I pray for President Obama every day and have done so for four years now, but now I do not know what to do. Evidently, my prayers offend him, even though I have only asked that God grant him long life, wisdom, and protection.

Does Mr. Obama welcome my prayers even though I believe in the sexual morality that’s taught in the Bible on which he’ll take the oath of office?

I am confused, but mostly for one simple reason: President Obama will take the oath of office on Sacred Scriptures. Why keep the Bible, but object to prayers by Bible believers?

From under the Internet bridge where trolls dwell will come the complaint that nobody sane believes in Biblical morality. Obama is using the Bible, because every President of the United States from Washington (who kissed the Book!) has done so.

Obama doesn’t believe the Bible, because nobody in American history in the mainstream has ever believed most of it. President Obama has just done to sexual morality what the rest of us, including mainstream Christians, did long ago. The Troll will rant about eating shell fish or the rape laws in ancient Israel. Apparently, in two thousand years of Church history, intelligent Jews and Christians keep giving up on “impossible” areas of Biblical morality without noticing it.

Now the brave Troll will tell us that Mr. Obama is just like we are: he loves the Bible while ignoring the nasty bits just like the rest of the sane. He uses the Bible, because it is a harmless costume from the Founders. A more skeptical reader than the Troll might worry that the same Troll is usually ranting that the Founding of America was totally secular and that religion and the state must be utterly separate.

But we need not ask secular Trolls to be consistent, we must demand they be literate.

After all, how plausible is this idea that nobody takes all the Bible’s morality seriously? Did literary scholars such as the late C.S. Lewis or philosophers such as Richard Swinburne not notice this self-deception? Did we have to await the twenty-first century atheist to find out our folly?

Probably not, since nineteenth century village atheists made similar complaints, though too many people in the nineteenth century had an education in classics to give the argument much force. Learn to read Greek texts, even in translation, and the village atheist argument about the Bible and morality sounds foolish.

Whatever the merits of our technical education, too few of us get a sound grounding in our roots. We lack classical reading skills so we tend to read old books as if they were new books written on scrolls instead of computers. But ancient authors were not just modern authors with quills, they had a different worldview.

Ancient Biblical law books require some cultural sophistication to read. Weirdly, the same people who would scoff at the Ugly American Tourist who cannot be bothered to learn the subtle linguistic norms of another culture (“adjectives oft come after the noun in our language,” the guide explained wearily) butcher old cultures’ thought patterns.

Some Biblical laws applied only to a nomadic people. Some were meant for a poor and embattled kingdom…and others were universal. Scholars might argue at the margins, but there are sensible ways to differentiate the categories.

Sexual desire, like any physical desire, deceives us easily. It makes demands that humans exiled from God find overwhelming. Most people in most places in most times have discovered that restricting those desires is necessary for civilization. They had a word for cultures that did not: decadent.

We haven’t discovered anything new that would change morality. Our Constitution, signed by the Founders “in the year of our Lord,” remains incomprehensible apart from the classical and Christian tradition.

President Obama is right to take the Oath on the Bible, but he is wrong to reject its morality. He is divisive to reject the morality of many Americans and most of the globe in a fit of parochial, partisan exclusion.

If President Obama doesn’t want the prayers of good men like Lou Giglio, then he doesn’t want my prayers. And yet the Bible, the morality of the Bible, commands I pray for him anyway. I must love him, I must honor him, and I must ask God to give him wisdom. And so I will pray tonight as I have every night:

“God save our Republic and my President Barack Obama.”

The culture war, we are told by clever men, has been lost. It is true that Christians and cultural conservatives, to the extent these groups overlap, have lost a series of battles, but losing battles is not losing. Napoleon won a great many battles, but lost the war. Soviet communism won battle after battle, but the Soviets are no more. The culture war is not over, because Houston Baptist University  has not surrendered. In fact we have just begun to fight.

Now the other side of the culture war might be amused by this  . . . rather like Sauron discovering the Shire is declaring war on Mordor.

The analogy is not quite exact, because it overlooks how many allies Houston Baptist can find in unexpected places such as Rome, Istanbul, and Jerusalem. It also ignores the fact that losing helped us get rid of causes that confused real issues. This is not about restoring the 1950′s, please (!), but about making 2020 better.

Cultural conservatives have lost several battles, but in losing they have also created an infrastructure that is ready to fight back. It is true that much of what has been down has been poor, but quality has been improving in many areas. Today’s Christian music is better than the music of my youth. Musicians are less apt to want to live in the ghetto of Christian music or wish to play by recording industry rules. The same is true of filmmaking. Compare the “Christian” films of my youth with even the cheesiest films made today and the increase in quality is obvious.

A few mainstream films, such as “The Exorcism of Emily Rose,” could not have been made decades ago, but the problem remains old definitions. Hollywood was not defined by Edwardian media and the Houston Reclamation will not be defined by old rules.

If we have been in retreat, then technology has given the bold tools to launch a surprise on the cultural left. The old battle lines can be withdrawn by ignoring them and looping around them, the way Americans did in Korea with the Inchon landing. Maturing Christian subcultures are ready to surprise everyone and start renewing the West.

What is HBU’s Inchon plan?

First, we don’t want Hollywood or influence in Hollywood  . . . or any other establishment. We want to make movies and distribute them. We want filmmakers who tell stories and do so with good craftsmanship. This fall we will be starting such a program. Nigeria and India both prove that ignoring Hollywood can pay. We aren’t going to make culturally conservative movies, of course, but be cultural conservatives who make movies.

Cloud Atlas or Atlas Shrugged proved that propaganda films don’t work for humanists whether they are mystics or libertarians. We are not going to make propaganda, but art.

Isn’t it time for a movie program that made movies and didn’t just talk about movies?

We are going around Hollywood and landing in the living rooms of Americans.

HBU is building on creative writing with MFA work. We are producing art through folk like Michael Collins. We are building an art gallery and museums through gifts from collectors who want the gallery to reflect their worldview. Our student paper is moving into media arts of all kinds while Barbara Elliot begins teaching how social justice and Christian values unite. Our faculty are moving ideas from the classroom to public space as part of their jobs.

Speaking of worldview, we are training faculty and freshman through the Francis Schaeffer Center and the work of Nancy Pearcey. On the cultural front, we are reclaiming what can be salvaged through a cultural apologetics program. The work of scholars such as Jerry Walls and Mike Licona in graduate philosophy refuses to play by old rules . . . and our hobbit invasion gets academic support as we set up an endowed chair beachhead in Oxford and in the writings of faculty such as Lou Markos.

We read great books because we love them and not just our honors kids read them: everyone does. All this in a school more diverse than any. Find a school that has a better universally applied core curriculum and we will look at it! If not, send your kid or grandkid to HBU.

Mary Jo Sharp makes sure this is not just your father’s apologetics program. And we don’t want you simply smart, we want virtue even more.

All this is laid out in the “Ten Pillars” by our President Robert Sloan, who knows higher education. This is not your grandfather’s Christian college, unless your grandfather had today’s technology and a robust Christian and conservative worldview. Unlike most Christian colleges, HBU is not sectarian, we have a progressive vision, but aren’t arguing about orthodoxy.

We are Socratic about our traditionalism and traditionally Socratic.

Some smarty-pants in the back of the Internet will point out that the Inchon invasion did not end the war. Things went badly after they went well, but that is the way of culture wars. One reason I am not a “mere” conservative is that I am not just about conserving, as a Christian I have a creation mandate and a desire for a progressive vision. Somethings change, but somethings should not change. Christianity informs me where conserving is good and where conserving is foolish. We are not going back to the future, we are creating a better future with the best of the old and the new.

It is Burke and Disraeli, but mostly it is Jesus: the progressive conservative. God is renewing creation: not recreating it! It is winning what can be won, not “winning.” America is not our home, after all, the New Jerusalem is.

HBU will not “win” the culture war, but we will be part, by God’s good grace, of winning the battles of our time. The war will not end, because (as conservatism knows) Utopia is not going to be found in this life, certainly not in Houston. We might fail, but our failure will be more interesting than Christian colleges who negotiate the terms of their surrender or who learn to lose gracefully. If you can find a school with a clearer Inchon plan than the Ten Pillars, support it, or you could join us here in Houston as we fight.

Perhaps, really, fighting is not the right analogy as we mostly plan jollification: the appropriation of the world God created and the best of what His children make in as inclusive a manner as virtue will allow.

I cannot wait.

 

A joy of blogging and Facebook are the thoughtful people who respond to what you write. Trolls exist, but they like all trolls they can mostly be ignored and left living in their basements working out their impotence in socially harmless ways. More common is a person with a different perspective who teaches me how I sound to those who do not agree. I never stop learning from such wise folk. One of my best correspondents is a person I shall call Albert. Albert has concerns about my last on “the morning after pill.”  With his permission, I have put his entire response to me below with comments and respond in italics.

 

Just read your article on the morning after pill and I will begin by stating that I agree with you that it should not become an over-the-counter medicine. My main reason for thinking this is so is that there needs to remain a certain gravity to such medications. Plus, regular birth control is not over-the-counter…etc.

However, your article raises an issue I’ve had with some pro-life rhetoric that has taken hold. I find it in your article and would love to hear your thoughts on this. I bring it up because I think this rhetoric ultimately has the potential to harm the cause (for the reasons I will articulate below) and not help it.

 

Here is the quote I’m thinking of:
“The pill performs its function of killing the unborn child, the fetus if scientists prefer, efficiently and well with no more harm to a mother than a natural miscarriage.”

This is a difficult sentence to sell to a secular public, even a religious public. The type of morning after med used in the U.S. is intended to prevent fertilization, or, in some cases, implantation of a fertilized zygote. Terms like “child” seem dubious here (as child implies for most people sentience, relationality, a nervous system, etc. and a number of other qualities that are not yet present). Child may, however, be a technically correct term according to particular theological perspectives.

Which brings up the next point. “Fetus” is not simply dubious here, it is scientifically incorrect. “Embryo” is even incorrect here. Zygote, or fertilized egg are the correct scientific terms. Confusing these deeply harms the argument in substance and in rhetorical force.

The third point is that the mechanism of action is quite common. As many as half to 2/3 of all fertilized eggs never implant in the mother’s womb. This raises all kinds of theodicy questions if half of all human persons have never even experienced cell division.

The 4th point is that the mechanism of action is also identical to the birth control provided by a breastfeeding mother’s body. What’s my point? Should we think of people who intend to not have “Irish twins” because breastfeeding provides a form of natural birth control as willfully engaging in abortion? Perhaps this is logically true from a certain theological point of view. But it is not a question I hear anyone asking and it ought to be asked if we are going to be consistent in invoking the morning after pill as tantamount to an abortion.

In any case, *here is my main point*:
I feel like the pro-life movement needs to focus not on these murky issues, but on those on which we have solid ground and can easily win rhetorical arguments and appeal to people’s minds and *hearts*. Ultrasound is already helping us win this battle.

So my point is this. We need to push hard for banning all abortions after age of viability (like many European countries at least have). We need to push for heavy restrictions after the point where it can be demonstrated that the fetus has its own blood supply and brainwaves (which no one can dispute are the markers of the cessation of human life–so why not push for them to be the legal markers of the beginning?).

These are battles we can win if we put all our eggs in these baskets.

But if we continue to conflate dismembering babies (that feel pain and think and scream) together with preventing zygote implantation (even if this is our theological conviction), we will lose.

We will lose because we will allow the public to continue to conflate the two themselves and not acknowledge the monstrosity of wanton killing of sentient human life.

 

 

We are being told by people who should know better that making the “morning after pill” over-the-counter is a “matter of science.” Those of us who oppose this cost cutting and convenient measure must be “anti-science.” If one cannot get a cheap abortion as easily as exfoliant, than science is being assaulted!

This is either ignorance of the Honey Boo Boo watching level or a falsehood told by powerful people who think they will not get caught.

Here is what nobody disputes: the “morning after pill” is safe for the mother’s body as such pills go. There is no reason related to the pregnant, or possibly pregnant, woman’s health for requiring a prescription. The pill performs its function of killing the unborn child, the fetus if scientists prefer, efficiently and well with no more harm to a mother than a natural miscarriage.

A miscarriage is the desired end and the pill brings this to pass.

The question, however is this: “Does our culture wish to make abortions cheap, easy, and quick?” This is a moral question and not a matter of science. Science, a very good thing, can tell us what will happen physically if we take an action, but it cannot tell us if we should take an action. Science describes is, but only ethics can tell us ought.

It can say nothing of what will happen to our souls if we do a thing. After all the name used in the media, “the morning after pill,” is not a scientific name or descriptive of what it does: induce a miscarriage. It is a softening name . . . an attempt to hide moral concerns most Americans might feel.

The science of killing is very advanced in the United States, but our news suggests the ethics to go with the science is not so advanced. After all, the science of killing told Herod that he could kill the children of Bethlehem easily, but good people judged him a monster for doing so.

Even Herod did not have the nerve to call Rachel mourning for her lost child “antiscience.”

Opposing the “morning after” pill is similar to opposing the easy and quick purchase of automatic weapons. The science of how each item will work or is not in dispute, but the ethics of use are. The difference is that the “morning after pill” can only be used to kill, while the firearm might be used in sport.

Science gives us the power to do many things now, but it is not anti-science to increase the difficulty in doing them.

Abortion is a serious moral choice and making it convenient creates a culture that is morally repulsive.

Should Americans even have such a choice? A plurality of Americans, at least, thinks the right to kill unborn children is not a constitutional one. Even “pro-choice” politicians like former President Clinton and President Obama want abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare.” Science can tell us what is safe. The law can make it legal, but the belief abortion should be rare is moral choice.

Science can tell Clinton and Obama nothing about that, so are they anti-science?

There exists an immoral minority that wants abortion safe, legal, and common. Making it easy for people to abort is part of achieving their goals.

When Christians stand against that goal, they are not attacking science, but immorality that would use sad badly. Sadly, some now use “anti-science” to hide their anti-ethics.

 

This year I supersaturated in Charles Dickens to celebrate his bicentennial and used his Christmas Carol as part of my jollification.

Whatever the state of Dickens’soul, and no man can judge, he lived in a pervasively Christian country. His books are shot through with references to the Faith and he assumes the Christianity of all but his Jewish characters and that appeals to Christian ethics make sense to his readers. Secularists have a poverty of writers before the nineteenth century, so they are always appropriating people writing within a Christian worldview. Since Dickens was not particularly pious and had marriage problems (by Christian standards), he has been celebrated as “secularizing” Christmas. I have even read critics who suggest that Christmas went from a dour religious holiday to a jolly secular one under his influence.

Of course, you must ignore all those Christmas carols to believe in dour religious Christmas. . .or assume they were written by dour Christians drunk on Dickens. Obviously the carol that commands gentlemen to rest merry must have been created by Dickens . . . except that it was written before the Christmas Carol and is referenced in it!

Imagine my surprise however, when I read a Christian organization taking issue with the worldview of Christmas Carol. Answers in Genesis published a criticism that made me wonder if they had read the story, or just watched secularized movie versions.

Here is their post in its entirety with my comments below each block quote:

This past week, I noticed that the well-known film The Christmas Carol (there are different versions of the movie) was shown on television, as it is usually broadcast each year at this time.

Good news! Broadcast television is going to show a film based on a novel chock full of Christian themes. It will be wholesome and a story of redemption. This will be good news, right? Ah, but there is, I fear, a Scrooge-like demon that infects faithful Christians that makes no news good news unless it is perfect new.

It is what you would call a “clean” movie with a touching story, and we all know that it’s fiction. Nonetheless all movies convey a message. As Christians, we need to be very careful to ensure that our children understand that the message of this movie, though quite tender in what happened to Tiny Tim and his family, falls short on some very important aspects.

Here is a thought: Esther fails to mention the name of God. Do we have to tell our children that this story “falls short in at least one important respect” or do we recognize that not all stories tell all truths? Second, if our children will be led astray by the message of Christmas Carol into works-salvation, the claim you know is coming, then they are doomed in any case.

But crying havoc and letting slip the dogs of war is always a good way to rally the troops, and one fears to raise end of the year funds, so even the most harmless of amusements must be lambasted.

A certain kind of Christian banned Christmas jollification, the same sort that worried about putting Austen’s books next to Bunyan’s (oh the impropriety!), but thank goodness the universal Church has rejected this narrow spirit.

Answers in Genesis has as well, as their wonderful holiday displays show. They needn’t worry about Christmas Carol anymore than Cromwell should have worried about Christmas in London.

One of our AiG friends wrote the following item about the famous 1951 movie version. His commentary, which we have slightly edited, is titled “The ‘Christ-less’ Christmas Carol.”

On December 19, 1843, Charles Dickens published his famous novel about Christmas entitled The Christmas Carol. It was made into a well-known movie in 1951 and has become a Christmas tradition that is shown on TV many times each December. Recently, Disney released an animated version of this novel that is a triumph of computer-generated graphics; the animation is very well done. Another version was even made with the Muppets.

In the novel, Dickens depicts Scrooge going through a life-changing experience as the result of seeing three apparitions—the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future.

In spite of its title, I suggest the book contains an unbiblical philosophy about life. Let’s consider some important points.

You will note the review starts about the movie, but then moves on to criticize the book. The central criticism is that Christmas Carol contains an unbiblical philosophy. We should concede at the start that any work of fiction by any person not divinely inspired will fall short in some way. Some might argue that we should, therefore, only read the Bible.

This suggestion will only succeed if we are to preach no sermons, since all of them will fall short. We should also cease to tell jokes, stories, or even speak to each other in any way not absolutely necessary for life, since all our conversation will also fall short.

Surely Answers in Genesis will concede at the start that it is not the sign of an unBiblical world view if a story does not tell every possible truth. If I am in Church, for example, speaking to Baptists, do I need to mention “immersion” as the preferred method of practicing the sacrament or can I assume it in my audience?

First, there is no reference to the Bible and the way of salvation provided for us through the life and death of Jesus Christ. There is only an allusion to God by Tiny Tim at the end of the novel. This in itself should raise suspicions about the intent of the author, for the novel is indeed “Christ-less.”

This is simply false as any quick scan of the novel will show. Let me begin with Fred’s speech at the very start of the book: 

“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew.  “Christmas among the rest.  But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.  And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

At the end of the book, Scrooge, who started a pronounced materialist goes to Church as one of the first acts of his repentance. He began life as a Christian (in an English context of infant baptism) and returns to his childhood beliefs and this is reflected in his attitudes:  ”He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure.  He had never dreamed that any walk — that anything — could give him so much happiness. In the afternoon he turned his steps towards his nephew’s house.”

I could multiply Christian references and assumptions in the story, but the point is made, I think.

The novel gives the idea that you may be able to have salvation by seeing or experiencing something. The Bible however, says that salvation is only through Jesus. “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (John 14:6 ). Scripture also states, “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).  The world would like to believe there are many ways to heaven, but according to the Bible, Jesus Christ is the only way.

There is nothing in the book to suggest this is true. Churches bring home the Gospel message through a testimony, where a person reflects on their life and sees what God has done to bring them to repentance. Scrooge is forced to see his life and see the hellish mess he has made of it. His life shows evidence that his materialism, adopted as an adult due to bad education and hard experiences, has failed.

The writer misunderstands the context: Dickens is writing to a Christian people and urging them to return to their faith. Numerous times in the story, he lashes their hypocrisy, their humbug, that is Scrooge’s excuse for his materialism.

Too many people are waiting for some experience or feeling before they will simply take God at His Word and accept through faith the salvation which He freely provides. They have the nerve to dictate to God how He is to dispense His mercies to them! Like the man at the pool of Bethesda, they will wait for a very long time and likely will wait themselves into hell unless God intervenes. (John 5:2–5 ).

And yet this writer is now dictating to Dickens how God must not intervene to help Scrooge . . . unless the reader is an utter fool he will not more think three Spirits must appear to him, then that he must have a Road to Damascus experience or do drugs like Nicky Cruz to come to faith. One man’s testimony encourages me, but it is not a model for how I must reject materialism.

The way of salvation as laid down in the novel for Scrooge is really a “works-based” salvation. If you do enough good deeds at the end of your life, these somehow will atone for all the bad deeds you did when you were younger. This is biblically wrong for several reasons.

This is, of course, false. Scrooge is a materialist and is brought  back to his childhood faith: a faith that works. The novel centers on the failure of Christians, and it is written to an overwhelmingly Christian nation, to live up to their professed beliefs. They allow children to remain in “ignorance and want.” They pass laws against working on the Sabbath that prevent the poor from having hot meals . . . as if this is what Christ wishes. These references make no sense unless one assumes an audience already in the Faith. 

First, this belief contradicts what the Apostle Paul wrote: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8) and “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17).

Just try this plea on a human judge! For example, suppose a convicted bank robber pleaded that he should not be punished because he had not robbed a bank in years and had been most generous helping others with the money he had stolen. Just like God, a human judge requires payment for what is past. No amount of good works in the present can atone for past sins, as the Scripture plainly states, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5).

Only when we are covered in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ will God see us as perfect—but only perfect through what Christ did on the Cross in atoning for our sins. Consider this verse: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels” (Isaiah 61:10).

In addition, God does not grade on a curve. He will accept perfection and nothing less. “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48).  If you only break one of God’s laws, then you are already guilty and destined for eternal separation from God in hell. “For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them” (Galatians 3:10). Likewise, “whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:10 ). Remember, Adam only had to commit one sin to be expelled from paradise, and his rebellion ruined the entire human race. Satan only had to think one evil thought before he and all his hosts were eternally judged guilty.

 

This is good Evangelical teaching, but nothing in it contradicts the Christmas Carol. A good sermon on holy living does not always have to contain the balance. If the writer wants to judge Dickens for anything, it should be for the literary suggestion (common to C.S. Lewis) that there is a time of “purgation” for a Christian (baptized) soul that has wondered away from faith and failed to do good works.

Biblical Christianity differs from all other religions, for they all say “do and live,” but only Christianity says “live and do.” Christians do not work to earn their salvation because that has been accomplished by Jesus Christ, but they do good works out of gratitude for the free salvation they have already received from God through faith and in obedience to the instructions for Christians in God’s Word.

I am a Christian, but this is a false description of all other religions. Many other religions (for example gnostic ones) claim the experience comes first (the regeneration) and then the good works. Non-Christian modern Jewish teaching for example does not universally claim that works save. I don’t know where this Christian urban legend began, but it should stop.

Jesus is the only way, but other faiths have postulated that our works cannot save us. They have the diagnosis right, but not the cure!

The novel by Dickens is an interesting literary work and is of historical interest about the conditions in England during the Victorian era. It should be treated as such and no more. Such books (and movies based on novels) can be entertaining to watch, but we need to make sure those watching them do not get influenced with wrong ideas that can be conveyed by such media.

It would help if one knew something about the Victorian era. In fact, Answers in Genesis should applaud the anti-materialism in Christmas Carol. Scrooge will not believe in the supernatural despite the evidence, a problem more than one critic of AIG has!

The real “Christmas carol” is found only in the Bible, when the angels sang to the shepherds announcing the birth in Bethlehem of the Savior, who is Christ the Lord. There never has been—and never will be—any salvation for us apart from faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ, which He accomplished on the Cross. In whom or what are you trusting today for your eternal salvation?

If the writer believes this, then I hope he does not sing carols found outside the Bible. He should also read his Bible more carefully, for he will find that the idea that the angels sang is extra-Biblical. It isn’t there, though I too think it likely. So we now see this letter urging us to be Biblical is itself unBiblical. Must I warn my children about it?

Charles Dickens was a flawed man writing from a hurt soul. I don’t know if he was a Christian, but I know his works, including Christmas Carol are deeply infused by Christianity. Like any author, including the writers at Answers in Genesis and me, one should never accept all said without critical examination. For those interested I wrote a ten part blog series on Christmas Carol starting here.

This whole missive exposes the danger of taking a book from another time, in this case the Victorian era, and failing to take the worldview of the typical reader into account in understanding the book. Answers in Genesis, of all organizations, should know better. Still in the Spirit of the Fourth Day of Christmas: God rest them every one!