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?
The sacrament of sacrilege
Many people were understandably horrified when the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics included sacrilegious mockery of our Lord’s Last …