{"id":24059,"date":"1999-12-31T16:52:44","date_gmt":"1999-12-31T16:52:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baonline.cog7engage.net\/?p=24059"},"modified":"2023-08-29T11:18:25","modified_gmt":"2023-08-29T17:18:25","slug":"is-it-wrong-to-celebrate-birthdays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baonline.cog7engage.net\/is-it-wrong-to-celebrate-birthdays\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it wrong to celebrate birthdays?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>I\u2019m interested in your stance on birthdays. Since celebrating them has pagan origins like Easter and Christmas, I think we should not. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Church does not have a doctrine on birthdays, for or against. We are aware of the claim that celebrat\u00ading them has pagan roots but not aware of proof for that claim. It is certain that birthdays were noted in Bible times, for that\u2019s the means of telling a person\u2019s age. Knowing a person\u2019s age \u2014 whether saint or sinner \u2014 was common then, too. The day and month of all sorts of Bible events are given, some celebrated and some not: the Flood (Gen. 8:13); Passover (Ex. 23:15); cleansing of the temple (2 Chron. 29:17); victory of the Jews over their enemies (Est. 9:15-22); etc.<\/p>\n<p>The day and month on which people were born, however, or the date of their death, are not commonly stat\u00aded. This is also true of the days people were converted or baptized. Still, being born or being born again \u2014 commemorating either of these is not prohibited in Scripture.<\/p>\n<p>Pharaoh celebrated his birthday with one humanitar\u00adian act \u2014 \u201che restored the chief butler to his butler-ship\u201d \u2014 and one act of vengeance \u2014 \u201che hanged the chief baker\u201d (Gen. 40:21, 22). The first doesn\u2019t make cel\u00adebrating birthdays good, and the other doesn\u2019t make celebrating birthdays bad.<\/p>\n<p>Job (3:1ff) and Jeremiah (20:14-18) thought of their birthdays as grievous because of the trouble in their lives, but such feelings do not require all of us to hate our birthdays and wish we had not been born! Jeremiah, in fact, may imply that the blessing of one\u2019s birthday was practiced. And if \u201ctheir appointed day\u201d means birthday (Job 1:4, 5) and if celebrating it was sin\u00adful, Job would not have been in doubt about whether or not they had sinned.<\/p>\n<p>Herod celebrated his birthday in a lustful and adul\u00adterous manner, leading to the execution of John the Baptist (Matt. 14:6; Mark 6:21); but this is not proof that celebrating it was wrong. His method was wrong, obviously, but not the fact of his celebration.<\/p>\n<p>The Bible gives several definitions of <em>sin<\/em>. The one that fits here is \u201cwhatever is not from faith is sin\u201d (Rom. 14:23). If we think celebrating a birthday is sin, then we should not do it \u2014 until we are convinced that such a celebration of itself is not sin.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014 Elder Roy A. Marrs\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Have a question you&#8217;d like answered? Submit it here:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[contact-form-7 id=&#8221;23927&#8243; title=&#8221;Submit a Question&#8221;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m interested in your stance on birthdays. Since celebrating them has pagan origins like Easter and Christmas, I think we should not. The Church does not have a doctrine on birthdays, for or against. We are aware of the claim that celebrat\u00ading them has pagan roots but not aware of proof for that claim. It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[705,746],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Is it wrong to celebrate birthdays? - Bible Advocate<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/baonline.cog7engage.net\/is-it-wrong-to-celebrate-birthdays\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is it wrong to celebrate birthdays? - Bible Advocate\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019m interested in your stance on birthdays. 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