Technology makes sin safe. . .

There was a time when the choice to have a child was the default and it was the exception to choose otherwise.  Of course, we all know that this has been reversed.  The default has become not to have children and the exception to have children.  While this is surely due to the values which have changed and the desire on the part of people, it is not solely due to these.  Key to this is access to cheap, reliable, readily available, and relatively safe means to accomplish this birth control and rid the mother of a child she does not want.  We should not minimize the effect of the technology upon everything.  

There are countless examples of technology serving to influence and even define the boundaries of right and wrong and the limits of acceptable behavior.  Indeed, that is one of the unintended consequences of technology -- it sometimes establishes norms even without the discussion or even consent of people.  That is especially true of matters of sex and gender.  If it were more difficult to prevent pregnancy or that imposed a difficult burden upon the couple or it was costly to obtain, birth control would surely be less prevalent than it is today.  If it were more difficult to end a pregnancy and there was no pill available to cast the unwanted child from the womb, the numbers of abortions would be smaller.  Technology has decided this for us and most folks follow along like mindless sheep to the slaughter.

What I fear is that technology is leading us to go too quickly where we have not even decided to go.  I can well recall when the mantra of those opposed to abortion chanted safe, legal, and rare.  We do not seem to be that concerned about the last part of that slogan.  Indeed, we seem not to even care how many children are killed in the womb so long as it is cheap, reliable, readily available, and relatively safe to end the life of the unborn.  When technology gets ahead of our reasonable deliberation on such things, we tend to end up where we had not planned to go.  When, in 1930, the Anglican Communion opened the door to birth control, who would have foreseen that within one hundred years marriage would become a more optional choice for people and children even less optional?  Who could have foreseen that whole sections of the civilized world would literally be in population decline as the birth rate declined to a rate in which we are not even replacing ourselves but shrinking?

The wisdom of St. Paul ought to prevail.  Things possible are not necessarily beneficial.  As I have spoken of before, the sexual revolution left our primary institutions in shatters with home and family trying desperately to keep up but lacking behind.  Liberty became its own end and was no longer tied to the desire to live freely responsible and upright lives.  We learned simply to live and to live primarily for ourselves.  Maybe it is time to reconsider the regularity of birth control and the normalcy of abortion.  Maybe now is the time for the Church to teach the faithful and those on the fringes of the church's life that what became normal to us (non-married and largely childless lives for those who are married).  Maybe it is time to admit that we were not ourselves and spoke in haste, enamored as we were with the setting as well as the numbers of those who inhabit that setting.  Will we continue to simply follow the judgment of the moment in deciding what is good, right, and salutary, or will we learn to speak to our family the values that undergird the fabric of our lives?

In one sense I might be saying that technology can tell us something is right and, even though it is wrong, it remains an enticement to us simply because we like being told what we want is right.  That is certainly the problem inherent with the problem of marriage and children becoming optional while sexual relations outside of marriage with the normal expectation of preventing a pregnancy and the assurance that if it was not prevented, it could be easily, cheaply, and safely eliminated.  Technology can make us think that sin, at least sexual sins, are normal and safe.  That is Satan's lie in Eden repeated again and again and again.

Promoting beauty or creating conflict. . .

Most of what we do in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod as far as media is concerned (official and unofficial) seems to revolve around more parochial concerns than more generally toward those outside the faith.  Yes, I know that there are plenty whose appeal is beyond the LCMS and plenty of those who have both kinds of conflict.  What I am more concerned about is that we often create as much conflict as we report and muddy the waters as much as we clarify them.  In so doing, we miss the more important use of the media available to us and that is to speak of the sheer beauty and grace of who we are, what we confess, and how we live (both liturgically and vocationally).  That is a missed opportunity.

Think, for example, of the last round of the presidential voting in the LCMS and of the media that has either officially or unofficially promoted a position or a candidate in that election.  What do those outside the faith hear and see in this kind of content?  It may be thoroughly relevant to the issue at hand for us inside the LCMS but is it going to help them to know us or Christ through us?  That is probably not the case.  The best use of media is not to air our grievances but to promote our position.  I know that you can do both at the same time but too much of what we do (maybe me included) is stirring the pot more than offering the world a taste of the goodness we offer.

I have heard others speak about this in particular with respect to Rome.  Roman Catholics have a great deal of positive media presence.  It is remarkable how easily they speak with deference and honor to their church, of the beauty and power of the liturgy, of the nearness of God's presence in the Mass, of the ordinary prayers common to most (the Rosary included), and of their unapologetic devotion to the practice of confession.  They seem to do this not because such things are the domain of Rome and its discipline but because they truly appreciate the beauty of their church and its life that encompasses their being and their identity as people.  Of course, as a Lutheran I cannot and do not always agree with the things they laud but I cannot help their admiration for they way they speak and of the positive nature of their witness.  These seemed to abide even through the tumultuous years of Francis.  I wish we knew how to be so positive in our display of our faith to the world.

One of the people who seems to do that so easily and powerfully is Pastor Will Weedon.  I have long promoted his visits with someone interested in Lutheranism and how positive that conversation was.  It remains, in my estimation, a high point of our social media presence -- even though it was done by someone outside our circle.  I have attached the videos here below for you to review if you have not seem them before or to watch again if you have.  This is how we need to speak to the world -- of the beauty of our confession, of our life together around the Word and Table of the Lord, of the catechism as prayerbook as well as explanation of the faith, and of our good works done not to impress anyone but because of Christ's good work to us upon the cross.  We can and should address the problems among us but we dare not forget to speak even more of this beauty and the profound character of God's life among us through the means of grace.  Beauty is not our enemy or even optional but intrinsic to our confession and our liturgical life.  In art and music, architecture and hymn, ceremony and rite, beauty is our ally and a medium for our message.  Why not online?

 

 

A conservative. . .

According to the dictionary,  conservative is an adjective meaning favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change or traditional or restrained or moderate; cautious.  The root of it all is that word conserve.  The problem is what to conserve.  The temptation is to pick one moment in history as either the starting point of the decline or the final moment of sanity.  But when?  When is that pristine moment which is the pure moment unspoiled by the advance of modernity or the corruption of values?  I know that conservatives would pick different dates just as I presume that liberals would be hard-pressed to agree on one date that defines their movement or their perspective.  For them it would seem the moment is still coming while for the conservative it remains somewhere in the past.

That is the problem in liturgical scholarship.  Some presume that the goal of liturgical scholarship is to find that pristine liturgy, that perfect and simple root without the flowering of modernity which has become like a treasure hunt except that none of our maps actually agree.  Ancient history is not the arena in which we hunt for the perfect moment but the revelation one truth in a thousand different ways along a linear path.  There are better moments and worse moments but that which endures are the grounding principles that endure through changes.  The problem of the liturgical scholars who were behind much of what changed in the post-Vatican II Mass is that they were looking for a perfect moment in history, a simple and yet profound glimpse through history to the unspoiled liturgy.  Most liturgical folks in other churches joined in the search assuming that there was such a pristine liturgy to be found.  In the end it was merely an excuse for burdening the rest of us with the liturgical preferences of the few.  Conservative liturgical scholarship disagreed with the date chosen.  Is that all conservatism is?  Is it a calendar matter?  One group choose 75 AD and another 600 AD and another 1563?  Who is the true conservative?

That same problem happens in Lutheranism.  Some chose 1941 as the date that governs everything good, right, and salutary and others choose 1888 and still others some other date when the kirchenordnung was unspoiled.  Others presume that a modern form (1978 or 2006 or later) is a better preservation of the ancient form than any other.  Is that all conservatism is -- the choice of a different date than the liberal or progressive?  Or, is there a body of things that go with and perhaps govern that choice of date?  A conservative is not a reactionary but neither is he opposed to everything modern.  It is a matter of principle.  The principles govern the conservative.  He is not like the liberal who things all things new are better but neither is he a curmudgeon who insists that everything old was perfect.  Instead the conservative sifts the history letting principle define goodness and not a snapshot of a moment in time.

I lived with an outhouse and do not wish to exchange my master bath for a rickety wooden building over a hole in the ground.  No conservative does.  But a conservative uses principles to suggest that those with male reproductive organs belong in the same bathroom no matter what gender the person feels at the moment.  What governs is not a date in time but a principle that goes well beyond the level of plumbing that has been installed in the room. 

A preface for every occasion. . .

Lutherans have a dearth of proper prefaces within the Canon of the Mass.  We too quickly defer to a seasonal generic set of words, not bad but clearly missing those prefaces which would be appointed for particular days.  Let me give an example.

In the Roman sanctoral calendar there is a day for St. Elijah, the Prophet.  Now, of course, we do not have such a day on our Lutheran calendar but the comparison is not about which days made it and which did not (or which became merely commemorations).  It is about the riches of propers which are tuned to the day.  The Roman proper preface for St. Elijah is:

Right indeed it is and just, proper and for our welfare, that we should always and everywhere give thanks to you, holy Lord, almighty Father, eternal God; and that we should triumphantly praise, bless, and proclaim you on this solemn feast of blessed Elijah, your Prophet and our father: who, at your word, arose like fire, closed the sky, raised the dead, smote the tyrants, killed the impious, and laid the foundations of the monastic life; who, fed with bread and drink by the ministry of an angel, walked in the strength of that food as far as the holy mountain; who was carried off in a whirlwind of fire, to return as a herald of the second coming of Jesus Christ our Lord; through whom your majesty is praised by the Angels and the Archangels, by the Cherubim too and the Seraphim, who lift up their endless hymn, day by day, with one voice singing: 

Don't you just love how the preface itself is filled with the primary details of the life of Elijah in a poetic way which invites us to know him of whom the day is set apart to remember?  I do.  I miss the abundance of propers in our Lutheran orders and wish we had utilized more rather than less.  Less is more is not a good principle in just about anything, much less rites and texts.  Though our Lutheran inclination is to tend toward simpler rather than elaborate, I wish we had expanded rather than reduced such examples of liturgical riches. 

Making messes. . .

I will pick on Pope Francis because he is not here to argue with me.  I suspect, however, he would not argue.  He saw as his mission and purpose to make messes for the Lord.  In places and times when the need was for clarity, he was obtuse.  In places and times when the need was for bring people together, he seemed to delight in actually creating conflict.  In places and times when the need was for patience and deliberation, he seemed to act upon whim or impulse.  In places and times when the need was for holding to the faith once delivered, he seemed to press the edge of change and innovation in a way that actually undermined the tradition and dismissed it.  

Pope Francis actually left his successor many messes.  Some of them were people (Victor Fernández).  Some of them were moto proprios (Traditionis custodes or Fiducia Supplicans}.  Some of them were initiatives (governance of Rome or synodality).  I could go on.  I do not need to.  You get it.  He stirred the pot and then looked offended when somebody caught him with the spoon.  There are those in every organization and in the Church who like to do what Francis did -- make messes.  While it is easy to blame those who make the mess, that does nothing to clean it up.  Cleaning up is, after all, the goal.  It would be good if you were steward of the Church on any level that you leave to your successors not messes but things as clean and orderly as possible.  That is good on the parish level and it is good on every other level as well.

We find that in Lutheranism as well.  Rome is not the only one who has a few mess makers.  Our own LCMS seems to have enough folks who like to render obtuse what is clear, to focus uncertainty what is certain, and to simply irritate folks for the sake of watching how it all plays out.  I have no problem with conflict when it concerns that for which we dare not compromise or waver but I am deeply suspicious of salacious headlines and threats that masquerade as concerns.  Sometimes we need to call out those who simply delight in making messes and watching what happens.  It is simply not helpful when we spend the majority of our time trying to clean up the messes others have left to us.  It is wearisome to constantly be putting out fires or throwing oil on troubled waters.  We should all be working to prevent messes and where they exist to clean them up and to making sure that if we must create a mess it is for essential purpose and need.

I speak this largely to those entrusted with offices in the churches but I also commend this to those who hold no office except that of baptized child of God.  We live in an age in which the internet allows us to make known to the world things which could be handled with some discretion.  Hitting post is a delightful way to get rid of our frustration but at what cost?  I know that there are times when we cannot help but make a mess in the process of cleaning it up and yet too often it is in the judgment of some that it is more fun to explode things than to build them up.  That is my concern today.  It does not matter at what level you are or what job you hold, be faithful and work for and not simply against the Church by making a mess where there does not need to be one.  Plus, my mother's wisdom for those who used her kitchen applies -- if you make a mess, clean it up!