He’s making a list,And checking it twice;Gonna find out Who’s naughty and nice.
Good little boys 
and girls can be assured that if they are good then Santa Claus will bring them presents. But the bad little boys and girls had better shape up because Santa Claus is coming to town and these little sprouts are going to have hell to pay. No toys for these little minions they’ll be getting coals and spankings or at best that nasty fruitcake.
If Christians are faithful then God will bless them. He will give them presents like peace, prosperity, and healthy relationships. When we turn our back on biblical principles this is when we are robbed of peace, prosperity, and our relationships become fractured. But we can be assured that if we are nice rather than naughty the Lord (who sees us when we are sleeping even) will reward us well.
You can extend this to a national level and say that when a nation is faithful to the Lord by allowing prayer in schools, keeping 10 Commandments and nativity scenes on the courthouse lawn, and making sure that our money mentions God then we will have prosperity, increased jobs, a better economy, and all the things that our good God-fearing nation would desire.
Now before I make my point it is important that you do not hear what I am not saying. I think God does ultimately desire peace, prosperity, and healthy relationships, and ultimately I believe those will belong to those that are faithful to Him. God does bless obedience. Obedience is a good thing. But…
How does the above mentioned Santa-god fit into Psalm 44?
The logic of Santa-god and Psalm 44
In verses 1-8 the sons of Korah remind the nation of the power of God displayed in their history. They remind the people that if they are to have victory and salvation it will come through the Lord and not their own efforts. Verse 8 ends with, “In God we have boasted continually, and we will give thanks to your name forever”.
For the first eight verses it sounds like Santa-god is standing on pretty solid biblical grounds. If we were using logic it would look like this:
(A) As he has shown in the past, God blesses those that are faithful
(B) The Sons of Korah are being faithful
(C.) Therefore, the Sons of Korah will experience God’s blessing
But that is not what the equation looks like in Psalm 44:9. Instead it is this:
(A) As he has shown in the past, God blesses those that are faithful
(B) The Sons of Korah are being faithful
(C.) “But you have rejected us and disgraced us and have not gone out with our armies”.
Instead of “blessing” the people experience tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and sword. They are “sold for a trifle”. They have become a “laughingstock”, their face is “covered with shame” and they have become like “sheep for the slaughter”.
Perhaps I am simply forgetting the other equation. Certainly their situation is a result of their unfaithfulness. This must be their equation:
(A) God punishes iniquity and does not bless those that are unfaithful
(B) Those living in the days of the sons of Korah are not being blessed
(C.) Therefore, the sons of Korah must be unfaithful
The only problem with that “loophole” is that according to Scripture the sons of Korah have not been “false to your covenant”. They have not turned their hearts away from the Lord. They have not departed from the ways of the Lord. They aren’t talking sinless perfection here, they know they aren’t sinless; but they have remained faithful to the covenant. And yet, “for your sake we are killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered”.
Romans 8 and Psalm 44
It is interesting that Paul quotes Psalm 44 in the midst of Romans 8. Honestly it seems like a weird (almost self-contradictory) place to quote Psalm 44. At the end of Romans 8 Paul is asking the question, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” He then lists all those really bad things like tribulation, danger, sword, etc. and then quotes Psalm 44. Why?
Paul is looking back to Psalm 44 at the experience of the sons of Korah and instructing us that believers will face mockery and suffering; such is, as Schreiner notes, the “lot of Christians”. Believers will suffer and it is not because they aren’t being faithful or that they aren’t having enough faith but precisely because God loves them.
In the midst of Psalm 44 the congregation is invited to join the psalmist in praying for the Lord’s redemption. Romans 8 is no different. It is placed there with Psalm 44 to infuse us with hope that in the midst of suffering and difficulty we can take heart that there is no place so low where the love of Christ does not reach the believer. The suffering that we experience is not necessarily a sign of the Lord’s disfavor but is perhaps a sign of his profound love and grace.
Somehow the pain of Psalm 44 or Romans 8 is not divorced from the depth of God’s love. This experience is not meant to separate us from the Lord but in actuality the banner that is placed over-top of this suffering is “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us”.
Not just conquerors. More than conquerors. To conquer it would be to get through something, to achieve victory over it, to slay it. At the end of “conquering” this suffering would be a statement like, “whew, I am really glad that is over”. But the text goes further than merely conquering. It says more than conquerors.
“More than conquerors” means that somehow God turns horrible things like suffering and death into good. Those that are “more than a conquerors” would say things like, “that was really difficult and I would not necessarily desire to go through it again, but it has deepened my relationship with Christ, increased my capacity for joy, and brought me into a greater conformity with Christ.”
The problem with Santa-god
There are many problems with the Santa-god moralism that wears the mask of concerned Christianity, but I want to quickly note three. The first and perhaps the worst is that he rips us off by distracting us with fleeting pleasures. With Santa-god the goal to obedience does not become greater conformity to Christ, greater enjoyment of God as God-belittling sin no longer distracts us from relishing the Lord. With Santa-god the goal to obedience is a bigger house, cheaper gas for your car, and more gold buried in your backyard. What a rip off. God offers eternal pleasure of infinite joy. I’m not buying this shoddy promise that Santa-god is promising.
Secondly, if we take this on a national level Santa-god causes lots of fighting. If Santa-god looks at us as a nation to see if we are being naughty or nice then those darn liberals not letting baby Jesus silently sleep in the courthouse lawn are causing me to be put on that naughty list. I’ll fight these loser to the death because they are robbing me of the fleeting pleasures that Santa-god is promising us if we would only be good.
Lastly, Santa-god creates moralism in the midst of brokenness instead of shining a light on the only source of hope. The message of Santa-god to a suffering sinner is simply, “repent, get up out of the mess, and do better next time”. He offers moralism as the solution to brokenness. But not Jesus. Jesus offer complete redemption. Jesus whispers to the suffering, “nothing is going to stop me from loving you”. He comes into the midst of brokenness, changes our hearts, and while he still calls to repentance he also infuses our hearts with hope, love, and grace to accomplish the task He calls us to fulfill.
Individually and corporately we need Jesus. We cry out with the sons of Korah, “Rise up; come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!” But we, as the sons of Korah could only know partially, know that Jesus Christ did “rise up” and he has redeemed us for the sake of His steadfast love! And we know now that there is nothing that can separate us from His love. Our crying now is for the not-yet to become the already!
Read more: http://www.mikeleake.net
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
We are done with Christmas, but this post is worth reading all year long.
I think you could tell the same story without the distracting “Santa-god”, but I know you’re highlighting idolatry and how it creates precisely the wrong spiritual condition in our heart.
By the way, SINCE you brought Christmas back up, I wanted to point to a quite fascinating campaign by the Catholic Diocese of Washington, DC that Chris Wallace highlighted on Fox News Sunday during the Advent season. I’m posting it because Christiane commented that most Catholic Church outreach is focused on bringing believers back. But this particular campaign seems to me to have a broader evangelistic tone similar to what the LDS typically does:
http://findtheperfectgift.org
In an effort to rationalize my comment,
I would also offer that the theme of the site is a direct response to our desire for the Santa-god to ameliorate the spiritual deadness we feel because of sin.
Greg,
Can you explain your last sentence for dense people like me.
Sometimes what we perceive in ourselves as deep suffering is in reality the transforming fire of God’s grace. People who go through profound suffering are never the same . . . they are changed, sometimes utterly.
And no one who comes on the journey of life to meet Our Lord can ever retrace the same road again, but like the wise men, they must travel now on a different road.
The suffering we bear can be deep and long-lasting, like the kind of grief written about by the Greek philosopher Aeschylus:
““He who learns must suffer
And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget
Falls drop by drop upon the heart,
And in our own despite, against our will,
Comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.”
? Aeschylus
Christian people have found, in the peace of Christ, that deep suffering brings with it a blessing of humility and compassion for others, not possible before . . . a kind of love for others . . . the kind of love and compassion that brought Our Lord to the Cross for our sake.
The Santa-God, the sky-God, the various forms of deity that people imagine God is, all fail to impress, when compared to what we know of God as revealed to us in Christ, Who spoke in the very Person of God.
Mike: I made several valiant efforts. Put as simply as possible, sin’s primary result is a zombie-like state where the body continues perambulating in a state where true reason is pithed and signs of spiritual aliveness–think fruit of the spirit and spiritual gifts–are missing.
Yet the secular Santa myth is adopted with gusto perhaps because when you give a child a (physical) gift you at least get the opportunity to participate vicariously in his (or her) happiness. Physical gifts ought to be fairly tame in the production of connectedness compared to more superior choices, yet I’ve seen families go into considerable debt at Christmas time to give–first and foremost–tangible, physical gifts.
It suggests a kind of counterfeiting of something more intrinsic and important with those physical gifts and also comes across as a form of compensation for something more important that is lacking. Hence my use of the term amelioration which means to lessen discomfort–specifically pain–in order to make it tolerable.
The thought when I wrote it was intended to be short, sweet, and pithy. But when you asked me what it meant, I realized unwinding the thought was actually quite complex. This is my best–and least verbose–of several efforts. My apology for the delay in response.
ahhhhh i just now realized where my break down in thought was. I was confused at your reference to the “theme of the site”. I thought you were talking about SBC Voices…but you meant the LDS site. Gotcha!!!!
Ahh…well, the site I meant addressed the “santa-god” syndrome was the one sponsored by the Catholic Diocese of Washington, D.C. The theme of that link is in the link itself: “find the perfect gift”. That was what I meant when commenting that the site’s theme “is a direct response to our desire for the Santa-god to ameliorate the spiritual deadness we feel because of sin.”
Which is to say, only the perfect gift completely fulfills what we truly long for at Christmas when we look under the tree.