform ourselves to. And that means that it’s not just those we see as being lost that are being called to repentance, but it’s ourselves also.

That’s a confession too few of us are willing to make. Thus, the controversy surrounding this ad was near universal.

However, that doesn’t mean that the group behind the ad made a mistake. In his book, “Leadership Not By The Book,” David Green discusses the need to be disruptive, to shake things up and get people’s attention.

This ad was definitely disruptive. It broke our conventional thinking into what an evangelistic ad should look and feel like, and it broke cultural norms about who we perceive Christ to be. That forces us to either deny the Gospel, or re-center on who Christ really is and believe the true Gospel.

And because of that, I find the #HeGetsUs campaign to be hitting all the right points.