Christocentric

Psalm 19

The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
² Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
³ There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard.
⁴ Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world.

In them He has set a tabernacle for the sun,
⁵ Which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
And rejoices like a strong man to run its race.
⁶ Its rising is from one end of heaven,
And its circuit to the other end;
And there is nothing hidden from its heat.

⁷ The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul;
The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple;
⁸ The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes;
⁹ The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever;
The judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.
¹⁰ More to be desired are they than gold,
Yea, than much fine gold;
Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
¹¹ Moreover by them Your servant is warned,
And in keeping them there is great reward.

¹² Who can understand his errors?
Cleanse me from secret faults.
¹³ Keep back Your servant also from presumptuous sins;
Let them not have dominion over me.
Then I shall be blameless,
And I shall be innocent of great transgression.

¹⁴ Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
O LORD, my strength and my Redeemer.

Creativity and eternity according to Karenga

Creativity – Kuumba (koo-OOM-bah) -To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.

The creator of Kwanzaa, Karenga’s definition of Creativity may be a little different than the average Kwanzaa participant.  Most people who celebrate Kwanzaa would attribute the great accomplishments of past ancestors as creativity. Whether they attribute the great Egyptian pyramids to their ancestors (a whole discussion on its own) or modern creativity in which many of the celebrants find in Obama, works of greatness is usually representative of creativity.

Karenga on the other hand takes creativity a little further.  He does put a lot of emphasis on leaving a legacy better than the one before it which is always desirable.  But the way he would like us all to do so has a familiar spiritual ring to it. He says in his 1997 book on Kwanzaa:

“Kwanzaa reminds us of the ancient Egyptian teaching that if we wish to live for eternity, we must build for eternity, i.e., do great works or serve the community in a real sustained and meaningful way. This reflects both a social and moral criteria for eternal life . . .” pg 63

What I find interesting in Karenga’s description of this sixth principle of Creativity, that for a man who claims that Kwanzaa is not a religious but cultural celebration, he uses religious terminology many times.  Eternal life? Moral criteria? Building for eternity?  He is essentially equating creativity with building blocks for an eternal future.  He summarizes that thought in his last paragraph on Creativity when he says the following from the same book above:

“Everyday is a donation to eternity and even one hour is a contribution to the future.” pg 64

You ever hear of the phrase, “some are so heavenly minded they’re no earthly good?” I do believe that is what Karenga appears to have people avoid doing.  Do good works here on earth, build a great legacy by building  your community.  But if Kwanzaa is not supposed to be a religious celebration, why all the talk of eternity and morality here?  That is the beef that Christians such as myself have with this religious wanna-be-without-calling-it-so celebration.

God has set the entire Bible as His guidebook to love Him so much that our lives reflect it here on earth.  This can be seen in the following verses that the Apostle Paul shares with the city of Thessalonia Christians:

“⁹ But concerning brotherly love you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another; ¹⁰ and indeed you do so toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, that you increase more and more; ¹¹ that you also aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, ¹² that you may walk properly toward those who are outside, and that you may lack nothing.” 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12.

Kwanzaa is a sneak attempt to imitate a religion without calling it so.  It has the same objectives that we may find in many biblical texts – scriptures that teach us how to live among men while waiting for our heavenly Son of Man. While waiting for eternity.

Although many people celebrate Kwanzaa innocently and without knowledge of the principles behind this quasi-religion, they are without excuse as we are to examine everything for its spiritual validity and biblical compromise.  Just knowing that the prinicples are already laid out for ALL of mankind and not just a particular group of people should leave many to question the true purposes of this false spiritual celebration.

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More about Kwanzaa in the eBook:  The Truth About Kwanzaa

How can you go wrong with the principle of Purpose?  There are some ways . . .

Purpose – Nia (NEE-ah) -  – To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

The Good: Always a great purpose to build up any people, especially a people whose contributions to their society is nearly ignored to the point that they have to have a special time of year to recognize those contributions – Black History Month!  There should never be a need for this type of recognition as an American’s historical contributions should be included in any book titled “American History.”

The Bad: Karenga takes this a step further than just recognition of a people to elevating a people to a place they don’t belong.  While Karenga tries to instill a picture of “greatness” of African people, he ignores the depravity of mankind in general.  There is the problem of people even getting along on the continent of Africa.  There are warring factions, governments, genocides and other atrocities in Africa’s history past and present that does not speak of “greatness.”  Let alone he ignores the fact that Africa is not monolithic. The picture that Africa is one big happy great place and every get’s along fine is unrealistic to give honor to as one would in this part of the Kwanzaa celebration!

So to celebrate Nia and congratulate one another for our greatness is folly when the true purpose in life should be to recognize man’s depravity and seek God.  We need to recognize the attempts to paint a rosy colored picture of African history while making the critical mistake of placing our self-worth on a perceived cultural greatness.  We aren’t great. We need God.  And in Him will we ever truly find our worth!

The reality

“But we are all like an unclean thing,
And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags;
We all fade as a leaf,
And our iniquities, like the wind,
Have taken us away.” Isaiah 64:6

The true purpose

³¹ “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” Matthew 6:31-33

Our worth

¹⁶“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. – John 3:16-18

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More about Kwanzaa in the eBook:  The Truth About Kwanzaa

Socialism in action.

Cooperative Economics – Ujamaa (oo-jah-MAH-ah) – To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.

As what was shared in the third principle of Kwanzaa, Collective Work and Responsibility, now we have the economic principle of “shared wealth” a catch phrase pointing to socialism.  Karenga doesn’t hide this fact at all in his 1997 book titled Kwanzaa: a Celebration of Family, Community and Culture:

“the fourth principle . . . is essentially a commitment to the practice of shared social wealth and the work necessary to achieve it.  It grows out of the fundamental communal concept that social wealth belongs to the masses of people who created it and that no one should have such an unequal amount of wealth that it gives him/her the capacity to impose unequal, exploitative or oppressive relations on others. – pg 55

Karenga’s stress of socialistic self-reliance is for the Black community only.  The goals of “buying Black” ring throughout this principle as Black people are many times scolded for not buying first from Black businesses.  Again, emphasis is centered upon the color of one’s skin.

What do people celebrate and honor while sharing this principle of Kwanzaa during a celebration? They are honoring Black separatism and socialism.  The good of this principle? Pretty similar to the Bible with the goals of meeting the needs of the poor, but the Bible never says to spread the wealth around collectively, but use one’s riches with responsibility in meeting the needs of those without.

The Bible encourages private ownership, which is not the objective of socialism.  It is okay to even be rich according to the Bible, but it’s not okay to pursue riches:

“⁹ But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. ¹⁰ For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” 1 Timothy 6:9-10

The failure to follow the counsel in the preceding verses is the result of capitalism gone bad.  In our country, people have taken the freedom of private ownership to levels of greed unseen in previous times.  But what about being rich? There is nothing wrong in being wealthy, but the responsibility just remains greater:

¹⁷ Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. ¹⁸ Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, ¹⁹ storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.  1 Timothy 6:17-19

For the Christian who celebrates Kwanzaa, they are celebrating principles that go against the very teachings of our scriptures.  This principle of Cooperative Economics – or shared wealth – is but another example of the glaring inconsistencies one faces when celebrating this Afrocentric holiday.

This fourth principle goes against being a Christian – against being an American!

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More about Kwanzaa in the eBook:  The Truth About Kwanzaa

Socialism or community activism?

Collective Work and Responsibility – Ujima (oo-JEE-mah) – - To build and maintain our community together and make our brother’s and sister’s problems our problems and to solve them together.

Karenga here wasn’t speaking of brotherly love and charitable acts by helping one another. No, he was talking more about socialism and defined below to those of us unsure of its meaning:

so·cial·ism

Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.

Karenga does not hide the fact he supports socialism when in his book titled, Kawaida Theory (1980), he says the following:

“only socialist transformation can end the inequities, exploitation and oppression of capitalism. It’s the only viable and valid alternative to capitalism as a socio-economic system.” pg 61

Now it’s apparent that not only did Karenga want to create a new way of life but a new life complete with socialist leanings!

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More about Kwanzaa in the eBook:  The Truth About Kwanzaa

Self-determination - Kujichagulia (koo-jee-chah-GOO-lee-ah) - To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.

As a Christian, this principle of Kwanzaa, self-determination, has to be one of the most offensive of all the principles.  If we remember from my post on the first principle Unity, Karenga created Kwanzaa as a means to create a new set of moral values just for Black people.  He is a strong believer in Blacks not ascribing to values he felt were eurocentric so he wanted to create an afrocentric way of life – thus the seven principles of Kwanzaa also called it’s Swahili name – the Nguzo Saba.

Why so offensive to the Christian? Because Christianity is the opposite to the self-centeredness of this 2nd principle of Kwanzaa.  We are to die to self and live for Christ. God created us and speaks to us through His word, the Bible.  Jesus describes this letting go of self here in Matthew:

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Matthew 16:24-26

Some may ask, “well what do those verses have to do with a cultural celebration and self-determination?”  Knowing the complete context of the history of Kwanzaa would help in that understanding. Knowing Karenga’s intense disdain for what he considers eurocentric religions like Christianity and Judaism and his motivation to steer black people away from those religions would only complete the full meaning of this critique.

Karenga’s view of self is without God. His view of self is to determine our own moral values. His view of self is to create our own way of life.

Self-determination in Karenga’s world means a man-centered world based upon humanistic philosophy and on the color of one’s skin rather than the life centered upon God and His principles (the Bible) for ALL of mankind.

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More about Kwanzaa in the eBook:  The Truth About Kwanzaa

Unity – Umoja (oo-MO-jah) – To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.

When Karenga, the creator of Kwanzaa made the first principle, the race he speaks of here is not the human race but the BLACK race.  This is a major reason why none of us should have anything to do with Kwanzaa because the first principle makes it clear that unity is determined by the color of one’s skin.  Not any other common factor.

Karenga made those intentions quite clear in his first book on Kwanzaa when he said:

“The key crisis in the Black life is…the critical lack of a coherent system of views and values that would give them a moral, material and meaningful interpretation of life.”  (page 20 in my book, The Truth About Kwanzaa)

Because of believing that Black people lack values for morality that could provide a meaningful life (a slap in the face of our God, and the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and His book of values to us, the Bible), Karenga created his own system of values called the seven principles or the Nguzo Saba.

So he starts with principle one in unity.  Of course for the Christian, there can be no true unity if there’s no agreement in how to be unified. How we believe in God is the first and unifying point in how we should live. If we don’t agree with that, then there is no true unity:

¹⁴Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? ¹⁵What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? ¹⁶What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” ¹⁷“Therefore come out from them
and be separate, says the Lord.  2 Corinthians 6:14-17

We are to separate ourselves from anything that is not of God. He doesn’t mean to find a place to live separately from unbelievers, but not to participate in ungodly things.  The first principle of Kwanzaa is just the beginning of eye-opening reasons why Kwanzaa is urged to be forsaken by anyone calling themselves a Christian.

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More about Kwanzaa in the eBook:  The Truth About Kwanzaa

This was an excellent article and a perennial favorite of mine to answer the charge that “Christmas is Pagan” by those who wish to steer people from the celebration of the birth of Christ.  Written by Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason.org, he presents excellent reasons why Christmas isn’t pagan in easy to share clarity.

Enjoy and have a very, Merry CHRISTmas!!!

Carlotta
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Is Christmas Pagan

Gregory Koukl

Greg sets the record straight on some old rumors about the origin of Christmas and separates the concepts of the meaning of Christmas from the spirit of Christmas.

The question of whether Christmas is pagan enters into the idea of cultural practices. Some have made the assertion that Christmas has pagan origins. Christmas does not have pagan origins, but there are winter celebrations that are pagan. There was, for example, a saturnal celebration around the time of Christmas that pagans celebrated, which was actually a temptation for Christians to participate in that had pagan content to it. So the church changed the day that they celebrated the birth of Christ. They used to celebrate it in the Spring. But the church said, “We can celebrate it any time we want. Let’s celebrate it at the same time the pagans are celebrating their pagan festival. It’ll act as a contrast to that pagan festival because our celebration is the birth of the God-man, Jesus Christ. It has Biblical content. Plus it will protect Christians from being wooed away by this other celebration to participate in what was a pagan celebration”.

See complete article here: Is Christmas Pagan?

I’ve finally completed the book I’ve been trying to write for so many years I’m too ashamed to say how long and how short it is. But when you’re raising five kids, it does create decades long writers block! (At least that’s my excuse.)

Researching and discovering interesting subjects is what I love to do, but this one I wrote about I had stumbled upon quite accidentally.  One day long long ago, one of my sisters changed her name my mother gave her to a Swahili name, which wasn’t at first a major cause of concern, THEN she claimed that Christianity was a White Man’s religion and no longer called herself Christian.  I wondered what in the heck changed her and since we were all living in Los Angeles at the time and near each other, I took it upon myself to “research” my sister’s change in lifestyle.

I discovered that my sister had become a member of Maulana Karenga’s Black activist group the US Organization – this from the same man who created Kwanzaa!  Thus my research began by taking weekly visits to the “Center,” the headquarters of the organization which was located in the city, and I quickly involved myself into their questions and answers sessions and their round table discussions at which many times I ended debating with Karenga himself as well as other US members. But as a young mother of two toddlers and the expansion of my family to five kids and then followed by a divorce, the Center soon took a back seat to my busy family life.

With no more time for the discussions and debates, I took to just writing my notes out and eventually posting them on a long running website that folks have used for their own writings on Kwanzaa.  What made my notes so unique, was that I was able to retrieve books (okay, I stole them) from my US member sister’s home library, books that Karenga wrote that the general public didn’t have access to. It’s those books from which much of my material came from, books that show Karenga’s TRUE intent for creating Kwanzaa.

Now with the kids all grown up and out of the nest, I’ve been able to finish writing about my discoveries of Karenga’s teachings and why I reject Kwanzaa as a cultural celebration.  This book I want everyone to read who has anything to do with Kwanzaa – and you don’t have to be Black for that to be!  It’s short with 46 pages with mostly references from newspapers, journals, websites and most importantly Karenga’s own books to show his true intentions with this false cultural holiday.

If you’d like more info on the book click on the eBook image in the right column.

Check it out folks – the FIRST BOOK EVER written exposing Kwanzaa!

(This is digital only in PDF, the print edition will follow later!)

edited 12/22/09

Tiger Wood’s wife Elin is filing for divorce and she’s not interested one bit in going back to him.  At least that’s according to all the news and gossip sources.  It hasn’t helped that Tiger has been with not one, two or three mistresses, but a whole harem of women!  He’s pretty much drained every single ounce of love from his wife that she once had for him (if she truly loved him). Can anyone blame Elin?

But word’s out that Tiger’s not giving up on his marriage.  Could it be to save his millions? His image? Both? Or is he truly realizing the value he had in having a good wife and mother to his children (again, we don’t really know what went on behind those doors).  Whatever the case, if Tiger truly wants his wife back there are some things he can do.

If I were Tiger’s friend, trusted confidant or marriage counselor, this is what I would tell him:

1. Surrender your will completely to Jesus Christ, the only one that can forgive you for the gross sins you’ve committed
2. Pray for your spiritual maturity, your marriage, the women you used and whatever else the Lord leads you to pray for
3. Whatever amount of money Elin requests, let her have it. Get money out of the picture. You’re surely talented enough to win it and all of your sponsors back later.  But beware because anyone who has been your friend or business partner for your fame and money will swear you’re a fool and find other rich friends and business folks to keep them company.
4. Get on that multi-million dollar yacht you own with just you and a bible, and completely absorb yourself with God’s word allowing it change your heart, soul and mind.  Then find an online community of believers incognito and do “church!” Learn the bible, study it and put God’s word into your heart!
5. Avoid all contact with any woman whose name is not Elin or your mother’s.   Make sure you’re well into Step 4 to have the power to even begin to do this.
6. And again, pray. For the One who works great miracles can surely put your marriage back together again.

Now do I really think Tiger would even try those things? Nope!

But I am praying …