Recently, on Twitter, the pope said, "Let us entrust the new year to Mary, mother of God, so that peace and mercy may grow throughout the world." Now the question becomes is: How should Christians think about this? Behind this is the Roman Catholic Church's concept of Mariology, doctrine about Mary; and also, the authorities that we as Christians have in our lives. Is it just scripture alone that is the highest infallible authority in the possession of the church, or does the pope also speak for God? Does the Roman Catholic Church speak for God?

There are several issues here to think about and talk about together. The first is: Should we entrust the year to Mary, and what would that even mean? To step back a little bit, let's ask: What would it mean to entrust our lives, entrust the passage of time, to a person who is dead and yet in heaven with God? What would it mean? What are they going to be able to accomplish? It's interesting, because the Roman Catholic Church encourages people to pray to Mary, that she is a co-mediatrix with Jesus, and she helps mediate on our behalf.

Let's just ask the simple question: If I could pray to Mary or I could pray to Jesus, under what circumstances would I ever choose Mary? Or: Under what circumstances would I choose anyone besides Jesus, and how would that make sense? If you can ask God for something, why would you ever ask anyone else for that same sort of thing? You wouldn't. That doesn't make sense. So why would I entrust the year to someone who's not God, who is just in the same state I'm going to be in one day when I die? I wouldn't, not if I could entrust that year to God.

Because Mary is incapable of affecting things down here on earth. Mary is incapable of hearing our prayers here. How could a human being who now lives in heaven with God hear and understand all the prayers that are coming at them? They couldn't. There's no evidence that we suddenly gain this new skill and ability of being able to hear prayers in multiple languages at the same time just because we die. That's an attribute of God, not of man.

I'm not going to entrust the year to a person besides God. I think it's interesting that Paul's speech that he gives at the Areopagus in Acts 17 actually has something here to say. Here's what he says.

”The God who made the world and everything in it is the lord of heaven and earth, and does not live in temples made by human hands. Nor is he served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation to inhabit the whole earth, and he determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands.

”God intended that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he's not far each of us. For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, we are his offspring. Therefore, being offspring of God, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by man's skill or imagination. Although God overlooked the ignorance of earlier times, he now commands all men, everywhere, to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead."

There is a lot in there. I want to be sensitive to the original context here, but one thing Paul's saying here is it's in God that we live and move and have our being. Without God nothing would exist. Nothing would continue to exist except for God's sustaining influence. “He holds all things together," Colossians 1 says. Why would I pray to Mary instead of the God in whom I find life and breath and in whom my life has meaning? Why woul…