Losing our yesterday. . .

Quotes about from those who laud the study of history to those who abhor it.  We seem to have gone past Henry Ford's rebuke (history is bunk) and learned to despise our past.  We are not only more and more ignorant of that past but more and more uncomfortable with it.  That says a great deal about us -- more about us than our yesterdays.

Part of the gift of victory is the ability of the victorious to write history.  Of course, those who lost are rightfully suspicious of and antagonist toward the privilege of victory.  Remarkably, the victors are not all self-congratulatory.  We have written some honest and fair surveys of our history over the years -- even before we had a woke culture to tell us how bad it was.  At least we knew our history.  We may have struggled to come to terms with the darker parts of that history but we knew its study was valuable and its familiarity was key to any hope of improvement.

I wish I could say that feeling remained.  The fruits of many methodologies are born in both our suspicion of how history has been told and our delight in painting with a broad brush the offenders and their offenses according to modern standards.  In studying Scripture we learned to be skeptical that we could ever really know the Jesus of history but it was enough for us to know that the Jesus of history was certainly very different than the Christ of the Bible.  Everything became a conspiracy theory and the center of the story was always different than what the text said.  This discomfort with history has moved well past religion and made us strangers to our own stories.  Either we have rewritten those stories or we have stopped telling them.  In either case, we have become strangers to our past.

Losing our yesterday will do little to improve our tomorrow.  What it will do is divide us even more and leave us conflicted, isolated, and ignorant.  The perfect example of this is how liberals and progressives snuggle up to the Palestinian cause, Islam, and terrorism against the Jews and Israel.  Do we really think that our American ideals have more in common with the terrorist and theocratic rule of Middle Eastern Islamic nations than they do with Israel?  It is a catalyst of ignorance and idealism that have made friends from those who should be enemies -- unless these same progressives and liberals are okay with the oppression of women and the death penalty for homosexuals.

I wish this were simply a crisis of conflicting values but it is more.  As we lose touch with our own history and lose confidence with the accuracy of its story, we are left with nothing to guide us but feelings and a distorted sense of what is right and what is wrong.  How else can we reconcile a culture which insists upon the fundamental right of one child to decide his or her gender while refusing to affirm that same child's fundamental right to life.  As yesterday becomes a stereotype or caricature of itself we find ourselves more broken, divided, suspicious, intolerant, and violent today.  What this breeds is not only today's ills but a dark future.

Christianity once had a powerful role in sustaining the story of our past.  In the university as well as in practice, Christianity honored our forefathers as well as God's work in time to deliver us from the tyranny of the moment.  The more Christianity loses its anchor in Scripture and its awareness of God at work in time, the less our culture has to guide us in the present or the future.  The great danger today is not simply the evils that we call good but our inability to understand what is happening to us because we have learning nothing from our past.  From the Psalms to the Gospels, Christianity is the retelling of the old, old story of Jesus and His love.  We don't just need that in Church.  We need to tell our old, old story in our schools and universities.  The loss of hope in our tomorrow is fed by the loss of our yesterday -- in religion and in life.

No closed questions. . .

In a discussion on a forum of ideas, the point was made that it is not helpful when certain things are treated as closed questions and therefore not open to discussion -- at least in the sense that they can be changed.  Though this was initially framed with respect to the sex and gender issues, it is not exclusively so.  The issue seems to be this.  Unless you are willing to talk about any doctrine and the conversation is open to an end that might be different than what the Church has always said, it is not a conversation worth having.  So if you cannot talk about same sex marriage or the gender alphabet as something that could end up at a different place other than the rejection of homosexual behavior, same sex marriage, or the idea that gender is an individual construct, it is not worth talking about.  Every end must be suspended for the sake of the conversation.  I get this.  Those who want to talk are looking to change minds and change positions and change doctrines.  They have no interest in defending themselves over and against those who believe the Church has long ago decided these things but they also find it narrow minded, judgmental, and a failure to be open to the Spirit if those who believe the Church has long ago decided such things do not want to treat them as open questions.

As much as some want to rush into such hot button issues as sex and gender, what about the bread and butter of Christian dogma?  Is the Trinity also a subject for conversation in which the Trinitarian statements of the Creeds are not allowed to be the end?  Can we talk about God as if the Trinity were not settled doctrine?  Should we?  Is original sin also a subject for conversation in which what the Church has said and believed is not necessarily where we might end up?  Should it be?  You could add in any number of things Scripture says and the Church confesses and has confessed through the ages that now some want to talk about because they no longer like where the conversation went.  My question is more basic.  If that is the definition of the conversation, then we cannot talk about anything unless we are willing to forego the conclusion the Church has made and turn a closed question into an open one.  Who does that benefit -- apart from those who do not want to end up where the Church has?

Accordingly, the only purpose of the conversation is NOT to end up where the Church has and to introduce a different conclusion.  While this is the modern penchant, it is alien and destructive of the Church's faith and confession.  What good does it do to make cultural-specific or relative what the Church has confessed, without any real change, for a couple of thousand years?  There can be only one justification for such a conversation and that is to make a change, to depart from what has been taught and confessed through the ages, to ignore what Scripture clearly says, and to invent another conclusion.  

There is also something else.  Failure to allow the conversation to end at a point other than what the Church has always believed and confessed is itself judged negatively as intolerance or unfriendliness or arrogance.  There are those who believe if you could make a case for a different end, you must make that case and you must allow that conclusion to stand at least along side what the Church has always believed and confessed OR you must replace the sacred deposit with the new invention.  Now you get what is the problem in the modern theological conversation.  While it is hard to made the case for change strictly from Scripture, it is possible to make the case on "theological" grounds.  Herein lies the problem.  Theological and Biblical are allowed not simply to compete but to conflict and the weight lies on the theological over the Biblical.  This is the fallacy of the modern era and one that makes what Scripture says and the Church has confessed as a mere starting place and not an ending point.  This is also the modus operandi of liberal and progressive churches -- put a question mark where the Church has put a period and put doubt where Scripture has put confidence.  The end result is that love becomes the only thing and love is so weak that it can only affirm and must approve whatever the individual has deemed right and true in his own eyes. 

What does prayer look like?

Sadly, the visual image of prayer has become decidedly feminine and aged.  I wonder if we presumed too much from the story of Simeon and Anna in the Temple.  In any case, prayer increasingly looks like the solitary domain of an elderly woman.  Whether clinging to a rosary or hands folded and eyes closed, the visual that accompanies prayer seems to have no room for others or for children or, especially, for men.  This has become a distinct problem for us.

Those inside and outside of churches see prayer as women’s work and the only women with the time to devote to prayer end up being the faithful but gray and white haired ladies of Christianity while the young, the youth, the younger women, and especially the men are too busy living to pray.  It is a profoundly more feminine snapshot than even those who attend worship.  Women, especially older women, pray but men work.  In the end, even faithful men have come to the view that God wants more from their hands in labor than in prayer and that is their challenge.  How odd!

The praying man has become an increasingly rare icon -- even among pastors.  The men not only fail to lead the family at prayer but their children find it hard to imagine dads and women husbands actually praying.  Now I am not saying that men never pray but that the image of a man at prayer has become absent from the albums that contain the ordinary images of life and worship.  Statistics have always said that the witness of the father bringing his family to church and leading the home has a profound and significant impact upon the likelihood of a child in the home keeping the faith.  Important but a much lower statistic is the woman and mother who brings her children to church and acts as the spiritual head of the home.

Man things are also increasingly hard to define.  There was once a common definition of the work of men as providers and protectors of the home but these have long ago given way to the shared duties of husband and wife with little real distinction between them.  Longer ago the man's role was to do the hard things of keeping order, maintaining discipline, fixing things, and the outdoor tasks of the house and yard.  But the primary work of the husband and father is within the life of the family.  They have increasingly become spectators in this and even distant spectators.  Yet surely our Lord presumes that this is not the case!  As the Scripture says “Would one of you hand his son a stone when he asks for a loaf or a poisonous snake when he asks for a fish?” (Matthew 7:9-10).  Our Lord is not talking to moms here but dads.  Is this reflective of the state of family life today -- even among Christians?  Could the Lord be reminding us that when men leave these domains and especially prayer to others, they are doing exactly that -- giving their loved ones and families stones instead of the Bread of God's Word and the Body of Christ to eat and allowing the dangerous play with serpents instead of the nurture of godly things?

Presence is everything.  You need to be present in the home and in the church to take up the cause of prayer.  Your wife is not for your pleasure but for your keeping safe and providing for and for whom you sacrifice even your life.  Your children are not playthings nor do they raise themselves but they are arrows in your quiver because of how you lead and care for them.  You cannot be a stranger to the House of God and fulfill your godly role assigned to you as man of the house, husband of your wife, and father to your children.  Faith conversations do not happen when you plan them but as you are with your family, less in the ordered conversations of devotion than in the practice of how you life, work, pray, sacrifice, and serve.  Children learn forgiveness not in Sunday school but as they witness their father grow in stature as a man who confesses to his wife and seeks her forgiveness and who hears his wife's confession and forgives her over and over again.  Children learn prayer they see their father pray at home and in worship, without shame or embarrassment and as the mark of the true strength of character and virtue.  Wives will gladly submit to a man they see demonstrating such conscience and resolve for love always invites love.

I am not at all suggesting that women or elderly women should stop praying.  What I am suggesting is that the minds of our children and youth should as readily conjure up the image of a vigorous man deep in prayer as the gray and white haired ladies we have become accustomed as the icons of prayer.  If men seek their families to follow, they must lead and they must lead them to church and in prayer.  This is how our children trust their fathers, listen to them, and follow their example.  Yes, men will fail but the restoration of the fallen is as profound as any example can be to children who need to know that God rescues the fallen.  So, men, don't be afraid of failure.  Maybe you did not have a good role model at home or maybe you did not learn from your own father.  That should not condemn you to their error or lack.  The strengthening of the family and the home begins on bended knee with the voice of husband and father leading the family in prayer.  

Expressive individualism. . ..

Our cultural move to a hyper-individualism focused upon the pragmatism with respect to the wants and needs of the individual in the moment has been well documented -- even celebrated.  It should not need to be defended here.  How deeply this expressive individual with its preoccupation on the felt needs or wants of the individual has affected Christianity and movements within Christianity is still being worked out.  It is not difficult, however, to see how many of the churches in America, and not only those who have a progressive or liberal bias, have capitulated to this expressive individualism both in the form and content of the worship and the doctrine or teaching of the faith.

Everywhere you look, the images of our society include those who live on the fringes merely by virtue of their numbers.  Yet those who are transitioning from one gender to another or adopting a non-binary view of gender and those who flaunt their divergence from the norm, such as drag queens, for example, have become the cultural icons of the moment.  It is pretty hard to argue that expressive individualism has not triumphed in the thinking and living of the West -- even among those who personally are not identified with these extremes.  How deeply this has infected the church depends upon which churches you are looking at.  The mainline Protestants (mostly liberal Christians) and even many “progressive” evangelicals appear to have conformed to the radical subjectivity of sexual desire and gender identity. They have adopted the view that Scripture and the teaching of the church must adapt to where people are at and follow the movement where people are going both in what is believed and how it is practiced.  The statistics tell us that such progressive and liberal mainline churches have not prospered in this move but have actually dwindled and, surprisingly, the more traditional churches in doctrine and practice and the adoption of the positions of culture are actually more demographically robust than those who have mirrored the world around them.

What is remarkable is that even these churches are not quite immune from all the pressures to adopt and be adept at maneuvering within the landscape of our modern world.  These churches have attempted to remain faithful to biblical orthodoxy but have they also allowed the spirit of pragmatism, consumerism, and individualism to prevail at the same time.  To what extent has their preaching and teaching focused more on the path to successful living rather than holiness of life and faithfulness amid challenge?  To what extent has their worship life reflected practices and music that emphasize the same over doctrine and faithfulness to the Biblical witness?  Look at these churches and what is both the soundtrack of their formal and informal devotional lives in the contemporary Christian music that sounds much like a secular playlist for the day.  Look at what their youth have understood to be the cardinal truths of their faith as they come of age in the world.  You will find more folks participating in the fitness centers and self-help groups of these churches than those willing to be taught what God says and how that truth neither depends upon nor changes by the faith of the individual.  Look at how easily they move from church to church in pursuit of something other than doctrinal orthodoxy.  What is all of this saying?

The indictment of modern liberal and Progressive Christianity does not depend upon nuance but is fairly and accurately defined by the shallowness of what passes for modern day preaching and teaching and the worship services which entertain more than they do anything else.  It was never about your children or grandchildren at least attending some church but always about which church and what that church believed or taught and how that church worshiped the Lord.  It might be that the church they are attending is doing a pretty good job of helping them depart from orthodox Christianity, from the solid truth of the Biblical witness, and from the categories of sin and forgiveness in which the Gospel lives.

 

Death is the end. . .

Progressive Christianity is not simply an error or a divergence from what was and has always been believed, it is suicide.  Progressive Christianity will always result in a move away from the Scriptures, from truth and fact, and from a normative faith to one normed by the individual.  Progressive Christianity seems to find nothing sacred or immune from change or alteration.  It invites no standard more than the individual and no time more than the moment.  Because of this, it can offer nothing of substance and certainly nothing of permanence.  From the house built upon the rock that is Christ, progressive Christianity has constructed a house that sits on sand, for now, and soon will sit on nothing at all.  Because of this, it is a suicidal movement that, in the end, will always result in the repudiation of what God has said for all and for all time in favor of what someone thinks or feels or thinks or feels he has experienced in the moment.  In fact, the ease at which Protestantism has chosen to live upon the moving foundation of the moment and the autonomous individual is another signal that it is not a serious theological movement at all but whimsical and nonsensical. 

Underneath progressive Christianity is a rejection of nearly everything Scripture says.  Progressive Christianity insists that Scripture speaks with symbolic language of creation.  While that might not seem so bad to some, what it does is undercut the whole purpose of the creation account.  God made all things as they are.  Evolution steals the fearfully and wonderfully made and leaves us with an accident of nature or mutation without design or purpose but random and without any intrinsic value or worth.  Progressive  Christianity guts the miracles and leaves them as mere fables with morals designed to tell you what you must do and nothing about what God has done.  In so doing, God cannot be made more than the myth or legend that produced these stories and, if He exists at all, has a sole purpose of making you better or making the world a better place.  Progressive Christianity defines life without sin and declares death to be natural -- an essential part of the circle of life.  Then death has the victory and the life that continues either lives in the memory of those who recall the dead or in some vague, spiritual existence in which real means imagined.  Progressive Christianity finds its purpose in ridding the sins of old from bothering the freedom of people to do what they want (so long as it is currently sanctioned) and consensual.  In this view, sex is for pleasure and life is for pleasure.  Progressive Christianity finds man alien to creation and therefore pursues the reduction of man's footprint on the earth through everything from birth control to abortion to ecology.  It is suicide with a religious veneer.

Traditional and orthodox Christianity is not battling for its own survival but for the survival of man and so far we do not seem to be doing all that well in this war.  Our children have come to agree with Progressive Christianity and culture that marriage of confining, family is not worth the trouble, children (if you want them) are toys, our marriages seem to fail at a rate similar to the unchurched, and our choices seem to mirror the values and choices of those who claim no faith.  We are not vying for turf here but for the most important and noble truths Scripture can convey.  Are we the crown of God's creation as people and did the Lord actually move time and eternity to send forth His Son in the womb of the Virgin to suffer and die to redeem us from sin and death?  If this is not true, what is?  Progressive Christianity is willing to kill the faith to save it -- literally.  It is time for us to admit and warn about the stakes of life today.  We are not looking toward a better tomorrow defined by the unfettered pursuit of pleasure and a life insulated from sacrifice but a life of service in the service of the One who served us even to death on a cross.  We are not looking for a better heaven and earth but a new one in which sin and death have no place anymore.  We are not looking for freedom from responsibility or duty or work but for the freedom which will help us accept responsibility, pursue the godly vocations for which we were created, and for work that puts others and their needs (spouse, family, neighbor) above our own as Christ has already done for us.

You will find in Progressive Christianity a narrower vocabulary in which sin has become injustice and death rescued by pharma and technology and life defined by our passion less any constraint or limit.  The end result of this is death.  Progressive Christianity does not need saving because it has no sins, does not need redemption because it has made its peace with death, and does not need a heaven because they are determined to find a way to have your best life now.  Progressive Christianity is self-destructive as a movement and even more as a reason for the hope you have.  Do not listen politely or meet in dialog or speak in the same terms as Progressive Christianity.  This movement is not looking for something you need but for a hit on the dopamine and a rush of good feelings that will turn your eyes from is what really wrong.  Death is the self-appointed end for Progressive Christianity.

Does God want religious harmony?

God must feel real good when we sit down at a table to play nice about religious diversity.  I may be a fool but I find it hard to identify any positive fruit if interreligious dialog.  Sure, our conversations with others who claim to be Christian, to esteem Scripture, and to confess the Gospel might be worthwhile -- not to promote understanding but primarily to call each other to account.  When you sit down with others, you probably better begin by having a realistic and historical view of who you are and what you believe.  But when you sit down with other religions without a common Word of God or history or values or identity, what is to be gained?

For example, do we really need to understand Islam better?  Will mutual understanding really calm down the tinderbox of Palestine?  Will Lutherans or Roman Catholics actually find some sort of common ground with Muslim faith and practice?  Maybe we could agree on climate change but will we ever agree on who God is and is not?  Do you think there is any way to such a common answer to the burning question of who God is?  Yeah, I thought so.  Neither do I.

Is God glorified knowing that people are trying to play nice in the sandbox of this mortal life but who do not bat an eye to defame and desecrate the Word of the Lord that endures forever in order to do so.  What have we gotten wrong about Islam, for example?  Is this somehow a deep and dark religion that has been falsely characterized over the years and its informative texts and leaders secret to us?  Does Islam really misunderstand Christianity because there are hidden things of the orthodox and catholic faith which are not in Scripture or creed or confession?  Is there the expectation that Christianity and Islam can coexist and respect each other's own exclusive paths to salvation as just as much true as their own?

I have volumes in my library that address Islam as well as its primary text.  I also have volumes in my library which tell me how to respond to Islam.  There are also copies in the parish library.  Perhaps Islam has their own similar books.  So what do we talk about in dialog which we cannot know from such written treatments of each other's faiths?  After such a dialog will Christianity disown the exclusive statements of Christ that no one comes to the Father except through Him?  Will Islam reject its own exclusive statements.  

Although I have focused on Islam,  you could substitute any other religion and ask the same sort of questions of those who believe a Christian/Buddhist dialog could be fruitful or a Christian/Sikh conversation or, well, you name a religion and fill in the blank.  The sad reality is that it is more likely that such dialogs will result in misunderstanding of their own faiths as well as the faith's of their dialog partners precisely because they are seeking common ground where none can possibly exist.  I am not saying that we should be open and hostile enemies toward one another but neither do I believe that our cause or the cause of humanity is furthered by presuming that the world will be better if we all just dilute our convictions enough to make a joke of what we say we will believe.  I shudder every time a Pope meets with the leader or leaders of another world religion.  Inevitably he will end up misrepresenting Christianity or misunderstanding the religion he hopes to accommodate.  But we are all at fault here.  No table is big enough for us to come let us reason together if such reasoning requires us to abandon what we believe.  Christianity invites such scrutiny from skeptics and opponents because we believe the Word of the Lord will bring faith from the hearer much to our own surprise and even chagrin.  But if we are apologizing for Jesus or His Word, we have no business sitting down with anyone and saying we would like to talk about how we are able to promote respect and toleration.  As I write this we have just celebrated the Exaltation or Triumph of the Holy Cross -- or did we not mean it?

Lutherans are not Protestants. . .

Lutherans have always found themselves the odd man out at the table of religious traditions.  We seem to be Protestants but we are not.  We claim to be Catholics but we aren't Roman.  Nowhere it this more true than when it comes to our approach to authority.  It sounds like Lutherans are right there with every other Protestant in putting authority in reason.  Unless we can be shown by Scripture, we will not believe it.  It almost sounds like Luther but it is not Luther.  Luther was bound by the Word that had authority over his conscience and not because of it.  Luther did not place Scripture into the realm of personal interpretation (though, to be sure, sometimes he sounded that way).  Luther believed in authority -- an authority bigger than him and bigger than the moment.  I sometimes wonder if we as Lutherans have forgotten that.  Luther was not a Protestant -- at least not in the way that term has been used since the first days of the Great Reformation.  Luther was a creedal theologian and one whose whole purpose was not to vitiate the authority of the Church but to correct that authority by placing it upon the firm foundation of Scripture.  The Reformation was and remains about authority and where it resides.

Even some Lutherans have come to sound pretty Protestant.  They submit to no man or institution, to no creed or confession, and only to a Scripture through the lens of their own reason.  They insist that they are happily free from these constraints as long as they stay true to the Word of God.  In the end, creed and confession, man and institution must submit to their understanding of Scripture and to their interpretation of it.  In this construct, nothing can be accepted from the past without being re-proved by the Word of God.  It is an exhausting proposition.  Every time you open the Bible you have to prove or disprove something and at the top of the mountain is reason.  It is not the end of the papacy but the making of every Christian a pope.  It ends up being a religious version of the autonomous self.  But is that Lutheran?  Or, is it even Christian?

Rome makes an attractive alternative to those who have tired of proving or disproving everything every time they open the Bible.  Rome has chosen which authority is above Scripture so that there is only one authority to interpret the Bible.  They say it is the Church but it is those with agency within the Church to do that (teaching magisterium or papacy).  If the church has the authority to infallibly interpret Scripture, then individual authority is not what is operative.  The problem is that this authority does not mean the same to all those who claim to be Catholic -- Rome puts it in one place, Constantinople puts it in another, and Lutherans put it somewhere else.  For Rome this problem lies with the fact that the teaching magisterium and popes have disagreed and erred and been inconsistent and even contradictory.  For Constantinople this problem lies with the fact that councils have contracted and erred and disagreed.  For Lutherans is that we sometimes are not even ready to admit that there is a church larger than a congregation and so we default to some sort of individual reason that is top of the heap.  

My Roman friends tell me that in order to disprove Roman Catholicism, you do not start with the Bible. Roman Catholics understand this as mere private interpretation and point to their historical claims.  The authority lies in the church -- whatever that means.  The problem for a Lutheran is that Rome has been all over the place and there is no clear and consistent teaching -- especially in the more modern times.  The teaching of Rome does not need Biblical authority nor does it invite it.  The other problem is exactly that history.  Who in their right mind believes that the early Church is the same as medieval Roman Catholicism or the same as Rome after Trent or the same as Rome after Vatican I or II.  In fact, Rome is debating this very point.  Is the Mass of Trent the same as the Mass of Vatican II?  This is evidence of the fact that the problem cannot be solved by shifting the authority from one autonomous individual to an autonomous institution.  What we call Roman Catholicism is defined most clearly by the Council of Trent and yet it is that very Council of Trent that Romans are insisting has been replaced by another Council that, on both sides of the divide, represents a different doctrine or teaching.

Lutherans often sound and act like Protestants but we are not.  We are Catholics not of the Roman kind.  We esteem our institutions highly but we do not endow them with autonomy or authority any more than we place one individual over truth.  We believe that there is an identifiable Catholic and Apostolic confession that has not wavered from the ages, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets by the voice of God's Word, and is not alterable by voice or vote.  Are there challenges to this by some, sure.  There will always be.  We will always seek to find an authority in our conscience or reason or in an individual or group of teachers because that is controllable.  If we defer to the sacred deposit once delivered to the saints, the faith will be confessed without being controlled or altered and this is what we say to the world.  It is the mark of true catholicity and we would welcome popes and teachers and individuals of any kind to join us in this faithful confession once and always the same.

What does anything mean?

For the Christian, words matter.  God spoke and all things came to be -- the Word is creative.  Christ is that Word through which anything that exists was called into being.  Christ is the Word made flesh in a moment in time.  He speaks through the voice of His Word.  The Bible is the written Word of God.  It does not take much to get it.  Words matter because God works through His Word.  Without that Word, faith is not possible since faith comes by hearing the Word of God.  The Spirit works through means -- the means of the Word, Scripture.  I could go on but it is pretty basic stuff.  So when we confront a world in which words do not matter, when truth is subjective, and when nothing is more than one person wide or deep and even then subject more to feeling or experience over truth, we are bound to have problems.

How we judge truth and how we see words is affected not simply by the Scriptures or religion but by the world in which we live.  You do not have to be a conservative to note how we treat words.  From the newspeak in which words take on a different meaning and context than they originally and universally meant to the doublespeak in which words are intentionally freighted with a different meaning than they would literally convey, we find ourselves at a great disadvantage politically, socially, morally, and religiously.  Yes, the Church is sometimes to blame for this confusion but even more has been the incorporation of the way the world around us communicates into the framework of religion and faith.

Add to this is the way those who control the message have the ability to change the historical record. To the victor belong the spoils and so important to that is the ability to write the history in such way that it favors them.  We have all known this but there have always been those whose recollection has challenged a false historical narrative.  The difference is that some have invented history and written it back into the past as if it really did take place.  The invention of history is not simply the altered facts but the slant on those facts.  For example, CBS recorded the announcement that Candidate Harris wanted to remove the tax on tips with glee and to the accolades of those in the hospitality industry.  However, a few months ago the same media was suspect of the cost to the treasury when Candidate Trump said he would do the same.  So we alter things by the spin we place on them as much as by the change of the actual record or fact itself.  The isolated incidence of same sex relationships in ancient cultures has become normative and justification for the radical shift that such same sex marriage was and is for our time.  All of this rewrites history or changes the slant on it to favor a presupposition instead of merely reporting the fact.

The unknown today is the new reality of artificial intelligence and what it could do to the established historical record and to the slant placed upon that history by those looking back.  What could AI do in service to those who wish to cleanse the past from the things that the present deems as its sins or alter our perception of that record?  I do not have a clue how this might further erode any idea of or appreciate for the constant of fact and truth.

Back where I began, let us think for a moment on how this suspicion of history or denial of the objectivity of truth bears on those who hear God's Word.  The Spirit is not simply working against the heart hardened by sin to disbelieve God over preference and experience and reason but is battling the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth or that if there is that objective truth does not matter.  For this reason we speak the Gospel not simply to an unbelieving world but to a world that does not believe in truth any longer.  So how do you think that affects the people who hear Jesus say "I am the way, the truth, and the life?"

Close to power. . .

Apparently I had missed that Lutherans were across the hall from power once.  VP Hubert Horatio Humphrey was a Lutheran.  And then he was not.  He became Methodist.  So we have had Lutheran Supreme Court justices and Attorneys General but now we could have a Lutheran VP who has not left for another church - Tim Walz.  The only problem is that his version of Lutheran is somewhat less than, well, Lutheran.  What do I mean by that?  If Lutheran means holding to the Scriptures as the infallible Word of God, then Walz belongs to a body that hedges its bets on that point.  If Lutheran means holding to the Evangelical Lutheran Confessions as normative over reason and culture, then Walz belongs to a body that believes that the Confessions are more historical document than confessional standard which informs and norms the present.  If Lutheran means being the catholics that our Augsburg Confession claims we are, then Walz belongs to a body that is more at home in liberal Protestantism than with what had been believed, taught, and confessed through the ages.

Walz, born in West Point, NE, and raised Roman Catholic, began teaching in Nebraska where he also met his Lutheran wife, Gwen. From Minnesota, she attended a slightly less prominent legacy Lutheran school, Gustavus Adolphus, than St. Olaf.  After Nebraska, they ended up in Mankato, MN, at the Mankato HS where was a coach and faculty advisor for the school’s first gay-straight alliance. From that time on, Walz did not merely follow the ELCA in its pursuit of the alphabet of sexual attractions and genders, he embraced and led the way to expanding upon it as Governor of Minnesota.

Now Lutherans are no different than other faiths.  We like to parade our politicians out in front just like Roman Catholics and everyone else does.  The problem is that too often we are more comfortable with the politicians than we are with the profundities of our own faith.  Look at Biden.  He claims to be a good Roman Catholic.  Some think he is but only if being a good Roman Catholic means refuting and working against the historic and set doctrinal positions of the Roman Catholic Church.  Who knows what Biden believes in his heart of hearts or Walz for that matter.  In fact, we are not to know what is in the heart -- that is the domain of the Lord.  But it is surely reasonable and, I might add, Scriptural, to believe that the thoughts and words and deeds are not opposed to each other but reflect a certain uniformity within the boundaries of our own human inconsistency.

So my long lingering journey to a point is this.  Be wary of trumpeting the politicians who might belong to your church.  They could be good and faithful folk who believe and confess exactly what their churches do.  They could also be good and faithful folk who believe and confess exactly what their churches do but who believe that they should not impose their personal convictions on others.  They could also be good and well intentioned folk who believe and confess along the lines of what their churches do but who believe governing and believing are two different realms with few bridges between them.  They could also believe that they are good and faithful folk whose duty it is to conform the faith of Scripture and the ages to their own preference and that this is the mark of faithfulness to disagree and diverge from the confession of the church where they think the church is wrong.  In any case, while it is nice to claim a politician as close to the halls of power as one can get, it does little for that church in pursuit of the mission anointed by God and can, in fact, do some harm.

Tim Walz may be a great guy but he probably is not the kind of Lutheran he ought to be or he would not belong to a church which is content living on the cutting edge of Lutheranism and going beyond that edge for the sake of culture, society, modern values, individuality, diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and access.  So whether we think he is a good guy or not, let us not list his Lutheranism as one of the reasons why he is.  In fact, I would be happiest of we judged our politicians on the basis of their public stands and records and not on anything else.  If you have read my blog you know that I am not a diehard Republican or a Trumper but I do appreciate that some of his governing was much better than his words and the Republicans have generally stood more solidly on the issues of life, culture, gender, and such.  I would happily support Walz or Biden or Harris if that were also the case.  My conundrum is that while the left has gone lefter the right has also headed left.  Because of that, there is a bigger issue than if they are Lutheran or Roman Catholic.

Not enough. . .

Remember this?

"The Impossible Dream (The Quest)"

To dream the impossible dream,
To fight the unbeatable foe,
To bear with unbearable sorrow,
To run where the brave dare not go.

To right the unrightable wrong,
To love pure and chaste from afar,
To try when your arms are too weary,
To reach the unreachable star.

This is my quest,
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless,
No matter how far.

To fight for the right
Without question or pause,
To be willing to march
Into hell for a heavenly cause.

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will be peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest.

And the world will be better for this,
That one man scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage.
To fight the unbeatable foe.
To reach the unreachable star. 

 

Apparently we are not up to such impossible quests today.  In particular, we are not up to loving purely or with a chaste love.  We think as a culture and even as Christians it is an unfair and too great a burden to deny your desires -- especially sexual ones.  Then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger answered that question of self-denial of desire pretty well way back in 1986.  I am not sure we have the stomach to hear it again now almost forty years later.

What, then, are homosexual persons to do who seek to follow the Lord? Fundamentally, they are called to enact the will of God in their life by joining whatever sufferings and difficulties they experience in virtue of their condition to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross. That Cross, for the believer, is a fruitful sacrifice since from that death come life and redemption. While any call to carry the cross or to understand a Christian’s suffering in this way will predictably be met with bitter ridicule by some, it should be remembered that this is the way to eternal life for all who follow Christ.

It is, in effect, none other than the teaching of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians when he says that the Spirit produces in the lives of the faithful “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control” (5:22) and further (v. 24), “You cannot belong to Christ unless you crucify all self-indulgent passions and desires.”

It is easily misunderstood, however, if it is merely seen as a pointless effort at self-denial. The Cross is a denial of self, but in service to the will of God himself who makes life come from death and empowers those who trust in him to practice virtue in place of vice.

To celebrate the Paschal Mystery, it is necessary to let that Mystery become imprinted in the fabric of daily life. To refuse to sacrifice one’s own will in obedience to the will of the Lord is effectively to prevent salvation. Just as the Cross was central to the expression of God’s redemptive love for us in Jesus, so the conformity of the self-denial of homosexual men and women with the sacrifice of the Lord will constitute for them a source of self-giving which will save them from a way of life which constantly threatens to destroy them.

Christians who are homosexual are called, as all of us are, to a chaste life. (Emphasis Added)  As they dedicate their lives to understanding the nature of God’s personal call to them, they will be able to celebrate the Sacrament of Penance more faithfully and receive the Lord’s grace so freely offered there in order to convert their lives more fully to his Way.

 

 – from Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons (1986)

It is not just the same sex attracted who are called to chastity.  We are ALL called to lead a chaste life.  How odd it is then that we really do not expect this of ourselves even though we expect it of those whose sins we disavow?  A chaste life is lived out within the Biblical order, according to God's design, within the fabric of forgiveness, and in repentance always.  It is not and never was that some folks get to be exempt from God's call while others have to give up everything.  We are all under the same call to live holy, upright, and godly lives where we are.  No matter what our desires.  No matter what our vulnerabilities.  No matter what our inclinations.  No one is singled out for more or less of a life of self-denial but we are all called to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus. It does not help that we have made divorce normal, that we shrug our shoulders at sex (as long as it is consensual), that we live in a culture of pornography and perversion, and that we have our own pet rankings of sin from worst to not so bad.  We are being converted to God's way and not the other way around.  Lest we forget this, every now and then when a question is raised about others, it finds its way back to us and where we live. 

 

Presence, Touch, & Words. . .

Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 18B, preached on Sunday, September 8, 2024.

The ministry of our Lord is a ministry of presence, of touch, and of words.  He is where He needs to be and He touches even the untouchable with the grace of life.  Eventually it becomes the charge laid against Him – He is too chummy with sinners.  He knows us by name and knows our secrets and loves us still.  He calls us by name and we hear, recognize, and follow Him.  That ministry of presence is also what the pastoral office is about.  You are where your people need you to be and you offer them the personal touch of a name and hands joined in prayer in recognition of God’s presence and His high touch ministry.

The world does not get this.  The world knows power, raw power, and does not understand or appreciate a God who is present with His people and who works not primarily through demonstrations of power but of acts of mercy.  God shows His character through His presence with those who suffer, His touch upon their hearts, and His grace to forgive their sins and lift up in hope their sagging spirits.  Earthly kings send men to die in battles to preserve their reign but the King whom we know as Jesus dies in our place and manifests His reign from the throne of a cross, a baptismal font, and an altar.

Today the Lord’s mercy is manifest in two things that we too often take for granted.  The ability to hear is seldom valued until hearing fades or is gone and the ability to speak is considered routine until our voices are lost to us.  We know how important our eyes are but we do not always appreciate how important our ears and our voices are.  Yet in this miracle of Jesus it is exactly with the ears that do not hear and the mouths that do not speak that our Lord manifests the fullness of His mercy, grace, and compassion.  

Imagine for a moment never being able to hear the sound of your children or your parents, never hearing the bird’s song or the sound of waves breaking upon the shore or the crack of thunder or the sound of a symphony.  Imagine never being able to open your mouth and speak of your love and affection to your family or to call out in warning to someone in danger or be able to tell others what lives deep in your heart or the forefront of your mind.  Words are the key.  Words that we hear, words that we speak, and words through which we communicate with others are so drawn from our isolation and loneliness into fellowship and family.  Words are essential to who we are as people, to who we were created to be, and to a quality of life God intended for us to know and enjoy.

So Jesus meets a man who cannot hear and who cannot speak.  This man is not only isolated from those whom he loves and from the whole of society, he is isolated from God, from the fellowship of God’s House, from the voice of the Good Shepherd speaking to him, and from the song of praise that erupts from the joy of God’s presence.  Jesus has not come to make the man’s life easier or more convenient but to restore the man to the life God intended for him.

Words are key to worship.  Words are key to knowing the Lord and responding to the Lord’s grace and mercy.  God speaks and we say back to Him what He has said and in that we discover who we are and who He is.  More than this, we are drawn into a familial relationship in which words are not optional or incidental but essential and pivotal to what it means to know the Lord and belong to Him.  Jesus was not simply fixing the man’s ears or tongue but restoring the man into the fellowship of God’s people.  

This is what our Lord does for you.  Your ears may hear but what you hear is the sound of anger and dispute, of sensuality and lust, of pride and unbelief.  You hear everything but the one thing you need to hear.  That is what sin has done.  It has left us deaf to the sound of God’s voice and unable to address the Lord as our heavenly Father.  Instead of being fully conversant with God, we know vulgarity and pornography, hate and contempt, arrogance and selfishness.  We are on a first name basis with every sin but unless the Lord opens our ears and our tongues we neither know Him nor can respond to His goodness, mercy, and compassion.

The ear Jesus touched and the tongue He loosed were not about giving the man hearing and a voice but the chance to hear God’s voice and to respond with the song of praise that rises up from faith.  Ours is a God of words, the Word made flesh, who speaks creation into being and who becomes incarnate so that we may hear of His steadfast love and mercy.  Jesus was not simply letting the man hear his wife’s voice or address his children but to know the Lord and to be able to say amen to worship and praise of the gathered people of God.

What a shame that we not only take for granted the gift of hearing and speaking but that we waste it on words that do not matter.  God’s Word does that of which it speaks.  By His Word we are addressed with Christ’s forgiveness and set free from the bondage of our sins.  By His Word we are called by name in the waters of baptism so that we might be His own and live under Him in His kingdom.
By His Word He addresses our sins with a power greater than sin and we are forgiven.  By His Word He speaks and bread becomes His body to feed us eternal life and wine becomes His blood cleansing us from all our sin.  By His Word He will call forth the dead from their sleep and raise them to everlasting life.  This is why we need to hear and why our ears are given to us to hear God’s Word.

Worship is words.  We are gathered by the Spirit, invoking God’s presence we assemble where He has promised to be.  We pray together and give our Amen to the prayers and petitions of God’s people.  We offer praise and thanksgiving with words that God Himself has given us.  Worship is not about the meditation of the heart or the thoughts that fill the mind but about the voice of God calling us to be His own and the Spirit working through that Word and the song of praise that erupts from within us because God has spoken love to His in His Son.

You are the man in the Gospel for today.  God has opened your ears to hear His voice.  God has loosed your tongue to speak in worship and in witness all that He has said and done.  God sends you forth with His Word upon your lips so that you can speak Jesus in your homes, at your workplace, and where you live.  God has given you ears to hear His voice and a voice to proclaim His Word.  You were made for this.  Sin shut down your ears so that you heard everything but God’s Word and sin filled your voice with the impure and empty words that mean nothing.  But now you hear the Lord, delight in His saving work, and are sent forth as His witnesses to speak His Word to others.  This is why you were created.  Not to pursue your own will but the will of Him who made you and redeemed you.  Thanks be to God!

An odd state of affairs. . .

I am struck by how we do not see the strangeness of leaving the recruitment of church workers to the colleges, universities, and seminaries of the Church.  It is a convenient presumption entirely because it leaves off the hook those who ought to be the primary agents of recruitment simply because of how closely they are located to the lives of our young people.  Certainly, it is well and good that the educational institutions of Synod do what they can, however, we have assigned to them a different role and purpose, namely, to train and form church workers -- from pastors to teachers to DCEs to DCOs to DPMs to deaconesses and so on.  Let me be so bold as to day that it is also not simply the pastor's job to recruit them either.  Although the pastor has great influence over them and great potential simply by way of example and should encourage young men and women to consider church work careers, the real recruiters and the ones who often work against that recruitment are the people in the pews -- especially family members!  I talked about this on KFUO a while ago.

The recruitment of church workers begins with parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, godparents, friends, and church family.  If those closest to our youth people do not raise to them the possibility of becoming a pastor or church worker or encourage their interest in a church vocation or support them financially toward such a goal, whatever the pastor or college or university or seminary does will face a brick wall.  Now more than 20 years ago a retired pastor came to be our assistant pastor.  He was a second career guy who would have been a first career pastor but he did not get the encouragement or financial support from his family and friends and church family.  On the other side of the coin, I had not even thought about becoming a pastor but my family, church family, and pastors insisted that I give this prayerful consideration.  My home congregation gave this encouragement a concrete form in the money that supported me financially through St. John's Winfield to the Senior College through the Seminary in Ft. Wayne.  And all of this happened in the midst of one of the worst times in our Synod's history -- the split!  Yes, I did enjoy the support of my pastor and I has recruited by a college but the key support was from parents, extended family, and the folks I knew in the pews of my home congregation.  And the fruit it bore has endured 44 years.

The key here is this:  What message are we sending to our young people?  Do we esteem church work as a most noble vocation or do we caution our young people about the drawbacks and burdens of that work?  Do we honor our pastors with respect and respect what they do among us or do we treat them as our servants or speak disparagingly of them to others?  Do we provide the kind of financial compensation they deserve or one we think will not cost us too much?  Do we give them enough so that they are free to devote themselves to the work of the kingdom and not making ends meet?  How do we speak of the Church or school?  Our people are hearing from their parents and family and friends and even church family that church work is hard, does not pay well, and will leave you in the crosshairs of their critics.  How do you suppose that translates in their hearts to a fair consideration of a church work vocation?

Why is this such a big concern?  Our Synod cannot survive with only second career pastors and church workers.  They are absolutely wonderful gifts from God but their time of service is always shorter than a first career church worker.  Furthermore, we are approaching that time when the boom classes of my era are hitting retirement or physical incapacity.  We are facing a black hole of need and we are simply not raising up enough pastors, teachers, deaconesses and all the other offices appointed for service in our church to meet the challenge of those retiring, leaving, or dying.  What may be today an inconvenience as congregations wait longer and try harder to fill vacancies will become tomorrow's disaster.  This is not about what is easiest for us today but what will best serve those who come after us -- including our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Set Apart to Serve is a great program but it is not a solution.  Its best work is to alert YOU to the ways that YOU directly affect those who may or may not be considering church work vocations in your family or in your church family.  Support this program not to benefit your pastor or teacher or whatever but because it will directly affect YOU.  Look at the youth sitting in your pews, recruit them for church work vocations, support them when they show interest in these vocations, encourage them with your prayers and financial support, and do it not for their sake but for the sake of yourself and those in your family down the road.

Ethics is a lost art. . .

As a Lutheran I am both proud and blessed to count the noted ethicist Gilbert Meilaender  as one of us.  While ethics has never been my particular forte, I have deeply appreciated the wisdom and approach of Dr. Meilaender.  His contributions to First Things were always my first look upon receiving that journal.  His distinguished career at UVA, Oberlin, and Valpo is something to admire (back when Valpo was an institution of character).  I also know the name of Robert Benne.  I have read some of this work but am not nearly as familiar with him as I am Meilaender.  Unfortunately, I am unable to name another Lutheran ethicist or really any others worth reading.  That is a problem.

We are entering an era in which ethical choices and decisions of great magnitude are facing Christians of all stripes regularly.  The world around us has left us with vexing issues of value and worth for us as people.  We have technological abilities that have far exceeded our consideration of their goodness or benefit over the long haul.  The very nature of our identities as male and female have become questions rather than answers.  Life has become cheap and easy and reproductive technology has allowed us to fully separate children from marriage, sex from love, and procreation from sex.  The approaching specter of artificial intelligence is a threat as well as possible blessing but who knows how to thread the needle of what is right and good from what is wrong and destructive.  We have shown how we can take something like the internet and turn it into a forum of hate and division.  How do we sort through all of these issues?  I wish I could say we have time but we do not.  The days of thoughtful consideration have long ago given way to an urgent need to figure out what is good, right, true, and beautiful and what is not.  While this is certainly true whether or not you are a Christian, it is of paramount importance to Christians.  Where is our faith in the midst of all of these choices and challenges?

Every day our people are facing decisions that come with ethical considerations that surpass a simple answer.  What about end of life issues?  How much treatment must or should be done for diseases that will prove fatal?  What about stem cell research, testing, and medical experimentation?  We already learned that what once defined something as a vaccine has been redefined in the wake of COVID and the supposed COVID vaccines (which do not prevent anything).  More and more of these kinds of vaccines are being promoted and with less testing and certainty about side effects.  Can we trust our doctors?  How much diagnosing and prescribing can be done online?  What about the cost of all these new meds advertised on TV?  Hardly any of this has much to do with sex or gender and yet our people are begging for help sorting out what to believe and what to do.

We need more people the caliber of Gilbert Meilaender.  We need strong and confident voices to help our people sort out the way through all of these questions now and the new ones which are sure to come.  None of this is optional and most all of it goes to the heart and core of what it means to be human, what is the meaning and purpose of life itself, and what diminishes that life and ennobles that life.  Ethics in college was a class I had to take but hated.  Ethics in Seminary was there only in bits and pieces.  I regret now that we did not have the benefit of a good ethicist and the value of a solid Christian ethical foundation when I was in college and Seminary long ago.  Without Gilbert Meilaender I would be lost knowing whose voice is reliable in a world filled with voices insisting they know the way through.  For the Christian, ethics is not just a discipline but the very application of the Law and the Gospel to these profound and urgent questions of everyday life. 

What does unity mean?

For a very long time now the forces of progressivism and liberalism have sought to steal doctrine from the unity of the Church and replace with a big tent approach.  These forces are also at work in Rome trying to do the same thing.  One Cardinal actually said “when we speak of unity, of communion, we are not referring to unity of thought.”  What an odd statement!  Are the words of the Creeds merely suggestions or symbolic language?  Has Rome accepted the fact that there are different theologies at work within its big tent and decided to accept that?

In what seem see as either tragedy or comedy, the Battle for the Bible in the Missouri Synod was not really about everyone accepting what the theologians and Bible scholars at the St. Louis Seminary had come to embrace, it was about toleration.  The cause then was the same as it is now.  Lutheranism ought to be a big tent in which we hold some things in common but always defer to local option.  Goodness knows that has defined us with respect to worship and catechesis.  We are literally everyone doing what we deem to be right in our own eyes.  As long as we retain the confessional article in our constitutions, the rest of it does not seem to matter.  Before we point our finger at Rome and snicker, we must admit that the same has befallen us.  Unity means nearly anything and everything but not doctrinal agreement.  

All over the place Christianity is redefining what it means to agree.  More often than not it has come to mean agreeing to disagree but also agreeing that the disagreement does not matter.  How else can you explain the ecumenical connections with the ELCA and nearly everyone but the next largest Lutheran church body in America?  My fear is that we are holding out against the ELCA but caving in to the local forces who define what is believed, taught, and confessed in the congregation, how and what worship takes place, and who is admitted to the Lord's Table.  We did fight the Battle for the Bible and a little more than 100K of our people left in protest to end up somewhere in the ELCA (or its spin offs).  But did we lose the war?  When unity means anything and everything except doctrine, that is exactly what we have done.  We have lost the war.  Maybe we did not lose it on the convention level or in official teaching, we I fear we have lost it where it counts in the minds and hearts of the people in the pews.

What would St. Paul say to this?  His harsh words exposing the false doctrinal unity within the Corinthian congregation would not be softened in his rebuke of us.  If we continue to define pastoral training in terms of minimums instead of fullness, we will effectively localize even the ministry to the point where no one knows or cares what they really believe.  Pastoral formation is at its core indoctrination (yes, I know that is a bad word in the minds of some).  We form the pastoral heart and mind by enduing in them the doctrine of the faith so that their voices may confess in and outside of the congregation the unchanging faith.  Rome seems to have forgotten that you reap what you sow.  Have we forgotten it as well?

Big business. . . at what cost?

Nearly everything that was once charity has become big business.  Let me give you a couple of examples.  In a report, Roman Catholic charities have received $800 Million from the federal government to transport and care for illegal immigrants.  Trans promoters say that each conversion costs $150K and multiply that by a million or more and you come up with an industry that is bigger than the entire film industry.  I once dealt with real people handling my insurance claims but now have layer upon layer of administration between me and the actual payment of my bills -- layers that were there only recently and supposedly save money.  Watch TV or look on your screens to find drug industry ads galore -- because there is big money in selling drugs, at least the new ones! 

I am not against business.  My father and his father before him were businessmen.  Their small businesses were not simply good for them but good for the communities in which they lived and the people around them.  What does concern me is how some things that were not the domains of business in the past have become almost the exclusive sphere of business now.  Charities have become, for some a small part but in others the majority of their work, businesses competing for the grants or governmental funds that pay the bills.  They do not provide the services themselves but many have become general contractors who take the money as NGOs and then find local small contractors to actually provide those services.  They are still called charities but this is a far cry from the time in which church organizations raised their own funds from the generosity of church members and provided the services themselves.  So does that mean that they are essentially different than they once were?

The WheatRidge, Bethesda, Lutheran World Relief, and so many other big names from the past are not providing directly what they once did but have become funneling agencies who find and support local groups to provide those services.  In the process, they have also become advocacy organizations for the general cause -- pleading for the needs before governments and legislatures.  Again, I am not saying all of this is bad or evil or anything of the sort.  But it is very different than what those organizations were created to do and how they once did it.  Furthermore, they are more and more distant from the churches that were once not only their constituency but they fund base.  So what does that mean?  Again, I do not have all the answers but I am concerned that we do not seem to be raising questions.  These parachurch organizations may do good for people in need but are they really connected to the churches that once formed them or engaged in the work the churches once formed them to do or have they left behind this past to honor it as legacy rather than agency?

The medical establishment still has the legacy names -- Lutheran, Methodist, St. Thomas, etc... but they are in the same boat.  They are non-profits run to make money for their causes and it has become very big business.  Add to this the fact that in many communities hospitals are franchises or part of a chain of profitmaking endeavors.  They serve, yes, but in order to make money.  I deal with some of them all the time and it is very hard to distinguish the difference between a non-profit and a corporate hospital or medical services model.  You have probably had the same experience.  Has it improved health care or made for more access for those in need?  I have already written before of how the promotion of the newest and latest drugs on print and social media and TV have transformed how we see prescriptions and what we expect from them.  To what extent has this side of the business shaped or influenced the provider side?  Are we asking those questions and do we want to know?

Now we come to those with gender dysphoria.  They already suffer from a much higher than normal incidence of depression, suicide, and loneliness.  As if that were not enough, they have been noticed by big business but is that a good thing?

“The Gender Industrial Complex” has suggested that this is big business and a new market niche for al already crowded medical industrial complex.  Look at the numbers and the issues:

• While the total cost of transitioning varies widely by individual, lifelong use of cross-sex hormones could cost up to $300,000 or more per person, while a full surgical transition could cost more than $150,000.
• The potential health effects of undergoing transition are numerous, including increased risk of cancer, nerve damage, chronic pain, sexual dysfunction, mental health issues, and the need for additional surgeries.
• A number of transgender surgery providers, including Cedars Sinai, the Regents of the University of Michigan, the Mount Sinai Health System, and several others, were each estimated to bring in over $100 million in revenue in 2022 from these practices.
• Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and AbbVie lead the way in hormone production, with 2022 revenues of $74 million and $51 million, respectively, from those products.
• Total revenues for transgender drugs and surgeries in 2023 were estimated to surpass $4.4 billion. And by 2030, the market is expected to grow beyond $7.8 billion.

Transitioning to a different gender is not just a matter of a few visits to a doctor or a few injections.  It’s a lifelong process of regular medication and a long series of surgical procedures -- all of it comes with a price tag and a potential to make some big money. 

So there you have a few of my questions.  Is the business model the best to deal with charities and medicine?  Is the business model able to keep in check the need for income and the best interest of the patient?  What about church charities that have become non-governmental organizations, funneling the taxpayer funds to a cause but not quite able to say anything about the faith while doing it?  All of this leaves me frustrated and not a little angry.

 

Urgent and not. . .

It occurs to me that one of the distinct problems of sin is our difficulty with time.  No, I am not suggesting that our (read that my) inability to be on time is sin's greater problem for me.  What I am suggesting is that sin has colored how we see things and given us a false view to them and therefore to their urgency.

Not too long ago Jesus lamented that the crowd that had been fed was more interested in bread than in the Word of the Lord.  Yes, they were certainly shallow.  But is that not the real problem created by sin?  We instinctively value the things of the moment higher than the things of eternity and we give into the things of the moment only to create an eternal problem.

They were hungry -- perhaps even hangry!  Hunger burned in their bellies and when Jesus satisfied that hunger, that was all they wanted from Him.  Jesus feared that He would be cast as a bread king until the only thing He could offer to people was what they wanted.  So entered the lauded discourses on the Bread of Life.  Nobody is at their best when the desire in an empty stomach is the only thing they hear.  The Lord does not give in to satisfy the moment before satisfying the soul -- well, at least not always.  In fact He warns over and over again against such a preoccupation.  What good is it if we give our lives for the treasure that fades or molds or turns sour?  Indeed!

The same is true of sexual desire.  It appears to be the single thing that informs everything about us these days.  Who we desire, what we desire from them, and how we feel about those desires dominates every other gauge of our character or our identity.   We have become like the animals who are driven not by something ordered or orderly but instinct alone.  Far be it from us to deny such desires and not give into our sexual drives or feelings -- why, that would be positively subhuman.  Or would it?  Is it not our ability to judge and control and defer our desires what marks us as human, created in the image of God, and distinct from the animals and the rest of God's good creation?  

Our desires are urgent and not simply evil.  We have to satisfy that hunger burning in our bellies.  We have to satisfy our horniness or want for sexual pleasure.  No matter what.  No matter how.  We have all walked around the house looking for the perfect snack or food to answer the desire within.  We have normalized sexual desire to make it available to us through pornography so that it is actually easier to conjure up from the internet an erotic image than it is to find a hot dog and some stale chips to satisfy our hunger.  No wonder we are screwed up.

All those prosperity preachers who tell us to give into desire and that is what God wants us to do are putting lipstick on the pig of sin.  Sin is precisely our inability to reign in the desires inside of us or order them rightly or delay them until an appropriate time.  No matter whether those desires are the swift retort of words to slap down an opponent or the quest for the perfect snack or the want of orgasm, giving into the present desire is always the mark of sin.  Our passion is our undoing while Jesus' passion in suffering is our redemption.  He denied Himself all the way to death on the cross and for us and our salvation set aside instinct for the sake of redemption.  Did He do all of this only so that we could give into our desires without shame or guilt or regret?  Is that the value of the cross?

What is most urgent is that which appears to be the thing you never have to take seriously -- the matters of salvation.  God in His mercy has accomplished all things for our salvation so that we might first of all order ourselves and our desires rightly lest sin gain the upper hand.  We belong to the Lord.  God grant us so to use and pass through the things temporal that we lose not the things eternal.  Pray it and pray it over and over and over again.....

Pathetic conversation. . .

For some reason, we think it is always better to be in dialogue than not.  That is decidedly true of the ecumenical conversations.  There was a time when serious minded people had serious minded conversations.  I think back to the Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogues which began with such earnestness and gave birth to some very weighty tomes.  They did not end as well as they began although that might be due to the changes that took place within Lutheranism and in Rome by the final volumes of essays produced.  Certainly the justification statement by the two involved some creative interpretation of past statements as well as current negotiated agreement in order for either to claim a certain amount of satisfaction in place of integrity.  Missouri's own robust participation in the beginning gave way to a mere spectator perspective willing to throw potshots at the final statements.  As right as those criticisms might have been, the fact that they came from the peanut gallery and not from full fledged dialogue partners seems to mitigate the value of it all (well, in my mind, at least).  Now, as I reported earlier, the Lutheran-Orthodox dialogue has produced some kind of agreement on the filioque.  It is a curious agreement but that is not the only odd thing about it.  It was also minus Missouri and made with the Lutheran Federation partners who can agree on sexuality more than their own confessional documents.  What value is this?

While I can always fault Missouri for preferring the nosebleed seats to a real seat at the table, it is precisely Missouri and her International Lutheran Council friends who ought to be the ones Rome and Constantinople seek out for conversation.  At least we mean what we say and are serious about being Lutheran.  How can you represent Lutheranism to any other tradition unless you are serious about it?  The ELCA and its host of ecumenical friends in America (not Lutheran) and its international allies in the Lutheran World Federation are the least serious ecumenical partners the folks from the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople could be talking to but they aren't and we aren't interested either.  I can only wish for the day when we would put the brightest and best of us around a table and tell them to have at it over what divides us.  For it is only by true to who we are that we can approach one another with any degree of integrity in pursuit of understanding and possible rapprochement.  It will not solve anything if Lutherans come embarrassed by their Lutheranism or Roman Catholics or Orthodox are equally ill at ease by their past and present theological perspective.  We will not gain anything by being bad representatives of our theology or confession and if we do achieve agreement it is worthless.

What good does it do for Rome to find some commonality with the LWF crowd when the elephant in the room is the ordination of women, the embrace of same-sex marriage, and the adoption of the gender alphabet soup?  What value is it if we put at a table people who do not like or want to believe the Word of God and who insist that the Word as we have it cannot convey the true Jesus of history.  What will Orthodoxy get from a Lutheran crowd that may just set aside the filioque but at the same time sets aside every faithful doctrine that conflicts with the current reason, experience, or worldview of modernity?  Jiminy Cricket, it is cool and all but it is the fakest coolness there is and it turns putrid the longer you look at it and the deeper you dig into it.  Come on, people!  If there is any value in dialogue or any hope in a theological conversation, could we agree that the only folks allowed at the table are those who believe in their own tradition?

Kindergarten rules. . .

I was listening on the radio and there was a report of some phone call of supporters of Kamala Harris.  It was about white privilege and women of white privilege and how they can support her candidacy.  In the beginning of this conference call or zoom meeting -- whatever it was -- a voice came on to issue the rules of this conversation.  There were the obligatory warnings about distancing yourself from your white privilege and other such things.  What struck me, however, was the call of the rule maker for the participants to put on their listening ears and to pay more attention to hearing than to speaking, thus giving women of color a larger part of the conversation.

Listening ears. . .   It reminded me a while back of an ELCA female pastor who warned that the feminization of the clergy would eventually result in "the pastoral office speaking with the moral authority of kindergarten teachers."  Yes, sometimes we do need to hear in plain and easy to understand words the questions, answers, and rules of a polite society in times not so polite.  That said, her words were initially lost to me until I heard again the conversation mentioned above.  

While there may be some who think that this is exactly what we need today in our world of conflict, suspicion, and violence, the problem is not listening ears.  The problem lies much deeper.  There is a rather strange arrogance in the presumption that the problems of our unjust world lie in the unwillingness of the privileged to hear out the oppressed and to give them space.  It is a further extension of the kind of victimization culture that has come to define us and people in general today.  We are not responsible for ourselves but are all victims in one way or another to the unfortunates who went before us (including our own parents).  How sad it is that have come to think that the problems of America are the result of people who refuse to hear instead of an honest disagreement over what is good and right and beneficial for the state of things in our land!  If we disagree over basic values and in particular over moral values, that is not a matter which will be solved by listening.  Either one is right and the other wrong or there is no resolution.  Competing values cannot exist side by side within one community without there being conflict.  The world is not a kindergarten classroom where problems are solved by distraction or diversion or sitting in a corner or a nap.  We are not a conflicted society because we are not listening.  We have stopped listening because we are not speaking the same language.

The role of religion and faith was once a key factor in the common bond of a people who were from everywhere but who were united into one community.  The values that once united us were not all that religion specific -- life, family, work, etc...  Even when we did not practice it, we believed that life was sacred and cherished it.  Even when we failed at it, we valued marriage as the noble goal and estate of life and the family as the central structure upon which any society could or should be built.  Even when we struggled for equal access to jobs and the marketplace, we believed in that marketplace and in the dream of a home, a job, and a means of providing for your family and helping your neighbors.  As imperfect as we were at these goals, the values were held in common. It is the disintegration of these values that has become our undoing.  We no longer value life but have treated it as a commodity at best or a burden at worst.  We no longer value marriage and family but have elevated the individual over all other estates.  We no longer value work but leisure and entertainment and pleasure above all things and tolerate work as a means to pay for what we really value.  Listening ears cannot repair what now lies broken nor can hearing each other out replace the common values and truths that once united us.

Whether you believe the doctrines of Christianity or not or believed them all the same or not, America expected faith to influence values and the common values of life, marriage, family, home, and work to be the bonds that bound us diverse peoples into one nation.  No, it is not the job of the Church to restore these to America as a nation but as a Church we would lie to our people if we denied how faith expected and supported these causes of life, marriage, family, home, work, and personal responsibility.  As the Christian faith has been co-opted into something that leaves people to do what seems right in their own eyes and in the moment, we have less and less to offer people and a nation in search of real unity.  Traditional Christianity was never an easy partner with the culture but it now seems we have little choice but to war with the voices of those who insist that life is a relative value, marriage is what we define it to be, family is not as important as the individual, home is a state of mind and not real, work has to be enjoyed to be worth anything, and personal responsibility is less important than acknowledging how we are victims of someone or something.  In the end, the Olympic controversy puts on display how distant culture is from the Christian roots that once grounded our life together in the West.  Our cultural decline is revealed not by the way the West has rejected Christianity but by the way the West has repudiated the values that once united us all as a people and replaced it with a false concept of diversity, equity, injustice, and access that can do little more than accuse and offers the pathetic solution of listening voices as what we need to repair what is broken.