And so it begins, my fifth annual Christmas letter. I apologise for the tardiness of this letter, but I was over halfway through my letter yesterday and my computer crashed. I lost the whole thing. Well, I see that the recipient list for this letter is somewhat different than previous letters. As I age, I leave behind seasonal friends and bring closer to myself the true friends that one crosses paths with in life. New seasons in my life are coming, and I am certain that by this time next year, my address book will be significantly different once again. Such is the way of life.

Well, to those of you who are new to my letters, every Christmas I attempt to include a selection of fascinating stories that I have come across in the previous year. I've got several, but I have a definite point to this message, and only one serves the purpose well. It is one that I am writing from memory; I heard it a few weeks ago. It is rewritten and embellished in all its several parts with the ornaments of language....er, nevermind. While tragic, the story is not Aristotelian. Read and weep.

There was a typical suburban middle-class type of lady who drove a typical suburban middle-class type of car. Now she also had a suburban middle-class type of job and lived in a suburban middle-class type of house. And in fact, now that I think about it, she really wasn't all that different than you and me. This lady went to church every Sunday morning, and when she was in a good enough mood, even went to small groups on Wednesday evenings. She worked nine to five on weekdays, slept in on Saturdays, and even volunteered at the local nursing home on Sunday afternoons, if her friends weren't going out to lunch. This lady was, like I said, a typical middle-class type of lady. Now, if you're a bit keen you've already begun to pick up on a few weaknesses in her armor, but I digress.

My story begins with our lady in her typical suburban middle-class type of car. It was five-thirty in the afternoon and she was driving home. Just like everybody else. She ran into some traffic along the way and wound up behind that perennial driver who we all love to hate. She could clearly see that he was not paying attention: his head was bobbing, he was holding some papers in his hand, and from time to time he appeared to be speaking to someone or something. Probably a cell phone. She sighed and drove on behind him. Now, of course, it came to pass that a signal light turned red ahead of them. Traffic ground to a halt and the man began to work. Our antihero the lady was directly behind him. The traffic also stacked up behind the two, including a certain other car of mutual interest to both us and to the lady, but we shall come back to him in a bit.
After a time, certainly, the light did turn green again, and traffic began to move. All, that is, except for the man and our friend. The lady could see that the man was looking down and did not notice that the light had turned green, so naturally she began to lean on her horn. No response from the man. It began with muttering to herself, proceeded with nonverbal forms of manual communication, and ended with her leaning out of her window to yell at the man, cursing very loudly. But she did not realise that her anguish at being held up for several minutes would end up costing her more than an hour. After a time, the man did suddenly take notice and step on the gas. Unfortunately for our lady, however, the light was yellow and the man barely slipped through the light and out of our sphere of interest. The lady glided up to a halt at the freshly red light, and she sank back into her seat, disgusted. What happened next took her completely by surprise.

Click, click, the sound at her window sounded quite a bit like metal tapping on glass. She looked out her window to see the barrel of a pistol pointed at her, for the unnoticed car behind her just so happened to be an on-duty police officer in an unmarked vehicle. The officer pulled her out of the car, placed her under arrest, and put her in the back of his car. Completely flabbergasted, the lady could not even muster the words to ask her sin. The officer took her to the jail, booked her, and tossed her in a cell. Alone in the cell, the lady had time to think about what her crime might have been, but she was unable to come to a conclusion.

It took approximately an hour for the obvious conclusion to this story to come about. The police officer reappeared at the front of her cell with the key and unlocked the door. She was ushered out, the officer apologising profusely as he did so. Bewildered, she looked at the man. "I'm very sorry," he said, "but this seems to have been a case of mistaken identity. You see, I observed the Christian bumper sticker and the fish and cross emblazoned on the rear of your vehicle, and then observed your actions. Naturally, I assumed that the car was stolen."

There is a great duplicitous treason gone rampant in America today. I am reading the Old Testament minor prophets at the moment, and I am imagining how the message of each could apply to day. One of them preached against awful richness in Israel. I see this in America. America is far too rich for its own good. We have grown so complacent as to forget God's commands regarding the poor, rejected, and foreign people of the world. A church in America spends millions of dollars providing gyms and facilities to Christians. Christians are a large majority in America, but Christians are more rare than an uncooked hamburger. The symptom is clear, how can it be missed? Churches spend millions trying to attract people by trying to win at the devil's own game. The devil's game is to make people happy in the world. The church is also trying to make people happy instead of trying to save people's souls.

Christians in America have as a whole forgotten about the Word of God. One strategy that my mom loves to use is to make a chart with Law on one side and Gospel on the other. Whenever listening to a sermon, she categorises his majour points. What she finds is not surprising. Many pastors have a huge relience on the gospel and rarely mention the law. We're obsessed with a feel-good type of religion. We only want to be happy, and the law doesn't make us happy. However, without the law there is no use for the gospel. Without the law, there is no reason for people to live holy lives. If God forgives every sin instantly, then why bother trying not to sin? Because the law clearly spells out the consequences of sin. Because we've rejected the law and embraced the gospel, we have Christians living duplicitous lives. With no reason to live a holy life, Christians go to church and praise God, then deny him the rest of the week. We refuse to obey his final standing order: to preach the Gospel to all peoples. We stick back in our comfort zones, pleasing ourselves. This is treason. God made us and supported us, and we acknowledge Him and proclaim our love for Him. Then we deny Him. This is the very definition of treason, and it angers God. There is no denying that we have ultimate salvation through Jesus Christ, but how angry would you be if you offered help to your own children and then they took your gift and went around slandering you in public?

Why is all of this happening? Why do we have such issues surrounding us like abortion and rape and violence and homosexual marriage? It is because we have denied the Word of God, which condemns these activities. How did it happen? It began long ago, when one single verse in the Bible began to be disavowed. What verse was this? The very first one: Genesis 1:1. A terrifying number of churches in America have admitted that they do not believe that Genesis 1:1 is literally correct.

This is America today.

We must turn from our evil ways, or just like ancient Israel, Edom, Babylon, Ninevah, and more, we will be destroyed by our own evil. Evil has a logical end: destruction. It wouldn't even require God's judgement for us to destroy ourselves. With such an awful emphasis on pleasing ourselves and being selfish, how could we possibly last? God has incredibly blessed America, and we have squandered everything that He gave us.

So on this Christmas, think about God's gift to us and what we owe Him. We owe him our allegiance. Not our treason.