Chapter 16: Take your stand for true worship

This post is part of a series of posts summarising chapters of the Jehovah Witnesses' booklet, "What does the Bible really Teach?", and seeking to evaluate those chapters against Scripture somewhat briefly. Those posts were introduced at the Introduction, and a contents page will be added to that entry once this run of posts has finished.

Chapter 16: Take your stand for true worship

Someone who realises how prevalent false religion is will want to make sure they have no traces of false worship left in them.

Images and ancestor worship: Don’t worship with images or shrines, and don’t fear your ancestors

Christmas – not celebrated by early Christians: NO-one knows when Jesus was born, and this has always been so. Observing someone’s birth anniversary is a pagan custom, and Greek and Roman civilisations associated birthdays with the visit of a spirit, which is superstitious.

The origin of Christmas: Jesus was born in October, not on December 25th. The December date came from the time when pagans thought the sun began to lengthen, so the date was picked to win them over.

Do origins really matter? They do. You can have good relationships with your family in ways that God approves of. It’s like picking up candy from the gutter – something good from a bad place. We are told to “touch nothing unclean.”

Discernment in dealing with others: You might not think you should celebrate Christmas, but tact is needed in explaining this to others, who may be very well-meaning.

What about family members?: Again, be tactful. “Avoid any actions that would make you a participant in a holiday. Still, be reasonable when it comes to matters that do not amount to actual celebration.” (161)

Evaluation

For me, this was in many ways the saddest chapter of all. This is really a chapter on Christmas. On avoiding false images and on being free from the fear of our ancestors, the Bible would agree and there is no big deal.

The Bible does not command us to celebrate Christmas, but neither does it forbid it. Even if it was unwise to make a big deal of Christmas, to council someone to avoid celebrating it so strongly that they might refuse a gift is very strong. What is the harm in joining in? Indeed, the birth of Jesus is a truly amazing event that deserves to be celebrated. The fact that our modern holiday is celebrated on the wrong date is either cause to celebrate on a different date or cause to decide that the date doesn’t really matter.

The argument about picking up a good thing from a bad place is a flawed argument. Lots of the good things we enjoy may have had an origin in history that we don’t approve of. If we lived in the time when those origins were current, it may be the right thing to resist the good thing because of its origins. But with the passage of time, the origin is forgotten, and the good thing doesn’t lose its goodness just because of where it comes from. A biblical example would be the people’s demands for a king. The origin of that desire was not good. However, the arrival of a monarchy into Israel’s life was part of God’s plan. For an individual Israelite to disobey the king because of the motivations of those who first asked for a king centuries before would not be excusable.

Whether or not someone celebrates Christmas in a particular way or on a particular date is not a primary matter. Arguably though, they have made it a primary matter, which turns it into a primary matter for us too. It is a primary matter when someone elevates not celebrating Christmas to a matter of first importance.