Indifferent Indifference

My wife played a little bit of the sermon tape her parents gave us to check out. They told us the sermon was really really good, and that it related to the differences between them (general Bible church type baptistic evangelicalism) and us (Calvinistic Reformed Presbyterians). I immediately thought to myself that the sermon couldn't be all that good... but it was worse than I thought. The pastor, preaching from Romans 14, said that keeping Easter and Christmas (though admittedly pagan holidays) was indifferent, BUT it's indifferent in the kind of way that Christians should keep those holidays [in other words, though both pagan and indifferent, yet Christians ought to keep Christ-Mass and Ishtar). To boot, he goes on to say that the whole predestination vs. freewill debate is an indifferent matter. Could be worse I guess... Rachel's uncle sent us an old picture of him and his buddy, a mere cardinal at the time the photo was taken, Joseph Ratzinger, who of course is the new Pope, pictured below between to effeminately dressed fruity looking guys: