Why not steps?

The mark of older chancels was often steps.  The altar was raised, the pulpit was raised, and the whole chancel was raised.  Sometimes there were a plenty of steps.  Some might suggest that this was due to the need to be seen but I wonder if it wasn't something else.  The God who is wholly other is accessible by steps.  The steps are not simply architectural but theological.  We must ascend to Him or He must descend to us or we have no communion.  The ancient Church more likely reflected this truth in architectural terms than the present and future Church does.  

Especially medieval buildings reflect this symbolic language within the floor plan. Every aspect of the medieval structures we do admire seems to echo or communicate theological truths. The churches built of stone and wood reflected a worldview that understands reality itself in hierarchical terms, the God who is wholly other and who is inaccessible until and unless He reveals Himself to us and makes Himself available to us and their sanctuaries reflect this very literally.  Indeed, from at least to the 8th century, the church buildings were designed in vertical layers, lifting the ministers as well as the vision of the worshipers to the God on high.  The entire building was intentionally designed to be a vertical map of this theological reality, a very expression of medieval Christian cosmology.  

Our present views on the subject of the buildings in which we worship are probably not as organized but they also reflect our cosmology.  Though we are more likely to be concerned about ease of access, to be sure, we are also driven by the idea that we are on His plane -- an egalitarian idea of our relationship with the mighty and eternal God.   It is not by accident that modern day liturgical churches construct buildings in which the altar and pulpit are often on the very same plane as the folks in the pew.  This might be something we do in the name of disability and ease of access but it is more likely a reflection of our desire to bring God down to us on our terms -- something not so foreign to the problem of Eden.

Medieval Christians and those who went before them could have certainly placed the altar at the same level as the congregation -- it would have been much easier on the task of constructing the building. They could have arranged the “worship space” in the manner that we do today -- so the congregation surrounded the sanctuary on most or all sides and in which the chancel is center but not above us. The reality is that generation after generation followed the early lead until the present day.  We forget that what we are doing is so out of sync with our own Christian past.  They have continued to construct churches whose architectural plan was intent upon proclaiming ascent, descent, hierarchy, sacrifice and the kingship of Christ.  At least until the past 70 years or more when we made a break with our own history.

We need to relearn how to read that symbolic language the architectural plans hide.  We need to learn how to be more intent upon faithful structures which visually reflect the Biblical image of God and how He interacts with us.  Without this, our buildings will continue to be living rooms or warehouses which do not look like our theology or at least like the Biblical reality which is supposed to inform our theology.

The lighthouse does not move. . .

There are a thousand lighthouse jokes.  The one I am most familiar with has several incarnations.  The one my Canadian friend likes to tell me goes like this.  A US naval ship is warned by Canadians to alter its course.

CANADIANS: "Please divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision"

AMERICANS: "Recommend YOU divert your course 15 degrees to the north to avoid a collision"

CANADIANS: "Negative. You will have to divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision"

AMERICANS: "This is the captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course"

CANADIANS: "No, I say again, you divert your course"

AMERICANS: "This is the Aircraft Carrier USS LINCOLN, the second largest ship in the United States Atlantic Fleet. We are accompanied with three Destroyers, three Cruisers and numerous support vessels. I DEMAND that you change your course 15 degrees north. I say again, that's one-five degrees north, or counter-measures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship"

CANADIANS: "This is a LIGHTHOUSE. Your call"

The lighthouse does not move.  Its value lies in that it does not move.  Its light is anchored to a certain point and this is what gives its light authority.  Everything else moves because of its light.  I wish we took this to heart in the Church.

There are so many voices calling for the Church to listen to the opinions of the people in and outside of the Church, so many who insist that the danger before us is becoming irrelevant by failing to listen to our people, and so many who believe that God's Word is more suggestion than permanent truth.  By and large liberal Christianity has given into to all of these.  The times are filled with the mantra of a listening Church in step with the times and with the needs/wants/desires of its people.  The end result is that these churches have no light left.  They shine with the borrowed light of those around them -- a fragile light that changes constantly and offers nothing of permanence much less transcendence. It is a mirror of our own light which has already failed us in Eden and left us broken and marked for death.

Even in the churches you would least likely expect to hear this call, it is there.  Rome calls it Synodality.  Some Lutherans call it trusting the wisdom of others to come to different conclusions than we have.  It is the deception of diversity which celebrates difference and promotes a unity unfounded on truth.  God has not left us with the tools to make our own light.  We are merely tenders of the lighthouse, HIS lighthouse.  We also shine with borrowed light but it is not our light.  It is always His.  His Word.  His truth.  His doctrine.  The world is that ship insisting the lighthouse has to move.  The lighthouse has no course.  It is anchored to that which is eternal.  This is the Church's value.  We are anchored to the eternal in the midst of a changing world filled with deception and falsehood.  This alone does not make the world bad but it does make it clear why the Church and the people within listen to a different voice than their heart, their minds, or the times.  I wonder what might have happened if we had spent the energy we used trying to reinvent ourselves and applied it to being God's light.  That is all past now.  We cannot go back to our past errors.  We must shine with the brightness of the one, true Light now, where we are, with all that we are.  God's light has not failed us but we have certainly failed God's light.  We have dimmed the Light of Christ in the hope that our own light would shine brighter.  It did not work then and it will not work in the future.  Our hope is to chart our position against God's light, to set our course by that light, and to follow that light from the changes and chances of this mortal life to our eternal safe port in heaven. 

Existential. . .

According to Study Finds:

A survey of 2,000 Americans found that one in three (32%) say they’re currently experiencing an existential crisis, with Gen Z leading all generations at 52%.

“Stressful” was the most common word Americans used to describe 2026 so far (35%), and respondents said they’ve already absorbed an average of two major unplanned life changes this year.

Financial pressure is a dominant driver across all age groups, with a separate survey finding that 87% of Americans believe the country is in an affordability crisis and half struggle to pay basic bills.

Despite widespread anxiety, 79% of Americans say they’re planning some kind of mid-year reset, and nearly a third say 2026 has gone better than expected.

One of the terrible burdens of our time is the so-called freedom to define yourself and to decide for yourself who you are, what you want, and how to live it out.  There was a time when I thought this is what I wanted.  In the end, I found it all exhausting.  It consumed my time and energy until I surrendered to what I had learned from my parents, what I had been taught in church, what I had seen in the lives of my family, and what the Scriptures said.  Thankfully, this journey of so-called self-discovery did not last very long.  The power of the examples around me and my upbringing within a community of faith laid calm on the sea of upset that this supposed liberty offered to me had created.  Sadly, there are too many people for whom the journey had no ending and has no end.  They are caught in the prison of this freedom and nothing else can exist before these basic questions are answered.  This is no gift.  It is a curse.

The sexual revolution said that sex was for everything but marriage and children.  It has become so embedded in our culture and in our lives that it is no longer questioned.  Even worse, the revolution expanded beyond the realm of desire and into a basic question of gender thrust upon the child as well as the adult.  You must figure out not only who turns you on but also who you are -- without DNA or sex organs to inform that decision.  Then you can use all the various forms to prevent the sexual union of man and woman from fulfilling its primary purpose and clean up the mess when it doesn't with a cheap and readily available morning after pill.

Work is no longer simply for the benefit of those in your care and to provide for yourself, it has become encumbered with the need to give us happiness more than purpose.  Our labors must provide us not simply with the needs of this body and life but interest, entertainment, and satisfaction.  Where my grandparents and parents knew almost instinctively who they were and what was the purpose of their lives, my grandchildren will have to treat these questions as a treasure map that might just take the majority of their lives to discover.  Work and money had meaning because of the people within your care -- those for whom you labored in unpleasant and unsatisfying tedium and those who benefited from the dollars the job provided.  But now it is more complicated.

Our children learn this stress too early, their childhoods robbed from by the intrusion of adult sized challenges and puzzles which must be solved before play.  Screens not only provide entertainment but shape the brain to love the search as much as the destination and inform in subtle ways the values and truths no longer built upon fact or faith but expedience.  Anxiety has been our gift to the children we should have insulated from these adult sized fears and questions.

The gift of faith is the gift of peace -- peace that comes first from the answer of who we are and why we are here, the order that shapes our lives not to curse us but to help us fulfill our purpose and find rest from the constant pressures of sex, money, work, entertainment, and happiness.  The rest that our Lord promises is not sleep but an end to the constant questions that prevent sleep and create turmoil where there was meant to be peace.  He gives us this peace, not as the world gives, but as only He can give.  Thanks be to God.  What we have to offer the world is not a restricted life which is bounded by unfair demands but the true and real freedom born of a death to end death and a life strong enough to live forever. 

Was he wrong?

Against the persistent chant of modernism which insists that the Church must change or die, there was a warning sent forth in 1933 by then Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (and later Pope Pius XII) against that very thing-- change.  We have lived with the change and the mantra of change for so long we no longer question its veracity or relevance in an age unhinged from its own past.  On so many borders, the problem we have is not tradition but the lack thereof, a nod toward the present that refuses to listen to the past much less be ordered by it.  Yet the Cardinal was closer to the truth than the merchants of transformation whose empty promises of making all things new has only made us forget anything old.

"...the danger that threatens the Church is a divine warning against the suicide that the alteration of the Faith, in its liturgy, its theology, and its soul, would represent."  That is what was set forth in a world soon to be changed right down to its core by rise of Nazism and the brutality of World War II.  Sadly, I do not guess many were listening.  "I hear around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject her ornaments, and make her remorseful for her historical past. Well, my dear friend, I am convinced that the Church of Peter must affirm her past, or else she will dig her own grave."  How we love innovation!  How we love the idea of dismantling the past and making the present disdainful of it until we are adrift from our moorings both on how we look at Scripture and how we live out its vision of the new life of worship and service.

We do not honor the past because it must be given deference but because we have no promise of being able to see the future but, through the lens of the past, we are able to see the missteps and errors of those felt it was a burden upon their time.  If we had paid a bit more attention, we might be in better shape today.  Since we have not, we have witnessed how we have made the Bible into a dead book of irrelevant facts instead of the living voice of God.  In the same vein, we have decided that relevance and contentment are more important gauges of fidelity than continuity so we reinvent things that we only yesterday invented while insisting the past is as important as myth and not much more.  Finally, we have given value to the idea that the unpredictability of what happens on Sunday morning is a better way to grow the Church and catechize the faithful than liturgy, lectionary, or life together.  Have you ever wondered about the irony of churches which insistently broke ranks with and condemned as false worship the lectionary and liturgy of the past only to become barometers of what is in style and what people will pay for in worship?

The way we have always done things seems to be laughable until you find yourself completely adrift from the anchor of yesterday and completely unequipped to handle the present, much less the future.  Tradition is hardly the ball and chain some presume it to be.  The dead have no veto power over the living because they are dead -- only because they were faithful!  “Tradition,” Jaroslav Pelikan famously said, “is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should  
add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name. The reformers of every age, whether political or religious or literary, have protested against the tyranny of the dead, and in doing so have called is also 
for innovation and insight in place of tradition.” (The Vindication of Tradition, 65).  We certainly offer to the future the best of that which is the present, but it is a gift that is yet untested and therefore not yet worthy of the same esteem as tradition, tested and tried and sifted until it has been deemed faithful from age to age.

Rome is even now reaping its own fruits of its own break with its past following Vatican II.  Lutheranism has found that its own liturgical change has brought an unwelcome diversity in which worship is all over the page.  Others are having their own issues with worship and doctrine -- including the idea that the form can be preserved (creed) but its own words emptied of meaning (e. g. Virgin birth).  It is as if both doctrinally and liturgically some have insisted of the Church, we must kill her to maker her live.

The great evil. . .

In the Pope's first encyclical, he has dismantled the just war theory Christianity has defended for a very long time.  In his mind, it is an antiquated concept no longer in step with the complex and changing reality of the present.  I am sure that the rest of Christianity will be happy to know that Leo has rendered his opinion on this -- except that his opinion counts for a bit more than an opinion.  To some, at least.

I am not at all sure that Rome, with its own history of brutal persecution of those whom it calls heretics or witches or whatever, is in a great position to speak of how justice, dialogue, mutual, sacrifice, and the affirmation of the human dignity of every person.  I guess that is a small thing -- since Leo is about to end the whole idea of war with the power of love.  Perhaps he could apply this locally to the situation in the Middle East, for example.   

As one wag put it, war is often a symptom of evil rather than the evil itself. The problem is that we tend to treat war as the problem in the same way we assign the problem of violence to guns.  Of course they are related but not perhaps in the way some presume.  The evil that set man against man happened long before there were nations and armies.  The first death of Eden happened before a military industrial complex or drug cartels or adultery or a lot of things.  In case the pope forgot.  War is the result of what lives in the heart of man from the departure from Eden to the present.  It may not be politically correct to say that but every Christian theologian worth his salt surely knows the truth of it all.  Or should.  Even Leo has to admit that today, “the highest level is not the State, but rather major economic and technological actors that exercise de facto power over the conditions of everyday life.”  That

He also addresses artificial intelligence.  It should not be served but serve us.  That makes me feel better.  Magnifica Humanitas is about the much larger transformation of human life in our time -- even bigger than war, it would seem.  It is about technology, work, education, truth, communication, political power, economic inequality, war, transhumanism, and the temptation to treat the human person as data, material, or an instrument.  On this we both agree:  AI needs to be governed and not simply regulated.  But it is probably a little late for that statement to make much of a difference.  The world is already in the camp of fear that if the good guys do not develop AI, the bad guys will so every one must take it over and make it work for their cause.  Amid Leo's warning is this odd statement:  "The artificial imitation of positive human communication—words of advice, empathy, friendship and even love—can be engaging and at times genuinely helpful.” Exactly how he does not say.

For Leo, safeguarding human dignity is the criterion for judging what is good and what is not -- even in the sphere of technological development and artificial intelligence.  He is rightly concerned about the risk of moral irresponsibility in the use of artificial intelligence as well he should.  But what remains to be seen is how a dismal record of human violence and war will give way to reason and the power of love when it comes to the implementation of artificial intelligence.  I guess he has more hope than I do.  He apologizes for slavery as if it were his or Christianity's to apologize for and then fails to admit that Silicon Valley is headed full speed while any calls to consider the impact of it all are not even a distraction for the powers that rule AI.  In the end it would be wise to admit that the improvement of the human condition is not exactly the reason for a Savior who suffered and died and rose again.  The redemption of humanity, not the same as its improvement, seems to be God's higher concern.  Leo should know that as well.  Christian thinkers should weigh in on the morality of this technology, to be sure, but our primary concern ought to remain the proclamation of Christ crucified and risen for sinners but not quite for semi-sentient silicon chips.

 

Dropping recognized faiths from the DOD. . .

The Department of Defense, for the first time in almost a decade, dramatically reduced its number of its recognized religious faiths and belief systems by approximately 180.  These reforms mark the first time the list has been officially revised since the March 27, 2017 memo, decreasing the total number of faiths from 211 to its new number of 31. The changes were iterated in a May 20, 2026, in a memorandum issued by the Under Secretary.

Secretary Hegseth said his department would be significantly streamlining the number of faith code affiliations for service members, including a separate but related change to replace rank insignia military chaplains wear on their work uniforms with religious insignia.  The faith and belief coding system, renamed to "religious affiliation codes,” was simply due to a system that had become too big, according to the secretary.

In what will certainly be claimed is a moved enhancing Christianity, the numbers of faith code affiliations had become inordinately long and complicated.  What it will mean going forward remains to be seen. I am sure we have not heard the last of this.

The new list now only includes: 

Agnostic (AN)
Baha'i faith (BH)
Buddhism (BU)
Christian - Assemblies of God (AG)
Christian - Baptist (BA)
Christian - Brethren (BR)
Christian - Catholic (CA)
Christian - Church of Christ (CC)
Christian - Church of God (CG)
Christian - Church of the Nazarene (CN)
Christian - Episcopal/Anglican (EA)
Christian - Evangelical (EV)
Christian - Jehovah's Witnesses (JW)
Christian - Lutheran (LU)
Christian - Methodist (ME)
Christian - Non Denominational (ND)
Christian - Orthodox (OX)
Christian - Other (CO)
Christian - Pentecostal (PE)
Christian - Presbyterian (PR)
Christian - Quaker (QU)
Christian - Reformed (RE)
Christian - Scientist (SC)
Christian - Seventh Day Adventist (SA)
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (CJ)
Hindu (HI)
Islam (Muslim) (IS)
Judaism (Jewish) (JU)
No Religion (NR)
Other Religions (OR)
Sikh (SI) 

 

From the ear to the eye. . .

In several previous posts I referenced Marshall McLuhan who famously coined the phrases the medium is the message and global village.  In his own estimations the two most profound revolutions for all of civilization were both means of communication: the printing press and the microphone (public address system).  According to McLuhan, these rather ordinary innovations (at least by today's standards) radically changed the world in which we live -- ways that only now, long after their introduction, have had consequences well beyond their own application.  Both of them made language more important than ever before and communication the premier industrial innovation.

With the printing press, language was no longer acoustical.  It was visual.  We hear so much about people being visual learners today but with the advent of this medium of communication.  Although it sounds rather complicated, the reality is revealed in a shift of senses from ear to eye.  As true as this is for everything else, it is equally true for the Church and, in particular, for the liturgy.  

Just like you cannot "see" the tone on a text message or email or printed page but must imagine it, the ear pays great attention to all the contours of the sound -- the inflection in the voice, the tone that is heard, and the volume.  All of these interpret what is heard along with the actual words.  Thanks to the invention of print technology and its evolution to the present day, we more narrowly focus on language itself than the fuller experience of hearing.  The microphone or public address system has amplified the power of words in a strange way.  Though the emphasis is on hearing, the print more often accompanies what is heard.  In the liturgy, for example, the worship folder or mass leaflet or printed readings accompany what is heard and, indeed, the importance of the ear is minimized by the printing of all of the words that are also heard.

This has had profound impact on the liturgy.  Is it no secret that, as McLuhan posited, “the demand for a vernacular liturgy arose spontaneously in the sixteenth century, but it isn’t so. In fact, that demand was linked to the invention of print, an invention that accentuated people’s need to push towards individualism and nationalism. Add to that the fact that printed texts gave rise to textual exegesis from the pulpit. And finally, the new accent on the visual favored placing the celebrant face to face with the congregation: we needed to see him and he wanted to be seen.”  No one but a fool would suggest that Luther and even Rome did not exploit the new technology of the printing press in their respective causes.  It is obvious that the printed pamphlets of the 16th century actors advanced their positions or that the sermon took on a greater power than ever before.  But the need for worship to be understood appealed to the visual influence of the printed word well beyond the acoustical.  Prior to the Reformation, people watched what they could and heard the sound track of the chant but in a language that was not their own.  After the Reformation, people heard the sound of the liturgy in their own language and the focus was more on the printed word than it had ever been before.  

Now we have a microphone on the altar as well in the pulpit.  It would seem that this contradicts the move to visual from oral and yet by making clearly heard and even explained in print, the shape of the liturgy changed from an encounter with the mystery of God's presence to an appeal to the mind proving rational propositions of truth designed to gain acceptance or even a decision.  It is no secret that this is true of the churches of the radical reformation but it could be said that it is also a true of Lutheranism, decidedly not a radical reformation church, or even Rome itself (especially after Vatican II).

This is part one of a look at this topic.  More to come.

The microphone problem. . .

A while ago I read what I had thought was an odd opinion piece by a guy arguing that microphones have
killed preaching.  Seemed odd at the time.  Was it?  According to the guy,  if a preacher spoke without a microphone, he couldn’t simply mutter pious platitudes or speak in dull monotone without emotion or conviction.  At least if he did, no one would be able to hear him.  So, most likely, he would not simply babble on with words he had not prepared saying things without intention or passion.  At least that is what this author said. The preacher would have to know what he wanted to say and how to say it -- without benefit of a microphone to amplify his speech.  Without a microphone, the preacher would have to speak loudly and clearly in order to be heard.  Without a microphone doing the bulk of the work of projection, the preacher might actually have to exert himself in the pulpit.  Was he on to something or was this complainer simply searching for reasons in the all the wrong places?

The carbon microphone was first invented in the 1870s.  The whole idea of a sound system (microphone + amplifier + loudspeaker) took longer -- sometime in the mid-1910s.  Except for a very few, these contraptions were rarely installed in churches until the 1930s.  Now you cannot go without them.  I was once in a very small parish with a very small building but they still had microphones.  People have to hear.  Except they did hear long before microphones became standard equipment in churches.  People heard preachers great and not so great.  They heard them preach and not simply speak into microphones.  Sure, they did have sounding boards and raised pulpits and pulpits located nearer the people to help them but the preaching was up to the preacher -- without benefit of sound amplification.

Have they helped preaching?  We can certainly hear better but the question of whether microphones have helped preaching is a very different question.  To tell you the truth, I had not thought about this at all.  I always hated microphones and still do -- especially those that hang on the ear and extend around the cheek toward the mouth.  But you cannot get away from them.  They are literally everywhere in churches.  We have them for a variety of reasons -- many of them also not ancient but modern.  We have to have microphones because we record these services and broadcast them and we need to have something to broadcast and record.  We have them because we presume that it is too much for the preacher to preach without them and so we have microphones to amplify the voice of the speaker to replace the need for him to learn how to preach, how to project his voice, and how to provide a room in which preaching does not need amplification.  But have they helped preaching and not just the hearing of the sermon?

The complainer I referenced was not the first to raise this question.  “Many people will lament the disappearance of the Latin Mass from the Catholic Church without realizing that it was a victim of the microphone on the altar.” [Marshall McLuhan 1911–1980).  He was Roman Catholic.  The guy who said the medium is the message.  He later said: “Latin wasn’t the victim of Vatican II; it was done in by introducing the microphone. A lot of people, the Church hierarchy included, have been lamenting the disappearance of Latin without understanding that it was the result of introducing a piece of technology that they accepted so enthusiastically.”   McLuhan, the Canadian communications theorist and educator, was a critic of the potent influence of television, computers, and other electronic means of disseminating  information over the information being disseminated.  I don't know about his comments regarding the Latin Mass and the Vatican II Mass but I would apply his words to preaching.  PA systems have not exactly helped preaching even though they have helped mediocre preachers to be heard.  I am not opposed to the preacher being heard.  What I am worried about is the lack of preparation and conviction that seems to be a description of preaching problems today and, I would emphasize, the confusion of talking with preaching or imparting information with preaching.  Preaching is not the same as talking and not simply imparting information.  Preaching is the application of the Word to the situation of the hearer.  The words of the sermon surely do inform but they proclaim, convict, absolve, and direct the hearer.  I fear the the sound amplification systems across the churches have given preachers an opportunity to be lazy -- if not by what they say then by how they say it.  So much for my rant today.

[Marshall McLuhan, Liturgy and the Microphone. First published in: “The Critic” 1974, vol. 33, no. 1, October-December, pp. 12–17; reprinted in: Eric McLuhan and Jacek Szklarek (eds.), The medium and the light: Reflections on Religion, Toronto: Stoddart 1999, pp. 107-116, quote from p. 112.] 

 

Odd humor that hides a probem. . .

On May 16, 2026, SNL included a joke which, even by the standards of shocking Michael Jackson jokes,  was too far.  “Michael Jackson did nothing wrong,” Michael Che, one of the co-anchors of Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update,” said during the episode. “He was right to molest all those kids.” This was delivered with palpable surprise at the words coming out of his mouth, but Che kept going: “They were lucky. I would have paid him to do it. And I did! That’s right, when I was 10 years old, Michael Jackson molested me, and the only thing it gave me was a fetish for middle-aged white women.” He then smiled and said, almost as an aside, “That is not why I have that.” 

I did not see it.  I do not watch SNL -- for various reasons.  But reading about this joke revealed a great deal about us.  We seem adept at laughing at the things that should not be funny.  It is not just nervous humor.  I can understand that.  But this is laughter that, by making things funny that should be shocking, makes it easy for us to ignore real problems.  It is not about Michael Jackson.  It is not about child abuse or pedophilia.  It is about how corrupting this kind of humor is for our values, for the things that should be sacred but end up being crude and ugly.  Our use of humor to cover how wrong some things are is a sign of the way we have screwed up these things -- whether by tolerating or ignoring these wrongs or by making a joke out of the things that should be serious.

We laugh at things that should shock us and we are shocked at things which do not qualify as moral issues.  This is what sin has done when we take from the shadows and darkness the things that belong there and bring them into the daylight.  When we try to make normal what out to disordered and unacceptable, we turn upside down right and wrong, who we are and what we are here to be and do.  Then we pass this onto our children and they do not realize the background behind such things and simply accept them as normal, even laudable.

I have no idea what Michael Jackson did or did not do but I am shocked at the thought of abuse he might have suffered as some suggest and the abuse he might have done to others.  I do not understand how we can make humor about murdering babies or making pleasure the most important principle of life.  I do not understand how we can normalize what is perverted and make perverse what ought to be normal.  But I do not know that using humor to cover such things helps nothing and no one.   We have made vulgar speech normal until language seems to shock no one anymore.  

The "Catholic Moment" of the 1980s

In 1987, then Lutheran Richard John Neuhaus suggested that history had entered into a particular moment, a “Catholic moment,” in which the Roman Catholic Church was poised to lead a renewal of the faith and to exercise its “rightful role” in setting forth a “religiously informed public philosophy” for the United States.  Then he left Lutheranism and became the Roman Catholic he said he always was.  This visionary individual has passed away but what has become of his judgment that the US was entering into that Catholic moment?

Of course, that was before Francis, indeed before Benedict.  It was on the heels of a heady moment in which many outside of Rome were looking with Rome to the theological leadership and moral authority of Pope John Paul II.  Things have changed.  Especially after Francis.  The Roman Catholic Church is bleeding just like any other Christian denomination.  As one pundit put it:

In 2000, 2.6 million American children attended Catholic schools. In 2025, only 1.6 million did. In 2001, more than a quarter-million Catholic weddings took place; in 2024, around 107,000 did. In 2001, more than a million infants were baptized in the Church. In 2024, fewer than half a million were. These numbers presage a future in which the Catholic Church will be much smaller and poorer than it currently is. 

If this is what a Catholic moment looks like internally, the vision of Neuhaus is tanking, rotting from the inside out.  And this is after the extent of the priest sex scandals had done their worst.  So much for ascendancy.  Well, to be sure, there are some healthy signs in Rome.  The surge in adult conversions, many in urban and university churches, that so many are talking about has not yet found its way into the ordinary statistics of mass attendance and baptisms and the like.  If anything, the conversions may be due to the decline of other churches as much as it is to the ascendancy of Rome.  Another commentator has said exactly this -- contrasting the decline in Biblical literacy and the depth of knowledge that once characterized some conservative Christian denominations with the highly visible signs within Rome that they are still there (a new pope does not hurt).

While I wish that my own Lutheran Church Missouri Synod were enjoying the fruits of this rise of adult confirmands, we are, to some extent, seeing the same thing.  Again, I am not sure that it is due to us doing things right as much as the others doing things wrong.  The news is filled with sob stories of Protestantism, even confessional Protestantism that once bucked the intellectual and moral decline of the liberal and progressive versions.  Anglicans are a hot mess.  Conservatives in most Christian churches are conservative by degree and not necessarily anywhere close to actual conservatives.  It would seem that people are not so much looking for Rome as they are looking for authority, for continuity with the past instead of a break with it, for the basics of traditional worship, catechesis, and morality.  Tragically, these are found less and less across the many churches that claim to be Christian (and even among those who claim to be Lutheran!).  It would seem that if a few churches are winning anything, it is because they are the only ones left who in any way, shape, or form mirror the faith once delivered to the saints.

Rather than my kind of Lutherans lamenting what is happening in Rome (the good news) or being jealous of it, we need to learn from it.  Doctrinal and moral clarity and Biblical fidelity are the means by which the faith is delivered to those who do not know God.  Far from being the impediments that some claim are keeping folks away, these are the magnets that are drawing Christians from liberal and progressive churches and from the edges of the faith to find out more.  I do not know whether they ever was or ever will be a "Catholic moment" for Rome.  I can say with a great deal of confidence that there will be a catholic moment for those who hear the voice of God's Word and preach it, who hold to the doctrine of the Scriptures without embarrassment, and who confess it and live it out on Sunday morning.  That catholic moment never waned no matter what the statistics might say.  Of course, Neuhaus was smart enough to leave a caveat, suggesting that he did not know if such a moment might ever be realized.  I will go out on a limb and say that the catholic moment I am talking about will be.

Our digital pacifier. . .

A pacifier is a rubber, plastic, or silicone nipple substitute given to infants and toddlers to suckle on between feedings, helping to soothe them by satisfying their natural sucking reflex.   So Wiki says.  According to the same, using a pacifier can provide several advantages for both babies and parents:

Comfort and Soothing

• Satisfies sucking reflex: Babies have a strong natural desire to suck, which can be calmed with a pacifier.
• Helps with sleep: Pacifiers can assist babies in falling asleep faster and may help them stay asleep longer.

Every parent knows the value of a good pacifier.  At the same time, every parent knows when the pacifier has to go.  While pacifiers can be beneficial for very specific uses, there are also potential downsides.  In the category of Dependency Issues, the problem is the pacifier can be habit-forming; babies may become reliant on pacifiers for comfort, leading to nighttime awakenings if the pacifier falls out.  Not mention the health concerns:  nipple confusion: introducing a pacifier too early can interfere with breastfeeding, as babies may prefer the easier sucking of a pacifier over nursing and dental problems: prolonged use of pacifiers can affect dental development, particularly if used beyond the age of two.  There are studies to suggest that children who use pacifiers may have a higher incidence of ear infections compared to those who do not.  In conclusion, pacifiers can be a helpful tool for soothing infants, but parents should weigh the benefits against potential drawbacks. It's essential to use them wisely and consider weaning off before significant dental issues arise.

Apparently we are wiser about pacifiers that you stick in the mouth than the ones you place in hands before eyes.  Have our screens become pacifiers?  Have we learned to turn to then for comfort and soothing in our time of angst, uncertainty, and fear of personal interaction?  Screens both create problems and become the solution kids and adults reach for, forming what some researchers call a “vicious cycle.”  Using smartphones as ‘digital pacifiers’ or ‘dummies’ is an increasing phenomenon in our modern society, where smartphones serve as soothing tools, digital pacifiers, for toddlers, teens, and adult.  While the term ‘pacifier’ or ‘dummy’ traditionally refers to a rubber object designed to calm babies by satisfying their innate sucking reflex, the concept has evolved in the digital age to include handheld electronic devices, particularly those with smaller screens -- smartphones and tablets.  

We all know that kids are glued to their devices.  The allure of smartphones as digital pacifiers is obvious. This is the generation who never allows themselves to be bored – or is it because we don’t allow them to be bored?  With vibrant screens, engaging apps, and an endless array of entertainment options, smartphones possess an inherent ability to captivate young minds and momentarily alleviate distress or boredom. Whether it’s the engaging visuals, interactive stories, educational videos, or soothing music, these devices offer an abundance of stimuli we have used to effectively distract, calm, or entertain children of all ages and this is what we carry into adulthood.  It has become our default.

In some ways, our digital devices have become tools that we use in place of religion, perhaps even the reason why the nones are growing.  We turn to the things we can hold in our hands and control in place of the God who comes in means and whom we must trust because He is in control. 

Small need not mean dying. . .

Surely you cannot help but be struck by the number of voices in alarm over the declining size of the average non-Roman Catholic congregation.  The reality is that these are small, some of them graying, but not all of them declining.  In fact, some of them remain vital and alive despite the obvious pressures placed upon them for their lack of size.  They can be found in the typical areas of the Midwest where LCMS Lutheranism has been historically strong, in the remains of a once vital Lutheran presence in the coast lands and inner cities of our nation, and in the places where you would be surprised to find them -- in the Bible belt of the South.  I tip my hat to them.   

The reality is that numbers are important and we should not say they are not simply because they are often headed in a direction that either embarrasses us or confound us.  At the same time, however, we should not equate small with dying or dead.  Small is often simply the surface judgment imposed by numbers that stand either below the average or median of a church body or a group of them.  It is not in and of itself a description of their life together or their ministry.  I am an example of one who was formed by a small congregation that was never big even though it was often bigger than it is today.  I am not alone.  There were many pastors and teachers raised up by that small congregation over the years.  They were the fruit of God's own work which is never small -- even though the font may be its power is not.  And these church workers stand tall together with the husbands, wives, parents, and children who in their own vocation seek to live out as fully as possible the promise of God's own divine life imparted by water and the Spirit in this new birth of water and the Word.

Small may be the condition of the place -- there are plenty of places across America which are not growing or even staying the same size but declining in the overall numbers of people who live there.  That often describes the rural areas in which the resource of manual labor has been replaced by expensive mechanized agriculture.  They probably will not grow back to their glory days but that does not mean that the people there and the communities of faith that serve them are without mission or purpose or glory.  Wherever God is at work, there is His glory -- calling, gathering, enlightening, and sanctifying His Church.  There are often closer to the two or three gathered in His name but He is there among them true to His promise and with His boundless gifts.  Small may be an accurate descriptor of everything except God's work among them in Word and Sacrament.  That is never small.

So today I laud those places which are small by numbers but not declining or dead.  God bless them and those whom they serve.  God bless the pastors who serve them, the volunteer musicians who serve them, the people who do the labor that larger congregations hire out to do.  God is not done with you yet unless you are already done with Him.  Trust remains the most valuable commodity for small congregations when the signs of earthly success are few.  God remains true and His work is without limit in growing His Church in the most surprising places and where number crunchers might have given up.  Small need not mean dying and dying congregations are often filled with plenty of people who have lost the hope into which they were planted until they trust in things more than in God's Word and promises.  So lift high the cross where you are and the work will not be finished until God says it it.  God bless you. 

God's voice is always musical. . .

One thing I learned from J. S. Bach is that God's voice is music, always musical.  The voice of God is not strictly words but the sound of music – complete with all its harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, form, etc...  It is a language that accompanies the words. I think it a rather modern idea that music exists as its own idiom and that it exists for the purpose of pleasure or the expression of emotion.  Bach taught me that the voice of God is music and this is the language of God.  His Word literally sings.  As a Lutheran Bach came by this naturally.  For us liturgy is simply sung Scripture –whether word for word as it appears in the book or paraphrased.

While for many of us or even most music is a soundtrack and not the screenplay, the success of it all is measured by the words and music that fuse together to become one.  It is surely that way for music in service to the Word.  It does not provide a sound but rather becomes something new when wedded to the Word of God.  The two become one.  It pulls you in and fills you with its peace and harmony.  How sad that it is now almost universally divorced from the context that gives it meaning and power, purpose and majesty. 

Though some reformers were hesitant about music, not Luther.  “First then, looking at music itself, you will find that from the beginning of the world it has been instilled and implanted in all creatures, individually and collectively.  For nothing is without sound or harmony.  Even the air, which of itself is invisible and imperceptible to all our senses, and which, since it lacks both voice and speech, is the least musical of all things, becomes sonorous, audible, and comprehensible when it is set in motion….Music is still more wonderful in living things, especially birds….And yet, compared to the human voice, all this hardly deserves the name of music, so abundant and incomprehensible is here the munificence and wisdom of our most gracious Creator.” in Luther’s Works, vol. 53, pp. 322. 

He commended music as the supreme gift of the divine -- second only to His Word.  “We can mention only one point (which experience confirms), namely, that next to the Word of God, music deserves the highest praise.  She is mistress and governess of those human emotions….which as masters govern men or more often overwhelm them….For whether you wish to comfort the sad, to terrify the happy, to encourage the despairing, to humble the proud, to calm the passionate, or to appease those full of hate….what more effective means than music could you find?” Ibid., 323. 

Again, in a 1530 letter, Luther wrote,“Except for theology, [music] alone produces what otherwise only theology can do, namely a calm and joyful disposition” (Robin A. Leaver, “Luther on Music.” Lutheran Quarterly, 2006).  Luther did not speak of music as the domain for the learned alone nor of something distant but as immediate and profound, for the commoner and peasant equal to the scholar.  From Bernard of Clairvaux to Thomas Aquinas plus those who went before (David and his harp) right down to the modern day, music is given by God from His own heart of congregational song.  Even more than giving a voice back to the congregation again, Luther sought to teach the whole counsel of Scripture through the music of the worship service. Luther said, “God has His gospel preached through music, too.”  He was fond of the rubric “say and sing”  -- not simply as God's directive to us but as God's practice for us, too.

It is God's medium to us in such way that the simple words become song and it is our medium to God in such way that our words become praise.  Can we say too much about it?   For the God who sings is the God we know in Christ by the power of the Spirit.

Henkel time again!!!

This year's Henkel Conference is scheduled for August 17-18, 2026.

Register through Eventbrite by clicking here.  You can be added to the conference email distribution list by sending a request to: henkel@ascensionmadison.com.

Those scheduled to present include:

•  Mollie Hemingway, Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist, Senior Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College, Fox News contributor, and best-selling author
• Scott Yenor, Chair of the American Citizenship Initiative at The Heritage Foundation and Professor of Political Science at Boise State University
• Alex Newman, president of Liberty Sentinel Media
• Noelle Mering, Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in the Life and Family Initiative and columnist for the Catholic Herald
• Korey Maas, Chairman and Associate Professor of History at Hillsdale College
• plus more TBA! 

Not a straight line downward trend. . .

A friend sent me some numbers regarding the enrollments at Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne and Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. Although we often think that there has been a long and gradual decline in the graduates presented for ordination, the reality is slightly different and it does not quite fit the scenarios offered by those who would like to make radical changes in the way Missouri forms pastors.  I thought it might be worth a look.

Taking Liberty University out of the mix (for what I would call obvious reasons), the whole of the schools covered by the Association of Theological Schools (the accrediting agency) shows that numbers for the total combined enrollment did, indeed, gradually decline year by year from 2016 through 2024.  

2016—29,282
2017—28,597
2018—28,597
2019—28,531
2020—28,183* Covid Year
2021—26,828
2022—25,437
2023—23,926
2024—23,812

That represents an 18%+ decline overall.  Now, if you did figure in Liberty when it acquired ATS accreditation in 2018, the numbers would be slightly different but typically American seminaries counted by ATS dropped steadily and rather evenly over the years.  For Missouri the situation is a little different.  Yes, there was some decline but not nearly as pronounced nor as predictable as the ATS numbers reveal.

Average enrollments for Ft. Wayne and St. Louis are rather steady.  A decline at Ft. Wayne of 8% and at St. Louis of a little over 15% and for the two together a little more than 12%.  This means that we are in a holding pattern more than a crash and burn scenario.  Those who wish to reshape how we train our pastors need to pay attention.

2016—    159            209
2017—    157            208
2018—    158            191
2019—    145            191
2020—    152            201
2021—    158            179
2022—    160            179
2023—    161            188
2024—    146            176       

We should not be consoled by these numbers nor should we slack in our efforts to recruit men for the pastoral ministry but neither should we presume that this decline is a continuous trajectory that signals a need for radical action.  If anything, it should give us a bit of breathing room to be deliberate and careful to make sure that we don't screw things up in an effort to fix something that may not be quite as urgently in need of repair as some presume. 

So I am suggesting that we not listen to the chicken littles who are predicting the demise of everything as we know it nor should we be complacent.  My radical thought is don't screw this up in the name of progress or urgency.  We are seeing good numbers with the Set Apart to Serve (for all church workers).  The recruitment task lies largely with pastors and congregations and not with programs or seminaries.  We identity and support men for the cause and the seminaries form them with help from a vicarage year and good, solid examples within their home congregations.  Is what we are doing perfect?  Of course not.  But it is not so bad it justifies wholesale change and that is my fear.  Those who advocate opening up the doors to a very different way we train and certify graduates are counting on fear ruling the day.  Lets make sure that we are not uninformed so that what we do will not have to be undone down the road -- when it may be too late.  

I may shock a few folks. . .

Now that both Lent and Easter are behind us -- at least for this year -- it is with some fear and trepidation that I offer these words.  Lent is not to be an extended version of Holy Week.  I am sure that some on both sides of the pulpit will disagree but let me continue to poke the lion anyway.  Not all the readings appointed for the Sundays in Lent (no matter what lectionary you use) rehearse over and over again the readings of Holy Week.  You should not either.  I grew up with an understanding of Lent that basically affirmed the whole purpose of this season was to render as explicitly as possible the horror of sin, the agony of the cross, and the details of everything from Palm Sunday through Holy Saturday.  It could have been worse.  I am not at all saying this was the worst thing that could have been preached but I am saying that the purpose of Lent is not to dwell solely on the final days of Jesus' life before His rest in the tomb and resurrection.  The personal discipline of Lent as well as its churchly focus is on the shape of Christian living under the cross.

It might be odd for a Lutheran to say this but I think it is okay to preach morality in the extra services of Lent.  Sanctification is not a topic alien to Lent but very appropriate.  We need to be taught how to mortify the flesh (when did you ever hear a sermon on that in a Lutheran congregation?).  We need to be taught how to practice the self-denial and walk worthy of our calling that befit those who have been baptized and who believe in Jesus Christ.  Calls to morality are far too few and far too careful not to offend.  Perhaps we ought to be offended during Lent.  

It might be odd for a Lutheran to say this but I think it is okay to preach over and over again the Creed (Apostles fits Advent and Nicene fits Lent).  We need to have this creed preached into us so that we can speak it forth within the gathering of the faithful on Sunday morning, teach it too our children, and grow up in its faith and truth.  Lent is a great time to rehearse for the people what the words mean which we confess so matter of factly on Sunday morning.  Preach the creed regularly or else they will become largely ceremonial words (which they are not).  This we believe is a good way to begin a Lenten homily.

It might be pretty normal for a Lutheran to say this but I think it is okay to preach the catechism (the Small one by Luther).  We tend to think of the catechism as words for a kid to learn until they are confirmed when they never deal with them again.  Wrong.  Preach the catechism.  Help us to hear the words we should be reading and praying regularly already and help us to learn them so that we might teach them well to our children.

Don't worry about a gimmick.  An acrostic might be nice but you don't have to create a sermon meme in order to preach during the penitential seasons of the Church Year.  You don't need to be clever by half to prove your people were smart to call you pastor.  Preach faithfully the things we ought to know already and you will find how many things we do not know as well as how earnest people are about things as common and ordinary as the stuff of daily life.

It is June and you have six months to think about it before Advent is upon you and Lent shortly thereafter.  Think about it.  Leave the Passion narratives for Holy Week and preach faith and life in Christ the crucified and risen Lord.  If you cannot help yourself, you can go back to preaching Lent as an extended Holy Week in a couple of years and tell me off by saying you tried it and it did not work.  I don't think that will happen but it is your out if you think I am wrong. 

One more time. . .

In my first call there were those who told me that I prayed like my prayers came from a book.  I thought it was a compliment.  It was not.  Real prayer came from the heart.  Who can argue with that?  Of course, real prayer comes from the heart.  Is there a conflict between coming from the heart and coming from the book?

Of all the things Rome should have been embarrassed about in the wake of post-Vatican II changes to the Mass, the Prayer of the Faithful ended up being the saddest.  You may not account for what people will do to undo the integrity of what is put out there but this was designed for exactly that purpose.  At the local level people form their own intercessions and pray them on Sunday morning.  But that was the problem.  

I would not call it an exaggeration to say that the result has been terrible.  In the end, it was hard for the thinking and listening faithful to add their Amen to them -- not because they could not hear or understand them but precisely because they could not forget what they had heard and how sad it was against the promise of what could have been and should have been.  From the trite, banal, and sugar coated petitions that appealed only to sentiment to the political and social propaganda masquerading as prayer to the petitions designed not to offend people but surely offended God, it was a disaster.  It still is.  

Lutherans are not far behind.  We have traded the careful, eloquent, and rich words of the old General Prayer for words that belong in the announcements rather than a petition directed to the Lord of all.  We listen to find out news rather than to hear what is being prayed so that we can add our Amen to the petitions.  It would be a tragedy if it were not a travesty.  At some point, those in the LCMS headquarters decided that something of substance and with words that not only pray but teach us to pray should be offered.  Thus the Synod's offering sent by email as starting point for some and the quick and easy end run for others.

Alas, the genie is out of the bottle.  We could but won't go back to the General Prayer of the past.  But we could and should go back to learning how to craft faithful and eloquent intercessions befitting the Church and useful for teaching the faithful to pray.  I long for the days when people considered this one of the most important times of the liturgy.  Sadly, it is too often a placeholder in the Divine Service today.  The presider has not give due time to consideration of and composition of the Prayer of the Faithful and so the people are dulled into a sense that it all does not matter that much.   

We Lutherans do not have a GIRM -- General Instruction in the Roman Missal.  What it says, however, is not unhelpful to us as well. 

In the Prayer of the Faithful, the people respond in a certain way to the word of God which they have welcomed in faith and, exercising the office of their baptismal priesthood, offer prayers to God for the salvation of all. It is fitting that such a prayer be included, as a rule, in Masses celebrated with a congregation, so that petitions will be offered for the holy Church, for civil authorities, for those weighed down by various needs, for all men and women, and for the salvation of the whole world. As a rule, the series of intentions is to be

1.  For the needs of the Church;

2. For public authorities and the salvation of the whole world;

3. For those burdened by any kind of difficulty;

4. For the local community.

Nevertheless, in a particular celebration, such as Confirmation, Marriage, or a Funeral, the series of intentions may reflect more closely the particular occasion.

It is for the priest celebrant to direct this prayer from the chair. He himself begins it with a brief introduction, by which he invites the faithful to pray, and likewise he concludes it with a prayer. The intentions announced should be sober, be composed freely but prudently, and be succinct, and they should express the prayer of the entire community (GIRM 69-71). 

Maybe we Lutherans ought to look in our own worship books for good examples of such a Prayer of the Faithful.  I would commend you to reflect upon the examples on page 265 or 249 of Lutheran Service Book.  While you can surely do better than either of these examples, please do not do worse.  My own pet peeve is names.  We can use the Christian first name and that is enough -- even for the President and surely for the sick.  And don't forget to allow some silence for the faithful to name in their hearts those whose names were not read or did not get listed in the worship folder.  Also, it would be good to teach folks the value of silence before the final petition invites their Amen.  We all have our own prayers to add, don't we?  While everyone is so fully accustomed to the form, Lord, in Your mercy/hear our prayer, I actually do prefer the other form (ektene) in which we ask the faithful let us pray to the Lord and they respond Lord, have mercy.  It is a pretty traditional form, don't you think?  So if I have pressed a nerve, so be it.  Let's do a better job with the Prayer of the Faithful.  Oh yes, this is definitely the job of the pastor.  It is not that others cannot do it but that this is one of the most important parts of his vocation.

Not ever. . .

An alert reader pointed me to this.  The University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center General Social Survey (NORC-GSS) is, as it claims for itself, the longest-running, most respected social survey produced by that University.  Who am I to argue?  If that is the case, then its most recent survey about women and children is even more shocking.  It put into a graphic the alarming state of affairs for American women.  Indeed, although it does show how political ideology affects the desire of a woman to become a mother, there is little to give hope even to the conservative or traditional woman or mom.  I hope it is flawed and its statistics in error but I fear neither is the case.

I am sure you do not need me to read the graph for you.  In case you do not get my point, let me say it bluntly.  We might expect that liberal thinking women might not wish to have a child ever (if they have not had one by age 35) but did you see that conservative thinking women were not far behind in 2010 and even now a third or more of them agree.  No child.  Never.  So much for the future.  They have already decided, 75%+ of those on the left with just under 40% on the right.  We have all drunk the kool-aid.

No wonder children are a hard sell today.  So many have already decided either they are a bother too much to bear or not important enough to be bothered with at all.  Europe has led the way in this and so have some of the Asian cultures (China by governmental policy) but America has learned this terrible lesson and taken it to heart.  Not ever.  Gulp.

Those who know me know that I am not one of the those men who think that a woman ought to be barefoot, pregnant, and standing either in front of the stove or washing machine their whole lives but wow.  Has it become so radical to suggest that children are a blessing from the Lord, that children are normal for marriage, and that motherhood is the higher calling?  Have we surrendered that position to those who insist on reproductive rights at the cost of the child, who proclaim self-fulfillment over sacrifice, and who insist that marriage and children are optional?  My question is not why liberals think this way but how can one who calls themselves conservative also think this way?  I hope and pray that the numbers who do hold this opinion and call themselves conservative are dropping but I also fully realize that their numbers will not drop by the rest of us keeping silent on this point.  So consider this one of my initial volleys in the war of words that will certainly follow.   

 

What does it mean to translate?

My wife spent time in Germany as an honors language scholar and the German I learned was for reading and not quite for speaking.  So when we would encounter Germans in New York City who were speaking in their native tongue, I would eagerly ask what they were saying.  Sometimes she would answer with the gist of it all and sometimes she would say that it was such an idiom that it could not be translated into English.  That would inevitably lead to my frustration as she laughed at their jokes or smiled bemused by their comments while I was left in the dark.

That is the problem with translation.  While we would like it to be rather mechanical and somewhat easy, it is not.  It is not possible to mechanically translate the words as they are on the page without occasionally and perhaps even often ending up with something that either does not make sense or does not have the sense of the original.  Literal translations are editorial every bit as much as dynamic translations simply because they require the reader to do what the translator did not.  So somebody must make an editorial decision about how to render the words from their original into the language you want them to be and that somebody is either the reader trying to make sense of a literal hodgepodge of word "translated" without communicating the idea or sense of what is there or the translator.  One of you will be doing that work so which one is better equipped?  The reader or the translator.  This is not only a matter of fidelity to the text but the work of rendering one language into another out of one culture and into another.

Translation is not a mechanical process; it is an art form.   It is often surprising to people that old and familiar sayings in English have heir source in Scripture.  That is often because the translator has rendered the words literally without communicating the idea.  Look up the phrase by the skin of my teeth.  It is from the Scriptures.  Job 19:20, to be exact.  One version says My flesh is corrupt under my skin, and my bones are held in my teeth.  That is misses the point.  Another says My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.  Google translator can render the words in English but it so often struggles to convey the text and idea in sensible English.

I must confess that I am in awe of the work of a good translator.  Note the singular there.  I am sad to report that too often translations are committee efforts and the committee actually votes on the one they like or chooses the one that they can all live with while the soul of the words is sometimes muted or made bland in an effort to be clearly understood.  While no one in their right mind would every say that Scripture is not clear or that it does not clearly communicate all that we need to be saved, that statement does not mean that we have no need for translators or that their work is ordinary.  Translation is also an art because it not only requires of the translator that they know two languages well -- the Biblical text and English.  That might be a common assumption but it is not a fact.  Not all translators know English well enough to aid their translations.  So let me express my appreciation to the good work of good translators.  They are doing a difficult job and one that requires an aptitude, skill, and knack -- over and above the knowledge of what the words mean.  This is surely why some translations endure and why some do not.