By Jerry Newcombe, D.Min.,
If the left had its way, there would be no Christmas, no Easter, no Thanksgiving. If they had their way, anything related to Jesus would be cancelled.
In fact, a new memo has come out in King County in Washington State, the county of Seattle. Thus saith the King County Department of Human Resources: “Thou shalt not celebrate Christmas, but if you do, don’t let anyone know about it.” No, that’s just my paraphrase.
Actually they write: “Some employees may not share your religion, practice any religion, or share your enthusiasm for holiday decorations. Displays of religious symbols may only be displayed in an employee’s personal workspace. Religious symbols should not be displayed in or as a background to an employee’s virtual workspace.”
In an article about this for Focus on the Family, writer Jeff Johnston notes: “If you’re working from home, you better make sure people don’t catch a glimpse of Jesus, Joseph and Mary in the background.”
Talk host Jason Rantz adds: “You can celebrate LGBT Pride and wear a Black Lives Matter button throughout your day as a King County employee. But you better not show a nativity set or menorah on your digital workspace or your home office.”
Many years ago I co-wrote a book with Dr. D. James Kennedy about the social impact of Christianity, showing how our world has been blessed in so many positive ways because Jesus had come. The book is called, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?
At D. James Kennedy Ministries (formerly Coral Ridge Ministries), we made a TV special about it in the early 2000’s and are now in the process of making an updated program dealing with the same thesis.
One of our guests in the first program was Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse, who worked for years with Concerned Women for America. Janice told our viewers: “When you see the atheist attack manger scenes, you would think, ‘This is an innocent, innocuous kind of thing. What do they have against a manger scene for crying out loud?’ It gives you some idea of how powerful Jesus Christ is. If He were not powerful, what would they care?”
And there it is. People aren’t afraid of Kwanzaa. They’re afraid of Jesus.
And why not? Jesus is more than just a man.
As John’s Gospel notes, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
In his book, Miracles, C.S. Lewis, perhaps the greatest Christian writer in the 20th century, said: “The central miracle asserted by Christians is the incarnation. They say that God became man.”
He added, “If the thing happened, it was the central event in the history of the world.” His books show over and over that Lewis most assuredly believed that “the thing happened.”
One of his characters in his series of books for children, The Chronicles of Narnia, notes this: “In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.”
But without Jesus, to paraphrase a friend, our world would just turn into “a winter wasteland.”
In a 1910 book on the impact of Jesus in the realm of literature, author Joseph Nelson Greene made an interesting observation.
He wrote, “There is a strange legend of a world that grew colorless in a single night…If to-night, with one sweep of the arm you brush from literature the Christ, the scenes and suggestions from His life, the spirit which He exhibited, the principles for which He stood, you would have a world made colorless in a night. It would be the world of letters, for Christ is the color thereof.” And that’s just in the realm of literature.
One man who gratefully celebrated Christmas and opposed the Scrooges that perpetually try to shut it down was our 40th president, Ronald Reagan.
Reagan pointed out on December 24, 1983, “Some celebrate Christmas as the birthday of a great teacher and philosopher. But to other millions of us, Jesus is much more. He is divine, living assurance that God so loved the world He gave us His only begotten Son so that by believing in Him and learning to love each other we could one day be together in paradise.”
Perhaps the greatest fear of secularists, like those bureaucrats in King County, trying to turn Christmas into a black and white “winter wasteland” is the possibility that Jesus is real and that His birth was just the beginning of His Kingdom.
Jerry Newcombe, D.Min., is the executive director of the Providence Forum, an outreach of D. James Kennedy Ministries, where Jerry also serves as senior producer and an on-air contributor. He has written/co-written 33 books, including George Washington’s Sacred Fire (with Providence Forum founder Peter Lillback, Ph.D.) and What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? (with D. James Kennedy, Ph.D.). www.djkm.org @newcombejerry www.jerrynewcombe.com
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