Episode 98: Un-Santa-fying God--December 25, 2018

In this Christmas episode, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve take a look at the way our culture's storytelling about "Santa Claus" affects (or infects) our thinking about God.  In this season, we are surrounded by pictures, movies, songs, and storytelling about this magical figure who seems to be all-knowing, can travel around the world in one night, and judges who is worthy of good gifts or bad ones based on how much they believe and how good their behavior is.  And it becomes really difficult sometimes for us to distinguish between the myth of Santa and the Gospel's story of a God who loves apart from our behavior, who gives generously and graciously to the well-behaved and stinkers alike, and whose power doesn't depend on how hard we believe in him.  In other words, we sometimes let our culture's image of Santa get projected onto our understanding of God without realizing how radical the Gospel of grace in Christ really is.  Join us on this Christmas episode as we seek to un-Santa-fy our pictures of God, and to recover the Good News of a grace beyond our earning.  And merrry Christmas to all!