Dear Sir,
Matthew Baalham, in his challenging article ‘Cancel Christmas?’ (November en) writes eloquently of the difficulty many Christians experience during the Christmas period when the image presented of our Saviour, along with the customs and traditions, are so different from what we read in Scripture. We expect pressure to conform to this world, but when it comes from the church itself we are faced, as Matthew Baalham said, with ‘a time of feeling very compromised’.
If we are going to ask questions over one day, or another day, the challenge is of facing a possible division within the church and no sincere Christian wants to be seen or considered as responsible for creating division among fellow believers. Of course, what is divisive in one fellowship is an article of faith in another. In regards to Christmas, one can move to a church that does not observe the festival, but then find that you have to deal with even more teachings that you disagree with than you had in your previous fellowship. There are no easy and comfortable answers. Perhaps we all know the answer but we do not apply it. Paul spoke directly to Peter in addressing the action of Peter and others in going against the truth of the gospel (Galatians 2:11–14). He did not think that he must not speak out against one of the leading apostles, or that it would harm the unity of the young church to bring a contentious matter up publicly. He knew that he had to speak out against that hypocrisy before it spread any further.
Our problem today is that we are not able to nip false teaching in the bud because it has been the accepted and approved way of worship for millions of believers from at least the fourth century, and woe betide anyone who speaks against the established position.
It is not only Christmas that divides Christians. Far more important to many is what day we worship on; Sunday – the Lord’s Day, the majority would say, others, equally sincere, would say Saturday – the Sabbath – is the right day. How would both groups apply Romans 14:5 to something as fundamental as the day of worship? If we find it difficult to raise the topic of the rightness and wrongness of the Christmas festival, it is very unlikely that we would question the biblical justification for our day of worship; after all, has not something as important as this been argued over and decided on long ago? There is no need to rock the boat and cause needless division – much better to just go along with what all the others are doing – who wants to make themselves a heretic in the eyes of their friends?
But would you, a Sunday keeper, look down at your brother, a Saturday keeper, and try to show him the errors of his ways with your biblical texts, and would you, a Saturday keeper, look down at your brother, a Sunday keeper, and try to show him the error of his ways with your biblical texts?
In all this division perhaps it is healthy to consider how far we have all gone from the high ideal of Romans 14 and think about what Paul wrote in Romans 15:7: ‘Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God’.
Yours sincerely,
