Christmas and weirdos.

Christmas has a funny way of bringing out people’s inner weirdo; you know, people with some conceptual axe to grind about Christmas. And much of the time, their favorite Bible verse is, “My people perish for lack of knowledge.”

Unfortunately, this verse doesn’t mean that anyone without every last little bit of insight you have is going to perish for the lack thereof. But sometimes these folks seem to think that the more obscure the idea is, the more necessary it is to being in right standing with God. So they nurture it and even start judging people by whether they accept it, creating a kind of crank Gnosticism, adding it to the Gospel, which is always the preface to full-blown cultish thinking.

But the true Gospel encourages us to fellowship even with people who reject what we believe, including that Gospel. So, the simplest test of any doctrine is whether holding it leads us to a sense of love, joy, and peace which others admit to us having, especially whenever we’re discussing our pet views.