December and 80...

Ah, the joys of Abilene. Today: high in the 80s. Tomorrow: high in the 50s. That has nothing to do with this post...

I'm currently reading a book called The Sacredness of Questioning Everything by David Dark. I highly recommend this book. The basic premise of the book is that, as Christians, we should be people who question. This is not really a new idea. A good friend of mine named Paul once said something similar: "Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil." (1 Thess. 5:21-22)

It is this time of year that reminds me how crucial it is to live in skeptical holiness (a term I coined which I hope catches on). We accept most of what we see and hear because we are so accepted. We live in a time and place where we can put up displays of the birth of our Savior and play songs about him with only a little backlash. We blend our faith with our culture to the point that it gets hard to pull the two apart.

Christmas is the prime example of this mixing. It is the season of giving. The Salvation Army ramps up its efforts, charitable organizations launch donation drives, and churches step up their game to keep up with the world. It is also the time of year when US spending spikes 80-100 billion dollars.

We swallow some pretty big disparities.

One point that is made in the book is that we have to question the small things as well as the large, because the big things need to be looked at but change happens in the small.

So what?

It's time to put back on our glasses. The world has convinced us that it is backward or old-fashioned to screen things through our faith, but faith is the way we see the world. Isn't it time we owned it?