Here's a great theology. You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I'm telling you why.

Santa Claus is coming to town. He's making a list and checking it twice. He's gonna find out who's naughty and nice

He sees you when you're sleeping knows when you're awake knows if you've been bad. He's omniscient for Pete's sake. And keeps lists.

Yeah, naughtiness and niceness and rewards accordingly.

This is just like the word became flesh

and we be held as glory.

It's a parallel to it, right?

Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Five centuries ago in taverns and public houses across Europe,

the masses would gather for discussion and debate over the latest ideas sweeping

the land.

From one such meeting place, a small Cambridge inn called The White Horse, the Reformation

came to the English-speaking world.

Carrying on the tradition, we're out in the malls and highways and byways, we're all hearing Christmas music,

and one of the ways of talking about the theology that we encounter at Christmas time is to look at the songs.

We've looked at the movies and one of the great classics of this time of the year for Christians especially is the Messiah. It was an oratorio composed in 1741 by

Georg Friedrich Handel. The libretto was by Charles Jenons, staunchly opposed to the deistic turn in some parts of the Church of England.

Genins, his librettist, was a reformed Anglican, who was influenced by Bishop Richard Kidder's book,

a demonstration of the Messiah from scripture

against all who reject him.

When we think of sociologist Christian Smith's definition of today's American religion as moralistic therapeutic deism, the target of

Kidder and Jenons is fairly easy to spot.

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