Is Your God Like Santa?

Is your God like Santa? (Aside from the obvious issues of being real/alive.)

You probably know the song Santa Clause is Coming to Town and will recognize the description of Santa in the summary below from the song - with a little oral tradition thrown in.

Santa –

He is coming to town

Concerned about moral choices “being naughty or nice”

Crying/pouting not acceptable

Sees all you do, knows if you’ve been bad or good

 He is “Making a list” - keeping count of good/bad

Punishment for being naughty – evidently not

Better be good - “for goodness sake”

Tradition would tell us that good gifts will come to those who are “good” and others get coal or nothing?

Does this represent many people’s concept of Jesus/God? What is wrong with it?

Naughty or nice, good or bad, pouting/crying, etc. are not sins against Santa. Santa is not the offended party he just wants to see us do good and offers rewards to encourage it. We have no command to worship Santa, nor would it be reasonable to worship Santa as he is not God.  Santa has no right or means to punish evil only to withhold good rewards and let’s be honest, because Santa grades on a very generous curve - no one ever really gets coal (sounds like the school system).

What about Jesus/God as described in the Bible? Many similarities: God - knows all, sees all, concerned about moral choices, consequences for choices/sin. But there are important differences also: sin is against God, God does not grade on a curve and God's punishment for sin is real and demanded by His nature!

One very significant difference between Santa and Jesus/God is the motivation for doing good. While Santa says to be good "for goodness sake" and better gifts, God says obey in response to the reality that He is God and worthy of our worship, love and obedience – for His sake. In the Old Testament when telling the Israelites the Ten Commandments God begins the list by reminding them Who He is:  

Deut. 5:6 ‘I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 7 ‘You shall have no other gods before Me. (NKJV)

God’s command for obedience starts with who He is. Recognizing God’s greatness/power and worshiping/serving Him above everything else is not only required, but completely reasonable based on who He is! You can be indifferent to Santa and simply miss the gifts, but you are guilty of sin if you don’t worship and serve God!

Santa assumes we are naturally able to do good and are worthy of rewards. Jesus/Bible says no one is good and that we need forgiveness for our sins and to be born again through the Holy Spirit before we can do any God pleasing acts (John 3:3-8, Rom. 3:9-20, 8:7-10). Interesting side note – if you were to watch the movie Santa Clause is coming to town (1970 version) you would find the following song  (excerpt below) where Kris Kringle advises the evil warlock on how he can be changed:

Lyrics by Bass, Jules

If you want to change your direction
If your time of life is at hand
Well don’t be the rule be the exception
A good way to start is to stand

Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking cross the floor
Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking out the door

If I want to change the reflection
I see in the mirror each morn
You mean that it's just my election
To vote for a chance to be reborn

I know what your thinking, surely I have better things to do than pick on Santa, a children’s movie and song lyrics. You might even think I a blaming a movie, a song or Santa for some of the worlds spiritual ills. I am actually saying the very opposite, rather than Santa being a bad spiritual influence, I would suggest that he is simply the product of our natural self-exalting religious tendencies. We all want to believe we are good (or at least better than many), that we will receive rewards from God (Heaven) for our good works and if we do need some kind of rebirth we can muster up the needed resources from within. I would assume that everyone’s god looks like Santa unless instructed differently by the word of God, through the Spirit of God, for the glory of God!

So you better watch out – that you don’t start thinking you are naturally good and deserving gifts. We are only accounted as good and enabled to practice true God honoring obedience, because of what Jesus accomplished for us through His death, burial and resurrection - He gets all the glory and He is the gift!

Eph. 4: ⁴ But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, ⁵ even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), ⁶ and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷ that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, ⁹ not of works, lest anyone should boast. (NKJV)