Bunnies at the Tomb

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That’s no ordinary rabbit! That’s the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!
—The Wizard Tim, Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Santa Claus I can deal with. The Easter Bunny drives me nuts, though.

At least with Santa you can trace him back to an old Christian saint. The Bunny, however, exists solely as a fertility symbol that has been traced back to the murky, disputed goddess Eostre and pagan celebrations of springtime among Germanic peoples.

It’s possible to play down Santa Claus for Christmas. But the eggs, chicks, and bunnies are everywhere.

Last weekend, my son won a game at the YMCA that was manufactured by a historically conservative Christian publishing house. easter_bunny.jpgThe game talked explicitly about the Resurrection, but it married Easter eggs, chicks, and bunnies to that story so intimately that it was impossible to extricate the two. In the end, it came down to battling messages, Jesus’ gory and brutal, with the bunnies’ all warm and cuddly.

Though I had an Easter basket as a child and participated in more than my fair share of egg hunts, I didn’t become a druid. I don’t go on a yearly pilgrimage to Stonehenge.

Still, it bothers me that it is so hard to cut through the competing messages to find what is real. My own son seemed to get plenty geared up for egg hunts and bunny-related ideology, but the resurrection didn’t garner the same enthusiasm.

“Our triumphant holy day” is how my favorite Paschal hymn labels it. That the highest holy day in Christianity must compete with foggy imagery from a forgotten diety of questionable origin bugs me to no end.

Unlike some other nations where a dictator makes proclamations that determine practice, Americans watch what is best and brightest in our culture and body politic erode through the constant dripping of one watery drop of concession after another. In time, the end result is a canyon. Our reaction? “Wow, now where did that come from?”

Maybe I’m just an excessive, joyless crank, but when you see the end result, when it becomes impossible to separate the resurrection of Christ from bunnies and chicks, it’s hard not to think that the goddess and her barnyard have won the war in the hearts of too many people.

57 thoughts on “Bunnies at the Tomb

  1. I went to a Passover Seder held by a Christian friend some years ago. I also went to a Hannukah celebration held by a Messianic Jewish congregation years before that. I loved both more than any Christmas or Easter service I’ve ever attended. In fact, I call myself the opposite of the Christmas/Easter Christian. At Christmas and Easter, I prefer to avoid church. I don’t like the added layers of fakeness.

    Why did I not feel that way about Passover and Hanukkah? Maybe because those were real holidays, instituted by the Lord?

    • TruthBeTold

      Great comment Micheal.

      When our children are asked why they don’t celebrate christmas or easter they respond with this…”We celebrate the Holy Days not the man-made holidays.”

      The children have never beleived in Santa Claus…for we never wanted them to ever doubt that we were lying to them about other things….if we lied to them about Santa, could we also be lying about Jesus too?

      We are called to make a distinction between the Holy and common….this is where the organized church has continued to miss it…..for there is so much mixture and compromise….and before you know it you have a pastor on national television glibly talking about how he wants to bring sexy back to *his* church….and has asked for the married couples to have sex for 7 straight days.

      Just not enough words to describe how common the CHURCH has become….sigh.

      Enjoyed your post Dan….

      Be blessed,
      TruthBeTold

      • Gav

        Geez Louise steady up! Theres a fair bit more to tackle than this. Your motives are excellent, no doubt, but bringing the conversation to such a tone such as above is a bit…..well: how does it edify the church?

  2. We had an Easter egg hunt for the kids after church on Easter.

    We put messages about Jesus in the plastic eggs. I don’t think it is harmful to the kids to engage in secular traditions as long as the Christian faith is not ignored.

    As a kid, all I knew were the secular traditions. The Lord still had a hold of me.

  3. It’s easier to bypass the bunnies, baskets and chicks than the cheap plastic Jesus junk and chocolate crosses. My children/grandchildren know that bunnies and chicks were not crucified, but the trivializing of the death and resurrection of Christ with plastic and candy and warm fuzzy “Christian” children’s books really bugs me.

  4. Myself and almost everyone I know in my church, celebrated Christmas (as children) with Santa Claus, and Easter with the Easter Bunny and goodies.

    This was not instead of Christ, but as a fun thing for kids to do that all the other kids were doing also.

    As we gre older we left childish things behind.

    But to rob children the pleasures of being children and enjoying the fun times of the season is not necessary.

    Just teach them the real meanings and all will be well.

    I’m a committed Christian. Those things did not steal my faith.

    • I used to think it was not an issue, Steve, but in our young lives existed far fewer divisive elements. Today’s children are torn in a thousand directions that we never faced. For this reason, I would suggest that adding yet another division that is pointless is not wise.

  5. Not sure if keeping these cultural children’s “games” away from kids at a young age is a good idea.

    This may make kids more apt to rebel later on.

    I think the Word of God is powerful and can overcome all the distractions. We just need not forget it, or let our children forget it.

    • Steve,

      When you compare the way children are raised today to how they were long ago, we have an artificial lengthening of childhood. It’s one reason we have so many people in their 20s and 30s who haven’t grown up. Witness the spate of movies about man-children who never stop being 15 years old.

      For many children, play is 24/7/365. The destruction of the agrarian lifestyle eliminated the need for children to be producing for the family from an early age. As a result, our kids almost never stop playing.

      Is it too much to ask that we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, one day out of the year, with a bit more reverence, without adding pagan fertility symbols that make the day “more fun”? In “olden days” kids used to get treats primarily on holidays, so you can perhaps justify getting some candy eggs then to make the day “special.” But kids today have access to candy every single day, and in large amounts.

      You read the primers they used to teach kids 200 years ago. With life more tenuous for the young, those primers routinely taught little children about death. As a result, kids then were more serious about life. And faith in Christ.

      I wish we could recover those olden days, at least to some extent. I think we’d be doing a great service to our children if we did. Yesterday, my son asked me how many children die in a year. And I was glad he asked the question. I don’t know where that question came from, but I was glad to see that he was thinking about life in a more serious way than simply wondering how many goodies he’ll get on the next holiday.

      • Kids are kids. Two hundres years ago …or today. Thay like to play, they like to fantasize, they like fables and mythical characters.

        Today, more than ever, kids need to NOT have their childhood robbed from them.

        We as adults, put aside childish things. The Bible doesn’t tell us to take the childish things away from children.

        Raise them with Christ. They will grow into the faith which the Lord has given to them (or will give to them).

        We have so little trust in the Word. We ought let children be children and we ought trust more in the Word to keep us and them in faith.

        • Steve,

          It is possible to both steal away childhood and wrongly extend it. Our culture cannot adequately differentiate one from the other. Nor can we discriminate between what need to be extended and what needs to be truncated.

          It bothers me that children now zip through kid toys and participate in play that is more geared toward adults and teens. The toy manufacturers are bugged by this, too. Little girls moved from baby dolls into Bratz by the time they were 4 or 5. That’s nuts. Same goes for children’s TV, which is often little more than adult innuendo for those who refuse to grow up. (What else explains the mind-bogglingly scandalous new Burger King commercials for their SpongeBob promo?)

          On the other hand, we continue to infantalize the most important issues of life, death, and faith. This explains why our young people abandon the Faith in droves once they reach college. In their minds, they give up childish things (their faith) for the faux maturity of “enlightenment.” They’d been spoon-fed a watered-down worldview that forces the resurrection to compete with bunnies.

          I’m no stranger to this discussion. I studied child development extensively in college and the implications of our cultural demise on children. I also studied what kids were like back when.

          Many aspects of how we deal with our kids need to be adjusted. Finding a way to differentiate between the holy and the profane would be an excellent start. We’ve got to tone down the message that life is always non-stop fun while still letting kids be kids.

  6. David R.

    One of our elders got up on Sunday and reminded us that the joy of Sunday must be tempered with the reality of Friday. As a non-denominational body, we didn’t do anything on Good Friday, and he lamented that a bit because we do tend to forget the sacrifice that was made in order for us to have joy in the morning on Easter Sunday.

    Now we are, in a way, stuck on the Saturday between Friday and Sunday. Unlike the disciples we shouldn’t have the fearful uncertainty of what is coming next, but we are still waiting. Occupiers of a hostile foreign land, we are given a task. It’s difficult to maintain the imperative nature of that task, given the diversions bouncing around us. Like the myriad household chores that have to be done on Saturdays, it’s easy to give them a back seat to the Saturday morning cartoons.

    What the world has done with the great celebration days should give us a warning about just how we are diverted. God doesn’t mind, I think that we hold some days as times of celebration and joy. He laid a few out for His people, and encouraged them to use them as days of remembrance. But it’s important that we don’t allow ourselves to be drawn off-purpose by others co-opting our celebrations. It’s no surprise to me that Christmas and Easter are the two biggest commercial celebrations of the secular world. What hurts is that the fact that they are celebrated by non-believers has soured the attitudes of believers to the celebrations they represent.

    Celebrate Easter! Celebrate Christmas! Revel in the joy of the very real events those artificial dates represent. Ignore the bunny and the funny man in the red suit behind the curtain!

    Don’t let the world divert you from the joy of the Lord.

    • TruthBeTold

      Hello David R.

      “Celebrate Easter! Celebrate Christmas! Revel in the joy of the very real events those artificial dates represent.”

      Why?

      Is this truth?

      No! It is not…and THIS is the problem. Instead of celebrating man-made holidays that are based on pagan origin why not celebrate the REAL HOLY DAYS that Father has instructed us to do?

      How about celebrating Passover…and rejoicing in the TRUTH that THE LAMB of God has come, and continues to come in every life of ‘whosoever will’.

      How about celebrating THIS WEEK….of the Feast of Unleavened bread….of asking Father to reveal areas of weakness and sin hidden in the heart and remove this yeast and replace it with the LEAVEN OF THE KINGDOM. For these are very real feasts that one experiences in the Spirit as one takes part and honors the Feast on earth….in their own earthen vessel.

      No, my suggestion is that the church repents of the MIXTURE….how about that? Let’s return to the simplicity of Christ and worship Him in Spirit and Truth….keeping these Feasts on earth as we keep them in our Heaven’s (our spirit’s).

      Be Blessed David,
      TruthBeTold

      • TruthBeTold,

        While I understand the basic idea of recalling the old Jewish feast days, I don’t know if resurrecting them will solve our problem—though I do agree that we need to be more serious about Holy Week/Passover.

        I grew up Lutheran, and it’s a bit sad to me that Evangelicals have largely diminished the impact of Holy Week. Lutherans take Holy Week seriously, as do many mainline churches. We were in church for much of that week. Modern Evangelicals have stripped away a lot of that seriousness about faith during what is supposed to be a very contemplative time for believers. That saddens me. I know that I feel like I have lost something from my own faith practice after having moved out of liturgical churches that practice a church calendar system into an Evangelical system that treats pretty much every day the same. (That said, I don’t think we must be beholden to the liturgy all year the way some people do. Again, balance.) Say what you will about the current theology of modern mainline churches, they at least do Holy Week right.

  7. Richard Ludwigson Jr

    HI folks, I am a fairly new reader and this is my first comment. I agree with this post and with TruthBeTold. I think that something I heard on the radio this morning might be relevant. It was the result of a survey of professing Christians. In this survey 60% of people that called themselves Christians DID NOT believe that the Devil is real, also 58% DID NOT believe that the Holy Spirit is real either. If this is true we have a much larger problem and going along with the worldly celebration of these “holy days” is most definitely a contributing factor! I agree that we need to go back to basics and celebrate God’s Holy Days, not mans.

    • Richard,

      Thanks for commenting.

      I think you’re right. And I have no problem with Christians celebrating “artificial” holidays (hey, I’m no JW) as long as we do it with some seriousness when seriousness is called for. Good Friday is a serious holiday, and so is “Resurrection Sunday” (as Evangelicals like to call it now).

      Are we so inured to the realities behind those days that we simply can’t celebrate for what they are? Do we have to add things to them to spice them up so they can be more “fun”?

      If anything, that shows me that we are losing the understanding of what those days stand for. It’s a bit like piling on the salt on every meal we eat. After a while, we forget what the underlying food tastes like! And boy, have we done that to every holiday that has a basis in Christian practice and theology.

  8. You raise a few good points, Dan, but I’d caution you about the other extreme. Growing up where I did I knew a lot of kids who were from very strict churches and who didn’t celebrate Easter or Christmas. They usually ended up leaving Christianity altogether because all they saw was what they were denied, and came to see Faith as something stripped of all joy and lightheartedness.

  9. So typical…we have so many issues in the “church” nowadays and we’re arguing about holidays! Look, the holidays aren’t the problem, but as Dan said, the mixture of the pagan practices are. Just because the Bible doesn’t set aside a day to remember the resurrection doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with doing so. The Pharisees argue, “Every day should be a celebration of the resurrection”. Fine, but by the same thought process, the Jews should’ve celebrated their deliverance from Egypt (a picture of our deliverance from sin) every day. Yet God told them to set aside a day of rememberance for Passover, didn’t He? So come on people, let’s grow up, eh? You want to celebrate Easter, fine. You don’t, fine. Only let us do 2 things: 1) Stop practicing pagan traditions that rob the holidays of their value, and 2) stop fighting over disputable matters like we’re instructed.

    Dan, this wasn’t a shot at the post. I quite agree with you. It was rather a reaction to some of the responses.

    • TruthBeTold

      Hi Chris,

      You wrote..”Only let us do 2 things: 1) Stop practicing pagan traditions that rob the holidays of their value, and 2) stop fighting over disputable matters like we’re instructed.”

      Listen, I am not about strife…for it is of confusion and brings about every evil work.

      I only want THE TRUTH….and He is a person.

      Truth is. these are not disputable matters…on the contrary…these are very well established, historical facts that a 5th grader can find out just by reading the dictionary or googling Easter, Christmas or Hell to find out the origins of these words and how they seeped into the ‘church’ back in the fourth century.

      Bottomline, some Christians like to think themselves better than the jews of old…and that they would never have done what the jews did by being so blinded to the Lamb, of being bound by so many man-made laws and traditions. Yet, many Christians have added to the Word just as the Jews have done.

      Deuteronomy 4:2
      Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the LORD your God that I give you.

      Luke 6:49
      But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.”Luke 6:49

      Hebrew 13:8
      Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever.

      Maybe instead of ADDING to the words of Scripture we should just DO what it says….maybe that has been the problem all along…and thus the reason why so many lives have crumbled and departed from the faith…b/c they were never built on the SOLID ROCK…but the faulty foundation of man’s traditions.

      Selah.
      TruthBeTold

      • If there is no Hell, there is no consequence for practicing Pagan holidays, and your argument is therefore hollow nonsense. Sorry.

        PS – Just want to make it clear that the Chris below is a different one. My name is a link and has a different icon. Stupid common names, lol.

        • TruthBeTold

          Hello Chris,

          How about you do some homework before you go off and pronouce my argument ‘hollow nonsense’…eh?

          Be warned….this link that I am giving you is not some kind of easy reading….no, for it is an IN DEPTH look at the teaching of ‘everlasting torment’ and its origins.

          Let it be known ….that I do believe that there will be judgement….I believe what the SCRIPTURES SAY….but not what man has INTERPRETED them to mean through the error of a Pagan Hell. All of Father’s judgements are corrective and have a purpose and are not everlasting. The Lord is the SAVIOUR OF THE WHOLE WORLD and none will be lost.
          Not one.
          He will not lose one sheep.

          So come back to me after you have done your homework Chris …..and then we can dialogue…..ok?

          Be blessed
          TruthBeTold
          http://www.tentmaker.org/articles/ifhellisreal.htm

          • Jesus speaks of those whom He does not know being cast away.

            He is the judge and he says that many will be lost.

            If you have a problem with that…then take it up with Him when you get “up” there.

          • Susan

            I’m fairly new here. I was raised Anglican and was never taught anything but eternal hell for the lost. I never heard terms like “annihilationism” or “universalism” until I read them on this blog a couple weeks ago. So, I began doing some research and came across the following:

            http://www.custance.org/Library/SOG/Part_V/Chapter19.html

            The site, http://www.custance.org, offers a compilation of papers by a Christian named Arthur Custance. He was, among other things, a scholar of Middle East languages, including Hebrew and Greek. This particular paper (chapter 19 in the online book SOVEREIGNTY OF GRACE) addresses four views regarding the future of the non-elect. They are: Annihilation, Universalism, Limited Punishment, and Everlasting Punishment. The latter includes a presentation of the handling of the original Hebrew ‘olam and Greek aion in Old and New Testament translations.

            I’m sure there are many such comparisons available, but I found this one to be helpful in understanding this discussion and thought others might as well. (It also helped to read chapters 18 and 20, as they’re all part of the same section.)

          • I actually spent a good bit of time reading your comments on this the last time you hijacked the thread, and remained unimpressed. Last night, I did several more hours of research. Still unimpressed. I thank you for your patience with my unnecessarily terse comment. Since you did so with me, I likewise forgive your presumption that I haven’t studied the subject, as well as your smugness in talking down to everyone who disagrees with you.

            Look, I’d love nothing more than to find out I misunderstand. You don’t know a thing about me; if you did, you’d know I can’t stay mad at anyone for 5 minutes at a time, so I’m not some hateful lunatic that wants to be the only one in Heaven. I hope you’re right, really I do. At the same time, I will not allow my desires to shape my theology, and the arguments made for Universalism just don’t fit, IMO. Truth doesn’t have to flounder and bluster to prove itself; Universalism does.

  10. Chris

    I sincerely don’t think the apostate church will be spawned by Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, although I was a bit shocked the first time I saw the big white rabbit sneak out back for a cigarette break.

    I also agree that we shouldn’t be celebrating the addition of pagan messages. One problem is that they were added a long time ago. A bigger problem is that eight year olds enjoy looking for eggs and might not quite be ready to hunt for sin inside. Can we still make it fun for the kids?

    • Most church services, regardless of denomination, are dreadfully boring, especially to children. That’s why most churches have nurseries and “children’s church.”

      • Michael,

        I think that if we reset our standards of what is “boring,” we would be doing our kids a lot of good.

        I remember talking with my mom one day about how we were as kids. And one thing she said was that she was glad that we were not like kids today who are always complaining about being bored. She would know, too, as she was a teacher. She said nothing was more disconcerting than a 5-year-old griping about being bored.

        When your entire day consists of nonstop entertainment, anything that isn’t juiced up becomes boring. If we could reset the line for where normal life crosses over into boring, I think we would do a lot of good for our kids. We have tried to do that with our son. Whether we succeed or fail is still to be seen. Some have accused us of being mean because we try to keep him from OD’ing on entertainment by limiting his access to certain things. And perhaps it is a fools errand on our part when every household around us is jacked into entertainment all the time. Perhaps he will only grow to resent us because we don’t have all the sources of entertainment that other households do. Perhaps, as some have implied, he’ll end up walking away from the Faith because his folks were scolds on some of these things. I don’t know.

        All I can do is what God has shown me needs to be done. It has to start somewhere. Generations of children raised on immediate self-gratification through personal entertainment and the dire need to avoid being bored are not doing anything good for our society. The leaders we have in government now were the first to be raised completely within that sphere, and look at how many of them believe in entitlements that have not been earned simply because no one should ever suffer even a second for being without essentials like digital TV and such.

      • Chris

        Dan,

        To tell you the truth, I’m sure of very little when I comment on your blog. I know I’ll probably be chewing on the words again soon.

        What I was trying to get across is that the dilution of meaning has already occurred in the culture and must be dealt with. I’d like to see us, as the Church, make it a cultural solution that doesn’t leave our kids associating the Church with constant sadness. It wasn’t easy but somehow my parents pulled it off.

  11. casey

    We’ve made the distinction between the real meaning of Christmas vs. Santa Claus and we give a basket of candy a few days before Easter Sunday so we don’t lose our focus, but if my kids spiritual future can be de-railed by a basket of candy one day out of the year then we’re not doing a very good job training them the other days. Lighten up, Dan. God has reached people for centuries through their misconceptions, prejudices, addictions, etc., etc. I’m sure the Hound of Heaven will chase all the bunnies away.

  12. “Good Friday is a serious holiday, and so is “Resurrection Sunday (as Evangelicals like to call it now). ”

    The next thing you know Evangelicals will be changing the name of Christmas to “Incarnational Sunday” because they don’t like what the culture has done to Christmas.

    Ridiculous. Easter is still Easter for me. I know what it is.

  13. I would worry more about what the parents are doing in their worship practices. If the parents can keep Christ central and not their own piety and out ward performance and teach that to the kids all year long…then having a basket of goodies and hunting eggs once a year won’t create apostates of them.

  14. I did not like being bored as a child. I could have learned carpentry, car repair, gardening, and piano from my grandfather, who lived just up the street from me. But all of that bored me. Instead, I played most of the time, fantasized, and revelled in fables and myth. I learned to read and write well, but not to excel at schoolwork. Again, that bored me.

    So now, in my thirties, a college dropout, when I could be earning a decent salary as a carpenter or mechanic while saving money fixing my own car and growing my own food, I daydream about hitting it big as a writer. Hey, I could have been a better artist, too, knowing how to write poetry and and who to play piano.

    My grandfather dropped out of school when he was thirteen, lied about his age, and went to work for the highway company so he could help support the other children in his family. Later, he built his own house, had two children, sheltered foster children, and adopted one of them, whom I consider as much my aunt as my blood aunt.

    I would have done a lot better if I had not had such an aversion to boredom.

  15. Jono

    I think that as Christians we will always have the tension of stradling two cultures- the culture of our country/nation, and the culture of the kingdom of God.

    I believe we should enjoy our human cultural traditions (including easter eggs, supporting our local sports teams, new years celebrations, cultural wedding traditions, coming of age celebrations etc.) while at the same time recognizing that they are earthly, and will pass away. Only the culture of the Kingdom of God will persist on into eternity.

    And of course- Yes it is our responsibility to teach our children what the culture of the kingdom of God is like… and that it includes celebration and joy and excitement and freedom!

  16. TruthBeTold

    Nope, I didn’t hijack any thread Chris.
    I haven’t been the one terse either or presumptious, I have been polite and considerate and have asked questions to you and others…and NONE of you have had the decency to come up with one scripture to refute the overwhelming EVIDENCE that Hell is of pagenism and is not found in scripture at all….notice I said Hell…I did not say Sheol or Gehanna….and these are not Hell either…these are places of Death.

    I am not a Unitarian…and I don’t believe that all roads lead to God…. for there is only one road…and that BE JESUS… I am a CHRISTIAN who believes the hundreds of scriptures that says that God will have all men to be saved, His mercy endures forever, every knee shall bow, as in Adam all die so too in Christ shall ALL be made alive. Not to mention all the types/shadows of the O.T.

    Here is the link again and you can’t poo poo the WEIGHTINESS of the evidence Chris…that would be intellectually dishonest.

    If you want to continue to have a herd mentality and follow the BLIND SHEPHERDS then go right on….I hope you have more fortitude within you than that…for it takes courage to leave the traditions of man and walk the narrow path.

    http://www.tentmaker.org/articles/ifhellisreal

    TruthBeTold

    • Actually, TruthBeTold, people have reasoned right from the Scriptures.

      I talked extensively straight from Jesus’ own words about the existence of a place of lasting torment from his narrative of the rich man and Lazarus. I talked about how Jesus doesn’t give examples that do not conform to reality. You disagreed. But please don’t say that no one reasoned from the Scriptures. I did. You just didn’t accept my reasoning.

      • TruthBeTold

        No Dan,

        what I explained to you was that your understanding of the word ‘EVERLASTING’ is based on a faulty translation from the King James Version.

        This is what you have not understood (and I say that sincerely and without any kind of pride).

        The KJV has interpreted the Greek word ‘Aion’ and “Aionian’…..WRONG….for that word is not everlasting but is ‘unto the AGE’….meaning that there is a set time, an endpoint before a new age begins…for there are many AGES and we see the ages unfold throughout the Bible….Adam to Abraham, on and on….until Jesus….and now we are at the END of this AGE.
        This is ‘aion’…and this is where we get the english word ‘eon’.

        So for you to use a faulty translation negates any kind of argument that you give with regards to a verse using ‘everlasting’.

        These are some examples of what the KJV says…and what other LITERAL translations render.

        Matt.25:46..”And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.”(KJV)

        Matt.25:46..”And these shall be coming away into chastening eonian, yet the just into life eonian.”(CLV…Concordant Literal Version).

        Matt. 25:46..” And, these, shall go away, into, age-abiding, correction, but, the righteous, into, age-abiding, life.” (Rotherham).

        Listen, I entreat you to read the article by Mercy Aiken entitled ” If Hell is Real”…and spend time praying and even fasting about it….and then come back and share with me your thoughts. This article is an in depth study that no one can dismiss.

        Chris has said that I come across as smug…and if I have in anyway communicated a smug attitude then please forgive me. I understand how it feels when the Lord starts to shake some foundations that were thought to be the REAL thing….believe me I have been shaken alot over the last few years….but He has given me the grace to endure and only want THE SOLID ROCK to be my foundation.

        I believe this is your heart too.

        This is why I share.

        Be blessed my brother,
        TruthBeToldI

        • David R.

          So neither “correction” nor life are eternal? By your translation of Greek, then the Kingdom of Heaven is to last only an “age”? Then what?

    • Jono

      Not trying to get sucked into any hijacking here- but i am genuinely interested.
      If this isn’t the right forum for this conversation please redirect me to a ore appropriate one.

      TBT-
      Do you believe that some people will be punished for their sins after they die?
      Do people who follow Christ get punished for their sins or has Christs sacrifice completely “wiped the slate clean”?

      • TruthBeTold

        Hello Jono,

        Thank you for your comment and questions.

        There is a wonderful site I am blessed to direct you to…it is a community of believers that have come to understand THE REAL GOOD NEWS of Jesus being the Saviour of the WHOLE WORLD and that every man, woman, and child will be saved in due time..(I Cor. 15:22-23).

        You can become a member (it’s free) and ask questions and make friends…it is a sweet community of people that come from all diffferent denominational backgrounds. Hope to see you there…
        http://www.wisefire.tv/

        To answer your questions as briefly as possible…so that others won’t think I am hijacking the thread…here is what I believe.

        Yes, I believe that there is judgement for sins and this happens in this life and the life after one dies…but this judgement is not a pagan Hell but is done by a Righteous Father who loves His children and all of his judgements are corrective in nature and purpose.

        Yes, people who follow Christ will be judged too…for Jesus himself made the distinction between the good servant and wicked servant. Both were servants…but one was given many STRIPES….we also see this with the SERVANTS in the story of the talents….for the wicked servant was judged for not using his talent at all. Salvation is for all but there are rewards…and these rewards are not given to all but to those who HEAR AND OBEY. These are the nobel vessels.

        This is why I get grieved when I hear Christians speak ignorantly about how it is ok to have a ‘little fun, a little compromise…lighten up”…for they don’t realize just the rewards they are forfeiting and the judgement that they may have to go through….for no FLESH can enter the Kingdom of God….and there are many Christians that have not entered into the Kingdom yet b/c they are still VERY FLESHY…VERY CARNAL.

        There is so much more that I could and would love to share but I believe the link that I have provided will give you a safe place to ask questions without feeling judged or misunderstood.

        Be Blessed Jono!
        TruthBeTold

        • TruthBeTold

          Jono,

          Just wanted to add one more thing…that when you visit Wisefire just be aware that this is a group of all different kinds of people from different various doctrinal beliefs. So you will see all kinds of different thoughts out there…but the one thing everyone has in common is the understanding that Jesus is the Saviour of the Whole World.

          There are 2 groups that I recommend on Wisefire…one is called ‘God’s Kingdom Ministries’ and the other is called ‘Sonshine’.

          Blessings

    • Corrections:

      If the post starts on one topic and ends with one person ranting about a completely different topic, that’s hijacking. In and of itself I could care less, but it’s getting to the point where it looks like (whether such is the case or not) that you only comment here in order to pimp your particular viewpoint, which is not the purpose of a blog. Dan puts too much into this site to have it turn into an endless discussion forum on Universalism. That’s what communities are for, not blogs.

      I didn’t call you terse, rather I admonished myself for being terse. You have however been presumptuous, as you assumed I haven’t studied this when in fact I have.

      I haven’t posted Scripture because A) there a too many to choose from that apply, and B) you’ve already proven you don’t want to hear it.

      I didn’t call you a Unitarian, I called you a Universalist. For someone who claims to be so studied on the subject, I’d think you’d know the difference. A Universalist is someone who believes that all will be saved. A Unitarian believes all religions lead to the same God. There is a difference.

      The simple fact of the matter is that, even if the word translated “everlasting” is a mistranslation, that still doesn’t support the view that, after some finite period, all will go to Heaven. I know the Scriptures you quote, but I agree with Dan’s (and 2000 years of Orthodoxy’s) interpretation of their meanings, not yours (though, as I say, I’d be happy to have solid reason to believe otherwise). I have weighed, I have prayed, I have discussed with others, and I disagree. Please get over it.

      So now, I end with this, and will not respond again afterwards. You accuse me of being “intellectually dishonest”. You can have your intellectual honesty all you want. Here is a scripture I hope we can both agree on: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up”.

  17. Dan,

    I agree we need to tone down the message that life is non-stop fun.

    But we don’t need to do that for (little) kids on Easter morning or Christmas morning.

    In our church we let the (little kids) have fun, AND we teach them the real meaning of Easter, and what Jesus Christ has accomplished for us.

    As a child grows, he or she is gradually brought to see life as it really is. Not that we should never have fun, but reality is reality.

    Our society is geared toward the infantile and that is wrong. But we ought not rob our kids of the joys of childhood as a reaction to what the culture is doing.

    Thanks, Dan!

    – Steve

  18. I took a ten-year-old friend for a haircut and dinner last night. He was not pleased with his haircut. He said it made him look too young. But as we passed a display of Sesame Street Elmo DVDs, he begged me to buy one for him. Elmo, he explained, is all the rage, even among thirteen-year-olds. He did not see the irony of his complaints about his haircut when he was begging me for an Elmo DVD.

  19. brian

    This is a new concept to me. Speaking from my own experience, I lost interest in church when I was 15 because there was nobody living the life of a Christian. I completely agree that as the child gets older we need to teach the important aspects the faith. For the younger kids I see the examples we set by our daily actions as better teachers than any other kind of instruction. I dont see a need to teach very young children that the non-christian aspects of holidays are wrong.

    • brian

      oops, I guess I messed up the block quote system. I meant to include this statement by Dan: ” On the other hand, we continue to infantalize the most important issues of life, death, and faith. This explains why our young people abandon the Faith in droves once they reach college. In their minds, they give up childish things (their faith) for the faux maturity of “enlightenment.” They’d been spoon-fed a watered-down worldview that forces the resurrection to compete with bunnies.”

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