An excerpt from last year — read the complete column here.

Time for a seasonal issue. Ho, ho, ho! Does the Bible say it’s wrong to have Christmas trees?

Ye have heard that it was said …

It’s wrong to have and decorate a Christmas tree (Jeremiah 10: 1-5).

AKA: Having a Christmas tree could be like having an idol.

What’s the Word?

But who was Jeremiah’s audience? What was their situation and motivation? Are their trees-as-idols really the same as Christmas trees today, and are all Christians who enjoy Christmas trees thus automatically guilty of the same sin? Some solutions …

Yesterday, Adam preached the sermon at my church. He is a great guy, normally with shaggy brown hair, but recently he had a haircut and it took a moment before I recognized him. It was a great message, thematically tied to the previous two (also posted on this site). And somehow, even more truths in this Biblical message related to this site’s current God’s will hunting series.

Another truth I haven’t included below: I can do quite a decent Adam voice impersonation. Yet I’m not sure whether continuing this is God’s will, because the Spirit hasn’t “nudged” me one way or the other (like He does every time we have a decision to make, right?).

So, discussion question: can I imitate Adam’s voice to the glory of God? It’s not forbidden in the Bible, and I believe my intention is not mockery. So in this instance, that might be permissible.

01.24.2010 — 1 Corinthians 10:23 – 11:1 (Adam)

• What is idolatry? It is whatever we serve and worship that is not God — false worship.
• This can be seen as corporate worship and individual worship. Corporate worship, with believers in a church, should not in effect worship itself or its own method, but be done for the good of glorifying God. However, we will spent our time this morning talking about individual worship — which is much more difficult. Again, human beings are hard-wired to worship, all the time.
• If the world belongs to God, everything we do in it says something about what we think about Him.
• God has set us free to worship Him, not “freedom” to have chaos. The human need to have organization in life is even reflected in the TV show “Lost,” which shows the survivors when they land on the Island getting together to form a structure of self-government.
• But not all our free choices lead to more freedom! What if we climbed on top of a roof and began dumping all our cash off it, then jumped off? That would not result in more freedom.

• Background: at this point, the Corinthian church is a mess. Members have been defending blatant sin in their members, class warfare, believers suing each other.
• When we’re asking what things are okay for us to do as Christians, we should ask two primary questions: first, is it directly condemned in the Bible? Drunkenness is wrong, for example, or gossip. But what about the harder choices? Questions for those: are even the not-wrong actions beneficial, and do they build up? Examples: deep-friend Spalding’s donuts, or hanging out with friends every single weekend. So we can see that these seeming gray-area choices are actually wrong.
• We must also consider how others will be affected before our own good. Can you buy an expensive car while friends are out of a job? Maybe, but what would they say about Jesus and Christianity to them? What about going to Haiti on a vacation cruise while people are dying? What would others, especially nonbelievers, think if you told them you did?
• The Bible doesn’t say specifically that these are wrong. But do we think foremost about the preeminence of Christ and how He would look to those we know?
• Verse 25: things in and of themselves are not evil. Instead, our own sin and what we choose to do with things make them our idols — it is our fault. We offer worship to fake gods, such as our good work or jobs, as if those things gave blessings to us. Money, food, comfort and safety can be turned into evil. A poppy plant can used to make heroin for the abuse of one’s body. Even our own bodies can become objects of lustful worship.
• So, what if we are invited somewhere, as in verse 27? Even if our conscience is clear, our goal should be not to harm the conscience of another, and represent Jesus to others.
• How does this play out in some typical life scenarios? Example: should you work for a political candidate, when many people already assume that Christian = Republican? Would doing that result in harming the Gospel and people’s perceptions of you?
• What about joining a college fraternity? What if you are a preacher and want to cut a Sunday morning sermon short so you can get home to watch the college basketball game?
• I’m not saying we should pull away from the world entirely because this is all too hard. Neither am I saying that the answer to such questions is always no, don’t do it. We don’t need to get together and buy property to Montana, move there and set up a walled commune. But even these seemingly unimportant life decisions do matter.
• Verse 31: true worship includes everything. Nothing is outside this definition. And glorifying God should be something we enjoy to do!
• When we much such decisions with God’s glory and worship in mind, sometimes we must disagree with people, even family members, and in so doing love them more than we would if we just went along with them, for the sake of Jesus. But simply not showing up when invited somewhere doesn’t help them — they won’t know the reasons for our objection if we just fail to attend something. Instead, we must lovingly give our Christ-honoring reasons.
• Again, we were made to glorify God! He is better than everything else!

Time for a seasonal issue. Ho, ho, ho! Does the Bible say it’s wrong to have Christmas trees?

Some of you are now squinting and maybe laughing at the thought. Others are nodding, having heard this belief from someone or somewhere. Maybe other readers are agreeing soberly and very seriously that yes, the Bible does have a verse that forbids dressing up a tree indoors.

My hope is not to offend anyone, especially those in the third group. Also, God forbid I should actually tempt you to do something that truly would violate your conscience. Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8 keep me from doing that.¹

What this piece won’t address is two things:

• Whether Christians or the Romans truly started Christmas.
• Whether a Christmas tree or other traditions are pagan in origin.

Perhaps a future column could address these issues, from historical and personal perspectives. Rather, the specific question is: does the Bible actually condemn decorating a Christmas tree?

Ye have heard that it was said …

It’s wrong to have and decorate a Christmas tree (Jeremiah 10: 1-5).

AKA: Having a Christmas tree could be like having an idol.

Figure A:

A Christian family, citing concerns about acting or appearing like the world, decides not to have a Christmas tree with their annual December tradition. They may give gifts, sing carols, or even have an Advent wreath or Nativity scene, but the Christmas tree is out. We don’t want to base things around an object that is like an idol, they explain. Jesus is the reason for the season.

Figure B:

One wonders what Jeremiah, if he were alive today, would say about all the Christmas trees that now decorate our Christian homes and Christian churches? Would he sound a similar alarm like he did among the ancient Jewish population in Jerusalem? He probably would.²

What’s the truth in this?

Materialism, stress, shoppers rushing home with their treasures, silver bells, etc., are definitely not the reason for the season. Jesus is. It would be wrong to assure people that holiday traditions are fine and good without also saying they can be corrupted. Surely for some people, a Christmas tree can be something that distracts from His incarnation as a human baby.

What’s the lie in this?

But is Jesus only the reason for the season? Isn’t He also the reason for everything? Could everything include an evergreen tree decorated with bright lights, bows, ornaments? Is such a thing a “creation” of the devil or the world? Or can they only twist good things God has made?

Many people in effect “worships” things like cars, food, a job, a marriage, family members and friends, even a church. Should Christians give up on all such good things, created by God? Yes, they can be twisted. But we know humans themselves are twisted — though created as good, human nature is corrupted by sin (Romans 2-3) and even Christians still struggle with remnants of their sinful nature (Romans 6, 1 John 1:8). Christians aren’t told to avoid all other humans.

But all that may not matter if Jeremiah really and specifically condemned Christmas trees. . . .

What’s the Word?

The writer: Jeremiah, a specially appointed prophet of God to Israel.

His audience: people of God’s original covenant who, true to form, had wandered away again, tempted by idolatry and other rejections of God’s law. In short, “They have turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers, who refused to hear my [God’s] words” (Jeremiah 11:10).

“Silver and gold”? Yes, it sounds like part of a Christmas song. But was Jeremiah really addressing Christians of about 2,500 years later who, as part of celebrating Christ’s birth, might bring an evergreen tree indoors to decorate? Rather, who was Jeremiah’s audience? They were citizens of Israel, who were wandering blindly after dumb customs of other nations.

Without reading further, we might even see he doesn’t even say this is part of an idol-worship tradition. God only proclaims such customs as “vanity.” One could say that’s a sin too, but this is more the sort of “vanity” that means useless.³ God is describing their custom as just dumb.

Real idols are next. His thought continues: these objects are worthless. They can’t even do evil.

The “they cannot do evil” part is key here. Items used for idol worship are not themselves evil. They may be stupid, vain and useless.⁴ But what is evil is how the people treat them.

If I really tried, I could treat a Christmas tree as my idol, even worshiping it likeunto a god, and claim that passage doesn’t apply to me. Why? I could say I haven’t cut down my tree with an axe (it’s artificial!) and I didn’t use silver and gold decorations (I used green and red) and didn’t need nails to fasten it (a Christmas tree stand works just as well). But still it would be an idol.

Remember part of what Jesus told His hearers, after more debates over true and false moral laws with the Pharisees, “There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him” (Mark 7: 14-23).

Further in

Heart check: do you treat your Christmas tree like an idol? Does cutting it down — or putting it together from a box — and putting up lights, ornaments and more draw you away from God? Do you value a tree too highly? For you, would it even be a worthless practice?

If so, then yes, you may have something in common with the pagan practitioners whom Jeremiah (speaking for the Lord) condemned. You shouldn’t have a Christmas tree.⁵

But such sin isn’t a tree’s fault — any more that it’s the Bible’s fault when, ahem, its verses like this are wrongly thought to be specifically about modern practices, which ignores the (human) author, his (and His) audience, and the reason for the writing.

Again, it would Biblically be wrong to insist someone must have a Christmas tree for whatever reason, or even celebrate Christmas at all, to be a truly spiritual person.

Yet people who are worried about acting worldly should consider questions like these:

• Would it really violate your conscience to have a Christmas tree? Or would it only seem to resemble a compromise with the world?
• Perhaps some parents believe a tree (or giving gifts, etc.) is something they must avoid for the sake of their children, so they will remember that Christians must have different standards. Yet should that truth be balanced also with the truth that objects are not evil, but how they are treated can be evil?
• What message does this show non-Christians about where we believe sin comes from?
• Depending on your motivations, could not having a Christmas tree be a kind of idol?
• Would you personally be sinning against God in your heart by having a Christmas tree?

Even if a Christmas tree, or another tradition, does have pagan origins (which itself is disputable anyway, according to Gene Veith and many others⁶), maybe the children of some Christians need to learn in this way that God can take “pagan” things and redeem them from sin for His glory.

A Christmas tree can be an example of this. Jesus is the reason for the season, but He is also the reason for everything. And Christmas trees, gift-giving, even stories of Santa Claus, can be included, in context, serving as teaching moments, with both showing and telling, as ways to glorify God to Christian children and their parents. That works even better than acting (in deed, even if not saying so openly), that it is a tree with lights, and not human nature, that brings sin.

After all, a prime example of a dirty pagan thing redeemed for the service of the Savior: you.