Christmas Is About Learning From Jesus

Christmas is about learning from Jesus

Luke 2:1 – 20

Rev. Dr. Michael H. Koplitz

There’s one thing that’s been bothering me about the protests that are happening around the world and especially in the United States that they are in support of Hamas. I was watching a television news broadcast, and the reporter went up to two young people and asked them what they were protesting about. Their response was to repeat the slogan of Hamas, which is from the river to the sea. The two young people did not know what that slogan meant. For those of you are not sure, that is Hamas’s slogan for the total annihilation and destruction of not only the nation of Israel but of all Jews throughout the world.

Why is it so exciting for young people to protest something that they don’t even know anything about? This is a phenomenon which I’ve been fascinated by, but I’m also scared by it. I can’t imagine that there will be a time when these young people will become the leaders of our country and of the world. If they will listen to their college professors teach them lies about what’s going on in the world, how will they ever be able to bring themselves to understand the truths?

A good question to the universities in United States faculty would be why you are teaching falsehoods to choose to kids. I always believed that in academia, one was supposed to be taught how to think for themselves. Then they would be presented with the information and each student would evaluate what is truth and what isn’t. But that doesn’t seem to go that way. Today, faculty members expect students to simply regurgitate whatever they say.

Then I thought about my time in Lancaster theological seminary, and I ran into the same problem. The teachers there were not trying to teach us how to change society and culture, but how to change the Church’s outlook to the Bible and to the different stories and traditions of the church. In one class, I challenged the professor of theology because he was saying in the year 2005 that the blood theology of Jesus dying on the cross and bleeding for our sins was being removed from Christianity. I asked him where in Christianity is this happening. His response was it was happening with the young people. Then I asked him have you listened to any of the newer contemporary music because they all talk about the blood of Jesus.

He looked at me and said that he knew that the blood theology was not leaving the church soon. So, I had a follow-up question which was why you were teaching this? He did not answer that question, but just gave me a blank stare. The theological position of the seminary was that it was going to teach its students a new form, or expression, of Christianity. They also pushed against the usage of male language for God. I had an interesting experience with that because I learned the concept then went into a church as a substitute preacher for Sunday and I used female language for God. An 80-year-old woman came up to me at the end of the worship and told me how horrendous that was and that she would pray for me. I decided after that I would never do that again to any congregation.

Lancaster theological seminary, which prided itself on educating men and women to be pastors of churches, actually had no clue what was going on in the church’s in Central Pennsylvania at least. Now perhaps if you went into New York City or maybe Philadelphia or some other large metropolitan area, you may hear people crying about not using female language for God. However, in most churches, even today that is not acceptable.

So, what I found out was the seminary professors were doing the same thing that the professors of the universities and colleges in the United States were doing. They were trying to implement their own agenda in what they think society and culture should be. This is causing a rift in the United States that just keeps growing because on one side we have what we call progressives who are pushing cultural norms, or I should say trying to destroy traditions and cultural norms while on the other side are conservative folks who like to keep what they have.

Why is it so important that progressives must destroy the traditional values that people have especially the traditional values of the church? Why can’t they go on with their beliefs and practices and simply leave everyone else alone? Ever since this liberal movement started back in the 1970s it’s clear that these people wanted to destroy everything the rest of us held dear. What a good thing is to see is that conservative minded folks are fighting back. I referred to the Bud Light incident where they woked their beer can which cause a huge number of their customer base to stop drinking the product. Of course, that brings up another problem in today’s society for me and that is why do companies think they may tell us what our culture and beliefs should be?