At some point in the past 20-to-30 years, I began to hear people use the phrase, “Big, if true.” With the flood of false statements on the internet seeming to double on a daily basis, it became necessary to add this three-word caveat to almost any “news” story someone forwarded, emailed, Tweeted, or posted to Facebook.
How many times have you read something online and thought, “There is no way that is true.”? The danger here is two-fold.
- We become so cynical about any news source or story, we just ignore it all.
or
- Since, it is difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff, we begin to treat all “news” as true.
Either way, we lose our ability to live in a world based on scientific, observable, and verified facts. We have passed from the Enlightenment and the Modern world, into Post-modernism where nothing is considered true.
The same thinking has rushed into Christianity and taken over many of the world’s Protestant denominations. If you quote a Scripture contrary to their world-view, they wipe it away with a simple “That’s just your opinion.” or “You are being judgmental.” What God tells us about Jesus and his church has become secondary to what they “feel” about any subject. Which of course is, “Big, If true.”
So, let’s examine two things Christians claim to be true. One of them is. The other is not.
- Jesus was born on December 25th surrounded by three wise-men and the Bible describes the church celebrating Jesus’ birth on that day.
- Jesus was in fact the Son of the Living God and was resurrected from the grave never to die again.
First, we must establish an authority for any claims made. Within Christianity, the Bible, “really is the word of God”-I Thessalonians 2:13 and is a trustworthy source because it was written when, “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”-II Peter 1:21.
In the Bible, we find the story of Jesus birth to a virgin named Mary (Matthew 1:18-25; Luke 2:1-21). But that is where the truth of proposition number one falls apart. No date is given for his birth. It is not referenced in connection with any Jewish feast. Plus, the Bible records nothing about early Christians holding religious ceremonies in connection with Jesus’ birth.
If there were biblical backing for what the world calls Christmas as a Christian holiday, we would certainly observe the birth of our Lord. But what instruction or example do we have to show us how Christians observed this holiday? None. Christmas is, “Big, If true.” The problem is almost everything surrounding modern celebrations of the birth of Christ are not true according to the Bible.
At North Second Street, we are dedicated to declaring the truth of Jesus and his miraculous birth, life, death, burial, and resurrection. These things are true. How much trust would you have in what we teach if you discovered there was no Scripture to back it up? What we preach. What the apostles and Jesus himself taught are, “Big” and they are “true.”
To answer proposition number two, I will gladly afford myself the assistance of C. S. Lewis. In his book Mere Christianity, Lewis takes issue with the idea Jesus was a good, moral teacher. In fact, he says that is the one conclusion we must not make about Jesus of Nazareth:
“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to1.”
Jesus is the Son of God. The church of Christ is his body (Ephesians 1:22-23). He has instructed us concerning the faith, worship, and practice of his church. If celebrations of wise men and the birth of Jesus were found in the New Testament, that would be big. However it is not true.
Jesus is the sinless Son of God and we are to worship him on the Lord’s day In the Lord’s way. That is both true and big. No “ifs” about it.
1 Lewis, C. S.. Mere Christianity (pp. 56-57). Pomodoro Books. Kindle Edition.
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