Ontological questions. . .

While some of the differences within the Missouri Synod are often framed as nuanced practices within the framework of adiaphora, there is another way to view these.  The divergent views of how we do things are ultimately ontological -- born of very different views of who the Missouri Synod is and not simply how we might do things.

Take the business of seminaries and routes to ordination.  While no one in their right mind would presume that Scripture has put in place the system we have today, that system has been the way we as the Missouri Synod have done things pretty much from the beginning.  It is not simply about who trains our pastors but who certifies them for service to the Synod.  While it might seem that the near monopoly our seminaries have might be worth breaking up, the real question here is who certifies the graduates of other programs and other schools and attests to their fitness and training to serve as clergy?  In the ELCA this is not the role of the seminary at all but has been delegated to local candidacy committees on a Synod (meaning District in our terminology) level.  Each Synod has its own criteria and makes its own decisions about who will be ordained (except, of course, for the regular pattern of ordaining outside this as was done with women and LGBTQ+ even before the ELCA had acted to approve these).  In other words, this is reflective of the ELCA's self understanding as a confederation of largely autonomous geographical units and that these decide on a local level who is ordained reveals the depth of this independence.  Missouri, whether rightly or wrongly, is not made up of autonomous or even independent districts that constitute the national jurisdiction.  In Missouri, the Synod defines the Districts and not the other way around.  Districts are simply Synod in that particular place (okay, the non-geographical districts sort of break some of the rules here).  Missouri has reserved not to the Districts but to the Synod the role of training and certifying for ordination those who will serve us as pastors.  Missouri has done so through the Seminary.  Synod makes those decisions and not Districts or other non-synodical seminaries or training routes.  Again, whether you think this is good or not, this is not a choice that can be changed without also changing the self-understanding of who we are as the Missouri Synod.  

BTW here are two statements from the leaders of the LCMS seminaries on such alternate routes, especially those which completely bypass official channels.

Or look at the business of worship.  Some have insisted the congregation is perfectly free to decide which hymnals and liturgies and agendas (the other rites) it will use.  Some have even gone so far as to suggest that perhaps Districts can establish their own criteria for and publish their own "hymnals."  Again, this is not a simple question of what can be done but what should be done.  The Synod has said it makes these decisions on a larger scale than the congregation or the District and asks the congregations as condition of membership to use only doctrinally pure hymnals, liturgies, and agendas.  For lack of better way of putting it, to forego freedom in order to pursue more unity as a hallmark of their identity within the Synod.  In other words, we have united around a higher value than liberty and locale and we call that value unity of doctrine and practice.  To delegate that solely to the congregation would transform Missouri from a congregational church body into a congregationalist one -- sort of like the Southern Baptist Convention in which there is no real national church identity or structure but a cooperative association in which the congregation is fully independent to decide for itself such things as what will be believed and how it will be practiced.   As we have seen recently, it takes a lot to get disciplined in the SBC and there is great latitude practiced (even more than some would like!).  For the District to assume the role of Synod in sanctioning or publishing its own worship books or establishing its own worship practices is for such a District to take what the Synod has assigned to itself alone.  Again, it is for the sake of all that some restrict some of their liberty to abide not only by a common confession but also to practice that confession more closely in sync with their fellow congregations across the nation and not simply within a geographical portion of the land.  I am not arguing here that this is good or bad or right or wrong but only to suggest that a big change here is also a big change in the self-understanding of who we are together as the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

Finally, if, indeed, we as a Synod decide that such changes in who we are and how we live and work together are the way to do, it has to happen on the level of how decisions are made by the Synod and not by individual congregations or even Districts deciding on their own.  Before you rush to conclusions here remember that I am simply talking about how some of these changes will result in a radically different idea of who the Synod is and not simply a change of a few practices.  So when we discuss these things, we need to be upfront in what we are discussing.  These changes are not about issues on the fringe but essential issues that will transform who we are and how we live and work together.  Another way of putting this is that these are constitutional and bylaw issues but the impact is the same. 

Waiting in the wings. . .

This from down under:

 

As Pastor Maria Rudolph becomes a Servant of The Word, Bishop Paul Smith encouraged us all to listen to her, as it is The Word of the Lord that Maria will share with all: "Listen to Him! A clear command from the Bible... where we should be encouraged that when we listen to her, we listen to HIM."

 

And from Maria:

"There have been so many people who have gone before us, and it gave so much joy to sing the Liturgy, today... why we are here is always an amalgamation of things that have happened because we have been blessed along the way. We are blessed to have more servants in The Word. It's overwhelming... My prayer is that when you engage with this ordination, any ordination in this church, that you see Jesus.... hear the words of Jesus... receive Jesus..."

 

Maria then encouraged us all to look at our neighbours, and to see the face of Jesus in them, and bless them - the same way Maria encouraged us to see all in the world. Pastor Maria, you are a beloved Child of God. God bless you!

 

The live link from Pastor Maria Rudolph's ordination will be available for viewing after the event. It can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/live/hwLhYDKKFqo?si=zbS1y2utabzy_Yrm

 

Maria Rudolph will be installed as Associate Pastor of St John's Lutheran Church Perth on Good Shepherd Sunday, 2pm Sunday 11 May 2025. Everyone is welcome.

Just in case you did not know it, the decision to ordain women was made only a few months ago, October 15, 2024, to be exact.  They did not have to wait for a woman to enter seminary and complete the required route to ordination.  She was already waiting in the wings for the decision which would allow those in LCANZ to make it all official.  In the bottom photo you can see her smirk and with it the smirk of all those who so smugly decided that it was better to break up a church body and depart from Scripture and the catholic practice of Christianity than it was to hold the line.  Doctrines always die on the minefield of expediency. 

 

How long the memory. . .

As someone well into the seventh decade of his life, I know the problems you encounter with memory.  I am forever wondering why I entered this room or that, where I put down my pen, what I was going to say, and what word I was looking for.  You could say I forgot and that would be true but the other side of forgetfulness is that I remember more clearly things that I thought I had long forgotten -- things from the earlier years of my life that have now become cherished memories.  I am, however, under no illusions about how long I will be remembered.  No, I have spent too much time in flea markets looked at the once cherished photos and frames that might have been heirlooms and not are simply the faces of the forgotten sold as halfway decent junk.

How long the memory is a pretty good question.  I fear the memory of all of us is diminishing, helped into oblivion by the short news cycle and the digital images which quickly give way to the next best thing to come along.  We have not simply agreed with Ford who said history is bunk.  No, we have done him one better.  We have run from the past to see everything through the lens of the present.  It is a fairly simplistic view of life.  Cause and effect and then forgetting it all when the next curious thing presents itself.  Our memories are short, too short, and it is becoming a serious issue.  We are so content living in the moment that we no longer miss the past nor feel bound to remember it accurately at all.  It has become so much easier for us to live in the invented history we imagine or to give up the whole idea of history.  I wonder when we will awaken to the fact that leaving the past behind is the first step to making the future worse rather than better.

We look at our lives less in terms of what happened in those lives than if we are happy about the life we lived.  I suppose it could be asked but I am not sure it matters.  When my kids were small, when life was busy and filled with demands, and we had not much money and a thousand claims to every moment, we hoped things would get better. Now I find myself spending more and more of the day trying to recapture what have now become my best memories of that family and of my life as husband and dad within that family.  Surprise, surprise, I find myself asking not only what God was doing in my life but also thinking a great deal more about how what happened in my yesterdays impacted the man who I am today.  Little things become big in comparison and big things sometimes become small.  Bucket lists are a tacit admission that we did not do what we wanted and no matter what we did do, it was not enough.  I am more enamored with the list of things done than those which await doing.  Perhaps I am lazy.  Perhaps I have learned that all is not how it first appears.

I have discovered that the people I thought were old when I was a kid were probably younger than I am today.  I have discovered that memories can be made out of little things as well as major events.  I have discovered that what I long for more than money or power is to hear the voice of my parents and grandparents one more time.  I have discovered from some of these ponderings that I am building a memory in others even as the same is built in me.  It makes more sense to me now that the thief on the cross begged simply to be remembered when the Lord came into His kingdom.  It also makes more sense to me that the worst of curses is to have you erased from all memories -- most especially from the Lord's own.

The myth of education. . .

I cannot speak for all time since my own experience is limited and my expertise is easily challenged so I shall only address the present as I have observed it.  There is education and then there is the myth of education.  My presumption is that the myth is a modern day phenomenon, especially given that access to educational institutions by the general populace is relatively recent in the grand survey of human history..  That does not mean to suggest that those who did not matriculate from institutions were not educated but that the myth that passes for education today is largely perpetuated by those same institutions.

There is today a bias toward the individual.  Whereas learning was once a process of diminishing the individual and his or her taste or preference or ideas in favor of that which is more established as fact, the reality is that those attending and those teaching tend to respect the individual "truth" of the student far more than institutions or other paths to education did in the past.  Education in both the formal and more casual sense of the term has come not to revolve around established fact or truth but around the individual person and their perception, preference, and identity.  Education has become a path more of self-discovery than of acquaintance with events, facts, and interpretations.  In fact, the job of educational institutions is to respect the quirks of the individual and provide a safe space for that individualism to exist without the challenge of inconvenient truths or facts.  The campuses of institutions once dedicated to challenging the opinions of the individual have now created spaces immune from such challenge when the student finds it all too threatening.

Along with the tilt toward the individual, there is also a corresponding loss of confidence in the facts that were once incontrovertible.  History, for example, is no longer a set of events and explanations but has been turned on end.  The modern values attached to diversity, inclusion, and equity have been read into the past and changed what we once knew with confidence to rewrite that history and to introduce question marks where periods once stood.  We are less interested in what happened than postulating why, less concerned with facts than interpretation, and much more willing to judge and interpret the past through the lens of modern values.  Columbus the heroic figure gave way to Columbus the interloper who began a history of atrocity and abuse of the now heroic indigenous tribes of the Americas.  As some tore down his statues, others remade him into the first of a long history of slavery that has now marked American history.  It is not that Columbus has been re-evaluated but that he has come under judgment by the court of modernity to be a heel rather than hero.  Again, the point here is not to defend him as hero but to see how the man and his accomplishments have been laid against another standard and how those values can diminish what he did or who he was in his own time.

What passes for education today readily substitutes the untried things of the present for those which generations before have lauded as worthy and noble.  Think here of literature.  Thirty years ago I noticed that the summer reading lists for my own kids included modern books published within the past few years but none of the "classics" that I had read in school and my parents before me.  In other words, the rejection of the past against the judgment of the present had rendered these works not only less significant but tainted and spoiled.  The summer reading that was once dominated by what were universally considered "great authors" and their "great works" were replaced by books churned out to fit the then modern themes of feminism, sexual liberation, depression, and drugs.  I read those books with my kids and found them painful to read, not only because the themes were so filled with despair and desperate people but because the writing was so poor.  There was little appeal to morality, right or wrong, or virtue against evil but plenty of justification for feelings, desires, and views that called into question what other times had concluded.  Most notably was a complete lack of religion.  One book on how a family dealt with death was absent of any mention of religion as a way of understanding of it or healing from its pain.  The penchant for the present has led to the unqualified rejection of what in the past had been the hallmarks of achievement.  While this is certainly truth for literature, it is no less true for other subjects as well. 

This all is true in the way science is treated as that which is most true of all -- except, of course, when it conflicts with other values.  Science as a discipline has always questioned the conclusions and insisted that they must be repeatable in order to be established and provable even against changing standards of evaluation.  Now science is spoken of as a conclusion and not a process of discovery that is adaptable to changing conclusions.  Evolution is judged incontrovertible yet the science that conflicts with multiple genders or the idea that a person chooses that gender is dismissed.  One science fits with the idea that life is random and spontaneous and the other science does not fit with the idea that gender is fluid.  Science is left to be the bastard child of the acceptable values of the day and the phrase follow the science has become a joke.

So education has become a myth.  It is not learning but indoctrination in a way far more perverse and dark than religion could ever have been accused of imparting.  The campuses of higher education have nearly all succumbed to this delusion and many schools with a religious history are not far behind.  Worse is that the high school has become infected and the federal purse strings have ensured that it remains so.  Now we are seeing just how far and how fast the elementary schools can be swept up into the myth of what passes for education.  The Church and her people would be wise to remember that it is better to be fools for Christ's sake than just fools.

Well, I watched it. . .

Though I have heard decidedly mixed reviews about the movie The Conclave, it was free and my wife and I had time so we watched it.  It was a most disappointing and troubling move.  No, the cast was great and the movie both well acted and well shot.  What was disappointing was that it was a political movie with a theme from the secular world that will be our undoing if we heed its advice.

Throughout the movie was the implicit lie that the Church (not just Rome) must be reformed and that this reform would of necessity move it further away from confidence in its dogma, further away from its own past, history, and tradition, and further away the primary concern with the salvation of man.  It began with the sermon suggesting that doubts are good, doubts are healthy, and doubting leaders are good leaders.  It moved to an absolute from one of the prime liberal papabile that people must know where he stands about morality and the role of women (more for the latter than the former).  It moves through a scandalous characterization of church leaders as guilty of bribery, simony, hate, crass power grabbing, and lies -- oh, so many lies.  It ends with the greatest lie of all -- a dead pope who manipulates the conclave, a doubting dean who is his dupe, and a new pope who is what, a woman, trans, whatever.  Honestly, if the Church follows this path of reform it will renew the Church into the progress of death!

It unfolds that the worst of all are those who believe the words of Scripture about homosexual behavior and who wish to connect the present to the past.  The movie is quick to label the former hypocrites and the conservatives lunatics.  There is that great and telling line from the cardinal who wonders what he is supposed to go back and tell his people when they have elected a pope who decries homosexual behavior.  In other words, the church in this movie is so far from God and His Word that they cannot even imagine having to defend what God has said (and not a particular cardinal).  The end is particularly troubling.  The burning of the papal ballots seals the lie and then the bad actors who were the princes are redeemed by being deceived.  

And today it all begins in earnest in Rome.  Of course, there will be different opinions about the man and the direction that should be taken but it would not hurt if the papal electors watched the move and came up with another end than the deathward drift from futile birth that has characterized liberal progress.  How can we be at home with our grandchildren if we are not at home with our fathers?  Rome cannot abide more doubt and uncertainty from the top and we would all benefit from someone who speaks with clarity rather than confusion.  No, we don't need some dark horse from Kabul or a political insider but the world hopes and prays that the one elected can restore some integrity to what is believed and taught.

We can't do that. . .

Living in the Bible belt, if you can still call it that, the numbering of the Ten Commandments is different from Rome or Wittenberg.  There is a part of the explanation of the first three commandments on who to worship that ends up being its own commandment.  "You shall not make any graven images." (Hebrew: לֹא-תַעֲשֶׂה לְךָ פֶסֶל, וְכָל-תְּמוּנָה, Exodus 20:6).  This is part of the fuller explanation of the command not to worship idols but Baptists and others have made it it's own separate law.  So what does this mean?  Is God somehow against art?  Is God jealous of His image or the image of His creation?  Or, is this what it claims to be -- part of the prohibition against having and worshiping any other gods?

I will admit that it is a strange business.  God violated His own rules then by commanding images for the Temple.  It was these that got the Temple looted and sacked by others.  Nobody was interested in the scrolls or the incense but the golden images that adorned the walls of the Temple were tempting to anyone in search of a quick buck against what had become a toothless nation.  Lets not even begin to talk about the ark of the covenant with its golden cherubim and wings covering the mercy seat. Then there is the business of the bronze serpent.  This was certainly a graven image that appears to directly contradict the command not to make any graven images except that this was an image commanded by God and to which a promise had been attached.  Perhaps this is the better example.  The command was never about making no sacred art but about those images which became idols and stole the worship of God away from Him and attached it to something else. It was always about worshiping an image not simply as a depiction of God but in place of Him.  The commandment explains this.  “You shall not bow down to them or serve them.” (Deuteronomy 5:7)

Lutherans seem to have gotten sucked into this even though our history clearly says different.  Of course, we are against the worship of any one or any thing or any practice or any idea that replaces what is due to God alone.  But neither are we iconoclasts who refuse the use of art that gives form to the Word of God.  In fact, we love art that speaks the Word of God.  The crucifix is a perfect example.  It is never an attempt to realistically portray what Jesus looked like but to give form to the words that speak of His suffering and death for you and for me -- all out of His perfect love for us sinners.  There is probably no more Lutheran a Lutheran than Franz Pieper and yet he reminds us that a crucifix is not simply permitted but can be a means of grace:  the Gospel is such a means of grace in every form in which it reams men, whether it be preached or printed or expressed as formal absolution or pictured in symbols or types or pondered in the heart... (Vol. 3 of Christian Dogmatics, p. 106). Pieper, of course, does not venture far from Luther:  by a crucifix or some picture... Luther often recalls that in the Papacy many, when in the throes of death, were reminded of Christ's substitutionary satisfaction by means of a crucifix held before their eyes and thus died a blessed death. 

Of course, the oddity is that no one thinks of this commandment as a command when purchasing a nativity set or buying the holiest of statues with Santa kneeling at the manger of the baby Jesus.  We are selective in our application of the command but often end up missing what is commanded.  Idolatry.   Not art or image but idols.  In our age, we seem to have made our peace with most images but have made an idol out of our own.  We must be comfortable, enjoy it, and find it meaningful before we will worship anything but most especially the Triune God.  In so doing, we have violated the commandment with nary a form or shape to show for it.  Oh, well.

Marketing the Gospel and the Church. . .

While perusing some journals and magazines in the stack, I happened across an article by a liturgical pastor on "Marketing Principles" to promote new growth.  The journal was at one time rather staid and stuffy but apparently has expanded its horizons.  In fact, the article was an unabashed promotion of business marking for liturgical churches and gave a personal testimony of how it had been used to fill the pews in one spot.  The premise was that churches had not adjusted to the changing times (some of them the fruit of the pandemic and others the result of culture shifts).  Bottom line is that people have fallen out of the habit of attending on Sunday, have shorter attention spans, and are focused on other things instead (like kids and sports and stuff).  The key statement is this:  Churches are simply a 19th century habit suddenly confronted by a 21st century post-pandemic world...

The suggestions were many.  First was the idea of scrubbing the liturgy to shorten, streamline, and make it move.  Permissive rubrics were the first appeal. In other words, may has come to mean omit.  Two abbreviated readings suffice for the lectionary instead of three.  The choir anthem stays (interesting since it is entirely a may rubric) but hymns are down to one (with fewer stanzas sung).  The Psalm stays but it is used during some down time (like the distribution).  Readers are on site to start reading right away (without a solemn walk up, reverence to the altar, and any dawdling.  Acolytes have also had it drummed into them.  Efficiency is the byword.  Everyone cheers when they get done in 55 minutes (even with 300+ communing).  Their contemporary service struggled because, believe it or not, contemporary Christian songs are often quite a bit longer than a hymn!  Problem was solved with the switch to Morning Prayer with communion on the side from the reserved.  Preaching is limited to about 8 minutes.  QR codes and online giving methods have also streamlined the liturgy.  Prepared and wrapped foods have kept the coffee hour without a delay or those irritating delays getting a sausage biscuit.  Sounds great, right?

I am sure it does sound good to people and, if it makes people the mystery to 55 minutes and get rid of the liturgy as if it were a speed bump on the road to success?  And what exactly does success look like?  Get them in and through and done and out the door as fast as possible does not seem to correlate with previous ideals of success or faithfulness.  So, who is wrong?  Should we be doing this?  Is the liturgy like a seven course dinner you can pare down to fast food?  Is the Word of God worth a few extra minutes or not?  What are we telling people by paring down the service to make it as efficient as possible?  I am not sure that Jesus ever addresses efficiency as a criteria for the Church or the Gospel.  If He had, He might have created a more effective governance system and something more efficient than Word and Sacrament.  If Jesus is not concerned by inefficiency, should we be?  Does heaven rejoice over even one sinner who repents or when the liturgy can be said in 55 minutes or less?

The point here is not to dump on this pastor and this parish trying to appeal to people who find worship and church unappealing.  No, the point is rather to ask ourselves why we think we have outgrown the whole idea of liturgy and why we would judge an hour and twenty minutes or son a royal waste of time?  It a more streamlined liturgy and shorter sermon the answer to the problem or are we the problem?  Have we become the problem because we no longer value or esteem the things of God as highly as we do our screens or our leisure time or our sleep?  Maybe the answer is to give up in person worship and simply pump out a good digital platform for folks to view in the pjs and when they choose?  If God does not like it, at least the people will.

What makes a community of faith?

Many delight in describing the Church as a community of faith.  It is not wrong.  In fact, that is exactly what the Church is -- a community of faith.  It has become popular to insist that within that community there needs also to be diversity.  Diversity has, in fact, become the byword of our age as a necessary ingredient to nearly everything -- from school to congregation to business to government.  Diversity has, for all practical purposes, become the most important ingredient within the community of faith that is the Church -- just as it has for the other arenas listed above.  It would be good, however, to begin with what it is that makes a community of faith a community.

The first aspect of a community of faith is that they have a shared faith or belief.  For lack of a better way of putting it, they confess a common creed.  A community requires some level of commonality in order to be a community.  People are not a community because they say they are.  The roots of community run deep -- as deep as the core beliefs by which they understand who they are and why they are.  For the Church, it is impossible to be a community when the most basic and foundational criteria of their existence are in doubt or in conflict.  The Church is not a community of seekers but confessors.  We are not gathered by our common questions but our common answers.  In order for this to happen, the Church must be a community united around what they believe about the Scriptures.  It is not enough to confess that the Word of God is in the Scriptures unless you also agree which words in the Word are God's and which are not.  Lutherans, like Roman Catholics and other conservative faiths, have traditionally confessed without reservation that all of Scripture is God's Word.  Of course, all that has changed of late.  In Lutheranism as well as across Rome and Protestantism, there has been a dilution of this statement and it has become one of the most serious challenges to the community of the Church.  Either we are united in faith around God's Word or we have no common creed and therefore nothing to bind us together more than our fickle wills.

The second aspect of a community of faith is that we have a common history.  This does not mean that we have all experienced the same history or that we experienced all the history.  What it does mean is that we claim this history as our own.  Christianity has a creed -- everyone knows that.  We also have God's story -- that is the Bible.  But we also have the history of God's people in the unbroken succession of those who have believed and confessed Christ crucified and risen.  Lutherans, for example, have acknowledged this from the get go.  We confess a catholic and apostolic faith and we own the history.  We have a story older than we are but it is our story just the same.  The early church is our story and down through every age and epoch of history we stand with those who went before.  If your history begins with you, with a specific date in history in which some constitutional documents were proclaimed, that is a problem.  In fact, that is pretty much the definition of a sect -- it begins everything with itself and is self-referential in the worst of ways.  No self-respecting Lutheran can begin history with 1483 or 1517 or 1540 or 1580.  We do not live in the imagination of our own definition but stand with those who went before us.  Chesterton is pretty clear about this and every Lutheran worth his salt will stand on this hill.  We do not simply live in the moment nor do we live for the future but we live upon the shoulders of the giants of the faith who went before us and confessed with us the mystery of the Trinity.

The third aspect of a community of faith is that we have a piety or practice.  We are not all doing our own thing but we have an order, rite, ceremony, usage, and ritual life that is also in common with those who went before and those who are and we pass it down to those who are to come.  One of the most abhorrent abuses of adiaphora is the idea that if it is not required, it is not important and can be left to taste as if liberty were a higher value than order.  We don't make rules about everything because we should not have to.  We ought to know how to live together in charity - those learning with those who have already learned.  We ought to desire the unity of order that manifests to those inside and outside who we are.  Community has manners and etiquette and personal liberty submits to these protocols not as chains that bind but yielding in love for the sake of the many (including a vote from the democracy of the dead).  So we have a common life together which transcends the value of personal taste or freedom.  We order our life together in an ordo or pattern older than we are.  We order our time in a calendar which proclaims the story of Christ and teaches us His Word as a common pulse or rhythm to our common life (which, by the way, includes a lectionary).  We order our lives within this community of faith according to a common set of values anchored not in the vote of the majority but the revelation of God and in sync with His will and purpose. 

Community is always diverse as the uncommon threads of our individual histories is woven into the common fabric of who we are as the people of God.  Community cannot be born from a diversity which values individual truths, stories, and habitus over the common creed, history, and practice of the Church.  It simply will not be a community anymore but merely a gathering of individuals in the same place at the same time.  Unfortunately, that is what some people desire the Church to be -- a people with nothing much in common except their desire to be together.  We have already applied that definition to family and look where that has gotten us.  No, family and community have an identity which is bigger than any one of us or there is no family or community at all.  Calling yourself a community does not make it so.

Imagine my surprise. . .

A long while ago I blogged about the demise of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's flagship magazine Living Lutheran.  I had a few issues left on the subscription but I wrote it all off.  It was not all that worthwhile anyway and I subscribed mostly to see who I knew who had died.  So, imagine my surprise when in my mailbox appeared a Spring issue of the now quarterly printed magazine -- like Lazarus back from the dead.  Well, not exactly.  The monthly version which they canned had given me source material for my blog.  This quarterly version had a feature article on the 1,700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed.  It is was not a perfect article but it was much more profound and much more orthodox than most of the content of the past.  I was actually not only surprised, I was shocked.

If the content of the past was like this article, perhaps the magazine would not have folded in the first place.  Yes, we all know that print seems to be going the way of all flesh.  Look at any newspaper.  But there was also another reason for its decline -- it was filled with nothing.  It stood for nothing.  It raised more questions than it answer for the readers and put more emphasis on what people were doing than what God did.  Content contributed to its decline as much as the technology transformation.  If you do not promote the faith but have something else as your message, what reason do you have for your existence?

My point here is not to beat a dead horse.  We all know that the quarterly resurrection of that once monthly magazine is a stop gap measure and that eventually it will die in print form and probably in digital form.  It was probably a gift to those whose big donations might be lost and who probably are not digital types who would read this online.  I don't know.  Maybe I am completely off base.  My point is that content matters.  Technology may change and forms may adjust to meet those changes but content matters.  If a publication intends to serve the Church, it must actually promote the faith, enlighten the reader, and instruct those outside the faith as to what it believed, taught, and confessed.

Most of what sells today is like the Platte River in my home state of Nebraska -- it is a mile wide and an inch deep.  The Church cannot afford to be generic.  We must be explicit in our support of and our confession of the faith.  This is the lesson.  The people in the Church and outside are looking for truth and conviction.  Nothing less is worthy of any magazine or digital publication that purports to be a voice of the Church.  Too much of what we get in the mail and in our email is worthless.  We cannot afford to send out or post that which has no solid content, no truth, no conviction, no confession, no creed, and no roots in Scripture.  We do not have the time or the money to settle for anything less.  

Thankfully, The Lutheran Witness is not one of those journals that gives us Christianity Lite.  The media in the LCMS has become much more content oriented.  It has aroused some ire from those who do not wish to be a lightening rod for the faith but so be it.  The Gospel always offends those who refuse to hear it and it can be a thorn in the flesh for those who want their own church to be less about doctrine and more about relationships.  I have heard complaints from those who did not like to see a clerical collar or chasuble in the photos or a doctrinal topic like marriage and family.  So be it.  If we are not contending for the faith -- as offensive as the faith can be to the culture and social movements of the day -- then why do we exist at all?  That is the lesson.  Content does matter.

To enlighten or darken. . .

I will admit that of all the books I have owned over the years, the smaller category is what you would call Bible commentaries.  Of those I have kept now into retirement, the number of books that fit into the realm of Bible commentaries is even smaller.  It is not because I think I am so smart I do not need them or even because I have no interest in the minutiae of the details of the text.  I need the guidance of experts and I do not have a command of the details.  The problem is that so many books which pass for Bible commentaries fail in their primary mission.  They do not enlighten the text.  Instead, they do the opposite.  They make the meaning of the text and therefore its application darker.  For a pastor, if it won't preach, it is not worth the time spent studying it.  Pastors have limited time and they have an urgent task before them and if those hundred dollar textbooks are not pulling their weight and helping the pastor do his job, what value do they have -- except as a curiosity?

Now, to be sure, there are some commentaries that open up the text of Scripture and shed light upon what it means.  I will single out the Concordia Commentaries from Concordia Publishing House as generally more profound and helpful.  In particular, I commend authors like Thomas Winger and William Weinrich and John Kleinig.  I only wish that when you pulled other volumes from the shelf in a bookstore, you found the same kind of approach that these and some other authors take.  They know their task.  They are not there to raise unanswered questions to arouse curiosity but to address the text so that the pastor can preach it to the people.  God bless them!

Now, I thought this was a recent phenomenon.  I thought that this was perhaps due primarily to the advent of historical criticism and the textual criticism that treats the text of the sacred Word as if it were not sacred.  Imagine how wrong I was when I happened upon a quote from one of the earliest Lutherans who wrote a hermeneutics text -- Matthew Flacius Illyricus (1520-1575).  He surveyed the situation in his own time and said "Interpreters, who indeed ought to be the greatest help to the unlearned for learning the Sacred Scriptures, often darken them more than they explain them."  (If you want to read more of him, try out How to Understand the Scriptures, translated by Wade Johnston, Magdeburg Press, 2011.) 

So my advice is to be careful about spending your hard earned dollars on Bible commentaries.  They are not all the same and many, if not most, are simply not worth it to your task as a pastor or helpful to your understand as a layman. 

Frustrated. . .

There is a great deal of frustration in me for the way that Pope Francis has been spoken of in death.  He is lauded as the great pastoral and compassionate face of Roman Catholicism, indeed, of Christianity.  The implicit contrast is between Benedict XVI who was by all means an academic and scholastic individual by nature.  Hidden in this contrast is another.  That word pastoral has come to be a wiggle word that means little regard for doctrine and truth.  There is nothing pastoral in that.  

The perception I had of Francis was not pastoral at all but rather petty.  He was known to be vindictive against those who disagreed with him (don't forget that he literally kicked cardinals out of their digs for having the nerve to challenge him!).  He was judgmental (even though he insisted who am I to judge and described the Latin Mass and communion in hand as proud).  He was by his own admission not even interested in doctrine (though this was his primary job as Pope to preserve and proclaim the doctrine and teaching of his own communion).  He was anything but humble and his humility was more photo op than his character (he was self-referential, arrogant enough to demand his personality over tradition, and petty enough to refuse transparency in the finances of Rome).  He was not compassionate toward the victims of sexual abuse (and actually hid or protected some of those high profile types accused of this).  He was so joyful, they say, except those who worked for him found him in a sour mood more than happy (ask anyone in the Vatican).  Worse than anything, however, was the fact that he gave witness to the false idea that sincerity matters more than anything else and that truth can be bent for the sake of opening the doors to the oppressed minorities of the day (usually LGBTQ+). 

What is worse for Lutherans is that we too often make the same mistake.  We presume that our pastors are being pastoral by refusing to speak the truth and that love means fudging the truth for the sake of seeming to play nice.  We act as if it is more important to find approval buy those outside the faith than it is to find approval from God by keeping the faith and preaching the Word without apology.  We complain that too much is made of liturgy and if people want evangelical style music and services, what is the big deal?  We complain about those who are concerned for those who commune and laud those who let people decide if they believe rightly and can benefit from this communion by their recognition of His flesh and blood.  We trash talk pastors behind close doors and then wonder why the seminaries are not turning out more of them.  We complain about seminaries and think there should be more options and less rigorous ones as if all the training were either worthless or not essential to the high and holy calling.  We say we want pastoral pastors but what we really mean is that we want pastors who will not make too much of those who deny or disagree with the faith and its worship distilled through the ages.  We make the same mistake in presuming that a pastoral pastor will tell us what we want to hear rather than what we must hear from God's Word.  

Pope Francis did not live up to the hype of him as pastoral and compassionate and accepting.  The problem here is more than his hypocrisy, the problem is that he seemed to care more about appearing to be flexible and nice than orthodox and true.  Lutherans should not fall into the same trap.  Our best pastors are not those who let us believe what we want, worship how we like, sing what makes us feel good, and hear what we want to hear.  Our best pastors are often those who appear controlling but who refuse to compromise the truth and who love us enough to address us with the Word none of us wants to hear.  Sure, sometimes pastors screw up and are their own worst enemies.  But more often than not, they fail because we refuse to hear the truth or heed the Word of the Lord from their lips.  Not because they weren't pastoral enough for us.

Interesting. . . but not a surprise

Ryan Burge has put together a map showing the average church attendance as a percent of the population by state.  While the results are certainly interesting, no one would find them surprising.   The deep red of the South, the dark pink of the Midwest and other parts of the South are all predictable.  The deep red of Utah and Idaho are obviously reflective of the strength of the Mormon presence there.  What is mildly surprising are those states that show the lowest -- Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, among them.  It betrays the stereotype of Wisconsin, for example, as an average upper Midwest state.  Of course, Maine, Washington, and Oregon are what you might expect.  However, over all it does remind us that even in the dark red states, there is still plenty of room to evangelize.  The numbers are low enough to give us all a sober reminder that the vast majority of the population around us is not deeply connected to the Church.  While some might insist that this does not mean they do not believe, I think it is safe to say that the faith they profess is less than vital if it cannot bring them to hit their church home at least once a month.

Make it so. . .

I read on another blog a bit about the source of the famous line of Captain Jean Luc Picard, "Make it so,"  It turns out that the line is rather old thought not quite as storied as some have wished.  

In the classic series of eleven Horatio Hornblower books, which I love, the phrase "Make it so" appears only once, and not said by Hornblower.

“About that breakfast, My Lord?” said Gerard.
An officer was touching his hat to Fell with the request that it might be considered noon.
“Make it so,” said Fell. The welcome cry of “Up spirits” rang through the ship.

According to others, this was a standard naval phrase used all the time in British heritage navies for hundreds of years. It was, as some have noted, used officially when it is time for an action to occur, but requires the senior officer present to issue the order and officially begin the carrying out of that order. For instance at sunset, the officer of the day is advised "sunset sir/ma'am" and the officer looks at his watch and says "very good, make it so" allowing the ritual to begin and initiating the evening watch routine.   
According to a movie (another favorite), Richard Widmark use the phrase "Make it so." in the film 'The Bedford Incident' (1965).   In the movie 'The Sand Pebbles' In the movie it was said by the character Lt. Collins, commander of the US gunboat San Pablo in China, played by Richard Crenna.  Long before any  of these, in Frederick Marrayat's 1832 seagoing novel "Newton Forster": Newton Forster: Or, The Merchant Service, the line also occurs.  

In the order of command, there is much to the calm voice of the one in charge who issues such a command.  Indeed, the mark of a good commander is that he is calm when everything else is in chaos.  Perhaps it is best to reserve this to God.  He is the calm voice in the midst of chaos created by man stealing himself from His creator by listening to the enticing whisper of the devil against the calm and almost boring Word of God.  Certainly, we might say that the first violence to appear in God's good creation was when Eve sought the counsel of Satan to make it so against the will and purpose of God.  

Some have tried to make the Church and her leaders reactionaries who run and jump and turn on a dime at every movement in the world.  We must act.  Well, maybe not.  The Church is not some wild voice against other wild voices but the voice of calm, echoing the calm voice of God who is never controlled by whim but always works His will and purpose (which does not and has not changed).  The flurry of comments on every political and social development by those who are jurisdictional leaders is not a good thing.  What we need is calm and that calm in the storm of sin and its death is the voice of the Lord addressing us with His Word through the voice of His servant, the pastor.  Though we are gravely tempted to presume that it is our calling and our power to make the things of God so, the One who makes it so is Him whose calm prevailed against the chaos of our willing sin.  God is always making it so.  It may not be fast enough or be the thing that we desire, but it is always exactly what we need and our only hope.  So every Sunday God is making it so -- bringing the lost and condemned from their darkness into His light where redemption and salvation is to be found.  That is the power of the efficacious Word.  It makes it so.  That is the power of the efficacious Sacraments.  They make it so.  It is not about symbolism or a sign of something that is not there but exactly this -- God making it so.  Of course, you only see it by faith.

 

An event space. . .

When I first moved to the South, it was not uncommon for some Church of Christ folk to call and ask about renting the worship space for weddings -- the Church of Christ not using instruments and typically having rather plain buildings.  Yeah, we got some calls.  Not as many as people thought we did but a few.  We have also had people ask to rent the worship space for everything from piano recitals to funeral home sponsored memorial services.  I soon learned the downside to the idea that worship space is not sacred but merely an event space.  It is not that I am unsympathetic to those who find themselves hard-pressed to rent space for performances or family events or a host of other things.  I get it.  But there is definitely a down side to the whole idea that the property of churches is merely event space waiting to be rented. A lot of folks did not get why I thought it was a bad idea to rent out the nave and chancel as if it were merely multipurpose space.

Some continue to be perfectly okay with this.  Some cultivate the idea that their sacred space can and should be used for secular events -- naves and chancels filled with drink bars, food stations, gift tables, dance floors, and all kinds of other things alien to the Sunday morning rituals that occupy the same space.  We wrestle with the same kind of thing for our congregation's music series and make sure that if it is held in the nave, it does not embarrass us or Christ.  There have been some close calls though.  Some do not seem to be bothered by the idea and rather like the whole business of the church as an event space business.  Some count on the revenue earned to pay bills.  In some, including such venues as Washington's National Cathedral, it is this that finances the whole operation.  Furthermore, some justify whatever occupies the sacred space as a "ministry" or some sort or another.  After all, if it brings in the warm bodies and some dollars, how bad can it be?

I grew up looking at a neighboring town's LCMS church that had been replaced and sold and ended up as a hog house -- minus the steeple.  Wow.  Is that all there is to what happens on Sunday morning?  The problem is that for too many outside of Christianity and even for some of those within, the holy ground of God's presence is no longer special.  It is just space.  Space that costs money and needs an income stream to pay for it.  In the end, though, the blurring of the sacred and secular helps no one and hurts everyone.  For an old coot like me who still gets agitated when guys do not remove their hats or people bring in an armload of drink containers, it is not a small problem.  Down the road we will reap bad fruit from our failure to guard the doors and maintain the integrity of the space.  It will cost us something more than money and we will not be able to get it back after we lose it.

Borrowed and maybe a repeat. . .

This is what passes for church in Germany.  At least in Roman Catholic Germany.  If the link does not work, try this: https://x.com/i/status/1905328689564287102.  In any case, it is worth remembering that the Roman Catholic Church in Germany lost the equivalent of a very large diocese for Rome or, in Lutheran terms, a Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, last year alone.  For the first time, fewer than 20 million Roman Catholics live in Germany, according to the 2024 Church statistics published by the German Bishops’ Conference (DBK) on Thursday, March 27.  Only some 1.3 million attend Mass.  Ourch.  As it was once said by Sen. Everett Dirksen of the US budget, a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon it adds up to real money.  In church terms, a diocese here and a dioceses here and pretty soon it adds up to some real losses.  There is no room for Lutheran smugness here.  We are bleeding off people at an alarming rate as well.  So the guy in the video presumes that the perceived relevance of the faith in the eyes of those in the pews is the problem.  Translate that to if we don't change we will die.  Lutherans hear and believe it all the time.  We must adapt.  We must change.  We must be relevant.

My question today is if giving into the press to be "relevant" and adapting worship to what some listen to on their playlists will help save the Church or is it killing that same Church?  You tell me.  During all those dark ages of the 1910s through 1950s when we had solemn, predictable worship (sometimes in a language not spoken by the folks in the pews), the numbers were growing.  At the time my congregation was being formed, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod was starting a new congregation every 54 hours or so.  Growth was explosive rather than incremental.  The percentage of those who claimed the faith and were in worship each week was high -- making today's numbers an embarrassment as much as a crisis.  We were growing but, more importantly, we were keeping the folks who joined in worship and in the life of the Church through their faithfulness.  

Today it is highly likely that you could walk into any Roman or Lutheran or Presbyterian or Baptist or non-denominational gathering and find the same song list playing and find a casual atmosphere in a living room sort of setting (where comfort and entertainment are key).  Even when the outline of the liturgy is present, it is there only in a shadow of its former robust self.  Sermons preach happy talk to people who want to be happy and the offensive words of the Bible (sin, death, etc.) are avoided in favor of the promotion of wellness and satisfaction and security.  This was heralded as the way for a Christianity that seemed to have lost its way recover its vitality and life.  Instead, it is literally killing us.  The Baptist Lifeway study indicated that the folks who do not go to church would prefer buildings that looked like churches used to look instead of the bland mall type structures being erected today.  I am convinced that this is also code for the fact that they also want churches to act like churches and not glorified entertainment or self-help venues.  Are we failing to reach those who are not Christian because we are too unlike their everyday lives and choices and tastes or because we are too much like them and have nothing compelling to offer?  Are we failing to keep those we have or keep them in worship more than once a month or so because we have too much liturgy, reverence, solemnity, doctrinal preaching and teaching, music that tells Christ's story, etc.?  

It would seem that in nearly every denomination there is a split happening between those old staid and stodgy folk who want to keep worship and catechesis as it was and those who want to ditch it in favor of something new.  We certainly feel it as Lutherans and so does Rome (if they care to admit it).  I suspect it is far more widespread than other presumed causes for the great divide among us.  We have worked so hard to reconcile and retain the different sides.  Has it been worth it?  In one sense, by keeping both camps in the one church body, we have presented a confusing identity to the people outside us and those in the pew.  Who are we really?  I may be a curmudgeon but I suspect we all know the real answer to that question.  The sad conclusion is not that some want a different, softer, gentler, kinder, more relevant and diverse Christianity but they do not want Christianity at all -- at least the kind that reflects the historic Christian dogma and life drawn from and expressed in the Scriptures.  This is not a fight over what Christianity really is or is not but between those who want to be Christian in every identifiable way that has been expressed before and those who do not.  In my dark days I just wish we would recognize it and part ways.  Then, perhaps, those who want to take Christianity seriously might find a way to heal their divisions and present a consistent, historic, and orthodox faith to the world.

The "ick" factor. . .

The sins that trouble us in others are usually those that trouble us in ourselves.  It is almost a relief to know that others wrestle with them and that we are not unusual in that regard.  It is a comfort that is false for instead of glorying in the forgiveness that cleanses us from all our sin, we glory in the fact that we are "normal" sinners.   How odd that is!

The sins we talk about most are the ones that have some level of the "ick" factor.  We talk about the things that we could never imagine ourselves doing.  These are the worst sins in our minds.  So if we find homosexuality repulsive, we will talk about homosexuality as if it were the worst because we could never imagine ourselves doing it.  Pedophiles, trans, bestiality, and a host of other behaviors and desires are singled out for the greatest condemnation because of that "ick" factor.  Who would do that?  Not anyone in their right mind, for sure.

Somehow this has translated into a hierarchy of sins judged not according to Biblical standards or even by those affected by these sins but rather a judgment of the "ick" factor.  These sins are the worst because I cannot understand why anyone would do them and neither could I ever imagine doing them myself.  We read Scripture into this judgment and so God becomes, in our minds, a willing accomplice to and a supported of our shock at these distasteful desires and acts.  Sin becomes like foods we would never try.  We would never eat them so they must be bad, terrible tasting, and sickening.  I know about this aspect since I grew up on a farm eating parts of the critters that were never put into styrofoam meat trams and sold in supermarkets.  Ick, indeed.

That is not really how sin operates.  God has not found something bad because He finds them "icky" but judges all sins as evil.  Sure, He notes the consequences of some sins are decidedly personal and do not affect others while other sins always do.  The sin is a sin is a sin -- from the ones which are our personal favorites and we could see everyone doing to the ones we have trouble imagining anyone doing.  We do not need to be saved from the awful and inconceivable sins that we could never imagine ourselves doing but we surely need to be saved from the sins which have become friends and even part of our family because they are so familiar to us.  Disgusting sins are not our biggest problems but the sins that come too easy to us are.

I find that my sins are a problem even more because I do not really consider them to be so bad while the sins of others are not a problem for me because I could never see myself getting caught up in them.  So I spend too much time trying to sort out the "icky" ones from the reasonable if wrong ones.  That is an even worse problem.  God does not ask us how bad our sins are because He find some more distasteful than others but calls out from us the secret and familiar sins we are not sure are so bad and are surely not bad enough that we would ever have to give them up cold turkey.

Having spend much of my life hearing confessions and making my own confession to a father confessor, I know how easy it is to get caught up in the pursuit of this triviality and how hard it is to lament within me the sins that have become my go to behaviors in stress, anger, or leisure times.  To say you are a sinner is to admit the easy sins which you struggle to see as wrong and to strive to give them up.  I wish I knew this sooner.  Think of all the time I could have saved trying to make sure I would not commit the sins I knew I probably would never do and think of all the time I could have spent working on the sins which have become my buddy along the way.

Cooperation in Externals. . .

Even where this is no possibility of doctrinal agreement or unity, that does not mean Christians must turn up their nose at working with other Christians when that work can take place without the compromise of their confession.  At least, that is what we have said.  In the theology of mercy generally viewed by those within the LCMS, this cooperation in externals happens in the areas of human need. Cooperation in externals is shorthand for the way we can legitimately ability cooperate with other entities (whether churches, societies, Lutheran, Christian or not, or even some government agencies) in the work of meeting human needs -- particularly in the areas of hunger, homelessness, refugee support and resettlement, disaster relief work, and caring for the sick, the aged, the infirm, and the hurting.  In so doing, the churches work toward common goals without either implying or giving the impression that unity of doctrine and practice exists or that these will be a part of their work together.  In short, there is no church fellowship (communio in sacris), no joint proclamation of the gospel, and no joint administration of the sacraments (worship). When the groups can retain their doctrinal integrity in order to work on behalf of those in need, it can and should be done.  Where, however, our theological/confessional integrity and the truth of God’s Word are the cost of such partnership, it is our duty to disengage from this common work in externals. Our joint endeavors rest upon the ground of an honest recognition of legitimate doctrinal differences or else they can bear no fruit.

Some have tried to pin the tail on the donkey by discrediting cooperation in externals, insisting that the preservation of our confession was justification for refusing such cooperation in externals.  Others, especially those within progressive or liberal churches, believe that if the witness gets in the way of the confession, the confession must bend.  Typically, however, the progressive wing will cooperate with anyone about anything while the conservatives are seen as the impediments to such mercy work.  There may have been a time when that was correct but it is not now.  Now it is more likely that the progressives will have litmus tests for the partnered work and these tests tend to be about the preservation of the holy grail of LGBTQ+ rights and protections along with the other liberal causes such as climate change, social justice, and advocacy over the actual provision of goods and services.  Add to that the political nature of this work and the NGO status of most of the agencies doing it and you have a recipe for trouble.

The reality is that most conservative Christian churches would be glad to cooperate if their noses were not held to the grind wheel of sexual practice, gender identity, global warming, political advocacy, and work that comes on the government dime.  In effect, the progressive churches have substituted the preservation of these stands and causes for doctrinal ones.  The ELCA is certainly more interested in shared communion with those who believe nothing is really there to be received in the Sacrament than they are talks with Missouri who believe the Real Presence instead of the real absence but it is equally true that the ELCA is more interested in doing just about anything with anyone so long as the sacred tenets of sexual freedom, gender identity, climate change, and social justice are preserved.  That translates into a truth (at least how they would express it) more important and more essential than God's own truth about who He is and what He has done for us.  In this respect, we are at an impasse.  The progressives do not want to work with anyone who will not affirm their unscriptural beliefs and the conservatives do not want to work with anyone who will not respect their Scriptural ones.   Maybe at one point in time the conservatives were the problem in the area of cooperation in externals but today the progressives have made it impossible for us to work with them even opening a can of soup without wearing a rainbow flag on our lapels.

Clown suits. . .

As long as I am making admissions, I will confess to at one point participating in the making of a tie-dyed chasuble.  It looked positively 1970s!  Oh, well.  I grew out of it and own and have worn a host of tastefully designed vestments.  I should have loaned a few to Notre Dame clergy at the opening extravaganza of that renewed building.  Instead they wore clown suits.  Some have presumed Masonic leanings and others have their theories but I think it is mostly bad taste and the foolish idea that vestments (like buildings) are a canvas for the inventive to play out their weird ideas.  

Even worse than the design are the colors.  Are they merely primary colors or are they supposed to remind us of the rainbow and all that this symbol now means?  It is art brought low, down to a very low common denominator.  The crayola box of 8.  It would seem that France learned the lesson early on -- don't mess with Notre Dame (at least on the exterior).  I only wish the Roman Catholic Church had learned the same lesson.  The interior became a fanciful exposition of our vain attempts to be relevant and the whole thing is embarrassing.  The altar, the pulpit/ambo, the sacred vessels, and the vestments represent the triumph of fancy over faith, of test over taste, and of a blank canvas over history.  Notre Dame is like the door you open from the outside only to be sure you opened the wrong door based on what is on the inside.  At best it is whimsy over stature but at worst it is chaos.  Art serves not beauty but the Word, not with what we could do but what we should, and not with as trial but as representation of the eternal.  

The designer did not try to hide his efforts.  The problem is that nobody was bold enough to admit what now everyone is thinking.  Clown suits.  Such things not only demean and make mockery of those who wear them, they also demean and mock the seriousness of the faith of the ages.  God gives us His best and we return the favor by offering Him whimsy and goofiness.  In art and music, architecture and design, vessels and vestments, we need to remember that these are not canvases for our own self-expression but offered to God and used for His purpose within the Divine Service. 
 

Heart of education. . .

There seems to be two minds in education today.  One path seeks to educate people for pragmatic purpose, to raise up technicians with skills that sell.  This has been going on for a very long time and is nothing new by any means.  In this view, education must be judged most of all by its ability to prepare its students for real life, that is, for work.  Business and industry certainly love the idea that the job of the school and teacher is to impart life skills that are marketable and employable.  The other path seems to believe that the job of education is to unfold the flourishing of the self, to help the student get in touch with himself or herself, complete with feelings, desires, wants, and thoughts.  In this view, education helps the student get in touch with the real self and is rather personal and individual.  We hear about this kind of educational thought among those who would believe a school should not threaten the student with thoughts or opinions that would contradict the student's own held truth.  Such schools are safe places where nary a challenging or opposing view is encountered.

Small, though growing, is the resurgence of the older idea of education.  Whether you call this a classical or liberal arts education, it is not at all a repristination of old ideas once fostered in Greco-Roman history.  Rather, this view has as its starting point the belief that the present is inextricably tied to the past.  If you wanted a phrase to summarize it, the heart of this view of education is that it is the education of the heart.  The point and purpose here is not to impart simple facts or skills but a worldview with morality among its chief values.  To find out more about this, you might read Edith Hamilton's 1942 book Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes which is still a key book in the renaissance of classical education in America.  There was a time it mattered little the trajectory of the child's future -- all children read the great classics in literature, were given a grounding in the history of Western Civilization, taught language and rhetoric, even Latin along with math.  So farmer or teacher or banker or preacher, the school provided more than mere technical skills and certainly something different than a place for self-realization.

Wisdom is acquired by extracting the lesson of history within the framework of the Greco-Roman foundations of Western Civilization according to the Judeo-Christian witness of faith and morality.  In our cancel culture world, this is not quite what most schools or most educators believe.  Whether it is the consequence of abandoning the classical and liberal arts ideas of education or not, we have never found ourselves today with the problem of raising over-educated children.  Schools are failing just as their time is being co-opted by social concerns and experiments trying to fix what they found missing in the home or to counter the work of the parents instilling instead progressive ideals.  It is not merely for the sake of religion or particular creed but also for the maintenance of the republic that education matters.  As so many others have said, unless we can regain control of education, the last best hope for America may well be lost as we forget what it means to be classically trained within a liberal arts curriculum to produce informed, responsible, and self-controlled citizenry.  

The death of a pope. . .

Pope Francis died at age 88, the Pope some saw as a humble reformer who sought to make the Catholic Church more inclusive and others saw as undoing the integrity of what is believed by his words and actions.  "Dearest brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis," Farrel said in a statement on Vatican News. "At 7:35 am Rome time, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father."  The pope's death comes one day after Easter when a frail Francis greeted thousands in St. Peter's Square after the Mass of the Resurrection.  It was not really a surprise given his health issues and recent and lengthy hospitalization. 

While it is not here my place to judge the faith of his heart, it will be the place of those inside and outside the Roman Catholic Church to make judgments about his legacy.  Popes either strengthen or weaken the faith and either leave the community they steward in stronger or weaker condition.  While some may point to statistics of attendance or membership or even finance as the markers of his success or the evidence of his failure, the real issue is the faith itself.  Was it clearly confessed?  Was the confidence both within the church body he led and its witness to those outside confirmed in orthodoxy, vigor, and truth or not?  God will judge the heart of everyone who dies and without the cover of Jesus' blood He will judge them according to their sins.  Those who are now preparing to bury this man will also prepare to find another Pope and it is in this that the test of their mettle will be found.  If they have courage, they will find someone who can restore confidence in the basic teachings of creed and confession, basic clarity in the morality of right and wrong, basic confidence in the truth of the Scriptures.  If they do, he will not look much like Jorge Bergoglio and much more like the man he succeeded.  

While I have no horse in this race, every Christian benefits from someone with doctrinal orthodoxy and a pastoral heart and if you have to choose, choose doctrinal orthodoxy over a pastoral heart that has no foundation in the Word of the Lord that endures forever.