Too much information. . .

We live in an information world -- a world driven by information.  We have so much information at our fingertips.  As a child I was thrilled when we got a set of Grolliers Encyclopedias.  I never even tapped the wealth of information in those books.  Sure, I used them for curiosity, school, proof, and to win arguments but there were too many words for me to absorb.  Now we have so much more at our beck and call in this thing called the internet.  We hear news from across the world, browse through catalogs of things to buy and choices to make, and learn the names and affectations of people around the planet in social media.  

It is too much information too absorb and it teaches us to be rather passive about the things we learn.  In days gone by people learned what they need to know and used that information for their jobs or families or purchases or the like.  Now we simply accumulate information as if it was what made us wise.  Plus, we live in a time when it is almost impossible to know if what you see or read or hear is actually true or a fabrication or a complete invention of non-human so-called intelligence.  We guess at what we see, hear, and read and hope that what we like is true and what we don't like or what feeds our fears is false.  I wish there was an easy way to figure it all out.

Information is just information.  It is too easy to mistake knowing something as important and good in and of itself and forget why knowing that information is important.  We treat life as as a time to accumulate information and it has become the digital equivalent of all the stuff our grandparents collected in their lives and we donated to a thrift store.  It has become a wildly successful industry.  Think of how little Facebook contributes to our world and how valuable it is as a company and how rich you or I might be if we had invested in it early on.  This is not simply true for the world.  Spiritual information has become  something of a cottage industry and it has not escaped notice of the marketers who are leaving the churches in the dust as they speed ahead to become the source of spiritual information for the masses.

Wisdom and experience were once the province of the old.  In our youth culture, it is not exactly a highly valued commodity -- age and experience, I mean.  Where the Biblical landscape had an honored place for the gray haired, now they are largely seen as liabilities or problems the younger folks wish would either shut up or go away.  Was I too harsh?  There are always brilliant young minds in every discipline but they are largely less knowledgeable and smart about life.  That is the premise of how many TV comedies? It is not hard to know what you do not know but it is not so easy to know what you don't.  I do not claim to be gifted in much and my expertise is usually less than my ambition.  If we only spoke about what we really knew, the rooms of our lives would be rather silent.  The passive information we suck up as if it were something real and valuable often leads us to the false conclusion that we know whereof we speak.  That is realm of age and experience and it is what contributes to the wisdom in so much short supply today.

It is probably good advice to tell ourselves and others not to speak as if we knew everything but it is advice seldom taken.  As evidence of that, I point to the increasing intolerance of diverging views on the unsocial social media and the violence that too often becomes the first response rather than the last.  We would do well to learn a little patience.  I am particularly speaking about those who insist that it is their job to inform the stupid masses of all the things they have gotten wrong without at all considering that they might be included among them.

Stick to what you know is good advice.  Stick to what God says is better.  Oddly enough, the plethora of information that surrounds us has led us to listen less to the voice of God and more to the gut feelings we have in the moment.  That is a particular danger we have fallen into in this world today.  We know something about everything but just enough Scripture to make us dangerous.  Lutherans were once prone to advise people to read the catechism.  It sounds like a put down.  It is probably one of those voices of wisdom we no longer pay much attention to anymore.  There is a great temptation to believe that you can know everything but in so doing you end up knowing not much and even less about the very important things of this life.  I fear that this has contributed to our quest to redefine gender, marriage, family, etc, and it has left us with a definite void in our education.  When the most basic things to our lives are largely strangers to us, it is typically the moment when we replace them with unsuitable substitutes.    

Interesting. . .

By now anyone and everyone knows the name Ryan Burge who is the guy with charts, stats, and commentary on religion in America.  It is worth noting when he offers stats that would explain some of the things we see when we watch Christianity in America.  How interesting in this data that shows that over time clergy within the Roman Catholic Church have grow increasingly more conservative while clergy in the mainline (so called seven sisters) have done just the opposite!

In this chart, he tracks the perspective of Roman Catholic priests by year of ordination and notes the dramatic shift since the early 1970s -- almost a complete reversal!  While it might be easy to notice and speak of this anecdotally, Burge has given us real data to show that this is real.  It might explain some of the drama and conflicts within American Roman Catholicism but it is worth noting.  I suspect that it is also true across the world but that is only my opinion.  Rome may be wrestling with a hierarchy that is rooted in another perspective while the future lies in a different direction.  What might that suppose for the next 5-10 years as some of those older folks age out of influence?

On the other hand, the mainline denominations in America have done the complete opposite.  Long ago we noted that their clergy were far ahead of the folks in the pews -- not exactly surprising -- but here it is documented that the conservative voices in pulpits across America in these seven sisters have turned around and headed in a very different direction from those in the pews.  Look at the stats:

Finally, in the following graph is revealed the increasing theological liberalism within those same mainline churches.

It is no wonder that the pews are emptying, that there is no longer instinctive trust between the folks in the pews and those in the pulpits, and that the shape of the future for these churches is more and more defined along ideology that transcends both theological and political views.

The last good war. . .

My father entered the US Army near the end of World War II.  I never served though my draft status for Vietnam was close to being called up.  There was an almost reverence toward the things of war in my small town growing up in the 1950s and 1960s.  We played army and had army toys, including legions of little green plastic soldiers we arranged in battles great and small.  We watched the post-WWII movies that continued to esteem and honor the sacrifices of those who fought against tyranny, fascism, and evil.  It almost did not occur to me that I was half-German or that one of my ancestors was the keeper of the Kaiser's horse.  There was no doubt about who was the evil and who was the good in the wake of WWII.  Korea and Vietnam did not have the impact you might have thought.  I would put it that these were tolerated wars but not accepted — wars which began with nobility but whose virtue was tarnished as the years dragged on.  This was especially true of Vietnam.  But when our town honored the dead on Memorial Day, everyone was included.  We lined up as children with our white crosses adorned with poppies to be loaded in cars and head to every local cemetery to pay tribute to the fallen of every conflict.  But the cannon in the public park was from WWII and most of the soldiers who pulled out their old uniforms and managed to button them up for the Memorial Day festivities had on WWII fatigues or dress blues.  It was the last good war.

At some point, we stopped having good wars.  It was not for lack of evil men and empires trying to steal away democracy and freedom.  We have always had those.  Maybe not on the scale of the Kaiser or der Fuhrer but enemies of all America stands for have always existed.  I wish I knew why wars against tyrants and dictators and terrorists stopped being good.  At some point we were worn down from a Cold War in which there was no battle to speak of but still the cost of it all in children huddling beneath desks in case of nuclear war or fall out shelter signs all over schools and community buildings or a thousand other small arenas in which the conflict was fought.  Then it all ended without a bang—more like a ballot box and a collapse from internal pressure and the wall came down and we even had hope for Russia.  The old evil empire seemed to be gone but not evil itself.  In my lifetime I have counted so many different armed conflicts or peacekeeping missions or whatever you want to call them that I have lost track of the number.  Some of them seemed good.  Desert Storm seemed noble enough until it didn't.  Then in Iraq and Afghanistan we seemed to be the good guys but they were not real wars.  We did not win as much as we got tired of it all, the political costs became too great, and an exit strategy was sought to save face.  Now we have had another fight with Iran—a commonly accepted bad player in a region of bad players doing bad things.  But it did not take long for the shine to be tarnished on this as well.

Americans have always honored those in uniform—well, except for those who came home from Vietnam and were treated as if they were the cause of that problem.  We have and should feel nothing but gratitude for men (and women) who sacrificed everything for God, country, apple pie, and our way of life.  But somewhere I think we gave up on the whole idea of a good war.  It seems that none of us can agree on an enemy or a cause anymore.  We are even second guessing the Great War and the last Good War.  We got over Germany, Korea, and Vietnam and they became partners with us in supplying our economic thirst for goods.  We forgot the atrocities of the past—mostly.  But we still cannot swallow the idea that any war for any cause can be good.  Even theologians argue over what wars were or are just and what are or were unjust.  It is not as easy as it once was.  The wartime presidents have been shown to have their own dark sides or they have been blamed for the decisions they made then that some might not make now.  The postwar presidents have thought that a conflict might unite support for them and their policies but it has not worked that way.  Trump said he would get us out of wars but has blood on his hands.  We do not have the stomach for war anymore.  We decry civilian casualties and live in the illusion that wars can be fought in a sanitized way in which there are no grieving mothers or fathers or parents or children—but there always are.  We live in an age of angst about every war and struggle to conceive of any reason why anyone would fight.  Have we lost the fight or simply lost the causes to fight for or to fight against?  In less than a month Memorial Day will happen again.  Has it become simply another day off that is filled with distractions to keep us from thinking about wars, bad wars, great wars, good wars, and those who fought in them and gave up everything for that fight?  I hope it is not true.  Please tell me it is not.   

The ecumenical future. . .

In what has to be the understatement of the year, Pope Leo said “While much progress has been made on some historically divisive issues, new problems have arisen in recent decades, rendering the pathway to full communion more difficult to discern.”  Ya think?!  While the ecumenical conversations of a certain age could have expected confidence in the ecumenical creeds or a consensus on the morality of divorce, birth control, same sex marriage, etc, this is no longer the case.  In addition to this, the cause of the Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified and risen has been replaced by social justice, climate change, and a host of other causes not even particularly addressed by Scripture.  Finally, the whole certainty of the Scriptural words, events, and message has been undermined until God's Word is merely a suggestion to many Christians today.  Do you think that this might have something to do with the conundrum suggested by the Pope's understatement?

There was a time when I applauded the work of ecumenical conversations.  In particular, the Lutheran and Roman Catholic dialogues produced some solid work engaging each other in what we believe, teach, and confess.  While not every one agreed with the fruits of this long standing theological engagement, it was serious, deliberate, and scholarly.  For the Lutheran side, most of this ended when the ecumenical chairs ended up in the hands of liberal Lutherans who did not take their own history or confession all that seriously much less the positions of their dialogue partners.  Now, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America finds itself in the odd position of being in fellowship with nearly anyone and everyone except any Lutherans who do take their history and confession seriously and who believe these inform and set boundaries for faith and practice.  It is no wonder that the ecumenical conversations have become difficult -- difficult at least for those who want to take theology seriously but easy for those who don't.

Sadly, I confess that today it is probably not worth our time and effort to sit down and engage anyone in official theological dialogues.  For one, the ELCA and Missouri are not speaking.  For another, the conservative Anglicans are still wedded to some of the same liberal positions they had when they were playing well together so I am not sure how far we can expect to get with those who insist that the ordination of women, for example, is not going to change.  Finally, even once rather solid partners (the Lutheran Church of Australia) have set their course away from historic Lutheran confession and identity and it might be that the SELK in Germany is not that far behind.  So who is their left to talk to?

The answer seems to take us to Africa.  There we find churches more willing to sit down with solid and deliberate conversations about faith and life.  There we find some churches whose clergy are being formed within the seminaries of the LCMS.  There we also find a vibrant and and larger presence to the Lutheran identity than seems to be left across the West.  If there is anywhere we need to be going to talk, it is probably Africa.  There are some small and mission provinces offering us hope but by and large the once vaunted Lutheran institutions of the West (i. e. Lutheran World Federation) are probably not worth the conversation and will not offer much hope of any serious debate much less future unity. 

Next week. . .

Next week I will be in St. Louie for my probable last go around on a floor committee weekend.  Hundreds of overtures have come from the various places and entities that comprise the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  The floor committees have been appointed mostly from District Presidents and delegates who will be in attendance at the Synodical Convention in Phoenix in July of this year.  They will mull over what has been submitted, cull down the working number of resolutions to be presented to the assembly down to a manageable number -- south of a hundred to be sure.  Then, with elections, the assembly will discuss and vote.  If I could have my druthers, there would be more deliberation than is often the case.  Too many times, someone rushes to close debate or call the question before real, substantive debate can be had.  I will admit that it is not easy to manage a real debate with some 1,000 voting delegates (clergy and lay) as well as advisory folks.  But that is part of why we are here.  

We all know that the cost of these things means it is hard to let things simply fly as they will but it would be better rather than worse to have more deliberation by the assembly rather than less.  In part, the floor committees will probably work against resolutions that will prove too provocative and will try to sense the mind and mood of the majority to offer things that pass.  Even bread and butter resolutions will hear from some naysayer who wants his comment recorded.  That means that clock watching will go along with the debate and the voting.  Thankfully, if the electronic voting and queuing for debate tools work, this will give more time to the floor to aid in it in all.  

Some will complain that there are too many clerical collars.  Some will complain that there is too much gray hair.  Some will complain that there are too many woman even as some complain there are too few.  Some will complain that the same voices seem to have something to say on everything.  Some will complain that the resolutions sound a lot like previous year's.  Some will complain that they do not go far enough fast enough.  Some will complain that they go too far and too fast.  Some will confuse us and some will be confused.  A few solid voices will work to sort it all out and then give us a clean record of what we actually said and did.  Short of a papacy to dictate it all to us our a council of bishops to tell us what they deliberated and voted upon, this is what we are stuck with.  

I have been to more conventions than I can remember and sat in the seats where people made the decisions and cast a vote as well as in the seats on the side of the dais where the people who cannot vote sit.  I will come home with a few  tchotchkes from the vendors but not as many as I once did -- times are tough and even cheap stuff from China can be expensive!  I will see a great many faces of folks I know and reconnect with most of them in some way.  It will also be a working week for me and the members of the Commission on Constitutional Matters and Commission on Handbook.  We do not get to make the rules but we have to make sure we follow them -- even the ones some of us don't appreciate.

My only advice is the one that physicians once tried to follow -- do no harm.  We have had a few clinkers in the past with unintended outcomes and consequences.  At least do not make things worse.  We need to clearly affirm who we are, attempt to thoughtfully, Biblically, and confessionally address the challenges before us, select faithful folk to serve us in the many positions of leadership and boards of our Synod, and that is about all we need or should do.  We certainly do not need to reinvent ourselves every three years.  We certainly do not need to forget who we are as we tackle the big problems and issues before us.  We do need to act in such a way that we do not dampen our hopes or darken our view of the next triennium because of our time together in Phoenix.  Like a herd of turtles, moves the Church of God; brothers, we are treading where we've always trod...  Yup, it is a slow process in a fast world and that is probably how it should be.  Do no harm.  That is the best advice.  Don't do something stupid that needs to be fixed down the road because who knows how long it will be before the fix will be found and the error repaired?  And laugh a bit -- if at nothing else, laugh at yourself.  We can be pretty funny even when we intend to be serious.  Oh, well, time to pack up for the soiree in St. Louie.