Straining at gnats. . .

How odd it is to watch from a distance the great debate within the Roman Catholic Church over such things as Latin and altar rails!  It is as if the madness of the world has invaded Rome.   The world itself is in a fight over such foolishness as men competing with women because that is what they think they are -- among other things.  How is it that we are preoccupied with the distractions that mean nothing while the real urgencies of the day are ignored?  And, yes, Lutheranism is not immune from the struggle.  In the ELCA the Gospel has become cause to depart from the clear teaching of the very Scriptures that they claim to hear and in Missouri we treat as incidental how we worship the holy God who has become our Savior.  Really?

There are profound problems facing us as people and as a nation, profound problems facing Rome, and profound problems facing Wittenberg.  They will not be solved by the detours and dead ends we pursue to make ourselves feel better.  What fools we have become!  While the most important things lie forgotten and ignored, we run with abandon after things that a generation or so ago would have considered bad jokes.  It is the way of sin.  "Straining at gnats" is, of course, a reference to the Scriptures (Matthew 23:24) where our Lord rebukes the Pharisees for their hypocrisy.  These religious experts of the day were so busy arguing about details that they blind to the Savior who stood in their midst, the one to whom Moses looked to keep the Law perfectly and whom Elijah prophesied.  Though we smugly presume to be spiritual, we have not progressed much.  

I am not saying that altar rails are unimportant or that abandoning the Divine Service is no big deal but we so often fail to connect the dots in such a way that it appears to be anything more than fools debating trivialities.  It is so long ago that a Christian worldview prevailed in or outside the faith that the world around us cannot be depended upon to get the significance of our subtleties.  I am not even sure that many debating such things understand why they are important.  In the meantime, the world languishes without any realization of sin or the damage sin has done and has no use for the Savior whom the Father has sent to redeem His lost and condemned creation.  

If we are to impact the world, those who call themselves Christians will be equipped for their witness by uniting around a distinctly Christian worldview and in a solid understanding of what it is that happens when the Lord encounters His people with His grace.  Otherwise, people presume that this thing called faith is all about little things that are easily reduced to the presumption that God just wants to make us happy and He is resident among us not in the concrete of the means of grace but located in our feelings.  The world is more than content to leave us to our convenient myths and legends because it knows that a people inwardly focused upon their happiness is not real threat to their pursuit of other ends.  Instead of being strong enough to rescue us from death, this thing called Christianity can be dismissed as a harmless gnat itself.