Ship of Fools: Not everything needs a Christian explanation

Thread: Not everything needs a Christian explanation Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by deano (# 12063) on :

Why do some people feel the need to give everything a Christian explanation?

This morning my lad came down and said that he knew what the tinsel on Christmas tree’s represented. I always understood it to simply be a reminder of frost or snow that would normally be on trees out of doors at this time of year.

However he said that at Sunday school, our lay reader had explained that when Joseph, Mary and Jesus fled Bethlehem after being forewarned of the coming Slaughter of the Innocents, they hid in a cave, and a spider very quickly spun a web over the entrance. Some soldiers looking for them saw the cave but assumed that because the spider’s web was intact, nobody was in there, so they left. The tinsel on the Christmas tree is thus a symbolic reminder of the spider’s web!

Why do some people need to do that? Why try to force Christ into every small corner of the world? It really isn’t needed. It’s just silly.

It’s the same when I hear that an Easter egg represents the stone that was rolled across Christ’s tomb. It is unnecessary in my view.

Sometimes an egg is just an egg – a symbol of new life in the springtime – and sometimes tinsel is just snow. Nothing would be lost from the messages of Christmas and Easter by letting the tinsel and the egg have meanings away from Christianity, so why stretch things to force a meaning in there?

Our Lay Reader is a lovely person and she works very hard for the church organising things and if she didn’t run the Sunday School I guess nobody would, so I think we’ll let her have her little bit of silliness. I told my lad though to not always accept things like that at face value, but why do some feel the need to find a Christian explanation for every single thing?

Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on :

posted by deano:

quote:

Why try to force Christ into every small corner of the world?

therein lies your answer

Posted by deano (# 12063) on :

I don't think it is an answer to the question though, FC.

Not every Christian feels the need to do that. I believe God is big enough to cope without having to pretend that tinsel is a protective spiders web!

Frankly it appears to my eyes as though they are trying to "help" God by shovelling him into everything they can think of, and I think it is a little demeaning to Him.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

I think he'll cope.

It's just crap that someone makes up and it gets passed on uncritically because it's "nice". Like crosses on donkey's backs and so on.

I'm more concerned about the fables that get invented that actually undermine theology - that crap about a gate called the "needle's eye", for example. But even then, I can't get that excited.

Posted by Hairy Biker (# 12086) on :

Deano,
I know exactly what you mean, but I think you characterise it wrongly. Christ is in every little corner of the world and we should expect to find Him there. However, the idea that everything we do is inspired by symbolism from Christianity is just plain untruth. Tinsel represents Hollywood as far as I’m concerned. Perhaps your lay reader knows the history better than I, but it sounds like the story is retro-fitted.

Everything we do in our worship has specific symbolism from Christianity. But not everything that our secular society has handed down to us has similar roots. We should own up to what the historical significance of, say, Easter eggs is, and decide if we want to keep them or jettison them. This pretence that all these pagan images have Christian roots is simply dishonest. That’s my opinion anyway (not “humble opinion” – I don’t think opinion and humility go together!)

Posted by The Machine Elf (# 1622) on :

quote:
Originally posted by deano:
they hid in a cave, and a spider very quickly spun a web over the entrance. Some soldiers looking for them saw the cave but assumed that because the spider’s web was intact, nobody was in there, so they left.

I'm not sure telling a story from the life of Muhammed with the names changed can strictly be called a Christian explanation.

Posted by Rosa Winkel (# 11424) on :

I agree with deano (yes indeedy).

I'm not enough reflected on the Incarnation to come up with someone clever, but guess in a fumbling way that this is in fact anti-Incarnational, in that we can simply allow Christ to be in everything without having to come up with justifications.

In fact such stories provoke the point "it doesn't matter" when asked whether they are true. For example, once in the cathedral I worked in there was a big nativity, and a grandmother told her granddaughter that the angel was a fairy. I said it wasn't, and she said "it doesn't matter".

I'm very comfortable with having non-Christian symbols used as Christian symbols, but we don't need to claim everything as Christian. Knowing why we do things matter, and knowing what things are and what they repesent matter to me. I myself don't want a flimsy belief. (I am comfortable with nuances and ambiguousness, but not claims that what isn't is.)

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Machine Elf:

quote:
Originally posted by deano:
they hid in a cave, and a spider very quickly spun a web over the entrance. Some soldiers looking for them saw the cave but assumed that because the spider’s web was intact, nobody was in there, so they left.
I'm not sure telling a story from the life of Muhammed with the names changed can strictly be called a Christian explanation.

Good catch!

Posted by deano (# 12063) on :

HB, thank you for putting it more clearly than I did.

It is indeed a retro-fitting onto secular traditions, and it just stands out a mile to me. It's like fitting fake stone cladding to a nice country cottage. Unnecessary and looks awful.

Posted by deano (# 12063) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:

quote:
Originally posted by The Machine Elf:

quote:
Originally posted by deano:
they hid in a cave, and a spider very quickly spun a web over the entrance. Some soldiers looking for them saw the cave but assumed that because the spider’s web was intact, nobody was in there, so they left.
I'm not sure telling a story from the life of Muhammed with the names changed can strictly be called a Christian explanation.
Good catch!

Yes indeed! I'll point that out to my lad. I don't want to turn him away from Christ, but he's got a good head on his shoulders and I trust him to apply his own critical judgement on things like this.

Posted by Hairy Biker (# 12086) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Machine Elf:

quote:
Originally posted by deano:
they hid in a cave, and a spider very quickly spun a web over the entrance. Some soldiers looking for them saw the cave but assumed that because the spider’s web was intact, nobody was in there, so they left.
I'm not sure telling a story from the life of Muhammed with the names changed can strictly be called a Christian explanation.

beliefnet tells this as a "traditional Jewish tale" about King David.

Posted by SyNoddy (# 17009) on :

Way back in the mid 1980s I attended my nephews preschool nativity play and they used the story of the spider spinning a web to conceal the Holy Family. It was nice enough and everyone seemed to enjoy the extension of the story beyond the traditional stable setting.
I didn't assume that this was anything more than a novel way to engage the kids in an already over familiar story - over familiar if you're a nominal Christian who has to sit through these year upon year.
I think elements introduced in an attempt to explain or elaborate can often get confused with authentic and original aspects when handed on over time. It can all get jumbled and confused. But guess that that applies to the vast majority of religious practices of every flavour.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

I suspect it's been around the houses. Even the story about being born of human and divine wasn't exactly new to the Greek world...

Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on :

posted by Hairy Biker:

quote:

This pretence that all these pagan images have Christian roots is simply dishonest.

It works the other way too; in fact with neo paganism there is a somewhat concentrated effort to do so.

Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :

I think the more pertinent question is:

Why do some people feel the need to give everything a naturalistic explanation?

Morality, consciousness, reason, religion... you name it... it all has to submit to that philosophy which is subtly (and often not so subtly) being imposed on us daily.

The issue about the symbolism of tinsel frankly pales into insignificance compared to this.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

Ah, yes. What is the preferable story? Does our awe at what God may do require spiders to follow instinct or divine command? Truth doesn't matter. The story does.

How about instead considering that people tell stories and make them conform both to reality and to their hopes. The reality doesn't matter does it? It doesn't matter that the history is different that the actuality. Any movie, "based on a true story" would tell us that.

Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :

quote:
Originally posted by deano:
Not every Christian feels the need to do that. I believe God is big enough to cope without having to pretend that tinsel is a protective spiders web!

I hope the Sunday School teacher made it clear to the children that this whimsical story was entirely fiction?

Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :

There's another way of looking at this. Dualism doesn't have to reign supreme. There's Christian symbolism in holly, Christmas trees, eggs, and the dates of Christmas and Easter. If it represents something of our faith, who cares whether other people use it to represent something else? who cares who used it first?

The story of the spider is a story. The children know that. They don't need to be told. The child who said it didn't matter whether the angel was a fairy was right. It's both, it's either.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

The reason why everything gets a Christian explanation is that medieval missionaries wanted to turn pagans into Christians so they took everything and gave it a Christian gloss.

Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
There's another way of looking at this. Dualism doesn't have to reign supreme. There's Christian symbolism in holly, Christmas trees, eggs, and the dates of Christmas and Easter. If it represents something of our faith, who cares whether other people use it to represent something else? who cares who used it first?

The story of the spider is a story. The children know that. They don't need to be told. The child who said it didn't matter whether the angel was a fairy was right. It's both, it's either.

Exactly. As an old man with a box once said, we're all stories in the end. I think a certain rabbi used stories too. Why does it matter if it's not a true story?

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