Kuyperian, Author at Kuyperian Commentary

On December 12, 2014 By Kuyperian In Culture Like

I Saw Mommybloggers Dissing Santa Claus

A recent article at The Gospel-Centered Mom (GCM) entitled, “What To Do About Santa” has proposed that if we allow jolly, old St. Nicholas to remain a part of our Christmas celebrations, he has to stay in the stocks. He is enough of a threat to all that is good and true and beautiful to warrant placing a Parental Advisory label on his forehead warning: “Santa Claus is a false god; he presents a grave threat to humanity’s understanding of the one, true, and living God; he confuses children so that they will not be able to recognize reality; and he is vying for your children’s allegiance.”

My rephrasing of her issues may sound hyperbolic, but it is not. And although my summaries of her reasons are intentionally pejorative, I actually agree with the introduction to her article. GCM opens,

First let me say I’m a huge proponent of fostering imagination in kids. My kids’ all time favorite activity is pretending. All day long I have pirates, super heroes, and exotic animals flying through my house. I love it.

I also want to point out that when I talk about Santa in this post I am specifically referring to believing in Santa, not whether or not he should be banished altogether. My husband wears a Santa hat while we bake cookies. My kids sing along to Christmas songs on the radio and they don’t skip over Santa’s name like a cuss word.

However, following this amicable opening remark, GCM demonizes the Santa legend in general, specifically attacking the character of Santa Claus in order to convince her audience that he should not be believed in. She simply makes him sound dangerous. If the threat is as large as she leads us to believe, then Santa hats and “Here comes Santa Claus” should be taken outside the city and burned. The smoke from the fire might even be toxic.

I assert that the Santa myth is not toxic. It should not be demoted to a level below “pirates, super heroes, or exotic flying animals.” He is to be enjoyed for all that he is, as or more beneficial than GCM’s allowable imaginations. In fact, the Santa legend is historical fiction. There was a person on whom the specifics of the Santa legend are built, and he was not a villain. St. Nicholas was not canonized for being the person GCM makes him out to be.

The ancient St. Nicholas certainly existed and in the modern myth He still exists, even if only in fiction. And to say “only” is not to denigrate him to one that is any less respectable than one who can be seen, touched, tasted, smelled, or heard. Santa is myth, and we ought to let him serve as such to the best of his ability.

Concerning my house, do we promote the idea that a jolly, fat, beneficent, ethically scrupulous, giant elf lives at the tip-top of the world distributing an annual dose of weal to the nice and woe to the naughty? No. Of course not. I make it a point not to lie to my children, but stories can be understood as stories, even by the youngest of children, and my children have heard the story of Santa Claus. It is not the only one they’ve heard, and it is nowhere near the best story that they’ve heard, but they have heard it. It is the story of a good man with a happy ending–a happy ending that occurs annually (according to the story).

In the order that they were presented, here are some responses to the GCM’s reasons for eschewing Santa Claus:

1.) Santa promotes works righteousness. To believe this to be the case would be to preclude any notion of one “reaping what one sows.” Do we reward our children for being good? Do we discipline them for being naughty? If we do, then according to GCM, we are promoting works righteousness.

But an even bigger question than how we parent is to ask how God parents. Does God distribute weal and woe, blessings and curses according to how we behave? Does he? This is a theological question and, therefore, must be answered in finely nuanced language, but asking these questions may help:

Can we place God in our debt and merit anything from him based on how we act? Can we force him to save us by making it onto his “Nice” list? In short, the biblical answer to this question is “No.” (Ephesians 2)

But has God said that he will reward his children when they do well and discipline them when they do ill? Yes, he has. (Hebrews 12) Is he pleased when they obey and grieved when they rebel? Yes, he is. (Ephesians 4:30)

We can’t place God in our debt, but that is not to say that he does not reward obedience.

Concerning Santa Claus, I do not catechize my children in the St. Nicholan Confession of Faith. I do not even tell them that Santa brings them presents. But at the same time, there is no need to fear the fiction. The question at hand is whether the legend of Santa Claus teaches our children something inherently unbiblical. I say, “no.”

(In the modern version of the myth, the real problem may be that if Santa Claus is a judge of niceness and naughtiness, he is not a very shrewd one. For example, have you ever met anyone who actually made the naughty list? Me either.)

2.) Santa blurs the lines between fact and fantasy. Overall, I agree with what GCM says in her second point, but she proves too much. Once our children have been told that Santa is myth, then we can move on to enjoy him as such. Do we constantly remind our children that Aslan is only a myth; that Superman can’t really fly; that Spidey can’t really stick to walls; that Bilbo doesn’t really exist, etc. Such never-ending caveats would ruin any story.

If myth “blurs the lines between fact and fantasy” to such a dangerous extent, why do we read stories to our children at all? And if we’ve decided to read them stories, then we would crush their imaginations by perpetually reminding them that this is not real. In fact, we read them stories because fiction is more real than not. Fiction is vicarious living, whether or not the protagonist has magical powers. Stories by humans will always teach us about what it means to be a human, and there are no stories that are not written by humans. Parental discretion comes into play concerning which stories are worth reading, but not because myth necessarily “blurs the lines between fact and fantasy.”

3.) Santa is a type of god. GCM asserts that Santa is so much like God that our children might end up asking us if God is like Santa. This is a real possibility for her because,

[Santa] is omnipotent (all powerful – makes toys, rides a magical sleigh, goes up and down chimneys). He is omnipresent (everywhere at once – how else could he deliver the presents?). He is omniscient (all knowing – he knows who is bad and who is good). He is eternal. He is perfect.

I am sure that I don’t know all the derivations of the Santa myth, but in general her summaries of Santa’s superpowers do not fit the bill as I understand it:

Is Santa Claus omnipotent? He has the power to make a bunch of toys (actually the elves do that), fly in a sledge powered by earthbound creatures, and fit into unreasonably small spaces. How is that anything like spoofing the biblical presentation of God Almighty? I have never heard anyone seriously call him, “Santa Almighty.”

Is Santa Claus omnipresent? He can deliver gifts to all the households on earth in one night, but nobody ever says he does them all at once. Calling him omnipresent does not accurately represent the myth. In fact, that takes Santa’s particular magic out of it.

Is Santa Claus omniscient? He knows your sleeping habits. He knows who is good or bad. Who has ever said he knows everything?

She also asserts that he is eternal. He might be immortal, but who said anything about eternal? I have not personally heard that version of the story.

4.) It is hard to compete with Santa. She closes her reasoning with “All the time and energy we put into keeping up the Santa myth could be spent focusing on Christ’s birth.”

I appreciate what she is saying, and perhaps some ought to heed her advice by radically reducing the emphasis on jolly, old St. Nick and returning to issues of central importance like the birth of Jesus Christ. This may be a “meat offered to idols” type of situation for some, but we need not necessarily fear losing our children to Santa Claus any more than to any other legendary character, fictive or historical. All fiction, yea, all of reality, must be understood in the light of the Word of God. Every aspect of the holidays must be understood in the light of God’s revelation. Santa is no different.

The problem in all of this is not Santa Claus or the retelling of the story, whether the modern one or the historical one. The problem that ought to be addressed is one of lying to your children. If we are going to address that problem, then let’s address it, but let’s do it by decrying the results of lying, not by attacking the character of Santa Claus. Santa is no villain. In reality, he’s a Saint.

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On December 3, 2014 By Kuyperian In Theology Like

On Dasher

A virgin conceived. A carpenter believed. Shepherds dutifully tended their flocks, and angels joyfully followed their orders. God’s messengers made announcements from high in the heavens while a young couple made preparations in a lowly stable. A baby was born—rather the baby was born. The King of Kings left his throne and took up residence on his footstool.

Advent and Christmas—the commemoration of Jesus Christ’s nativity is festive and rightfully so. The only begotten Son of the Father came to earth in obscurity only once, and this unique, cosmos changing event inspires singers to sing, pipers to pipe, and dancers to dance. The trimming and lighting of buildings and trees; the baking and cooking and roasting of food; the drinking of glasses and bottles of wine; the making and buying and giving of gifts are exceedingly appropriate human responses to the coming of Messiah. There is every reason to celebrate for the King of Kings has come, but not all celebrated his arrival.

Herod, the king of Judea, heard of this child born King of the Jews. In futility he attempted to commit regicide, but could only accomplish infanticide—mass infanticide. This king of the earth set himself up against the Lord and against his Anointed. Herod dashed the innocents; Rachel wept; comfort was refused. Joseph dreamed and fled. Herod died. Joseph dreamed again and returned. Thus, out of Egypt God called his Son. The Holy Family settled in Nazareth, from whence something good finally came. No, not something good—someone great.

The great thing about a great king—a reason to celebrate—is that he always remembers that he is never less than a king. He serves as king from morning to noon and from noon until night. He sleeps as a king and awakens a king in the morning. A great king never tires, yea, he ever lives to serve his people, and Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, is such a King. He always protects his people. He always stands against his foes. He instructs his people to recognize the enemy, and he equips and prepares them to fight.

This requires a great king to be a great judge. As long as there are enemies, a king must rightly separate friend from foe. Royal discernment is the order of the day in order to distribute weal and woe accordingly, and distribute it he will, for a great king is not one to be trifled with.

The righteous are left unprotected if the evil are left unchecked. Therefore, a merciful king wields a rod of iron for a singular act with a manifold purpose: to strike down the impudent enemy, thereby protecting the innocent from the enemy’s wiles. Since the enemy’s endgame is nothing shy of the throne itself, for a righteous king to guard his throne is to guard his people. The enemy wants the kingdom, the throne, and, ultimately, the people. The enemy wants it all. He has ever since that tree in the middle of the garden.

Like the vikings of old, this enemy cannot be placated. To quote Rudyard Kipling, “We’ve proved it again and again. That if you once pay him the Dane-geld, you never get rid of the Dane.” Either the enemy must be converted, thereby ceasing to be a threat by ceasing to be the enemy, or the enemy must be dashed into pieces, thereby ceasing to be the enemy by simply ceasing to be. A wise king knows this and strikes a death blow with exacting precision.

As the kings of the earth take counsel together and set themselves against the Lord and against his Anointed this Advent season, the followers of the King of Kings have no reason to fear and every reason to rejoice. The whole point of Advent is that we now know the name of the Lord’s Anointed. Jesus is the Son to be kissed, lest he be angry and you perish in the way. And Jesus is the One who blesses all those who take refuge in him (Psalm 2:12). Behold, the goodness and severity of God (Rom. 11:22).

A virgin conceived. A carpenter believed. The baby was born. The King of Kings left his throne and took up residence on his footstool. King Jesus laid down his life, and he took it up again. Wielding a rod of iron, he needed only one swing to both conquer his foe and save his people. In Jesus Christ, we have every reason to rejoice and sing, to eat and drink, and to have ourselves a merry little Christmas.

“You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” Psalm 2:9

This article was originally published in Every Thought Captive magazine, Volume 18 Issue 10, December 2014<>game mobi

On December 1, 2014 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Cyber Monday Deal for Christian Pipe-Smoking and The Trinitarian Father, $0.99

As a way of saying thanks for your support, I am offering The Trinitarian Father and Christian Pipe-Smoking for $.99 each. Buy Now!

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On December 1, 2014 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Planet Narnia: The Speechless Word

I am currently reading Planet Narnia by Michael Ward. I am only halfway through, so this is not a full review, only some thoughts. I just want to catch you before you appropriate all your Christmas money; this may be a book you want under your tree with your name affixed to it.

The primary reason to read this book is that Lewis was a genius and the Narnia movies are, to put it bluntly, not. If you are watching the movies but not reading the Narniad to your children, then your children are learning lies about Lewis. Although it may be formally true that the films were “based on books written by C. S. Lewis,” it can only be true in the meanest sense. The movies are “action/adventures” for children; the books are the subtlest of fairy tales. The movies are the epitome of unliterary, while the Narniad nears the apex of literary. The Chronicles of Narnia are sublime, and Michael Ward proves it.

Michael Ward is unflinching in his thesis that Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia were shaped by medieval cosmology, which happens also to be a distinctively Christian cosmology. But instead of Lewis using Narnia as a bare metaphor, he wrote the Chronicles “along the light” of medieval astrology instead of looking directly at the light or even at the object on which the light was shining. The seven heavens are the atmosphere in which the stories live, not the focal point of the stories themselves. You are not supposed to read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and always be thinking of the planet Jupiter, but without the medieval understanding of Jupiter which Lewis employed as his “atmosphere’ for the tale, the tale would not exist as it does. It is distinctively Jovial, and Ward proves it.

He does the same for the other six books, neatly aligning them with the other six “planets”: Mercury, Venus, Luna, Sol, Mars, and Saturn. The book is incredible—worthy to be read and reread.

I finished the Mercury chapter this morning. As we have just entered the Advent season, the following paragraph stood out to me:

In a sense, ‘the night was over at last’ is a pun, but a pun with a Christological significance, pointing, as it does, not just to the approaach of daylight but also to the effect of Aslan upon Shasta. For that matter, all good puns have Christological significance: first, because Christ himself was a punster; second because there was a divine wit at work (as Augustine recognized) when the Word became speechless (infans) in the infant Jesus; and third because of the essentially polemic import of the God-man. The incarnation of Christ, the enfleshment of the spiritual, is the tap-root of Lewis’s belief in meanings beyond the literal. It is the incarnation which sanctions and underwrites both his use of word-play, one of the lowest forms of wit, and his faith in the highest double meanings of all, which he calls symbols or sacraments. The highest does not stand without the lowest, and Lewis’s understanding of God is that he is both ‘unspeakably immanent’ and ‘unspeakably transcendent.’ To attempt to combine these theological perspectives without cancelling out their polarity was a bold endeavor and full of risk. The Horse and His Boy succeeds as well as it does because a river of Mercury runs through it.

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On November 26, 2014 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

C. S. Lewis: No Ordinary People, No Mere Mortals

“It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deep about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my nieghbour’s glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long, we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealing with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And out charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.” (emphasis mine)

–C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory” p. 45

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On November 13, 2014 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Naming God’s World

I am currently rereading Nancy Pearcey’s Soul of Science. Here’s a juicy morsel from the conclusion of chapter 7:

“The primeval paradigm of human knowledge is the account of Adam’s naming the animals. Devising a suitable label for each animal required careful observation, analysis, and categorization, based on the way it was created. Adam couldn’t very well call a fish ‘woolly creature with four legs’ or a bird ‘scaled creature with fins.’ He had to reflect the world as God made it.

Yet Genesis tells us ‘God brought the animals to Adam to see what he would call them.’ God did not prescribe one right name, one correct way to describe an animal. He left room for Adam to be creative, both in the features he chose to focus on and in the terms he selected to describe the animal. In this simple paradigm Genesis gives the Biblical basis for all the arts and sciences. On the one hand, we root our work in the external world God has created, and, on the other hand, we freely exercise the creativity and imagination He has given us.” (page 160)<>биржи текстов отзывы топ ов работы

On November 12, 2014 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

C. S. Lewis Doodle: “Religion and Science”

C. S. Lewis Doodle on YouTube. This is the entire essay “Religion and Science” by C. S. Lewis from God in the Dock being drawn as it is being read. It is short (7:11) and made even more accessible through the doodle. Not that Lewis made it hard. It is a simple point with profound implications.

On November 6, 2014 By Kuyperian In Theology Like

The Rights and Wrongs of Private Interpretation

One of the legacies of the Reformation is sometimes called “The Right of Private Interpretation of the Bible”.

Before the Reformation, individual Christians were discouraged or even forbidden from reading and interpreting the Bible for themselves. Instead, they were told, the church tells you what the Bible means, what you ought to believe. This, of course, is what lay behind many of the other doctrinal problems in the medieval Catholic church.

But the Reformers objected to this. All Christians, they said, have the right and the responsibility to read the Bible and to seek to understand their faith for themselves.

Unfortunately, in our day, we sometimes end up misunderstanding the idea of Private Interpretation. We tend to think of it in an individualistic way: Every person has the right to decide for themselves what the Bible means to them; we don’t have to listen to anyone else. We end up as religious anarchists: we don’t need anyone to teach us; we just make up their own mind and follow our own path.

This is emphatically not what the Reformers had in mind. More importantly, it’s a serious distortion of the biblical picture. We need to place the idea of Private Interpretation within its proper ecclesiological context. The reason why we all need to grow in our understanding of our faith is not so we can all plough our own personal religious furrow, but so that we can all help each other.

To put it most bluntly, the person sitting next to you at church this coming Lord’s Day needs you to read your Bible between now and then, so you can help them, correct them, challenge them, teach them, encourage them. We all need each other to comprehend the faith more deeply, so that we all come to know more fully the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

Guest Post by Rev Dr Steve Jeffery, Minister at Emmanuel Evangelical Church, London, England (Blog, Facebook, Twitter)<>

On October 31, 2014 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Luther on the Glories of Christian Fatherhood

Any consideration of the Protestant Reformation in general–and Martin Luther specifically–would be incomplete without mention of Brother Martin’s views on the Christian family and his affection for children. Consider the following excerpt from Luther’s treatise (published in 1522) entitled The Estate of Marriage:

Now observe that when that clever harlot, our natural reason (which the pagans followed in trying to be most clever), takes a look at married life, she turns up her nose and says, “Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and on top of that care for my wife, provide for her, labour at my trade, take care of this and take care of that, do this and do that, endure this and endure that, and whatever else of bitterness and drudgery married life involves? What, should I make such a prisoner of myself? O you poor, wretched fellow, have you taken a wife? Fie, fie upon such wretchedness and bitterness! It is better to remain free and lead a peaceful. carefree life; I will become a priest or a nun and compel my children to do likewise.

What then does Christian faith say to this? It opens its eyes, looks upon all these insignificant, distasteful, and despised duties in the Spirit, and is aware that they are all adorned with divine approval as with the costliest gold and jewels. It says, “O God, because I am certain that thou hast created me as a man and hast from my body begotten this child, I also know for a certainty that it meets with thy perfect pleasure. I confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers. or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother. How is it that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? O how gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised. Neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labour, will distress or dissuade me, for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight.”

A wife too should regard her duties in the same light, as she suckles the child, rocks and bathes it, and cares for it in other ways; and as she busies herself with other duties and renders help and obedience to her husband. These are truly golden and noble works. This is also how to comfort and encourage a woman in the pangs of childbirth, not by repeating St Margaret legends and other silly old wives’ tales but by speaking thus, “Dear Grete, remember that you are a woman, and that this work of God in you is pleasing to him. Trust joyfully in his will, and let him have his way with you. Work with all your might to bring forth the child. Should it mean your death, then depart happily, for you will die in a noble deed and in subservience to God. If you were not a woman you should now wish to be one for the sake of this very work alone, that you might thus gloriously suffer and even die in the performance of God’s work and will. For here you have the word of God, who so created you and implanted within you this extremity.” Tell me, is not this indeed (as Solomon says [Prov. 18:22]) “to obtain favour from the Lord,” even in the midst of such extremity?

Now you tell me, when a father goes ahead and washes diapers or performs some other mean task for his child, and someone ridicules him as an effeminate fool, though that father is acting in the spirit just described and in Christian faith, my dear fellow you tell me, which of the two is most keenly ridiculing the other? God, with all his angels and creatures, is smiling, not because that father is washing diapers, but because he is doing so in Christian faith. Those who sneer at him and see only the task but not the faith are ridiculing God with all his creatures, as the biggest fool on earth. Indeed, they are only ridiculing themselves; with all their cleverness they are nothing but devil’s fools.

Notice that Luther’s vision of the Christian family does not presuppose an absentee father who sees the care of infants as “women’s work” that is somehow beneath him. Rather, Luther’s assumption is that the man who is following hard after Christ will take pleasure and gain sanctification as he rocks his newborn, washes it’s diapers, loses sleep giving baby comfort, and cares for baby’s mother in all tenderness. Luther also assumes that the man who does these things will inevitably face some scorn from what he calls “devil’s fools.”

As we pray for God to grant further reformation to the church in our day, we should pray that one of the evidences of that reformation would be men that mimic Luther’s views on tender caring toward their wives, their newborn children, and overall servant leadership in their households.

—-

Derek Hale has lived all of his life in Wichita, Kansas and isn’t a bit ashamed about that fact. He and his wife Nicole have only six children–four daughters and two young sons of thunder. Derek is a ruling elder, chief musician, and performs pastoral duties at Trinity Covenant Church (CREC). Derek manages a firmware lab for NetApp and enjoys reading, computers, exercising, craft beer, and playing and listening to music. But not all at the same time. He blogs occasionally at youdidntblogthat.tumblr.com.<>mobile rpg games кейсы продвижение ов