easter

Easter Means We Don’t Need A “Prayer Room”

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Stephen McAlpine writes:

Christian: We Don’t Need No Prayer Room

The decision by the Royal Adelaide Hospital to build a prayer room for Muslims, but no dedicated chapel for Christians, merely a multi-faith room instead, has drawn predictable ire from the likes of Australian Conservatives leader Senator Cory Bernardi.

The Australian newspaper today reported Bernardi  saying he is “sick and tired” of the constant accommodation to a minority group in Australia, to the detriment of Australia’s historical faith.

The report states:

Senator Bernardi said the new hospital’s arrangement was “everything that’s wrong” with the approach to integrate other cultural groups, and the prayer room was “clearly designed for Islam”.

Separate washing areas were “all the symbolism I need that this is tailor-made to accommodate to a tiny minority’’, he said yesterday. “We’re bending over to ­appease a minority for fear of causing offence while undermining our tradition and heritage.

is Bernardi right?  Is that what is happening?

Perhaps.  It’s not beyond the realms of possibility in our secular context, in which Anything But Christianity is viewed ironically, as sacrosanct, that that is the case.

But it’s not the only reason, perhaps not even the primary one.  Other faiths are less demarcated in our culture in the sense that Islam has strong parameters about what it can and cannot do; what it can and cannot abide in the public square.  Provisions need to be made.  Dedicated prayer rooms need to be available.

A multi-faith room for everyone else seems somehow reasonable because no one else seems to care too much about separatism in the way Islam still does.  And let’s face it, the anaemic version of Christianity in the public setting today has been at pains to show how much it is the same as everything else.  Islam, to its credit, is not making that mistake.

Perhaps too Bernardi, for all his railing against the secular system, misses the radical point of Christianity.  For if he understood it rightly he’d realise, we don’t need no prayer room at all!

Read the rest here

Celebrate Life

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risen5815The heart of Christianity is the celebration of Jesus’ death and resurrection in the season called Easter.

On Good Friday we remember that Jesus died on the cross and that His death purchased the redemption of everyone who puts their faith in Him.

On Easter Sunday we celebrate the most amazing fact of history- Jesus is no longer dead, but He is alive. Not alive in a diminished “living dead” kind of way but in a new enhanced kind of way.

The Christian conviction is that followers of Jesus will also be raised to eternal life, to a new life with Christ.

From the earliest days of the church Christians have celebrated this reality. The period from the evening of Holy Thursday through to Easter Sunday was called the “Great Three Days.” New converts were baptised on Easter morning to enter their new life on the very day that Christ was raised to life. In time the Easter season was stretched to cover the full 50 days to Pentecost- after all this is a big fact worth celebrating to the max!

Some people don’t like the celebration of Easter because of its similarities to pagan myths. For example, there is a belief that the Old Testament person Nimrod became a false god and was worshipped in the Ancient Near East because after his death some people claimed he had come back to life in the form of his illegitimate son. They also say that Christmas is pagan becasue it is the celebration of Nimrod’s birth not Jesus’.

The existence of false celebrations does not make the real thing false. In science it is said that “correlation does not imply causation”- in other words, the fact that two different things seem related it doesn’t necessarily mean that one causes the other.

Let me ask you this. Does the existence of fake $20 notes mean that you should reject real $20 notes?

The presence of false resurrection myths should not stop us celebrating the real thing.

I will kick up my heels and sing praises to God and proclaim the ancient truth:

Christ has died

Christ is risen

Christ will come again

Hallelujah!

Is Easter Pagan?

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Every year, about this time, there is a bit of a controversy about Easter having pagan origins and therefore christians should not celebrate it.

It seems to me that it’s a bit arrogant of people to assume that after 2000 years of christian tradition they alone have the truth about Easter and everyone else has been deceived. It is possible, but you really have to do your research before making such an assumption.

As far as christians are concerned, Easter is the grand celebration of the central historical fact of our faith- Jesus died on the cross and then on the third day He came back to life, raised by the power of God the Father.

The resurrection, as far as historians can tell happened on a Sunday, and from very early days, the church had its worship celebrations on Sunday (or the Lord’s Day as they called it), even the Jewish christians who were used to worshipping on the Sabbath. Every week was a celebration of the mystery of the resurrection.

Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way first- Easter eggs and Easter bunnies have nothing to do with the resurrection. Christians do not worship eggs, chickens or rabbits. These things were often used as symbols of spring which in cold climates is about new birth after the death of nature in winter. Christians have often said “Aha! Great teaching aids to help us understand how Jesus’ resurrection brings new life to His followers.” The church in its worship has never elevated these symbols to be important.

The one important Easter symbol for christians is an empty tomb. Christ died, Christ was buried, Christ rose.

Some people say christians should not celebrate Easter because the name itself is derived from an ancient pagan goddess. That’s true, but only in English and German. In most European languages the word used is a variant on the Latin word pascha which refers to the Jewish festival of Passover.

The word Eostre is a Middle English word for the month roughly corresponding to April. Yes it is named after a pagan goddess, but most people back then thought about the month not the deity it was named after. According to the logic of Easter-haters, we should not be able to worship at all in January (named after the Roman god Janus) or March (named after the god Mars) or on any day of the week- all of which in English are named after Roman and Norse gods.

What about the dates which are based on phases of the moon and the equinox? Doesn’t that seem a bit like pagan worship?

Well Genesis tells us that God gave us the sun and the moon to mark the seasons. Jesus was crucified at the time of Passover, the date of which was set by the Habrew lunar calendar. The early church Fathers thought that Easter should be near Passover but not necessarily on the same day. In other words Easter is linked to the Passover festival but is not the same thing. So it was decided at the Council of Nicea  in 325 that Easter would be celebrated by all the churches on the first Sunday after the full moon following the spring equinox (normally March 21st).

Just because Easter is linked to a phase of the moon and to the equinox, like some pagan feasts are, does not make it in itself a pagan feast.

So this year celebrate Good Friday and Easter as good christian festivals. The most important event in the history of humanity was the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He purchased redemption for our souls and offers eternal life for evryone who will follow Him.

 

 

Jared Wilson: 10 Reasons Big Easter Giveaways Are Unwise

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Apparently cash give-aways at Easter are a thing in America. The folly of this is the focus on getting people to church at any price rather than getting them to Christ.

We are nearing the day many Christians look forward to all year. Yes, there’s the somber reflection and penitence of the Passion week, culminating in the resurrection of Jesus to celebrate on Easter Sunday, but there’s also some fabulous cash and prizes. Every year some churches seek to outdo themselves — and their local competition — by luring unbelievers (and I suppose interested believers) to their Easter service(s) with the promise of big shows and in some cases big giveaways. One guy in Texas made national news a couple of years ago for giving away new cars. More and more churches each year are dropping prize-filled Easter eggs out of helicopters to gathered crowds below. Local churches with more modest budgets sometimes promise door prizes like iPods or iPads or gift certificates to local restaurants.

I’m not against “Easter egg hunts” and kids having fun and all that, but I think the sort of large-scale, giveaway promotion that takes over this time of year in the church calendar is profoundly unwise and in many cases very, very silly. I want to offer ten general reasons why, but first some caveats: I’m not talking about a church giving out gifts to visitors. Gift cards, books, etc. to guests can be a sweet form of church hospitality. What I’m criticizing is the advertised promise of “cash and prizes” to attract people to the church service. Secondly, I know the folks doing these sorts of things are, for the most part, sincere believers who want people to know Jesus. But I don’t think good intentions authorizes bad methods. So:

Ten reasons luring people in with cash and prizes is not a good idea.

1. It creates buzz about cash and prizes, not the Easter event.When the media takes notice, nobody wants to interview these pastors about the resurrection. They want them to talk about the loot.

2. It identifies the church not with the resurrection, but with giving toys away.It makes us look like entertainment centers or providers of goods and services, not people of the Way who are centered on Christ.

3. Contrary to some offered justifications, giving prizes away is not parallel to Jesus’ providing for the crowds.Jesus healed people and fed them. This is not the same as giving un-poor people an iPod.

4. It appeals to greed and consumerism.There is no biblical precedent for appealing to one’s sin before telling them to repent of it. This is a nonsensical appeal. We have no biblical precedent for appealing to the flesh to win souls.

5. Yes, Jesus said he would make us fishers of men, but extrapolating from this to devise all means of bait is not only unwarranted, it’s exegetically ignorant.The metaphor Jesus is offering here is just of people moving from the business of fishing to the business of the kingdom. There is likely no methodology being demonstrated in Jesus’ metaphor. (But the most common one would have been throwing out nets anyway, not baiting a hook.)

6. It is dishonest “bait and switch” methodology.Sure, the people coming for the goodies know they’re coming to church. But it’s still a disingenuous offer. The message of the gospel is not made for Trojan horses.

7. It demonstrates distrust in the compelling news that a man came back from the dead!!I mean, if nobody’s buying that amazing news, we can’t sell it to them with cheap gadgets.

8. It demonstrates distrust in the power of the gospel when we think we have to put it inside something more appealing to be effective.What the giveaways really communicate is that we think the gospel needs our help, and that our own community is not attractive enough in and of itself in its living out the implications of the gospel.

9. The emerging data from years of research into this kind of practice of marketing-as-evangelism shows the kind of disciples it produces are not strong.I have no doubt these churches are going to see many “decisions” Easter weekend. We’ll see the running tally heralded on Twitter. As questionable a practice as that can be, I’d beextrainterested in how discipled these folks are in a year or two years or three. Hype hasalwaysproduced “decisions.” Would anyone argue that after 30 years or so of the attractional approach to evangelism the evangelical church is better off, more Christ-centered, more biblically mature?

10. What you win them with is what you win them to.

Full article here