Stupid Politics

I am watching the convention of the Missouri Synod on computer.  It makes me happy that I am not actually there as a delegate.  Once again, the stupid politics of our Synod is standing in the way of listening to voice of the Synod.  Points of Order are being called every few minutes -- which generally are not points of order -- taking time from discussion and deliberation.  The discussions reveal that there is an expectation among an element of the convention delegates of sinister intent.  Every step of the business of the convention is being fought and hobbled by parliamentary procedures.  Something as simple as changing the name of the circuit counselor to its historic name of circuit visitor is debated for twenty minutes, with attempts to amend and to refer it back to committee.  The single point of the resolution is to change a job title.  It was finally adopted by a significant majority, which points out that all of the parliamentary maneuvering was simply to slow or stop the business of the Synod and to obstruct the peaceful work of the convention.

I have been to many conventions -- several as a delegate.  Each convention has the same bizarre behavior.  All that this obstructionist behavior accomplishes and stopping the Synod from working together and expressing their will -- leaving us in the hands of bureaucrats to make the decisions about who we are and what we can and will do.

The people of our Synod have been denied a voice in so many ways.  Nominations from the floor now must come from a pool of names already having been nominated.  Then the convention has to vote on each nomination individually just to get them on the ballot.  There is very little voice left, and the points of order and the calling of the question, and the motions to re-commit to the committee, just robs the people of the Synod of a voice.

A Dog's Life

I was walking my dog the other day when it struck me that the dog is a good illustration for man''s sinful nature.

My dog always wants to go outside of the permitted area. If he is on a leash, he is pulling it to the end and straining to go just a little father. If he is walking free around the yard, he is always wanting to go outside of the yard. It doesn't matter how large or small the yard is, he wants to be just a little father out than I want him to go. He is well trained to voice commands, but he is always testing the limits.

If I call him, he will ignore me as if he is deaf until I get close enough to grab him, or he will comply for a moment, and, when he thinks I am not paying attention, he will head right off in the direction I just called him from. I know that he is not deaf -- he can hear me open a bag of dog-treats (or animal crackers - his favorite!) from three rooms away! But if I call him for something he would rather not do, like a bath or a haircut, he feigns deafness almost perfectly.

He likes to dawdle to sniff and what-not for no apparent reason. If I am in a hurry, this dawdling is more important than otherwise. The dog is just contrary at times.

I asked him (yeah, like the animal can understand everything I say) why he always wants to go where I have made clear he is not supposed to go, and it struck me that all of his behaviors are like those of any person facing the law of God. We want to go where we are told not to go. We always want to test the limits. If nothing is permitted, we push to get away with something. If nothing seems to be forbidden, we go to outrageous lengths to find some way to offend or transgress. And we humans seem to be almost perfectly deaf to the Word of God, until we get into trouble, or we want something from Him very badly.

Seeing his behavior as an object lesson on human sin and contrariness has made it no easier to put with, it just makes me laugh at myself, and thank God that He is more patient and forgiving than I am often minded to be. In some ways, the situation reminds me of that poem, To a Louse, by Robert Burns - "O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! "

 Sometimes I think that is why God gave me a dog.

The Natural Knowledge of God

The CTCR recently released the report on the Natural Knowledge of God called for by the Synod in Convention in 2007.  It took six years of study and writing to assemble what might just as well have accomplished by directing the Synod to read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, cited copiously by the report.

I have no argument with the report’s content or conclusions.  It is well written, if somewhat dense linguistically.  Your average layman will give up long before they get to the application of the sixty-some page report, but for those who make it all the way through, the ‘application’ section is written like a theological paper, as well.  The weakness of the report is that it is not easily accessible to the average reader, laity or clergy.  It should have ended with a short arch-books type of summary for the less cerebral reader.

The report not a fun read, even for one interested in the topic.  It held a treasury of quotes and analysis, and in that sense was a joy to behold.  Of course, there were issues and arguments that were missing, some old favorite chestnuts that one might wish to have seen, but in a report of this brevity, it is perfectly clear why some editorial choices had to made.  After reading the report, however, the first question to come to mind was “Now, what do I do with all of this in terms of witness?”.  Since that was the point of the report, one must wonder why it was entrusted to a body of the nature of the CTCR, and not assigned instead to a group of pastors who have to make what they present palatable and comprehensible to the common man in the pew.

Frankly, four pages ought to have accomplished what the entire report says – not in detail, but in substance.  Those four pages would have answered the original question of the Synod in convention more clearly and to greater profit, I suspect.  The discursus on the theological debates over the natural knowledge of God was informative, but did not really serve the question of how one might apply the natural knowledge of God to witnessing endeavors.  The short excepts (or so they seemed, although unattributed in the footnotes) from other writings seemed most to-the-point, as examples of using the ideas discussed in the report.  One could devoutly wish that there were more of them and less of the dense and stilted prose that made of the body of the document.

The End of the World

(Post originally written in early January)

Is the end of the world coming? of course.  Is it coming soon?   I hope so.  But there is no sure way to tell. I see the natural disasters, the fires and floods and such as God taking blessings away by the handful. He does it because the nation which He has so abundantly blessed has taken their wealth and blessings as something they have earned an deserved and used them in ungodly ways. The popularity of divorce (not ones that are needed like yours, but those where they just get tired of one another after a year or two), open sexual immorality, the promotion of homosexuality, the openness of porn, the popularity of violence, the "me-first" of our culture and the abandonment of the church and of faith and worship - these things are being addressed, I believe, by the withdrawal of blessings.

It doesn't happen all at once, but God does some here and some there, calling us to repentance. The troubles will fall on everyone, in general, but those that trust in the Lord will have their comfort in Him, and will show the way back to the Lord. Whether society will follow or not is another question. Finally, the nation will fall because of the corruption of society. How few are not participating in the corruption! You don't need to be a prostitute to share in or at least tacitly approve of general immorality. Look at the abortion issue! We have a candidate for office who supports infanticide! He is running neck and neck in the polls with the other candidate. Wouldn't you think that believing it was a fundamental right to murder babies would disqualify someone from office? I am not just talking about abortion, but putting to death a baby that survives the first attempt on his or her life.

Church after church drives their pastor out for not being fun enough, or for holding faithfully to the teachings of the Scripture. Okay, so none of those people may have murdered their neighbor in his sleep. But they told God to take His truth and shove it, and demanded to be entertained instead of hearing the Word of God and worshiping. In their unfaithfulness, they close the door to those who have not yet heard the Word, no longer allowing the truth to be proclaimed in all its power, so that they might be saved -- thereby murdering souls. They spend a fortune on their clothing and toys and entertainments, and allow their pastors to live below society's standards, their churches to fall into disrepair, and the mission to the unbelieving to die a slow death of underfunding. They sing "Take My Life and Let It Be", but they don't mean a word of it. "Take my silver and my gold, not a mite would I withhold." Yeah, right!

When the church members had only two sets of clothes - church clothes and work clothes - and did not even need closets, just a nail on the bedroom door, the church built hospitals and orphanages, and wonderful church buildings, and schools for their children. Now we are rich, and cannot afford the school, and the pastor's support is too much, and no one has time for bell choir or church activities. We don't do hospitals or Orphanages any more. We leave that for Uncle Sam.  The church may be struggling, but Walmart is doing great business, and new restaurants open every week or two, and every child seems to have a cell-phone and an I-pod. Who is innocent?

The crap on TV is there because people will watch it. I am as guilty as the next guy, there, but if I could watch The old shows - Lucy, Beaver, Sgt. Bilko, Uncle Milty, Crusader Rabbit, I would. I am so tired of seeing women in their underclothes in commercials, and hearing about feminine hygiene products, I could scream. And who gives a rip whether some guy has E.D.? Then there are lawyers advertising for people to authorize them to sue someone. They don't tell you that as a member of a class you might get a buck forty-nine, while the lawyer gets ten or twelve million dollars. Open, stupid, hateful greed! Where is the innocent person?

Could someone as shallow and dangerous as Obama be a symptom of the wrath of God against a society gone terribly wrong, and all the evil in our country? Yeah, it is possible.

The Official Publication

One of the most telling and troubling signs on the horizon for the LC-MS is the Lutheran Witness letters.  People write in, and editors choose to print false doctrine and broadsides aimed at our confession without a word of correction.  It presents the false ideas of those who are clearly not solidly grounded in Lutheran doctrine (that is to say, the Scriptures) alongside sound doctrine as though both are equally valid and acceptable.

It is true that writers can write in to correct the false teacher, but their letter appears a month later -- ineffective for making the point that what was written was error, because it appears not as an official correction, but as an expression of another, equally valid idea.  Fancy re-design of the publication and even sound articles published in the magazine will not work to promote or preserve sound doctrine when the apparent policy is to publish truth and error side by side as equally valid positions.  Someone needs to review their Krauth.

I append the Krauth quote for the novice to his works:

The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology, by Dr. Charles Porterfield Krauth, original copyright 1871, reprinted by permission of Fortress Press by Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1963.

Pages 195-196

     A human body may not only live, but be healthy, in which one lobe of the lungs is gone; another may be sickly and die in which the lungs are perfect.  Nevertheless, the complete lungs are an essential part of a perfect human body.  We still truly call a man a man, though he may have lost arms and legs; we still call a hand a hand, though it may have lost a finger, or be distorted.  While, therefore, we freely call systems and men Christian, though they lack a sound sacramental doctrine, we none the less consider that doctrine essential to a complete Christian system, and to the perfect faith of a Christian man.  The man who has lost an arm, we love none the less.  If he lost it by carelessness, we pity his misfortune, yet we do not hold him free from censure.  But, when he insists, that, to have two arms, is a blemish, and proposes to cut off one of ours, then we resist him.  Somewhere on earth, if the gates of hell have not prevailed against the Church, there is a Communion whose fellowship involves no departure form a solitary article of Christian faith -- and no man should be willing to be united with any other Communion.  The man who is sure that there is no such Communion is bound to put forth the effort to originate it.  He who knows of no Creed which is true to the Rule of Faith, in all its articles, should at once prepare one that is.  Every Christian is bound either to find a Church on Earth, pure in its whole faith, or to make one.  On the other hand, he who says that the Church is wrong, confesses in that very assertion, that if the Church be right, he is an errorist; and that in asking to share her communion while he yet denies her doctrine, he asks her to adopt the principle that error is to be admitted to her bosom, for as an errorist and only as an errorist can she admit him.

        But the practical result of this principle is one on which there is no need of speculating; it works in one unvarying way.  When error is admitted into the Church, it will be found that the stages of its progress are always three.  It begins by asking toleration.  Its friends say to the majority: You need not be afraid of us; we are few, and weak; only let us alone; we shall not disturb the faith of others.  The Church has her standards of doctrine; of course we shall never interfere with them; we only ask for ourselves to be spared interference with our private opinions.  Indulged in this for a time, error goes on to assert equal rights.  Truth and error are two balancing forces.  The Church shall do nothing which looks like deciding between them; that would be partiality.  It is bigotry to assert any superior right for the truth.  We are to agree to differ, and any favoring of the truth, because it is truth, is partisanship.  What the friends of truth and error hold in common is fundamental.  Anything on which they differ is ipso facto non-essential.  Anybody who makes account of such a thing is a disturber of the peace of the church.  Truth and error are two co-ordinate powers, and the great secret of  church-statesmanship is to preserve the balance between them.  From this point error soon goes on to its natural end, which is to assert supremacy.  Truth started with tolerating; it comes to be merely tolerated, and that only for a time.  Error claims a preference  for its judgment in all disputed points.  It puts men into positions, not as at first in spite of their departure from the Church's faith, but in consequence of it.  Their recommendation is that they repudiate that faith, and position is given to them that teach others to repudiate it, and to make them skillful in combating it.

A Little Here, A Little There . . .

"As was laid out above, the office of pastor is Word-based, not ritual-based. To distinguish one pastor from another on the basis of education, so that the non-M.Div. pastor cannot “consecrate the elements” makes an unacceptable distinction between the means of grace, as if consecrating the elements is the chief task of the pastoral office. This has never been the Lutheran position. Furthermore, the Lutheran Confessions do not regard “ordination” as that which qualifies one for the office; rather, it is that the candidate be “rightly called,” of which ordination may be viewed as a recognition by the wider church of this man’s training and call. However, by no means is ordination a necessary element."  -- from the St. Louis Seminary statement about the SMP Program.

This is what results when a church body abandons its confession.  Someone got the strange idea that it was okay to let those who were not pastors preach from the pulpit.  At first it was just the odd "special" occasion.  The Augsburg Confession surely never meant to restrict anyone from speaking the Word of God, and, after all, a pulpit is just a place.  It has no specific New Testament sanction.  AC XIV did not intend to stifle such free speech, so they said.

Men of good intention then marked the distinction of the office with the administration of the Sacrament.  A retreat from Augsburg, for sure, but intended to maintain the distinction.

Now the seminary can see no distinction in ordination -- or no need for it,  So, the unordained can preach AND administer the Sacrament.  We don't really need trained pastors, after all, we no longer have any confession to maintain.  Welcome to the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod - Baptist Association.  If you feel the call, get up and start preaching.  If you can gather a crowd, you are a minister.  If your "congregation" gives money to the Synod, through the District, you will have their hearty support.

The only thing required in reality to be a Missouri Synod pastor is the permission of the District office.  And if you don't have their support, training and ordination is not of much use to you.  They will even help your critics remove you - and see to it that you do not get called again.

What Is Missing?

We hear of a new scandal every day.  Our government is going all 1984 on us.  Persecution for the Christian faith is undoubtedly not far behind.

Have you noticed what is missing?

There is a ridiculously obvious absence of outrage or even real concern by our elected representatives.  They passed the laws that enable this totalitarian shift, and they have no concern for us.  They apparently see themselves as insulated from the effects of this change in policy.

I recognize the few voices of concern, and that the Pravda-esque Media immediately dives into the effort to marginalize those who speak out, but there are too few speaking.  Apparently, free-enteprise and a representative republic (for the people, or the people and by the people) is only for small countries and pre-industrialized civilizations.  Once you get too big or too prosperous, shameless socialism and oppression is required. 

The Democrats have taken the lead in finally bringing us to a state-controlled, socialist society.  The Republicans are taking us there too, but first they have to run against the way things are before they acquiesce to the need to put us serfs back in our place.  Thank-you congress for undoing the Revolutionary war and bringing us back to the monarchy.

It does get a little tiring now and then to watch those we elect to preserve our liberties betraying us.

Mendacity as a Virtue

Here is another sign that our society is collapsing: Mendacity is now proclaimed as a virtue.  Mendacity is defined as the tendency to lie, or lying itself.  People have always lied, throughout history.  For much of this nation’s history, deliberate deceit has been considered a bad thing.  In modern America, it is now considered a virtue.  Oh, not by everyone, just by the leaders and shapers of public opinion (such as the media) and such.  Mendacity is a good thing.

It was probably growing for a long time unnoticed.  Every politician knows that a little deceit is a powerful campaign tool.  It began to flower when Bill Clinton was president.  When he boldly lied about his relations with that female intern, the media gushed over how well he lied and how useful a lie could be.  Articles even appeared in various publications about how lying was good, useful, profitable, and healthy at times.

Today, politicians, particularly the president, can openly and boldly say things that are easily demonstrable as lies not only without being challenged on the deceit, but being applauded for saying that which is false as though it were true.  Advocates for various political agendas can, if the goal is “politically correct”, openly say things that are false to advance their agenda without fear of being challenged.  Their patent lies will be cited, quoted, and rehearsed by the media and others who would endorse their cause.  Challenging the veracity of such obvious deception is attacked as an assault on the speaker, or adherence to outdated ideas, or *gasp!* fundamentalism of some sort.

Public policy is now being formulated on the basis of mendacity.  The ten percent of the population that pays eighty percent of the taxes paid in this country are still not paying their “fair share”.  The fifty percent of the population who pay less than five percent of the taxes are overburdened.  The mentally ill individual that misuses a firearm tragically is evidence that the average, law-abiding citizen should have his or her second amendment rights curtailed.  The cooling of the earth over the last two decades is proof of “global warming”.  The dramatic increase in the world population of polar bears is evidence that they are endangered.  The erosion of our economy, with higher unemployment, fewer (by millions) in the workforce, and a deep decline in average incomes in our nation is cited as evidence of nearly robust recovery from a recession even though marked by failures of businesses and banks on a scale not seen in America in over fifty years.  And the massive increase in the deficit of this nation is proof that we are not spending too much, . . . somehow.

Politicians lie to get elected and then lie to explain their nearly inexplicable actions.  Media personalities misrepresent the positions of politicians and other public figures – and their own statements of the past – depending on whether they wish to advance or hinder the work of those public figures about which they report.  What is a virtue for one is a sin for another.  The double standard is breath-taking.  Criminal activity by some hardly merits mention, but taking a sip of water during a speech is proof of some cosmic failure in another.  Even when they acknowledge a lie, they may often marvel at how effective it has been, without correcting it or decrying the deceit. For such people, mendacity is a virtue to be admired rather than a failure or character flaw.

I could expand this post by a discussion of false doctrine and unfaithful church practices that are being advanced, but it would make this post much longer.  Suffice it to say that those who are charged with defending the truth often do not, and those who should know better follow the crowd rather than the Lord in their teachings.  There are some faithful, but far too few.  This is the one place where deceit is to be expected.  The Lord promised us that it would be so.  It is not a good thing, but it is a mark of the times and of the truth of the prophecies that such things (and such people) would happen.

No society can stand for long without reality as its foundation.  No political system can endure the embrace of the lie for long.  The Church alone can stand in such an environment, and that only because God is control and will not allow His Church to disappear completely.  The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  Deceit will inevitably destroy such a society, however, because no one will know what to stand for, or where true value lies.  Perhaps that is the reason for the adoption of mendacity as a virtue.  The goal may well be the dissolution of our nation as it exists and the establishment of something other.  If things don’t change, I suspect the great American experiment with freedom and democratic ideals is over, and although it was a great success, it has been manipulated into failure in the end.

May God have mercy on us all.

The Time Is Right

I am wrestling with a cold.  I am too sick to do anything productive, so I was looking at various things that popped up in Google -- articles and blogs and the like.  I saw nothing enormously good, so it was a reasonable sick-time activity.

I noticed a number of pieces, blogs and such, that focused on spiritual sounding topics from a non-spiritual perspective.  One listed twelve rules of a personal philosophy about how to become a better you.  Another observed the tendency of people in our modern world to invent things to be distressed about: Zombies, phony apocalypses, potential but unlikely disasters and the like.  One writer saw the problem as boredom.  Another saw it as a flaw in human nature.  Many of the articles sounded like Christian writings of our era, only struggling to not sound Christian.

The sense I came away from the articles (as a group) with was how the world really needs what Christ has provided.  One article actually used a progression of something like 'malady -repentance - redemption'.  There was no mention of Christ or how this closely followed the sin-repentance-redemption of the Christian Gospel.  But the world around us is trying to make sense of what only God can explain.  They want a self-improvement program that echoes what the Gospel teaches us about our conduct as His people.  They are bored with this decaying world and need something to focus them and lead them through to a salvation of some sort.  They need the Law and the Gospel, they just don't know it, and they don't want the misrepresentations that so many religious bodies advance instead of the Gospel.

Jesus had it right, and it is still true today: The fields are white unto harvest.  Pray the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into the fields.

Without a thought

The sorrowful events at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, have inspired a new and ferocious round of calls for "gun control", by which they generally mean dis-allowing the Second Amendment and taking all guns from law-abiding citizens everywhere.

The events at the school are terrible.  They are, however, no worse than the Benghazi murders, except in scale.  They are no more of a tragedy (and no less!) than any of the murders that take place routinely in this country.  The sad fact is that if the  gunman had no access to firearms, he could still kill.  The progress of this twisted soul was aided by the legal requirement that no law-abiding person in that place have a gun, unless he or she might be a police officer -- which apparently was not present at the school.  There was no one who could have effectively responded to the evil-doer with the gun.  That requirement is part of the agenda of those who now use these unfortunate deaths to promote further gun-control.

Scale doesn't actually justify calling this a tragedy.  For each family involved, it is a horror and great sorrow, but for mankind, or even for this nation, hardly a tragedy.  The events in Newton equal about ten minutes worth of our daily average of abortions; all children, all helpless, all murdered, deliberately, by a heartless killer.  The only real difference is that the killer in abortion has the apparent complicity of the mother of the child.  But the roughly 4,000 that die each day in abortion is surely a greater tragedy than those twenty murdered children.

Except, abortion is defended as a "right" and celebrated by many of the same people who now cry out for the disarming of the decent, law-abiding people who had nothing whatever to do with the murderous rampage of that sick man.  One Democrat politician in New York, a member of Congress, was refreshingly honest about it, saying that we need to "exploit" these shootings to advance the gun-control agenda.  Apparently, this is not a tragedy, it is an opportunity.

Do not misconstrue my remarks: I feel great compassion towards those who suffered a loss in this shooting.  For the families involved it is a tragedy.  We would only compound it if we were to withdraw from Americans yet more liberties as a response to this event, and disarm those who obey the law in the face of those, well-armed, who disregard the law and have evil intent toward the innocent.

Let us pray for those who suffered loss, and let us approach the issues before us rationally and not merely on the emotion of the moment.

No Wonder

The election board certifies the results of an election while admitting that the number of ballots cast was 141% of the registered voters.  In another state, President Obama records 100% of the votes in 56 precincts -- a feat rarely accomplished by dictators.  These are just two of the stories circulating on the internet news sites interested in reporting the truth.

It is clear that there is massive and repeated voter fraud, seemingly always in favor of the Democrat candidates, and there is hardly a peep.  Democracies die of such injuries.  What sorrow at seeing the deliberate destruction of our nation by our citizens, and overseen by those who were charged with preventing it and protecting us!

The Election

The election has locked the United States into socialism.  The newly re-elected president has already shut down oil drilling in the west.  He appears to be set on a course of deconstructing the nation into a second-rate third-world country.  The many groups that conspired to achieve this end will go down with the rest of us.  That is the single consolation in this mess.

Democrats have proven themselves the successors to the communist party - as the communist party has already said publicly.  They have no loyalty except to being elected and controlling power.  That the route they have chosen will unravel the "great experiment" that once was America means nothing to them.  They won the election.  They manipulated the electorate - deceitfully but effectively.  That is all that they care about.

The Republicans are already scrambling to surrender their convictions and go along with the flow, once again, to the detriment of the people, is one of the reasons I could never support them.  They say one thing and do what ever the Democrats tell them to.  Pathetic and miserable politicians.  The sad thing is that there are few representatives of the people in Washington.  Just rich people fighting over the scraps of power and wealth, while the rest of us go down the toilet.

By the time a change of power in Washington is possible, policies will be set in stone, and there will be only one opinion, shaded to be sure, but socialist and third-world.  I am delighted that I got to live in America while it was America.  I am saddened that I lived long enough to see it pass away.  I imagine that there is a special place reserved in hell for the media.  They betrayed us all and their own fundamental values to battle for the re-election of The President.  That reservation in hell is probably not true, but it is a comforting thought to entertain as I weather the bitter disappointment of seeing capitalism rejected and socialism embraced by the majority of this nation, and their (the Media's) willing betrayal of us all to that end.

"Trust not in princes."  That is what the Bible says.  I place my hope and comfort in the Lord.  The politics of man simply demonstrate his venality.  Still, the world has lost a wonderful thing, and the date its demise may be marked is November 6, 2012.

I have come to really dislike politics.  I cannot bring myself to vote for the "winning" side and voting for the losing ballot each election is really depressing.

Does Being Lutheran Matter Any Longer?

A number of fine posts have appeared addressing the question of whether being a Lutheran matters any longer or not.  The answers, and the clarification sought by Pastor Wilken, are excellent. Still, the question is not fully addressed until one understands that the question is actually, "Does truth matter any longer?", or "Does it really matter if one is a Christian any longer?".

One senses a reluctance in certain quarters to identify the Lutheran confession with truth, or the Lutheran faith with the Christian faith.  But what else is it?  If our confession is not the truth, why do we stand on it?  As one wise (and inspired) man once wrote, ". . . what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?  Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?  Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols?"  And, if there is a difference between the Lutheran faith and the Christian faith, that the two may be distinguished as readily as many seem to do, why do we cling to that which is not fully or truly Christian?


No, Lutheran is Christian, and Christian is Lutheran, whether one bears the label or not.  To the degree that one's faith departs from true Lutheranism, ones faith also departs from the Christian faith.  Clever and sophistic evasions of this confession abound, but the truth of the matter is that if we cannot make that confession, we ought not to call ourselves Lutheran, and ought not to seek to cling to the Lutheran faith because the failure to be able to clearly confess this truth is to manifest that one is not really Lutheran, or one does not believe themselves and their faith to be fully and honestly Christian.

Now, this is not necessarily the approach to discussing the faith that I would recommend for outreach, but it surely a reasonable approach to teaching the faith to those who also call themselves "Lutheran".  People need to learn first about the faith before they will be ready to confront the reality of the counterfeits of the faith and the distortions of it that abound in the world.  But, if those who are charged with teaching the faith cannot readily confess the truth of what they teach, and say clearly that their faith IS the Christian faith and those confessions that disagree have disagreed with historic Christianity, who will?  And, what does their refusal to say so say about them?

Are there Christians outside of what is called "The Lutheran Church"?  I believe so, and surely hope so, but they hold a Lutheran confession to the extent that their confession is Christian.  I will also admit that everyone who calls themselves a Lutheran may not truly be a Lutheran.  That is sad, but it is also one of the logical conclusions of this post.  Those believers who do not call themselves Lutheran may hate the name, "Lutheran", but if they believe in Jesus Christ, and trust in His grace and hope for the blessings of the Gospel - like forgiveness of sins, resurrection of the body, and life everlasting, all by grace - then they hold to the Lutheran, and therefore the Christian, faith. 

There is no real distinction between Christian and Lutheran, except, perhaps, the labels one chooses to apply to oneself.

VOTE!

I have been coming upon the meme in other blogs that people want to sit the election out because they do not like either candidate.  There is nothing less intelligent.  There are two men in position to be elected President.  One is the incumbent and has demonstrated what his agenda is and will be.  The other has staked out a position distinctly different from the current president.

Either Obama or Romney will be elected.  A vote for anyone but Romney strengthens the position of Obama, since incumbency has its own natural advantage.  Not voting also weakens the challenger and strengthens the incumbent.

Vote for Romney unless you want Obama as president and desire to see this nation slip into third world insolvency.

Choose.  Either you want Obama, or you want someone else.  Happily or sadly, only one man is in the position to be that someone else. 

If you love Romney, vote Romney. 

If you want Obama vote Obama.

If you honestly don't care, then vote anything but Romney, or don't bother voting.  But trust me, you WILL care within just months of the election, should Obama win re-election.

If you want a change in the occupant of the White House, vote Romney.

It really is just that simple.

Vote.  No matter what your political position is, VOTE!  It is a gift from God that we have the right do do so.  Use that gift.

Its Not Error.

The troubles in the church are always doctrinal.  Someone is trying to introduce something alien.  Usually it is called "something new", but as it says in Ecclesiastes 1:9, there is nothing new under the sun.

Typically such alien intrusions are referred to as "error".  By that word, people tend to want to communicate that something is wrong.  But the word carries with it a connotation of a mistake.  When teachers in the modern church try to introduce something contrary to Scriptures and the Confessions, it is not a mistake, a misstep of reason, or a misunderstanding, it is deliberate evil.

The conversation in Bible Study strayed to the discussion of "modern Biblical scholarship", which is to say, unbelieving Biblical scholarship.  The question was posed, "How did the field of Biblical studies become the tool of unbelievers?"  The answer involved the need, or desire, to make a name in the field for one's self, to establish credibility with others in the field, and to do or say something "new".

The problem is that the field is currently fixated on the idea that the Bible is a work of fiction.  Many Bible "experts" would not say it so bluntly.  They would talk about traditions, oral and written, about redactors and their work, and such, in a wondrously esoteric technical language, but when it comes down to the final sense, it means that the things the Bible reports probably never happened in real-world history, and that the best one can hope for from the Scriptures is a sense of the religious sensibilities of a previous and primitive people as they wrestled with life and questions of its meaning and purpose.

Even the New Testament is treated to this apriori assumption.  Scholars do not believe the individual documents were actually penned by the authors traditionally held to have written them.  The events, particularly the miraculous events, are assumed to have never occurred,  Jesus is treated as basically unknown and unknowable, and therefore the Jesus of the Bible is a work of pious fiction.  Observe the work or the Jesus Seminar as evidence of this attitude.

I hasten to note that there are believing Bible Scholars.  They are simply in the minority and have little influence on the course of the discipline.  The big thing is still to teach the documentary hypothesis, and the diversity of deities and theologies presented in the text as we have it today, and to deny and ignore rectilinear prophecy.  The precise points of the dominant hypotheses being debated is always in flux, but the discipline begins today with the notion that the text is unclear, non-historical in what it reports, and unreliable.

The scholar who absorbs this attitude must fall from the faith, for the source of all of the knowledge and the foundation of their faith is demonstrated by the "science" of their discipline to be fiction, not real, not true in the sense of correlation with reality.  To go anywhere in the field and do anything impressive and new, one must adopt the critical approach and attitudes of the discipline.  One may know the content of the discipline while rejecting that it is true, but to really do something that moves the discipline, you gotta be a member of the club, a true believer -- not in God, but in the skepticism of the discipline.

The prime mover in this industry of unbelief is, of course, the devil, the father of lies.  He would have everyone doubt and disbelieve.  Human pride plays a part, for rather than laugh unbelief off the stage, the church cautiously tiptoes around it, tries to curry the favor of the proponents of unbelief, and tries to salvage scraps of truth and knowledge, so-called, from the work of the unbelievers who study the text of God's Word.  Something in us yearns for the acceptance and validation of the "experts", even when they are clearly the enemies of our faith.  We want to wear the mantle of being "intelligent" when we should be striving to wear the mantle of being faithful.

But the false teachings and the denial of clear truth is not an error, nor should we honor it by giving it that title,  it is, more clearly now than ever before, deliberate and despicable evil.  Let them stand up and say that they reject the faith, denounce the sounds words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and have a new path, and I will respect them as committed errorists, who champion their faith, which is clearly another (see Galatians 1:6-7).  Until they do, however, they are quisling, fifth-column traitors, and deliberately and despicably evil, attempting to sneak in error to pollute the truth and lead the unwary to their destruction! 

May God ever guard and keep His faithful people from such men and women.  It is not error -- it is evil!

How Do You Identify a Hypocrite?

He (or she) would be the one who says something that is inconsistent with his own actions.

The “Green Crowd” holds Earth Day rallies and tries to impress us with their pro-environment, anti-carbon-footprint message, while running generators that spew exhaust into the air at terrific rates.

The “save the animals” crowd wear leather.

The “we must dramatically reduce the economy” crowd - Van Jones and Henry Kissinger, et al., live rich and opulent lives.  They don’t really want us all to stop using petroleum products, to reduce our consuming, and to live with less consumption – they want to do as much consuming as they can, they just want us “common folk” to have access to less.

The “fix healthcare” crowd doesn’t want to change their healthcare – just ours.  So Congress exempts itself, and the President and select others from the abysmal law they want to foist on ‘We, the People’.

I am in favor of one size fits all.  If the law applies to anyone, it must apply to everyone equally.  And we need a new enforcement system that will arrest congressmen and even the President if they - or he - should break the law.  We the People need protection from those who are elected to serve us but choose to lie to us, take advantage of us, and abuse us.  The President, our Senators, and our Congressmen and women (and all their staff and appointees) need to be subject to the law and liable to arrest and prosecution just like any citizen, or we do not have a free country, or a representative republic, but an oligarchy.

Those who say one thing and do another are hypocrites - and often dangerous.

T'ain't Necessarily So.

I am a pastor who has experienced the aggressive attempt to force me out of the ministry.  I read Pastor VanMehren's letter of resignation on a popular conservative site, and although I thought it was unfortunate that he resigned, I found the typical conservative responses disheartening.  Almost every time the aggressively evil in the congregation succeed in destroying a man, some conservative jerk will make the point that it is almost never the way the pastor describes it, that there are always two sides to every story, and that the pastor did himself no favors doing this thing or that.

As a former participant in the survival game, I can attest that just because there are laymen who want to blame the pastor, and tell stories on him, does not mean that the laymen are honest.  I have stood in meetings where people I had counted as close friends in the congregation stood up and announced that I said or did something that I did not.  It was not a case of misunderstanding, it was a case of total fabrication.  And when I responded that it was simply not so, that I never said or did what was announced, others would leap to their feet and cry out that I had "attacked" and defamed the brother or sister who stood up to boldly lie.

I am not a participant in Pastor VanMeheren's situation and cannot judge the laymen's response, but the automatic assumption that the pastor is presenting perspective that does not comport with reality and that he is at least half of the problem is not necessarily justified, as many can tell from their own experiences.

We (conservatives and confessional pastors) tend to shoot our own and comfort the enemy reflexively.  I know of situations where pastors have been driven out, and the congregation (the majority of it) accused the pastor of abandoning them because they were blissfully unaware of the attacks on the pastor or the controversies that had consumed their shepherd.  Further, attempts to keep the congregation informed while the attacks proceed are decried as violations of the Eighth Commandment.

The topic of these sorts of dismissals needs to be talked about in our Synod, but when highly respected men do the cry of "It is never just the way the pastor describes it", and cows others into apologizing for even bringing the topic up, the needed discussions will never take place.

Let the churches beware: the Word of Jesus is, "He that hears you, hears Me and He that despises you, despises Me, and he that despises Me despises Him who sent Me."  Let the leaders of the church bodies and districts remember that there is a God, and He is watching how they deal both with the people of God, and His called servants.

Be What You Are, not what you are not!

The article was highlighted by a friend on Facebook.  Ontario's Premier, Dalton McGuinty, who styles himself as a Catholic, is promoting an amendment to a supposedly "anti-bullying" law which would require Catholic schools to permit the establishment of "Gay-Straight Alliances" on campus and under the school's auspices.  McGuinty cites this aberrant behavior, and the opinions behind it as a freedom of conscience, I can believe differently than others, issue.  What is actually reveals is that McGuinty does not understand what "being a Catholic" is or involves, or what Catholic doctrine is.

The Canadian Premier is a fine example of what is rampant in the Western Church today.  A significant segment of those who present themselves as Christians, Baptists, Lutherans,and so forth, are not what they pose as, or think that they are.  Too many don't know what their church bodies teach, and when they know they disagree and feel that such disagreement does not alter their status.

Their denominational bodies may not protest, but reality does.  One does not become a Lutheran, for example, by simply adopting the name and saying that they are such.  Even those who start as Lutherans cease to be such when they cling to and espouse teachings and values that are in contradistinction to the clear teaching of historic Lutheranism.  Entire church bodies have forfeited their character as Lutheran by proclaiming this or that which is contrary to the Scriptures and inconsistent with the Lutheran Confessions.  They continue to use the name, because their is no body on earth that honestly regulates such usage, but they are no longer Lutheran.  They are not, in some cases, even Christian any longer.

My appeal would be for honesty.  If you don't want to hold to the doctrines that have historically identified a belief system, then don't but surrender the good name of whatever it is that you once pretended to be, and find or invent your own name.

If you do not, then be prepared to be called out as a deceiver and a seducer and a hypocrite of the first order.  Claim the name that fits your confession and stop trying to claim a confession you no longer confess!

My Confession

Serously, Call Jerry Goetz
His Mission is truly worthy!

I cannot tell you why it is.  Not yet. But it troubles me to my soul when I see my brother pastors, retired men I truly respect, seeking opportunities to preach the Gospel in emails and Facebook, and such.

I understand their zeal.  I share it.  I just feel like they quit too early.

I have the same sorrow about those who left the Missouri Synod for solid confessional reasons.,  Obviously I don't share their decisions, but I understand their reasons and I support them.  I love these brothers and sister of mine (see, Ste. Em, I respect and admire you also).  But I don't share their decisions.  I have chosen a different path, a path they have rejected and disclaimed.  Their condemnations rest heavy on my soul, but I believe they are in error.  Not the error of making the wrong choice, of course, but the error of condemning  the differing confession --- or path.

Some of my brothers, toward whom I would look for support in my struggle, have condemned me for not abandoning my call and the first church body that I took my oath of ordination within.  They leave me to doubt whether my confession, shared with them, is honored by them or disdained by them.

Take note, fellow pastors, and deaconesses, that your swift condemnations are brutal and difficult to bear.  I have counted you as my brothers and sisters, and now your words have condemned me for not being as swift as you to abandon my first confession.  I rejoice that you can, with such facility, deny that to which you have proclaimed life-long fidelity.  I cannot.  I serve a body of believers (my congregation)  who have stood shoulder to shoulder with me in the confession of the faith.  I cannot deny them, and I will not move on without their agreement and confession. But you call me coward and unfaithful for not following your sudden change of commitment.  but let us leave that issue behind.

The issue I began with are those pastors who retired, and now are seeking "preaching engagements".  If you are retired, then honor your theology, and await a call.  Let the Lord call you to speak.

You know, I observed the pitiful practice of the "Reformation Lands Tour".  Pastors, or those who once held that highest office in the church, seeking laymen to pay inflated prices to facilitate their travel to the holy land, or somewhere in Europe.  It is an abuse of the laity to trick them into paying your way to the Holy Land.

Anyhow,  those brothers of mine, and I do still call them brothers, who call out for preaching opportunities:  listen to your theology, and not to the spirit of our age.  When the Lord calls you, He calls you.  Do not advertise.  Advertise the mission, but not your desire to preach.  Ask for the Lord's blessing, but not for the preaching date.  There is something truly creepy and unfaithful about seeing those who were faithful messengers of the Gospel peddling the message and seeking opportunities to preach.  I cannot tell you what it is -- someone will, doubtless, write a gripping and astute theological piece about it some day, but there is something truly  wrong and sick about such seeking.  The verse that comes to mind is something about casting one's pearls before swine.

I confess.  I often find my unease with what is happening is correct while it precedes my understanding of the theological problem.  I can only say with certainty that something is amiss.  If you want to preach, serve a parish.  If you want to be "retired", sit down, and shut up.  Or at least, join a parish and participate as a member.

Honesty

As I watch Hollywood celebrities stand up and march for liberal and anti-American causes and politics, I wonder why movies don't come with disclaimers:  "I am a communist!", or "I stand for the destruction of the very society that has made me rich!", or "I am glad that you are making me rich, but I oppose you ever getting rich!"

Celebrity after celebrity gets rich on capitalism, and seems to think the system owes them that, but then they stand next to Castro, or Chavez, and condemn the society and the people that made them rich and notorious.  They prove themselves right, we are stupid to make such imbeciles famous, rich, or influential, but they are morons to condemn that which made them rich and influential.

Movies should come with disclaimers:  "The film you are about to see employs idiots who will try to destroy you and your economic well-being.  Purchase a ticket with the knowledge that you are shooting yourself in the head."