Firstly if you take Christ out of ‘Christian’, we all know that Ian isn’t the one who is going to help us!
Anyway back to it…With Christmas fast approaching my mind has for the first time in my life turned to what Christmas is all about. We all know why we celebrate Christmas, but do we though really understand what Christmas is all about. With more than 160 countries worldwide celebrating Christmas it is believed that Christmas was chosen for the 25th December so that the Catholic Church could compete with rival pagan rituals held at that time of year! Once again a sign of Church wishing to find a quick win solution to compete with the world we live in. In fact we have got so swept up with the gift element of Christmas that each person will spend an average of £390 on Christmas gifts this year, up 18% on 2005. To put this into perspective 60% of all annual retail turnover in the UK will occur over the 6 week period leading up to Christmas!
Stripping away the commercial elements of this period and going back to basics, this time of year is a really good excuse to think about the bigger picture. Jesus is God and God is Jesus, so why it then that is there are denomination out there that don’t believe in the Trinity? This is a hard concept to get one’s head around, but Jesus himself spoke about this in the bible – “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30-33).
As a new Christian I have so far stumbled across four issues which I think are all corner flags to be an active Christian. If we can embrace these then the foundations are in place:
• The Holy Spirit is all around you
• Jesus resurrected from the dead
• Jesus is God
• Blind faith
These are all great thoughts and ones that make me shout out “wow”. Next on the list is to ensure that sin is recognized and how I can combat minor sin (if there is such a thing as minor sin!) over the festive period – gluttony and laziness for starters.
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