{"id":716,"date":"2010-12-14T02:47:01","date_gmt":"2010-12-14T02:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com\/community\/karenspearszacharias\/?p=716"},"modified":"2010-12-14T02:47:01","modified_gmt":"2010-12-14T02:47:01","slug":"grinchalert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/karenspearszacharias\/2010\/12\/14\/grinchalert\/","title":{"rendered":"Grinchalert"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note: A glimpse of the\u00a0$130 million building project planned by the good folks at First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas. <\/strong>Rev. Robert Jeffress, pastor at First B, is urging businesses to put Christ back into Christmas through the website <\/strong>Grinchalert.com<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Best Buy<\/a>, Kirklands<\/a> and Alaska Airlines<\/a> all made the nice list, but Nordstrom<\/a>,\u00a0Macy\u2019s<\/a> and Barnes & Noble <\/a>had better watch out. They\u2019ve been tagged on the naughty side of Christmas. But don\u2019t blame Santa \u2013 he\u2019s not the one keeping this list of who\u2019s been naughty and who\u2019s been nice.<\/p>\n

This\u00a0idea originated with Rev. Robert Jeffress, pastor at First Baptist Church<\/a>\u00a0in Dallas, Texas. Jeffress came up with\u00a0the website, Grinchalert.com, because he wanted to make a point about keeping Christ in Christmas.<\/p>\n

Grinchalert.com<\/a>\u00a0allows\u00a0people\u00a0to\u00a0create their own lists of businesses that promote the Christ in Christmas and shame those who don\u2019t. \u201cIt\u2019s an attempt to do something positive,\u201d Jeffress says.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Admittedly, Jeffress has some warped notions about what it means to play nicely with others. This is the same fellow who during the debate over the placement of a mosque three blocks from Ground Zero warned his people Islam is an evil religion, one that promotes pedophilia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe deep, dark, dirty secret of Islam: It is a religion that promotes pedophilia \u2013 sex with children. This so-called prophet Muhammad raped a 9-year-old girl \u2013 had sex with her,\u201d Jeffress said.<\/p>\n

To be clear, it\u2019s not Islam that Jeffress is fed up with so much as it is a namby-pamby propensity toward political correctness that our culture has cultivated. Jeffress is a man who says what he thinks, even when he probably hasn\u2019t given as much thought to it as he should have.<\/p>\n

Before the executives at Nordstrom and Macy\u2019s storm the offices at the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Jeffress wants them to know he\u2019s not the one keeping track of who is naughty and nice.\u00a0The website is a public forum, like Letters to the editor, Jeffress told a FoxNews reporter. \u201cIn a pluralist society like ours everyone ought to be able to share their views,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

You have to hand it to Jeffress for adopting the language of the politically correct and finessing it to suit his purposes. What those purposes are, however, is downright disturbing. If Jeffress is trying to put the Christ back into Christmas, he\u2019s sure picked an ugly, Un-Christ-like, way to do that.<\/p>\n

He says that the website is simply a positive way to reward those businesses that promote the spirit of having a Merry Christmas. It is not, he insists, meant to be a boycott of businesses that fail to do that.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that the comments praising the businesses that meet some nebulous standard of what constitutes a Christian Christmas far outnumber the comments on the naughty list. But it also true that those on the naughty list are getting a public spanking for their holiday, not Christmas, spirit.<\/p>\n

After a shopping experience at Target<\/a>, one person wrote: \u201cI was looking for an ornament that reflected the reason for the season, and I could not find anything that said Merry Christmas. I\u2019m tired of seeing ONLY snowmen, Santa Clauses, snowflakes, birds, glitter, act. I could not find a gift bag, an ornament, or a gift box with a manger or the Holy Family on it. My husband & I will make a conscious (sic.) effort to support stores like Mardel\u2019s, Hobby Lobby, Life Way, or church bookstores that support Christmas wholeheartedly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another said of Barnes & Noble: \u201cEmployees will not say \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d because they have been instructed to say \u2018Happy Holidays.\u2019 This has been going on for years and I quit buying from them years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeffress can deny it all he wants, but the message that comes across is loud and clear: Good Christians will only shop at the stores that give lip service to Jesus.<\/p>\n

Ironically, Jeffress and his followers never address the question of how the babe in the manager became the poster child for Capitalism to begin with. If Jeffress and his Grinch Alert crew is so all-fired concerned about keeping Christ in Christmas, they might want to be begin by spending less time in the shopping malls and more time at the homeless shelters. That\u2019s the most likely place Jesus would hang any time of the year.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Editor\u2019s note: A glimpse of the\u00a0$130 million building project planned by the good folks at First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas. Rev. Robert Jeffress, pastor at First B, is urging businesses to put Christ back into Christmas through the website Grinchalert.com\u00a0 Best Buy, Kirklands and Alaska Airlines all made the nice list, but Nordstrom,\u00a0Macy\u2019s and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[131,162,305,333,389,576,608,692,956,995,1029,1089,1210,1456,1520,1685,1708],"class_list":["post-716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barnes-noble","tag-best-buy","tag-christ","tag-cnn","tag-dallas","tag-first-baptist-church","tag-foxnews","tag-grinch","tag-kirklands","tag-lifeway","tag-macys","tag-merry-christmas","tag-nordstrom","tag-rev-robert-jeffress","tag-santa","tag-target","tag-texas"],"yoast_head":"\nGrinchalert<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u00a0 Editor's note: A glimpse of the\u00a0$130 million building project planned by the good folks at First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas. 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