Pictures and junk

 And by junk, I mean a story that I shall weave through pictures from the last couple of days.

Christmas morning was bright, but rain loomed ahead

So last night, in a move of questionable wisdom, I engaged on Twitter with one of these "Christmas is a pagan holiday" people.  This one was using Jeremiah 10 to equate building and worshiping an idol with setting up a Christmas tree.  I told him he was taking it out of context.  I explained to him his whole fallacy is put to rest in Romans 14:

Rom 14:5  One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 

In other words, it was the old 'eating meat dedicated to idols thing'- if your faith is weak enough that this bothers you, don't celebrate.  It doesn't matter, if your REASON is in the right place.  His reply was to continue to meme me cherry picked verses that weren't beginning to be on point.

From the bridge to PFW: the End of the Earth...

The mud flat

"Follow the sun... WEEE-OOO..."

Our little hiding spot is quite dry

As I brought up Romans 14, he accused me of being a pagan, because December 25th is NOT Jesus's birthday.  Gee, we can celebrate Washington and Lincoln's birthday on President's Day, which isn't their birthdays, and that's okay... but because our Catholic friends, in their ever-present desire to bend over to the world, adopted the Saturnalia date and converted it to a celebration for Jesus, and we saw no real need to correct it, now we are all pagans.  At this point, I pointed out the OTHER thing Paul had to say on the subject...

Rom 14:3  Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. 

Rom 14:4  Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. 

...and this put the next spin on the subject....

Misty's usual river dip, from the other side

Why do kids feel the need to wreck everything?

At this point, our subject replied, "Paul is your God? Christians love Paul because they don't understand the letters."  I reminded him that Peter said Paul's letters carried the weight of Scripture, and asked if he was a Christian.  The meme/'pagan' assault resumed, and I challenged him to answer the question.  His reply:

-"Did Christ tell you to celebrate Christmas, which is Nimrod's birthday?"

-"...you are a pagan, because you follow pagan traditions..."

-"Christians follow Christ, I don't associate myself with hypocrites they call Christians today that don't do anything Christ says. Christians who don't know scripture besides Paul as a sinners pass or John 3:16."

So at this point, I have discovered a)His concept of the Bible starts with the Prophets and ends with Luke; b) his concept of Paul is that grace lets you get away with anything; c) he apparently has a problem with the most wonderful verse in all the Bible.

But what about this Nimrod's birthday thing?

The rain let off a bit this morning, so off we went

Squirrel play at the ravine

So if you trace down enough whack job sites, you get Nimrod ( of Genesis and Tower of Babel fame) associated with the Saturnalia and other sun-worship items, and thus HIS birthday is on December 25th (even though they have no more evidence to this than the Catholic Church did for Jesus's birthday).  Therefore, anything I do on the 25th of December HAS to be all about Nimrod.  Anything I decorate a tree with HAS to be an idol, and if I listen to Paul (or apparently John), I'm disobeying Jesus.

Bonus:  This whole thing apparently entered the whack job universe via a connection to an article by one Wilhelm J Wolfaardt- an article published on a site for MUSLIM CONVERTS.

He was mad... would run up the tree, turn, bob his head at us.  Reminds me of a fella on Twitter...

More doggies

The elusive grey squirrel

At this point, I bid him adieu.  But here's the point:  Know your BIBLE- or any idiot might come along to try and confuse you.

Misty sees yet another doggie way behind us...

Black squirrels at play

"Hey, a bit of light coming through...."