Credibility and integrity

The amount of bs spouted by Christians is incredible, and many don't even know they are espousing the equivalent of urban legends. I did an extended blog post on integrity on Christmas before. Now that I've caught myself in an urban legend, it is time to return to the topic.

[To kill the curiosity before it distracts you, I got caught in my belief of the stat that only 1 in 1150 couples who pray together end up divorced. A friend quoted a similar stat with those numbers for a slightly different set of actions, and I thought I was correcting him in commenting. Even a quick search found a citation of the version I had heard. Digging deeper later, however, I found the whole thing is just an urban myth. Various versions are out there, but so is the research from "Smart Marriages" who spoke with each of the various cited sources for such statistics (Gallup, Barna, Harvard) and no one at any can verify any such study or poll was ever done. I've been busted.]

There are numerous urban legends (we'll be generous in our terms) are out there, pushed by Christians and cited in blogs, books, and worst of all sermons. They are just so numerous one could spout one a day for years. What happens to our credibility, our integrity, when we cite them, oft repeating them, without verifying them? You may have heard them from "the pulpit", but that doesn't mean we trust them blindly - as it we who pay for being caught in the lie, not that preacher.

If the message of Christ has the power and restoration capability we believe it does, we need not exaggerate, need not grasp at straws to prove it. A part of me is glad the 1 in 1160 divorce figure is a lie - it shows the power lies not in a magic formula of praying together (or as my friend heard it - studying the bible, praying, and going to church together), but in grace and reliance on Jesus. So what if the origin of the candy cane was not the mythical symbolism of stripes of red representing blood, etc (heard that myth?). So the Easter Bunny and eggs is purely pagan in origin, along with the other traditions around Easter and Christmas. That is not where the power is anyway.

In seeking God's truth, let's pursue truth in what we say, what we repeat. Let's not allow a false sense of need to trust professional clergy undermine our integrity. Let's trust instead in God.

Integrity on Christmas

I've debated for a couple of weeks even doing this post, but the issue of integrity among followers of Christ is a growing concern. Particularly, the integrity of intellect.

It's a post for another time all the anti-intellectualism and anti-science sentiments among many Christians. But if, as many claim, Christianity is reasonable, let us act with integrity on many common practices and beliefs.

First of all, the assumption is that all Christians celebrate Christmas. Not so. I grew up in a Christian faith system that did not set aside special holidays (for as Paul writes in Galatians 4: "how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years!" ESV). The Puritans, who were an influential part of English and American history, thought Christmas as too pagan. There may be many others I'm not aware of, denominations that don't celebrate.

Second is the perception that Christmas is fundamentally a religious occasion and has been since the day of the apostles. Yet:
>In 245, the theologian Origen of Alexandria stated that, "only sinners (like Pharaoh and Herod)" celebrated their birthdays. ("Natal Day", The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1911.)
>In 303, Christian writer Arnobius ridiculed the idea of celebrating the birthdays of gods, which suggests that Christmas was not yet a feast at this time. ("Christmas", The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913.)
> More recently, Christmas celebration was banned in England from 1647-1660, and was banned in much of the New England colonies in the 17th century, including Boston from 1659-1681

Christmas was "out of favor" in the early years of the U.S. where after the American Revolution it was seen as an English custom, not a religious obligation. Congress actually convened on Christmas day in 1789. The first state to make Christmas a holiday for its workers was Alabama in 1836 -- it wasn't a federal holiday for DC workers until 1870 and didn't become a holiday for all federal workers in 1885. And it wasn't until 1893 that all U.S. states and territories had made it a holiday for all its workers.

So what led to the "return" of Christmas in the 19th century? Some big religious revival? Nope. Christmas literature become popular in the U.S. and England in the 1820s and 30s. This was the time of much of our Christmas themed stories and poems, most famously Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol (1834) and Clement Clarke Moore's A Visit From Saint Nick (1822). Most of this literature had no or only passing mention of religious motivation for Christmas. Even then, Christmas was largely a non-event for most Americans until the 1860s (Daniel Boorstin, The Americans). And some actually credit department stores like Macy's of New York for that popularization of Christmas. So the tradition of retail stores "creating" reasons to buy gifts is tied to Christmas (consider that the next time you complain about the commercialization of Christmas).

There are other aspects of Christmas celebrations that we need to watch - the date itself is fairly random.

The Roman Catholic writer Mario Righetti candidly admits that, "to facilitate the acceptance of the faith by the pagan masses, the Church of Rome found it convenient to institute the 25th of December as the feast of the birth of Christ to divert them from the pagan feast, celebrated on the same day in honor of the 'Invincible Sun' Mithras, the conqueror of darkness" (Manual of Liturgical History, 1955, Vol. 2, p. 67).

And De Pascha Computus, a calendar of feasts produced in 243, gives March 28 as the date of the nativity.

You know the fable for the three wise men -- check the bible, the true story is they arrived months later (the shepherds weren't still there like many of our nativity scenes), scripture mentions that the wise men arrived at a house (not a barn, in other words, Joseph and Mary went home w/Jesus), and there were three types of gifts. No mention that there was three wise men -- the number is actually unknown.

The need for integrity is great. Many churches use Christmas as a time for evangelism and revival. If the integrity on the facts are poor, what does that say of our witness? If we are sloppy about the history and practice of Christmas, if we are to practice it at all, what's that say when we teach about why Jesus came? We need integrity about it all.