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Wednesday, 23 December 2015

Five Errors?

Oh, please.
I know online media is necessarily, (all God's children gotta pay the rent....) obsessed with clickbait. But why must religious writers be as egregious with their listicles, and "You've been doin' this wrong your whole life!" overstatement, and their solutions to problems you didn't know you had with with everyone finding your approach to something or other risible,  ("everyone laughed when he stepped out but when he began to.... their jaws dropped!")?
The danger of infusing spiritual rationales into cultural practices is also seen in some of the Christmas songs we sing at church during the month of December. The most flagrant violation might be “O Christmas Tree.” You have to search hard through the stanzas of this hymn to find anything related to Jesus. We should be uncomfortable singing this carol in a gathered group of Christians because it’s basically a song paying homage to a tree. 
Nope.
I can sing Jingle Bells in public, too.
Not in Church, of course, (although Catholics who program it and the editors of Gather for printing it, should cringe that this piece of  borderline pantheistic drek ever sees the light of day.  I know, I know, I realize that the "poet" or translator probably intended all those "fors" to mean "because of" not "directed toward", but telling us to sing to the Creator,  but then in every verse enjoining "praise for" some non-sentient item of creation, is clumsy and open to too many, too widespread, manner of heretical idiocy in our theological and spiritually ignorant world.)
That's the difference.
There is plenty of room for secular Christmas songs, and even "in Church," just not "in worship,"
The carol sing lead-up to Midnight Mass? that's part of worship.
The carol sing on a Sunday afternoon, punch, fellowship and bars to follow?
Not so much.
The authors are Baptist, I think, so it's understandable that being of a non-liturgical bent they just don't "get" the Both/And quality of of most Christians' culture and praxis.
I can sing secular songs with other Christians, just as I can  drink Starbuck's in December.
And that leads me to a larger, (in my opinion,) problem.
December.
If by, "some of the Christmas songs we sing at church during the month of December,"  they mean "during the last week of December," fine.
But otherwise, even so far removed from ancient practice as Baptists are, ADVENT, guys.
Advent.
Stop having desert while you still need to be cooking.

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