When our children were young, we would occasionally give in to pressure and take them to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal. If you’ve never experienced this delight, it’s a portion of highly processed child-pleasing food, in a cheerful-looking box, which includes a freebie plastic toy.
The burgers, of course, are gone in minutes; and in my experience, the toys last very little longer. Not just because they’re rubbish, but because the children know that they’re rubbish. I don’t remember any of my children ever caring about a Happy Meal toy longer than the duration of the car ride home. If something is given away for free, everyone – even a child – knows that it’s worthless.
Recently I saw a church minister post online that he was planning to baptise a child being brought up by a practicing gay couple, and asking for advice from other ministers on how to make the best of the opportunity. When a number of other ministers (myself included) suggested he should not be baptising a child where the adoptive parents were openly unrepentant, his response was, this is a great opportunity to reach the couple and their friends and family with the gospel. Why not baptise, if it would get them into church?
A cultural recovery?
Christianity appears to be having a little cultural recovery. I don’t mean for a moment that the general hostility …