Believe It or Not

A few more days of the Christmas season left. I'm not one bit tired of it yet. I love the Christmas carols, the lights in the neighborhood and the fun of being together. One thing that I have noticed about this time of year and around Easter is that television networks will air specials that they have on Jesus. The History Channel and National Geographic and the Discovery Channel will all broadcast shows with titles like, "The Real Jesus," "In Search of Christmas" and "The Secret Lives of Jesus." I will occasionally tune into one of these just to see what swill they are pushing. And it is swill. They will interview some of the most liberal and and outlandish "theologians" and "scholars" without even giving a chance for a rebuttal from a conservative. But, what would you really expect? They are pushing an agenda. Not a political one necessarily, but a spiritual one. "The world" (John 7:7), as Jesus describes it, is the system that the enemy operates in. It will always set itself up against the Lord Jesus and His kingdom. So, it is not surprise that it would use it's greatest platform, mass media, to sling fiery darts and arrows at the truth of the Son of God. Here are a few examples of arrows that have been slung recently and a defense of faith against them.

Herod did not kill the Bethlehem infants (Herod: Madman or Murderer on The Discovery Channel).

Rebuttal - Herod the Great, the one of whom scripture says was the instigator of the death of the infants 2 years and younger and who prompted the family of Jesus to flee to Egypt, ruled from 37 B.C.- 4 B.C. Herod interestingly was not a true Jew and was greatly disliked by the same, but was an Idhumean and was appointed King of Judea. Fearful of the brand of "Jew," he was a frequenter of the commercial Greek marketplaces and strove to be, as his adopted title suggested, a "friend of the Romans." Though a diplomat at heart, he was a man of great cruelty and paranoia. Reports have it that Herod had his nephew drowned, his sons strangled (7 B.C.), his mother-in-law Alexandra executed as well as his wife Mariamne. If Herod could kill family members, what would foreign infants matter to this murderer?

There was no Virgin Birth (Jesus: Holy Child on A&E).

Rebuttal - Just read this.

Jesus was the son of a Roman named Panthera (In Search of Christmas on The History Channel).

Rebuttal - Celsus, an influential 2nd-century Platonist of Alexandria and perhaps the first serious critic of Christianity is the source of this falsehood. Read more on Celsus here.

Jesus was confused about whether he was the Messiah (Mary, Mother of Jesus on NBC).

Rebuttal - There is no proof that Jesus was confused about his divinity or mission. See Luke 2:49, Mark 2: 1-12, 28, John 20:28.

There are many more that I could list off, and the best and most powerful rebuttal to all of them is the Word of God itself. And that brings us to the true point of contention. Is the Bible really accurate? There are many, many more TV specials that discuss this topic and I will just let you figure out what their consensus is. Bill Maher, the comedian and the host of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, has said, "The Bible is a fairytale," and "The people who wrote the Bible...it was not meant to be history, it was not meant to be literal." William Dever from the University of Arizona and frequent Bible Archaeology Review magazine contributor has said, "The Biblical tradition is a composite of...legends that still may be regarded as containing moral truths but until now they must be regarded as uncertain historical provenance." It is that last point that I want to speak against.

It is true that Bible contains some pretty incredible and fantastical stories. The Old Testament writers of the most dramatic of these stories are Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Jonah and Daniel. Moses gives accounts of the world being created out of nothing and man being formed out of dust. He talks about a worldwide flood, a bush that speaks and burns with fire but is not consumed and about a sea that is split in half. Joshua tells the story of the destruction of the great city of Jericho without even one finger placed on the walls of the city. Samuel writes about how Elijah called down fire from heaven and was also taken up into heaven by a chariot and horses that are made of...fire. Jonah tells the story how he spent 3 days in the belly of a giant fish before being vomited up onto the shore, alive. Daniel speaks of men being thrown into a very hot furnace and walking out unharmed, a disembodied hand writing on a wall and surviving an entire night in a den of very hungry lions. Those are incredible stories. And what about the New Testament? Look at all of the miracles that Jesus performed. Turning water into wine, walking on water, silencing a storm, feeding thousands of people with a handful of food, giving sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, causing the lame to walk and run again and raising people from the dead. Are we supposed to believe all of this? Yes.

One thing for us to consider is the motivation of the writers. Why were these men writing these accounts down? To point people to the one true God. Now, if you wanted to accomplish this goal, what do you think is the best possible means of doing so? Would you want to write stories that were believable? Sure you would. But, if you set out writing with the express goal of writing stories that are believable you are already being dishonest because in a sense you are saying, "I will only write down and record the things that people will believe." That was not the motivation of the biblical authors. Their motivation was to write down the truth, no matter what that looked like. I wonder sometimes if this thought ever crossed Moses' mind, "They are never gonna believe this, but that's how it really happened."

When Homer was writing down his epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey, he knew that he was writing mythology. He knew that he was writing a story that was always only supposed to be fantasy. When the biblical writers were writing down these incredible stories they knew that they were writing down history. These were historical records of things that they had really seen and experienced the one true God do. The Gospel writers had either seen these things first hand or they wrote down the accounts of those what witnessed these events. It only makes sense. If you wanted to write down or have a story that would convince people that you were right, wouldn't you try to make it the most rational and realistic story you could? What Moses, Samuel, Matthew and John wrote down was not primarily intended to be persuasive, but to be an accurate accounting of events. So, you and I make our choice. Do we choose to believe these things as they were always intended to be or do we say, "No, that is too unbelievable and mystical"? I choose to believe the truth, wherever it leads. Merry Christmas.

What We Do At Christmas

I want to begin with saying that I know that Mark Driscoll just posted a blog talking about what he teaches his kids about Santa, but I have not read it. I really wanted to, but I have been preparing this post all week and didn't want to be influenced/impacted by what he has said. Also to say that these opinions are my own and I have not gotten anything from any other source.

Okay, now that the disclaimer is out of the way, I wanted to write about what my family does during the Christmas season. I have realized that what we Cloers do at Christmas is pretty different from what a great number of people do. First off, let me hit Santa. Oops, let me put that another way. I will discuss what we do/teach about Santa. We do not do anything with Santa Claus. We don't take our boys to see a Santa at the mall. They don't write letters to Santa nor do they leave cookies out for him. If we are ever going to tell them anything about Santa it will be about the historical person that his mythology is based on. But, I'm sure that they won't care at all about that nor will they commit those facts to memory. We don't do Santa for one simple reason: WE HAVE JESUS! That's it. TheLord Jesus' coming to Earth for the rescue of sinful humanity is a big enough and special enough reason for celebration. Some people ask, "Don't you feel like you are taking something away from your children by not letting them believe in Santa?" Or they say, "We do Santa with our kids because it just adds to the magic of Christmas for them." Really? My response to that is: WE HAVE JESUS! I could go on and on about this, but it really is that simple to me. We have the greatest thing in all of the history of the universe to celebrate in the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. And to say that adding a mythological story about an overweight, elderly man that rides in a sleigh that is powered by flying reindeer to deliver presents to the children of the world by slipping down chimneys will make that glorious celebration "more special" or "magical" is totally absurd. So, I have been trying to teach Michael some things to say when he is asked, "What's Santa gonna bring you?" First response, "There is no Santa." Second response, "He sits on a throne of lies."

Seriously though, on Christmas morning, when our children are opening up presents (more on that in a bit) we want them to know that those were given to them by their parents who love them very much. And we love them even if they have been bad and they don't have to be good for goodness sake in order for them to experience love from their parents. So, no Santa, all Jesus.

Christmas day has always been special in my family. Here is what a Christmas day looks like in the Michael Cloer (my father) family. Wake up to smell of deer tenderloin being fried up. It is a wonderful smell. My parents get up early, I have never really known how early, to start making us breakfast. Breakfast will consist of the aforementioned deer tenderloin, scrambled eggs, biscuits, sawmill gravy, grits and my mothers fruit salad with miniature marshmallows and shredded coconut (so good). There is always Christmas blend coffee that is brewing all morning, cold milk and my mother's Christmas fruit cocktail drink/punch (non alcoholic, of course). When everything is ready, we sit down at large table together, everyone wearing their pajamas and such, Dad prays and we enjoy a great meal. A great thing is that the size of our family has grown numerically over the past decade. This Christmas there will be 11 of us around that table.

After breakfast, we excuse Mom and Dad to go and take showers and get themselves ready while we do the dishes and clean up. Then later in the morning, around 11 we all sit down together again, but this time it is in the den/family room where the Christmas tree is (that is a picture of it up there). Then Dad begins us in a time of prayer. Each one of us then prays and thanks the Lord for the blessing of the past year. It is usually a pretty emotional time. After that, Mom leads in some songs and we usually crack up at least once because it is either to high or too low for some of us. Then we refill our drinks with more coffee or more of the Christmas cocktail and maybe grab a quick bite of some goodie from in the kitchen and then settle back in for the giving of presents. That's right, it can be after noon sometimes before we start doing anything with presents. It has been that way my whole life. And sure when I was younger I might have been annoyed or irritated by that, but it taught much such a valuable lesson. It has taught me that there is so, so much more to the celebration of that day than getting presents. And that is what we want to teach our children too. We want them to know that this is a very special day because we get to be together and love on each other and celebrate Jesus and worship Him. We get to give to one another.

And we will not be showering our children with literally tons of gifts. I think that we can all agree that there is a tremendous amount of excess that American children experience all the time and especially at Christmas. It is not the aim of Melissa or myself to raise our children to be greedy, selfish or ungrateful. We want them to be generous, giving and compassionate. We want to give to people, families, in need. We want to give money toward global missions. We want to serve people in our community and love our neighbors. We want to celebrate Christmas in deed and not just in word. Our children will receive a few presents each year and they will give many gifts each year as well.

Christmas day usually ends with a ride around town to look at Christmas lights while drinking hot chocolate and some of Dad's homemade peanut butter cookies. I love my family. I love being a member in my family. I am not in any way saying that what other families do is wrong or sinful or anything like that. We Cloers are not better than anyone. But we are different. I love and embrace that difference. I truly am thankful to be a son of Michael and Tebra Cloer and I want my children to feel the same way about Melissa and me. Merry Christmas.

A New Chapter

For those of you who don't know you (there shouldn't be many), I am the new youth pastor at the First Baptist Church of Athens, TN. Just saying that statement brings back a flood of memories and emotions for me. Melissa and I went through a long process, not with First Baptist, but with the Lord about this transition in our lives. We prayed and started asking the Lord for some specific things concerning the next pastor and church that I was going to be serving in. It was, and still is, awesome to us how the Lord answered those specific requests and has so abundantly blessed us in the process. I could not be more pleased and at peace with where the Lord has brought us. This is the beginning of a new and exciting chapter in our lives.

I'm not making any promises here, but I do hope that I will be able to post at least once a week from now on. I hope that you will keep checking back in and seeing if there is something new. Also, please respond/comment if you wish. I think that probably every person that writes a blog really loves it when a person comments on the things that they have written. I have a tracker on my page that tells me how many people have viewed my blog that day, and I love seeing the numbers, but I would really like to hear what you think. Whether it is disagree or agree, I want to hear it all. But hey, no pressure.

Soooo, I figured that I would use the remainder of my time here to reflect on some thoughts that I have had about Christmas. Well, I guess I should clarify that. I want to talk about something that is pretty cool about Matthew chapter 1. If you haven't read it recently, take a minute or two and read it. Isn't that genealogy incredible? I think that it is fascinating that Matthew, a Jewish man writing to Jewish people, would use his first statement of his gospel to set the precedent for the entire book. Essentially what he says is that Jesus Christ is greater than David, the greatest king in all of Israel, and Abraham, the father of all Jewish people. You may be saying, "What? Where does he say that?" He is making that statement by placing Jesus first in the genealogy. Typically, if this were the genealogy of anyone else, then Abraham would be listed first according to his importance and the fact that he is the patriarch of the the Jewish people. If not Abraham, then certainly David, the greatest and most beloved king of Israel. But Matthew doesn't do that. Matthew, making the case throughout his entire gospel that Jesus is the promised Messiah and true King of Israel, places Jesus prominently at the head of His own genealogy.

Another amazing thing about this genealogy are the people that it is made up of. First, the women. Women were never included in genealogies. If there was a woman mentioned in a genealogy it would be extremely rare. Matthew places five women in the lineage of Jesus. Each one of them was either marked by scandal or the appearance of scandal. Tamar was a Canaanite woman who posed as a prostitute to seduce Judah, her father-in-law (Gen. 38:13-30). Rahab was a prostitute from the destroyed city of Jericho (Josh. 6). Ruth was a Moabite woman and a worshipper of idols (Ruth 1:3). Bathsheba, “Uriah’s wife” committed adultery with King David (2 Sam. 11), and Mary bore the stigma of pregnancy outside of wedlock. This shows us that the Lord can use scandal and what the devil meant for evil for His purposes and His glory.

Secondly, the men. These were not a collection of winners themselves. Jacob was a liar, Judah had sex with a prostitutes (one was his daughter-in-law), David was an adulterer and murderer, Solomon led the nation into worship of false gods and Rehoboam split the kingdom of Israel. So why did God choose this group of people? I believe it is because He likes to show how great He is in spite of how pathetic we are. He likes to display to world that He can uses the broken down and beaten up. I know that is is true because I can read it clearly from His Word and I have experienced it in my own life. I'm a nobody. I have screwed up more than I have succeeded and yet Jesus still loves me and wants to use and does use me for His glory. I get the feeling as I read the Word of God that the Lord is drawn to broken things. It's not because He likes to fix things/people. No, God is not a fixer. It is because He like to make them brand new. Born again, if you will. He is the Creator.

I will continue these thoughts later. Merry Christmas.