Bonds of affection or ties to truth. . .

There was a time when the ecumenical endeavor seemed to have the attention of many, if not most, of Christian leaders and seemed poised to muster the energy to do what years of division have undone.  That, of course, has come and gone.  The ecumenical endeavor is no longer on the front burner of anyone and many presume that its aims have all been achieved -- if not by a common structure and single jurisdiction then by communion and fellowship long ago declared.  The only problem is that the ecumenical consensus was achieved not by struggling to find unity amid the doctrinal divisions that had existed or continue to exist.  Instead of truth, the focus shifted to mere affection.  We like you.  Let's work together.  Let's eat together.  Bonds of affection are as fickle as affection.  What was needed then and now is something more study -- a unity deep in the truth of God's Word, the creeds confessed, and the doctrines held.  That is not where the ecumenical movement is today.  Not by a long shot.

An example of this has already occurred in Anglicanism.  The once formidable Anglican Communion has been fractured to the point where those representing some 75% of Anglicans worldwide chose to boycott the enthronement of Sarah Mullally as it titular head, the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Who would have thought that the supreme example of a unity forged less with common creed and confession but in the area of affection, tradition, and "gentlemanly" discretion would be left with the tattered rags of church bodies and bishops who still hold to the idea that fellowship does not have to mean agreement on doctrine?  But that is where things have ended up.  The seeds of this division were always there but they have grown, matured, and borne the poison fruit of an Anglican Communion which is no longer a communion at all.  Yet what we have seen in Anglicanism is largely what has happened across the ecumenical landscape.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has struggled to find some group with whom they are not in communion -- except, of course, the Missouri Synod which actually holds to Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions.  Bonds of affection have led to seats at the table for Methodists, Reformed of various stripes, and a host of others who could not quite agree on what is believed, taught, and confessed but who do agree that affection means you are willing to overlook such thinks for the sake of the ecumenical endeavor.  They are certainly not alone.  Indeed, nearly all the old seven sisters of the American Mainline Protestant Churches have pursued this kind of ecumenical unity which is but merely the agreement to act civilly toward each other, not to address the other's sins, and make nice for the public image.  There is, for this reason, little need for the ecumenical conversations of old in which theologians actually looked at what they believed and what that meant.  It is probably for this reason you have need seen any such provisional texts of the progress of those conversations for some time.  Don't count on any in the future either.

Ecumenical endeavors have become the stuff of media friendships proclaimed with a click and with all the meaning and significance of those social media relationships.  Bonds of affection may sound nice but they lack little teeth or power to hold groups accountable or together.  And that is the real purpose of ecumenical conversations -- to hold each other accountable to what we said and say we still mean about who is God and what His Word speaks.  Indeed, the premise of the old ecumenical conversation was that if we really held each other accountable to be the best we could be through the norm of Scripture, it actually might mean that we had a confession in common.  Alas, that seems to be lost.  In its place is something that is as fragile as a house of cards and with even less meaning.  What a shame! 

Fix the Mass. . . Fix Everything

Curiously, the two divergent liturgical groups within Rome, Lutheranism, and other denominations seem to have exactly the same idea -- fix the mass, fix the Church.  It is exactly this which gave birth to the post-Vatican II mass form.  Though perhaps not fully complicit in its origin but certainly responsible for its outcome, Paul VI accepted the ideas of Bugnini and others that what was inhibiting Rome was the old Latin Mass.  Get rid of it and everything will be fixed.  Of course, it was not.  Yet the other side seems to say the same thing except this time it is get rid of the New Mass and restore the Latin Mass of the ages and everything will be hunky dory.  Okay.  Maybe I am simplifying things a bit but probably not by that much.

Lutherans are also victims of the same oversimplification.  The evangelical wing of Lutheranism insists that fix worship by abandoning the liturgy in favor of a casual, seeker, entertainment form of worship will be the answer to all that ails us.  They continue to insist that this is the problem—not the doctrine but its practice.  Those on the other side insist that you cannot hold to doctrine in theory, especially if that doctrine cannot or does not inform practice.  The Church that once insisted that justification was the article on which the Church stands or falls cannot now make everything else adiaphora.  So they insist that you will fix everything that troubles us by returning to page 15 (in LSB form, of course).  Is that all that the problem is?

In the end it might seem like I am arguing against myself and my own well founded advancement of Prosper of Acquitane's maxim 'lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi'.  I am not.  The problem is that worship is not the only one of our many problems.  Modernism may encourage faulty worship practices that are out of keeping with our own past and our confession but that is not all that modernism does.  It begins not with worship but with the Word of God and how we have made relative what God meant to be final—finally making that Word merely one of many voices competing for our mind and our heart.  The problem is not only worship but our failure to hear and heed the voice of God has aided in the corruption of worship and made it difficult for us to speak of the Divine Service in any other terms but preference and desire.  With the loss of that anchor, worship has been adrift on the same sea of change as our morals and truth in general.

Rome cannot fix the Mass and solve the problem of doctrine no longer anchored in the unchanging Word of God and neither can we as Lutherans.  They go together but they are different problems requiring different solutions.  Our loss of marriage and the family is coupled with the way we have distanced ourselves from God's Word and truth.  Our willingness to cater to people's preferences and pet peeves about so many things has certainly led to the idea that they can treat the Scriptures in the same way.  It only stands to reason that if the voice of God is merely a suggestion, nothing can rein in the power of desire—whether in worship format or moral truth.  This is only the solemn admission that we have much to do and our work cut out for us.  If we equivocate on the core issue of God's Word, we will have lost every other battle as well.  It is certainly something to think about... 

Embarrassment, Entitlement

It was with embarrassment I looked around at our first real home as a married couple.  We had at the beginning what my parents had worked their whole lives for - from modern appliances to cars in the driveway to clothes in the closet and so much more.  It was hard for me to accept this while knowing how much my grandparents and parents suffered in their early married lives.  This is not simply about things but about expectations and desires.  I wanted more than they wanted or so it seemed.

Now that my kids are grown and on their own, they are in my position in some ways and in some ways not.  They are not wealthy and have an abundance of techno toys and indulgences but they are hard workers and have put in sweat and tears to have the things they call their own.  They are like me just as I am like my parents.  We have together labored long and hard to enjoy a few things of this mortal life.

When I hear people complain about how bad they have it, however, I am easily embittered.  Even the needy folks who stand begging at the junctions of the roads I travel have a smart phone.  I well recall a fellow who was hungry and calling my parish from his cell phone while camping out in the woods.  He did not want a bag of food.  He wanted me to order him take out from Dominos and have it delivered to his tent.  He did not have all the stuff I have but he had something I do not think I have -- he had hubris.

So when I hear young folks complain that they cannot afford to marry or have children, I am tempted either to laugh or to cry or both.  It is laughable because I do not know of anyone who can actually afford to marry or have children or who has used this as a legitimate indicator to time when any of these happened.  Sure, some folks say they waited until these things were affordable or within their financial reach but the joke is that while they were saving for either of these, they continued to indulge their appetites for Uber Eats and the best technology money can buy.  They had selective tastes which they were unwilling to abandon or compromise in order to get something else they wanted.  Was it a problem of resources or was the problem competing desires and an unwillingness to compromise?

In my vast old age, I wonder if we have become an entitled society of individuals who feel entitled to have what we want, when we want it and who are not willing to adjust our desires even to achieve other wants.  It sure seems so.  Marriage is less popular today not because people do not want or need this kind of relationship but because so many have decided that it costs them too much of their wants and desires to be married and simply cannot convince themselves it is worth it.  The same is true of having children.  And I am supposed to be supportive of them in their whining?

Entitlement does not necessarily look like designer labels or people who are brand whores.  It can look like sleep pants at Walmart and folks who don't have a car but who have the cost of vehicle tattooed on their skin or pierced in their flesh.  And then those same people insist that I am the conspicuous consumer because I have grandma's china that I refuse to get rid of or a collection of anything.  Really?  It occurs to me that just about anyone under the age of 40 has more digital photos of themselves than all the members of my family had over the span of many generations.  

Entitlement does not necessarily look like an abundance of stuff (at least the kind of things I call stuff).  It can look like food delivered to your door regularly -- cooked and ready to eat.  It can look like paying for the latest iPhone because the previous model simply will not do.  It can look like choosing to be lonely because the cost of companionship is too great.  It can look like insisting that a university shield you from opinions you find distasteful lest you have to tolerate something besides your own opinion.  It can look like a great many things.  

I do not at all suggest that I am immune from it.  I used an outhouse as a child and got water from a pump.  I remember all of it and I certainly also recall telling myself I wanted more.  It is not simply the desire for more than makes you entitled.  It is primarily the idea that the things you want are owed you and that you have a right to whine about it when you do not get all you want.  Again, I am not saying I have not done my share of complaining.  My phone is many generations old.  My electronics are serviceable but not new.  The bulk of the furniture we have had for many, many years.  We have lived in the same house for 33 years.  We have several newer vehicles.  As a culture, it seems that values are shifting and fewer folks want to purchase a house and more are content living in an apartment.  That is fine.  But don't insist you cannot afford to purchase a house.  Maybe you can't or maybe you have simply made other choices.  And maybe you think you are owed something more than should work for it by sacrificing other desires.  My point is not to judge you or for you to judge me -- only that we as a culture could do with a little embarrassment over the riches that we have all come to enjoy and refuse to go without.  More than this, we need to stop placing the problem at the cost of the things we want and start putting it at the things we want--period.  We have got to stop complaining about the high cost of living high and learn a bit more gratitude, humility, and appreciation.  When our embarrassment of riches no longer embarrasses us, we have become an entitled people who love to complain more than we love to give thanks. 

Implications. . .

A couple of generations or so ago, how a couple parented their children was not always an accurate indicator of how they saw things in the public square or how they voted alone in the polling booth.  Then there was much more in common between liberal and progressive thinkers and religious and conservative ones in terms of how they raised their children.  Of course, there were permissive parents and strict ones, those who were very involved in their kids lives and those who were less intimately involved in their kids everyday lives.  But that did not always equate to a clear indicator of their political or social or moral views.  Parenting was parenting and so parents had a lot in common despite other differences.  At least that was how it was in Nebraska and watching as a young parent in New York and a parent finally of teenagers in Tennessee.  Their were card-carrying liberals who were strict and card-carrying conservatives who were permissive.  But that has changed.

How parents view politics, religion, society, and morality has become a fairly accurate predictor of how they parent.  Those on the left are more likely to be permissive and those on the right more likely to be conservative.  Both sides can and are authoritarian about their views.  It is not quite a rule but it is an indicator no less of the more profound connection between the views of the parent and their parenting style.  The same is true of religion.  Those who claimed religious affiliation a couple of generations ago were probably split among the more liberal and progressive churches and the conservative ones but they were equally religious.  That is not quite the case today.  Those on the left are not simply more likely to be non-religious but to be actively secular in their views and in their parenting.  Those on the right are more likely to be religious and to seek out more doctrinal and doctrinaire religious communities and it shows in their parenting as well.

You see it in the schools.  Again, that was not always the case.  Sure, there were good schools and bad schools but they existed in neighborhoods and communities across the spectrum of liberal and conservative.  Within those schools there were good kids and not so good ones, compliant and defiant, responsible and not so responsible.  Today the distance between liberal and conservative in schools and in the teachers is more pronounced.  It is not hard to predict the political affiliation of the parents or of the teachers in most public and private schools.  Even the vocabulary is different as well as what it taught and how it is taught.  The left and right identities tend to spill over into more aspects of the people's lives and into the institutions in their communities.  That was not always the care or even ordinarily so but it surely is the case today.

The great divide between suburban and urban, between city and rural, and between married with children and not has become not simply more evident across the board but also seems to be incorporated into our kids and into the institutions where they are raised.  In short, we are attempting to raise clones of ourselves.  There was a time when we all assumed that it was better for our children to know both sides of the question or issue before them but we are more likely today to raise them to be unthinking and to respond instinctively, according to our own views on things before us.  And it is showing.  

Is this a good thing?  Some might think so.  Some might even suggest that this is the job of parents -- to incorporate into their children their own political, religious, cultural, and social viewpoints.  The problem, it seems to me, is that we have not raised them to know and hold our views but to not know the opposing views or sides.  In the end this will not help us raise children to be thinking adults capable of defending and reasoning their way into our points of view but just the opposite.  It leaves them vulnerable and unable to defend or reason why they hold to certain beliefs or values.  Insulating children from a real debate and putting them into cocoons in which they do not encounter challenges to their beliefs will not help them to retain these views and beliefs but just the opposite.  Unless our kids know why we think what we think or believe what we believe or value what we value, they will shed our clothes like yesterday's style and become adults without a real anchor to their faith, identities, values, and opinions.  I fear less those who disagree with me than those who hold no real and firm beliefs.  Chaos is the greater problem.  We just might be raising a generation of children who not only do not know why they hold to some view or belief, they are more likely to choose the tyranny of feelings over the concrete of facts and truth.  That is bad all the way around.  

I know it when I hear it. . .

The phrase "I know it when I see it" was first used in legal description in1964 when United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was describing his own threshold test for obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio.  He famously explained why the material at issue in the case was not obscene under the Roth test, and fit the definition of protected speech that could not be censored. 

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

The expression became not only one of the best-known phrases in the history of the Supreme Court but an example of the extreme subjectivity of things for which a proper definition could not be offered.  "I know it when I see it" was his attempt to define "hard-core pornography".  Some thought Stewart's "I know it when I see it" standard "realistic and gallant" an example of judicial candor. Others said it was ridiculous, fallacious and subject to individualistic arbitrariness.

The same could be said of "hate speech."  The very promise of “hate speech” laws is that there exists a boundary between permitted speech and criminal speech but the actual definition of where that boundary sits is not only subject to individual decision but judges have disagreed.  As much as some would like to cling to such a distinction, it has become a tool of the WOKE to remove not only speech but the very speech that was almost universally believed and accepted as normal a few generations ago.  In Finland in the case of Päivi Räsänen, a doctor, grandmother, and long-serving member of the Finnish parliament, no less than eleven judges across three levels of the Finnish judiciary spent over six years trying to locate the line between speech permitted and criminal speech and they could not agree.  By the narrowest majority the highest court of Finland found what they considered a boundary line.  

Hate speech laws are the very definition of abusive power either by intimidation or by judgment. In any other case, the writer would have simply deleted what was deemed offensive and retreated but in the case of Räsänen and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola, they refused to delete and fought the charge.  Even with an international team of jurists to help in their defense, how do you defend yourself against a moving line which no one seems to know where it is located except by that vague old pornographic line from Justice Potter Steward -- "I know it what I see [hear] it."  In a world in which those who testify before Congress insist they do not know how to define who a woman is and when the standard of truth itself has become subject to the whims of the individual, hate speech is one more example of a bad idea that cannot be rescued by fine tuning the hate speech laws or getting better judges.  These are the bad kinds of laws that simply need to go.