Tuesday, December 19th | Christmas Traditions

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We're going to leave a couple of links in the description so you can do just that. Let's slow down, and let's write ourselves with the verse of the day. Let me align my crown chakra with my root chakra. Ew, gross. None of that.

No. Throw that in the trash. It's in the trash. Throw it in the trash.

It's gone. Alright, the verse of the day today comes from Deuteronomy chapter 24, verse 19. When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it. It shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. I don't know why it is.

Maybe I'm just more, maybe I'm just more quote-unquote spiritual than the average person. But it really annoys me when people are so fixated on getting everything they paid for. You know what I mean? Like, it really is like, this is not even the gripe vine.

We're gonna do a gripe vine today. But this is just kind of that attitude of, no, that's mine. Go back, go back for that. I'm getting that. That's mine.

We paid for that. I don't know why people, and I love that Deuteronomy says this. It's like, leave it for someone else. Leave it and just let someone, you don't need all that I've given you. All that I've given you, this is God saying, all that I've given you is abundance, is blessing. That's how much I love you.

You don't need all that to survive. And yet there's this sinful selfishness in us that's like, no, no, no, that's mine. Give it to me. Yeah, well this verse should sound familiar to you because this is what Boaz did. When Ruth was there gleaning in the field, she was going behind the workers and picking up what they dropped.

And so Boaz instructs them, he says, you know, drop a little extra. Like, let it just kind of slip out of your hands so that Ruth and Naomi are provided for. And this is a picture for us of how we ought to live as believers. You know, we should be generous with what we've been given. Because everything that we have is a gift of God.

Nothing, I mean, we can sit here until the cows come home and say it's because I'm smarter, it's because I'm successful, it's because I'm motivated. And while you might be those things, those qualities themselves are a gift from God. Everything that we have is a gift, so we need to share freely with what we have. And if we are generous and hold onto our possessions with open hands, then God can put more in our hands so that we can continue to be a blessing to other people. That's how God's economy works. That's right, that's why it says that the Lord your God may bless you all through the work of your hands.

The work that you've done, it may be that some of that is going to benefit other people, and you should be thankful for that. Speaking of being generous and not holding onto things tightly, we've got to talk about some stuff today. David brought this up, and he said, I think this is something that has really grinded my gears, and we need to talk about it on the gripe vine. It's really hindering his worship, so everybody, welcome to the gripe vine! This episode of the gripe vine is brought to you by Muddy Muscadine.

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David, this impacted you very strongly. I want you to talk to the people about what it is you were saying. McDonald's. That's the gripe? McDonald's shouldn't play with my emotions. They shouldn't play with my feelings.

Please elaborate. McRib needs to be, year round, why would you take it away? Surely they must have done some market study and found that taking it away and bringing it back gives them more money. Here's my question, because I like the McRib, but I'm not one of those that's like, the McRib is back, I gotta go. I've never had a McRib. It's pretty good. I like it.

It's not like life-changing. The barbecue, the fake rib meat, the onion, and the pickle. You like it? I love a McRib. So they did an ad campaign last year where the McRib was leaving forever?

They didn't. It didn't leave forever. I do remember that though, where they're like, hey, no more McRib ever. No more McRib after this.

Sales shot through the roof. And now there's, I just Googled McRib season and it says the McRib is back again, but only for a limited time. This is literally what it says. Turns out the 2022 farewell tour was a lie.

Yeah. Surprise. What do you call someone who tells a lie, David? A liar. What do you call someone who tells a lie? A liar. If McDonald's is saying, hey guys, we told a lie, what does that make McDonald's? They're a lie.

The truth is not in you. The McRib is rising from the ashes once again on Friday. McDonald's confirmed that today.com to today.com that the McRib, a sandwich that swore was done forever in 2022 is coming back to select restaurants in November, 2023.

Was it in this past November? I don't know. I've stopped going to McDonald's because of this.

I've been burned one too many times. Chick-fil-A has the peppermint shake in the winter. Right. That makes sense.

Heat shake in the summer. These make sense. Right. For all, not barbecue season. That's like saying, okay, our chocolate shake, seasonal. Why?

Why? I can have chocolate year round. It's like make it hot and then make that seasonal like a hot fudge kind of hot chocolate thing. But I want a chocolate shake all the time. McDonald's, we need an answer.

Write in and let us know. It's money. It's the only thing, that's the only thing is they must have made. McDonald's is not dumb, y'all. We know McDonald's is not dumb.

Of course not. They're on top of their game. They know that taking it away and bringing it back makes more money. They're worse than dumb. Huh? They're smart. That's not worse than dumb. Wait a minute.

That's some falling state logic. We need an answer, McDonald's. Write in and let us know. What's the reason for the seasonal McRib? Does Pastor Jai eat McRibs? Does your dad eat McRibs, Nicholas?

I didn't think so. I can't see him eating that slop. It looks like slop.

It looks like pig slop on a bun. It tastes good. I will say that. It's not like a world shatteringly good sandwich. Right.

But it is good. Let's take a break, come back, ask Pastor Jai what he thinks. For the McRib. Yeah, for the McRib.

And see if he has any strong feelings about being constantly teased with a sandwich. Dangly in front of me, only to take it away. Write in and let us know your thoughts on the McRib. Or you can visit us online at ClearViewTodayShow.com.

We're going to get Dr. Shaw and we'll be right back. Hello Clearview family. I'm Nicole.

And I'm David. And we want to talk to you today about the Clearview app. You know, there are so many churches out there that put their sermons on YouTube and their announcements on Facebook and their prayer list on Periscope.

I didn't even know Periscope was still functional. Oh it's not. And that's why nobody can find their church's prayer list and nobody's prayers be getting answered. But here at Clearview, we believe in making our content as accessible as possible. That's right. Clearview produces so much content every single week, including Dr. Shaw's sermons, original music, a full online store, weekly prayer gatherings and so much more. Not to mention the number one best selling Christian talk show of all time.

I don't know if that's accurate. Well, maybe not yet, but that's why we want people to download the app. If you're listening from the Triangle area, we encourage you to check out Clearview Church in person. But if not, you can still follow all of our content on the Clearview app.

It's 100% free on the Apple Store and Google Play Store. And best of all, all of our content is right there in one convenient spot. Make sure you download the Clearview app today and let's get back to the show. Dr. Shaw, one thing that we do a lot as a team is that we eat lunch. Yes. Yeah, we do that. We tend to do that from time to time.

That is a thing that we do. You know, we've been talking about food. We were talking about restaurants. One of the restaurants that we never really frequent is McDonald's. We kind of keep it on the lower tier of our lunch options.

Right. But I mean, it's not because it's bad or anything. It's just that for having a sit-down lunch, unless we're in a hurry, unless it's like, hey guys, let's just somebody just go quickly and get something, then yeah, you can go get like 10 quarter pounders and just devour. Well, I'm glad you bring that up because you and I, I think we're of a similar mind where if we choose, you know, McDonald's or Burger King, we're going to go Burger King. But McDonald's does have those ace in the holes. My question to you is the McRib. Where do you fall on the McRib?

I'll say it this way. Somebody says, you want to have good barbecue, go here. And you go there for barbecue and they give you the menu and in a box on the side somewhere on the right hand corner of the menu, it says, we also serve sushi.

Don't buy sushi. Yeah. Like, like it's a, you're going to shop for cars.

You go to a car store and they also sell fishing equipment. I mean, it's up to you. You want to buy it? It's up to you. Go for it.

But I won't recommend. Yeah. David wants to jump in. I think we're getting off topic here because the question is McRib and the McRib. You like it. Phenomenal. Yeah, he likes it. It's good.

I really like it. It tastes fine. It's a good tasting sandwich, but I don't know that I would.

Phenomenal is a little bit of a stretch for me. Have you had it, Dr. Shaw? Have you had a McRib? I've had their fish sandwich. I've had the fish sandwich and I like it actually.

I just don't know how long it's been packaged. I'm kind of with you. Don't be cute. Go get your quarter pounder. Move on.

You know, don't, you don't have to do this like cute thing. As long as that area where the McDonald's is sitting, a lot of people eat that fish sandwich, then you're okay. Yeah. But here's the problem. If you order and they're like, wow, we haven't had anyone order those in a long time. Change it. Change your plan. Change your order. I'd like to change my order, please.

Promptly and now. Even with Dr. Shaw, I feel as though only a pagan would eat the McRib sandwich. Oh boy. Only a pagan. It is not of the clean Christian variety to me. And we're not here to knock down McDonald's.

No, no, not at all. I've never even had the McRib, but I would say that it's one of those, maybe stay away from, you're here for something. It's kind of like going to the movie theaters. We know what you're going to get. We're going to get popcorn. We're going to get sody pop.

Don't go in there looking for a Maine lobster. Yeah. It's not going to happen.

And if it does happen, it shouldn't. You know, people take the same approach with Christmas traditions. That's right. You know, they come in here looking for something that's not there. They want Christmas, but then they want to start picking it apart.

Yeah. Like I've heard people say like, look, I love the Christmas trees. Like I love decorating my house with the lights and the Christmas trees. Let's just not bring it. Let's not pretend these are Christian traditions. We all know the Saturnalia Festival.

We all know these pagan roots. Let's just acknowledge them. Right.

One of my pet peeves. Right. And people say that it's like these are pseudo historians. These are people who are taking the same old comparative religion garbage that was passed around in the eighteen hundreds. Nothing new.

This is nothing new. Yeah. All this has been debunked in the past hundred years. OK. In the eighteen hundreds, there was a big movement and it had some merit to it.

How do we see the parallels in different religions or mythologies? There was there was some merit to it. Unfortunately, it sort of got out of control. It's like you have hair, you have hair, I have hair. We're all, you know, Americans.

It's like, no, there are other people in the other part of the world also have hair on their heads. I mean, that's that's not that's not a good enough criteria to judge who is an American. Well, I like the way you said it. It's pseudo-historics.

The thing that I that I see is that it just sounds good. Yeah. You know, it sounds like something that number one, it sounds just scientific enough or just historical enough to where I'm I certainly as the average joke, I can't debunk it.

You know, I'm not going to realistically I'm not going to put that research in to debunk it. And then I also didn't know that it went as far back as the eighteen hundred. Yeah. So that's when all this was a big thing, because this is when Europeans were coming in contact, more and more coming in contact with indigenous cultures like Chinese, Indians, Africans, Asian, Middle Easterns. And so it was like, hey, wait, oh, wow, this looks very similar. Now, there are scholars who took that information and really dug deep into original sources, primary writings. And then they found those comparisons that, oh, wait, there is something here that matches with something here.

But it's really researched, well researched. But then there are those who have just been like, hey, just like I said today, you're wearing a sweater. I'm wearing a sweater. You're wearing a sweater. All sweater wearers are in North Carolina. Yeah.

People in North Carolina wear sweaters. And it's like, that's not true. You're saying two independent things and linking them confidently. That doesn't make them related. Yeah. Both things are true.

Yeah. But that doesn't mean that they're linked. That's a faulty conclusion. Those are historically, it's called a historical fallacy. And there are a lot of different fallacies there. So same thing with Christmas.

A lot of things you heard, especially coming from the Jehovah's Witnesses. You know, this Christmas thing, this is a pagan holiday. Yeah. And I want to say, man, your whole system is based upon historical fallacy. Well, I'm glad you're pointing that out because it has gotten to the point where it's quote unquote common knowledge. Like there was that thing that was going around for a long time where it's like, you know, human beings, we really only use 10 percent of our brain.

Yeah. Underneath, we we are superhuman if we could just unlock the rest of that 90 percent. And it got to a point where it was such a talking point. They started making movies about it like that Limitless with Bradley Cooper.

The whole premise of that was based on that science, that pill that makes you and it just became a thing where it's like, hey, we use only 10 percent of our brains until people came out was like, that's never been true once. Right. But we've said it so much that now it's just common knowledge among the people like that Mandela effect. It's just everybody accepts it.

But it's not. I know some people who basically have that much brain to making them use only 10 percent. You really they're struggling. Yeah.

Limited their capacity. Not making fun of anybody. I'm just making fun of that idea. So people say these kind of things. Now, when it comes to the Christmas trees, it's often claimed that it was a pagan ritual borrowed from the Scandinavians.

And it is true. Lots of cultures have worshiped certain trees. And Indian culture has done it.

And I'm talking about Indians from India. If you travel just like I was two months ago, I was in India to visit my mom. And as you know, she passed away while I was there. But I had to take a car to get to the airport and back.

And it was like an eight, nine hour drive. It was going past villages and towns. You would see the trees. You would see trees that are especially dedicated to worshiping God, some God. And so this is not just Scandinavians. Indians did that.

It's not just Indians. Native Americans did that in their own sort of way. Somehow they had that whole ancestor worship sort of tied in with pantheism. And again, Africans do that.

So it's not just a Scandinavian thing. So trees were never sacred for Christians. They were symbolic.

Just think about it. Adam and Eve took the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And then God blocked their way to the tree of life.

If they had done that, they would be locked into their state of sin forever. Also, Abraham lived by the oaks of Mamre, where he built an altar to the Lord. And everywhere he went, he planted trees. And it's very evident. When you go to Israel, John knows this. David knows this.

Nicholas knows this. On the Israeli side, there are a lot of trees. On the Arab side, there's not that much. It is there. Don't misunderstand.

But the same priority is not there. It's like a whole big thing where you can plant a tree in Israel. I remember we were riding down the road and our guide was talking about it. There was no end. It was insane because they just kept going and kept going and kept going. And you start thinking about heaven or eternity.

You keep waiting for it to end, and then they just don't ever end. There were so many trees. And that's people planting them there. Right.

Purposefully. Because it's in the Israeli or Jewish mind or the Hebrew or the Israelite mind that they need to have trees. Trees are important. Like we think here in the south, there's lots of woods, but there are trees just like it's a big cluster of trees. These are like individual trees.

It looks different and just looks like there's so many more. Because it's part of life. Having trees there is part of life.

And of course, we can argue from the standpoint of environment and oxygen and all of that stuff, but that's different. I don't know how much they knew that about back then, but maybe they felt refreshed under trees, hence they planted them. Also, the people of Israel were promised to become trees of righteousness. Jesus hung on a tree.

Of course, we know it as a cross. But if you read the Old Testament, the Messiah was supposed to die on a tree. Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. And so there you have the tree again. And so then we get into the book of Revelation, we see the tree of life in the middle of the street of the heavenly city. Of course, you all see here about Zacchaeus climbing a tree. There's a lot of trees. And even that story of Zacchaeus climbing that tree, it's more than just, in my opinion, just this short man trying to get a better vantage point.

It has a symbolic meaning. He's trying to get on this tree of life, and he's unable to do that in his own way. And Jesus says, come on down. Let me go to your house.

Let's talk. Because that's not how you do this. Any historian worth their salt, even a thousand years into the future, would never look back at us and say, the Americans worshiped their Christmas trees. It's symbolic. And so I think that's where a lot of people try to bring in this fallacy of, you know that's a pagan ritual where they worship the trees.

It's like, yes, but in Christianity, we're never saying that the trees were things to be worshiped. They are thematically significant. And I think that's the big difference. Yeah, that's critical. And that changes the whole way you see it, like the process of decorating your tree, the process of, you know, if you get a live tree, going and picking one out and bringing it into your home, that changes the mindset behind it. And I think that goes, I mean, we're going to talk some more about some different things, but that bleeds over into a lot of what we're talking about here.

Looking at pagan rituals, yes, if you fixate on those details, you can find those details. But that's not to say that this was the core. That's not the bedrock of what we're talking about.

Right. If you do that, then pretty much everything has to be taken away. Take away the church, because it reminds you of a temple. Take away the steeple, because it reminds you of the temples with their various steeples. And we have a pagan church here. You should take away giving, because that's a sort of sacrifice. And so we don't do sacrifices anymore. Right. So next time you think about old Tannenbaum, nobody is singing praises to a fir tree. Right.

It's simply, think about the coming of Jesus, dying on the cross for you. That's beautiful. That's right. What about all that mistletoe, you know? Mistletoe.

Yeah. Where does mistletoe come from? That's such an unfortunate name for a plant.

It really is, dude. Mistletoe? Both of them, because a mistle, that's not really great. I don't want to think about nobody's toes. Toes. Neither one of those, it's either someone's toes. Neither one means you want to kiss anybody. Yeah. And neither one of them make me want to kiss someone. It's like, I can think about someone's toes, or I can think about an ICB I'm headed right for the United States. Yeah, those aren't really romantic things.

No, they're not. But mistletoe was considered to be a miracle plant, especially in the Scandinavian countries. It was sort of a rootless parasitic plant when everything would be dying because of the harsh winter, and you look out and it looks gray.

This is this one plant that is still sort of green. And so the Vikings, the Druids, they would look at this plant as being sacred, and sometimes they would even get married under that plant. It's like, oh, evergreen, you know, kind of thing. So when Christians became Christians, they did not just say, we still got to keep our pagan roots. They said, you know, mistletoe has a deeper meaning. It reminded them of God's power to bring life, for there was death.

Later on in England, when a couple passed under the plant, they had to stop and kiss. If they did, God would bless them with an everlasting love. I like that. And I think it's important for us to remember that the pagans who were pagans did not stay pagans. God worked and moved in their hearts. Right.

Why not redeem what was there? Right. How about from our series, Table of Nations? They were not pagans at first.

That's true. They were believers who sort of degraded into paganism. And then with the coming of Christianity, they came out of that paganism, not all of them, but many of them.

So many times these things that are happening, and again, I don't have hardcore proof to go through all of this. I do have hardcore proof to tell you that when you study the Table of Nations, many of these people had the light. They knew someone was coming. But then, unfortunately, Romans chapter one took effect. When they turned away from God, God gave them up, God gave them up, and God gave them over. And they sort of degraded into paganism.

That's a good point. Because a lot of Christians will even buy into this whole pagan roots in Christmas thing. But if you go back even before pagan times, there was just God and his people. We really believe they came first.

I mean, if you look at the king lists, and I believe those lists are good, Jeffrey of Manmuth's list of kings. They're all tracing their lives line back to Japheth, the son of Noah, Shemham Japheth. And so a lot of these people knew about the gospel. They knew someone was coming to the line of Shem. Unfortunately, with time, they walked away from God and they chose to find their own way. And their own way was nothing but death and hell. One of the traditions that I really like that we talked about, I think we may have talked about on the show last year.

But if not, it was the one where Martin Luther saw the lights on the tree and he wanted to recreate it with the candles. I was like, bro, I really kind of wish. Good idea. Lots of fires. Lots of house fires. Yeah, I was going to say, I really wish somebody would try that this year.

I guess not genuinely wish. Imagine like when that first strand of Christmas lights came up. People were like, oh, wow, this is so much better.

What would you say? He saw like the moonlight on the tree or something like that? Yeah, just kind of sparkling on the snow covered branches of the evergreen trees.

And he was like, wow, this is it. We got to have light on the tree. Let's put some candles on it.

Let's begin some fire departments everywhere. I still love that. I mean, it's still the same thing about Jesus being the light of the world. It's just reminding us of who he is. That's right.

Wow. That's one of my favorite traditions is Christmas lights, both on the tree and outside riding around with the kids, looking at Christmas lights. And it really is like you're riding down the road that would normally be dark at that time of night. But it's so bright because of all the Christmas lights.

Why not take that meaning? Like in India, they have another festival called Diwali. Diwali is sometime October, November. And they call it the Festival of Lights. And they have these tiny little oil lamps and they will put them all in their front yard, on the doorstep, everywhere. Lights, lights, lights. Now, if you go by this philosophy that everything we have in Christianity is borrowed from the pagans, guess what the Christians in India will have to say? Let's not use any lights because this is coming from Hinduism.

None of us ever did that. We're like, I know what they're doing. They're celebrating the victory over darkness and that, what do you call, rakshas. Rakshas is like a demon. And so, yeah, we can't do that because it's too many similarities.

No, we did our thing. There's one big one that I feel like maybe should have its own episode for tomorrow. And that is... Santa Claus? Santa Claus, the rotund savior of Christmas himself. The one that Christians just throw their hands up and say, somebody please give me the answer.

What should I think? Because I want to do Santa Claus. I love Santa Claus, but I don't know if I can. Right. We can definitely talk about that next week.

Let's do it. Now, here's what I will say, just to summarize all of this. The Puritans, when they first came to America, they were just totally averse to any Christmas celebration. I mean, they did not want it. In fact, they penalized people for it. I mean, you would get fined if you were found celebrating. Their reasoning behind that was it was so full of just drunkenness and carousing that they felt like you have lost the meaning of what Christmas is about. It's not like Puritans were just a bunch of sticks in the mud. They were just very saddened at the state of Christianity. Like a lot of debauchery and stuff.

Right. And so they said, you know what, no more celebration. Nobody's going to celebrate Christmas.

It's going to be like the most ordinary day ever. People didn't go with that. People would call out and not show up for work. And then some of these guys will go out there and find them playing in the streets or playing with their kids.

And they were like, uh-uh. So you lied to me. Okay. Off with you.

And so a lot of these things happen. And my encouragement to people, pastors, well-meaning Christians is don't penalize Christmas. Don't ever do that. It's so important for us to keep the spirit of Christ in Christmas and the spirit of evangelism like you talked about, Dr. Shaw. Why not go tell people if they don't know the real reason, use that as an opportunity to go tell them.

That's right. If today was helpful for you in clarifying some things about Christmas, maybe correct your understanding or misunderstanding about a few things, write in and let us know. 252-582-5028. You can visit us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com. Don't forget you can partner with us financially on that same website.

Also want to encourage you to visit MightyMuscadine.com and check out the products that they have there. If you need to round out your Christmas shopping, there's some great options for you there. Use that promo code today, T-O-D-A-Y, for a sweet little discount as you check out. And those proceeds, a portion of those proceeds will go right back to the Clearview Today Show.

Amen. Tomorrow we're going to dive into the legend of Santa Claus. We're going to jive into it too. We're going to jive into it because listen, we've got a lot of thoughts on Santa Claus. That's right. All positive too.

A lot of people, just give you a spoiler alert. There's nothing on tomorrow's episode that's going to be like, you shouldn't celebrate Santa. All good things. All good things. Tune in tomorrow. We love you guys. Tune in tomorrow on Clearview Today.