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The $71-a-ticket megachurch Christmas show tearing Dallas apart… and the furious fans saying ‘Jesus would be flipping tables’
UK Daily Mail ^ | 12/11/2025 | MARYANN MARTINEZ

The Meaning of Christmas?

 

The $71-a-ticket megachurch Christmas show tearing Dallas apart… and the furious fans saying ‘Jesus would be flipping tables’
UK Daily Mail ^ | 12/11/2025 | MARYANN MARTINEZ

The cast includes 8 sheep, 3 camels, 3 peacocks, 2 donkeys, 2 zebras, 2 alpacas, and 1 horse. The animals come from Hedrick Exotic Animal Farm in Kansas which also provides animals to the Texas State Fair.

Talking about Foods

 

SAD is the acronym created by Dr. Joel Fuhrman - the Standard American Diet:

SAD is long on -

1. Fats, 
2. Salt, 
3. Sweeteners, juices, and 
4. High blood sugar carbohydrates (corn, popcorn, white rice, white flour, Wonderbread (I wonder if is bread).

The processed food we buy at McDonalds is very expensive and loaded with all the wrong ingredients, including orange juice (orange flavored syrup, no fiber).

The Chubby Chunky Industry - two components - has an ideal place in our budgets. Our SAD is super expensive for what it pretends to be, such as spending dollars for pennies worth of colas, burgers, and fries. And SAD is very harmful to our health at the same time. Most SAD solutions are expensive.

The Chubby side is exemplified by the enormous aisles at Walmart 

• for sweets, 
• for soda pop, and 
• for snacks. 

At the largest WM in Arkansas, second largest in America, each category above has one side of an entire aisle devoted to that product, plus impulse displays as the laden shopping carts are pushed toward the do-it-yourself cashier.

Being overweight has become the American norm, and that brings us to the Chunky department. The medicine, food, and fad industries endeavor to keep us obese and craving for even more destructive habits. 

First, let us name some obvious outcomes of all that fat - or as the Chubby businesses say - all that wasted money:

• Obesity often causes high blood sugar...diabetes.
• Obesity drives up blood pressure, which leads to cardio-vascular problems, heart-attacks, and stroke.
• Obesity starves the body and brain of good food while substituting bad food for the good.
• Obesity leads to overlapping medical disorders because one thing like diabetes will also cause many other problems, including the need to amputate.
• Obesity drives people to try various useless, expensive, and dangerous fads to reduce weight. Doctors cluck their tongues in pity and offer all kinds of expensive prescription medicine that can be even more dicey than insulin.

Creation-Based Health Ideas - Or, As My Parents Used To Say - "Eat Your Vegetables! Do you know what is wrong with you kids? You are spoiled. SPOILED ROTTEN!"

Dad never saw the irony in his speeches about eating good food.

I was brought to repentance by the combination of overweight, high blood pressure, and high blood sugar. I also had low energy from low potassium thanks to too many colas used to promote energy. 

I found an unread copy of Eat To Live! by Joel Fuhrman in my own library. 

First, I began eliminating bad habits - like ice cream twice a day. One reader observed that our deep freezer was devoted to ice cream treats of many varieties. I also dropped desserts in general.

I knew I could drop 10 pounds easily that way, but I needed to do more than repeat failures of the past. 

I had to flip my habits from 100% SAD to 95% beans, greens, fruits, and nuts. That took my weight down another 25 pounds. I faced food cravings by daily weighing. I lost weight steadily with raw spinach and chickpeas, plus many different vegetables. If I indulged in a craving, I could see my weight go up in the next day or two.

The number one weapon against craving is spinach by the bowl. If I have one or two large bowls of raw spinach, the craving goes away a long time and I am not stuffed, quite unlike a SAD binge. I thought I hated all that spinach; I hated the dressings instead. There are good dressings that are not blobs of fat, but I simply like spinach alone. No, I will not say lettuce alone is Honeymoon Salad.

Almonds and walnuts are also good to blunt craving. They are a daily requirement for nutrition and low cholesterol. 

I enjoy four fruits a day, trying out new ones I previously ignored - two apples at least, pears, cherries, peaches, oranges, blueberries. Yes, I swapped apple pie ala mode for apples.

My main food for the day is a quart of frozen vegetables, warmed up on the gas stove:

1. Chickpeas or other beans, like red or lima.
2. Frozen, chopped collard greens or kale. Mustard and other greens are also good.
3. Frozen peas because I always enjoyed them.
4. Frozen chopped onions, green and red peppers.
5. Tomato paste or low-salt tomato sauce.
6. Sometimes broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms.

All these ingredients are incredibly low-cost. Remember the Roman Emperor who bonked his head on the pillar and moaned, "Varus - Give me back my legions" ? That is how I feel about the money previously not spent on vegetables, greens, nuts, and fruit.

Some good side-effects of vegetables I did not expect:

• My doctor was shocked that walnuts dropped my bad cholesterol to zero, but he showed me the blood sugar was up with ice cream. He scared me with that A1C level, so I went full-Fuhrman and brought down BP and blood sugar.
• I previously accepted painful arthritic hands, but now that sharp pain is 90% gone and no trouble.
• I dropped a BP medicine once it was in a good range.
• I saw that antihistamines were still driving up my blood pressure, so I dropped Benadryl and Claritin, resulting in normal BP, very good sleep, and no allergic symptoms in ragweed season. Marketing tip - "Drop your allergic medicine and decrease BP and allergic symptoms!" That won't fly.

At the risk of offending the medical industry and the non-licensed food fad industries, I have to conclude -

God created many dozens of medicines through plants, herbs, fruits, and nuts. The variety of cures is simply astonishing and low in cost. 

The medical industry addresses symptoms of eating badly, but they skip over the most basic and least expensive way to cure many problems. Christina went to one cardiologist who weighed 400 pounds. I said, "How can he treat patients with a good conscience?" I told the desk clerk it was a bad idea to ask people there, "Are you ready to check out?"

  The doctor agreed that ice cream is a great tranquilizer. However...

The Necessity of Kindness without Equality

 

My favorite Luther story (from R. Bainton) is the neighbors laughing at Luther because he was washing his children's diapers outdoors. He responded, "You may laugh, but the angels look at me and bless me." 

There are so many ways to get irritated, and so many to delight.

The neighbors, mother and girls, decided to write out cards - in great detail - about their love of roses during the season, with artwork included. I did not know how much that meant to them because they were always near to take a vase and exchange more fresh flowers. I should have remembered, because women and girls easily respond to flowers. Later I saw how much that meant to them - in great detail.

The equivalent is having students (online and the old-fashioned) who take the time to say a class was very much worthwhile. Members and friends are like that, too.

Quoting Luther in another post, we should be looking out for those we are inclined to stink-eye or ignore. We can improve matters on our part, but stink-eye and ignoring will never build upon trust, humor, misunderstanding, and many more ways to improve rather than disapprove.

I have had odd experiences on the cul-de-sac. One person did not respond to roses for a long time, then waved in a friendly way. After that, there were more friendly gestures.

One tough veteran said, "I don't need roses." I said, "They are for your sainted mother, not you." He took that well. Some people need a lot of softening before something worthwhile happens. There is so much opportunity and not enough time. It is better to overcome the barrier and create some cheerfulness.

 Christina loved seeing a paraplegic and listening to him through his special computer. She was always reaching out to people will special needs.

 

Ruminating with a Friend

 

Norma Boeckler gallery - as imagined by a non-artist.

I was talking with a friend about the collapse of congregations, which are greater than anyone imagines. The first ones to go are the glory churches headed by by vain-glory ministers always selling their product, not the Gospel. 

I once looked up the early Hour of Power (which countered the Hour of Glower). The almost famous man looked and sounded fairly normal at first. His extreme gestures grew until it was it was more of a clown act, or maybe a sandcastle near the seashore, aching to dissolve. And it did.

Few seem shocked today that the Hour of Power eventually became the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange.

The glory pastors - now retired - are too many to count, but a surprising are still rising up to make themselves known again. The real issues are more like this:

1. Denominations and synods are doubly harmful in making sure sonny boy will be at the top - or equally - someone who will be driven away for being too serious, too sober, too academic. Keep track of the genetics, in-laws, and cousins. The smaller groups memorize it all and repeat solemnly. 

2. Didja ever wonder how many dullards leapt to the top, landed in a choice spot, and floundered? 

3. Only the efficacy of the Word and the Means of Grace will make a difference, no matter how glorious the outward appearances look

a. Efficacy means we always treat the effective Word of God as active through the work of the Holy Spirit. For example, when we ask for help, pardon, and relief in our prayers, they are always both asking from God and listening to God's Word.

b. Efficacy in the Means of Grace can only prove that the visible and invisible ways in which faith receive grace.

I go through folders of files and find beautiful photos and illustrations. They remind us of the grace that comes to us and others through faith in Jesus Christ the Good Shepherd.