Must our leaders be Christian. . .

I will admit something that I am not proud to say.  When someone who I am employing or obtaining services from announces to me that they are Christian, the hair on the back of my neck goes up.  When we were building the last addition on to the church I served for 32 years, several subs assured our building committee that because they were Christians and we were a church, they would do us a great job.  Every one of those either never showed up to complete their work or were fired for cause.  A very long time ago I got a pep talk on tithing from a Christian trying to sell me a washer and dryer.  He insisted that it was good business to tithe since God multiplied what you gave and sent it back to you.  He said he had the pay stubs to prove it.  Yeah.  So when a politician announces that they are Christian and will hold to Biblical values and bring the integrity of faith to their office, I generally take it with a grain of salt.  Perhaps I have become too jaded.  Indeed, the quiet Christians tend to surprise me and the loud ones tend to disappoint me.  That is exactly the problem when some Christians look for a Christian on the ballot --  as if that were the sole criterion we were to use to choose who would lead our nation, state, city, etc...

It was with interest, therefore, that I read the introduction to Christopher Chen’s recent Evil Empire?   He insists that the New Testament weighs in on the hidden Christians who appear in the New Testament as soldiers and Roman officials.  Chen reports that throughout the patristic period Christians held major and minor posts in the Roman government -- well before Constantine!  His point is that the government is not necessarily the evil empire that some Christians insist.  In fact, Christians have long been hidden in the most surprising places -- from communist or secular China back to perhaps the eighth century.  Not exactly the beast marked with the sign of the anti-Christ.  It is not simple but complicated.  That is true surely for the secular democracies of the West, the socialist economies of the same, the communist nations which have become institutional dictatorships, and so many others -- but it is also true for our American democracy.

We have people who gut Christianity's doctrinal center to proclaim a gospel of love and acceptance that fits better with liberal social mores and then parade that faith before the nation on the left.  We have people who proof text their campaigns with great slogans betrayed by moral lapses on the right.  There is no one single word to look for to find the great combination of faith and virtue in our politicians.  That is certainly true of President Trump.  While his words often embarrass or disappoint me, his actions are easier for me to support overall.  It is the problem not simply of the flaws or failings of our leaders but also the alternatives.  I wish I had a simple answer for this dilemma.  I don't.  Hidden in our government on every level are good people.  Plastered on the front pages of our media are the sins of our enemies.  Somewhere in the middle stands an American and a Lutheran Christian like me who struggles to sort my way through the maze of options and alternatives on the ballots from local to national.  Too often they are not the people I would have nominated.  But the government, though accountable to God and all its leaders also, is not quite a tool through which God is doing the work the Church does.  At best it preserves enough distance so that the Church and Christians are free to do what is good and right and salutary.  At worst, it conspires with the enemies of the faith to promote what contradicts Scripture, creed, and confession.  Sometimes, the best we can hope for is for those who lead us and our laws to simply leave us alone.  Well, and one more thing, to hope that those hidden Christians working in the halls of government on every level will help to prevent what we fear and promote what is our hope and confidence -- all while drawing as little attention to themselves as possible.

Where do you find one?

I was reading an older article on the First Things website raising the poignant question, Looking for the Real Catholic Church in New York City.  The whole premise is even larger than the Roman Catholic Church.  Indeed, it is common among those looking at Lutheranism but also Presbyterians, Methodists, and other Protestants.  The problem is that various different representations of Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, and so many others exist side by side with little to clue the outsider in on which is authentic.  They cannot all be bona fide representations of the same churches when they look so different and sound so different and often believe so different.  Can they?

Although this might seem like a rather picky point to make and even a rather narrow minded perspective, it is not.  No one joins a church which has a split personality or more than one doctrinal and liturgical face.  Do they?  Maybe it was once possible to limit your sense of the Church to one congregation but not today.  After all, we live in  mobile world in which our people pack up and move many times throughout their lives.  Furthermore, the differences between the various congregations of the seemingly same confession are not just window dressing differences but real and substantial.  In a world in which people seem more and more interested in authenticity, which one is authentic?

Indeed, that is the problem.  Which one is the real one?  Lutherans have tried for a very long time to presume that there is no real face to Lutheranism -- they are all real and we even have a term for it.  It is called adiaphora.  We have adopted that term to mean that anything can go on Sunday morning -- within certain limited boundaries -- so long as the kernel of faith is preserved in theory.  I do not buy it but it is the party line, so to speak.  What this means is that Lutheranism presents itself in a variety of ways to those within the tradition and to those either interested or merely curious.  The range is rather mind boggling.  Some of us have bishops and some do not.  Some have female clergy and some do not.  Some confess the whole Book of Concord and some merely the Augsburg Confession.  Some have adopted the Western version of sexual desire and gender identity and some have not.  Some have praise bands and some have pipe organs.  Some have pop gospel choruses and some have hymns.  Some have an open table and some practice close(d) communion.  Some have vestments and some have torn jeans and tees.  I could go on.  You get the point.  So would the real Lutheran Church stand up?  Que.  They all stand.  Ah.  Duh.

Rome has an equally confusing face on Sundays.  Some have Novus Ordo and some have Vetus Ordo.  Some have reverence and tradition and some have casual informality all over the place.  Some have pep talks on spirituality as sermons and some have, well, sermons.  Some like Rome and the Pope and some want to keep both as far away from them as possible.  Some kneel and some stand.  Some hold out their hands and some wait for the Sacrament to be placed on their tongues.  Some have altar rails and some are tearing them out.  Some want a dictator pope and some want to introduce democracy into Rome.  Some want married and female priests and some could leave it if ever showed signs of happening.  Would the real Roman Catholic parish please stand up?  

No matter where you stand on these issues, the truth is obvious.  They all cannot be right or can they?  Is Christianity more a state of mind than a liturgical identity or a creedal confession?  I fear that those who may be interested in a Christianity neither lite nor paranoid will have to admit that not all the incarnations which display the name Lutheran are right or can have the same claim to fame.  Eventually, we will have to resolve this (and so will Rome!).  Even if we cannot muster the strength to resolve the untenable disparities for the sake of God and the people of God, then at least we need to resolve it for the sake of those who might be interested in trading the vacuous version of Christianity of the liberal left or no version at all from those who refused to teach it to their children into something authentic.  At least I hope so... 

Rights vs Freedoms. . .

K.G.M. v. Meta is a landmark legal case where a young woman, known only as K.G.M., sued Meta and other social media companies, effectively accusing them of designing their platforms to be addictive -- especially for children.  Her standing was her own personal claim that her mental health was harmed by these social media. The jury found in favor of K.G.M. and awarded her $6 million in damages.  This al;l happened in Los Angeles and in Superior Court and, even though it went on for three years, is surely not over yet.  Last month’s ruling in K.G.M. v. Meta et al., found Meta and YouTube liable for harms to an individual plaintiff not by virtue simply of content but by design, by the algorithms inherent to those platforms.  Of course, the naysayers insisted that this verdict threatened free speech; and that it interfered with and undermined parental rights and responsibility.  These are the same concerns raised against state efforts to impose age restrictions or parental consent requirements for minors on social media.  Is this really a contest between our children's mental health and wellbeing and rights of both kids and parents?

Note that the plaintiff alleged ythat she was harmed not by the content she was exposed to on social media (which may be bad enough) but by the design of the platforms themselves, such as aggressive algorithms, infinite scroll, autoplay, “likes,” and filters which both change the appearance of the person on display as well as the setting or background.  I would simply add that the progress in AI only makes these more dangerous as they become more effective.  What so many fail to note is the distinction between content (which is protected by the First Amendment) and product design (which is subject to liability).  In other words, this is not a simply balance between rights and freedoms protected by law but a challenge to the structure of those social media platforms and how they work.  Addiction scientists testified at this trial that social media effectively acts like a drug, triggering pathways in the brain that build upon rewards, triggering dopamine release, and generating a hunger or need for what is being offered.  This is much the way video games and pornography operates.  It is not simply the image on the screen but the craving for what is next, what is behind the next screen or click of the mouse.

Parents are complicit when they fail to exercise their parental duties to supervise and decide on behalf of their children what is appropriate and what is not.  In this, they are hindered by social media companies which insist that they are child-friendly and that they can be safely used by children.  Indeed, social media has become ubiquitous in our society.  We are addicted to those screens, reels, ads, and content and not simply because we are weak or mindless but also because those social media platforms are designed to exploit us, especially children.  Ten minutes in any public place and you can see how everpresent these screens are while we shop, walk, enjoy leisure, eat, talk with friends, etc., but especially when we have nothing else to do and even when we have everything else to do.  It cannot be merely that we are more weak-willed than ever before.  It has to be that social media companies have our number, literally.

It bothers me, then, when the Church jumps on the bandwagon and adopts social media as the means to do its work of evangelism, fellowship, education, formation, and even worship.  We are contributing to the problem.  We may not half to abandon all social media, nobody is saying that, but we do need to be much more careful about whether we are simply using a platform or feeding the hunger that is corrupting youth and adults.  Indeed, some churches today are more a .com presence than a presence in brick, mortar, and people.  The screen is justified because it is cheaper and easy but are we paying attention to the cost of this wholesale abdication to the social media frenzy that has become the world today?  Some people may choose to live on Facebook.  If they are adults, I suppose I have little to say.  But the Church does not need to live on Facebook (or any other media platform).  And, I would suggest, we betray our very claim to be the Church when we become nothing more than one more client of those platforms, preying upon the users of any age, with theology, fellowship, prayer, and communion disguised as an algorithm.  

Was it wrong?

The history of the requirement of priests to be celibate is not exactly easy to chart.  The practice of the East indicates that it was not exactly uniform Western practice -- at least prior to the Great Schism.  In the East priests are still allowed to marry (before ordination) though bishops are drawn from monastic orders or the unmarried who lived under the rule of celibacy.  Even in Rome there are exceptions.  Some Eastern Rite Churches, part of the Orthodox Church following the Great Schism, were reunited with Rome even as the Reformation was unfolding but with the proviso that they would be allowed to retain their liturgical, theological, spiritual, and disciplinary heritage, including a married clergy.  Clergy of Protestant denominations who convert to Roman Catholicism and seek the priesthood are allowed to keep their wives and children -- as expected in a communion that does not look favorably upon divorce!  Pope Benedict XVI created a special dispensation for the Anglican Ordinariate to do the same.  

The history of moral failure is not exactly rare.  It is said that even homosexual and heterosexual popes themselves did not lead celibate lives.  It is claimed that Pope Paul II (1464-1471) died while being sodomized by a page; Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) was known to be a “lover of boys and sodomites;” Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503) notoriously had illegitimate children with two women; Pope Julius II (1503-1513) had three illegitimate daughters; Pope Leo X (1513-1521), who excommunicated Martin Luther, was reported to have suffered from an anal fistula as the result of too much anal sex; Pope Paul III (1534-49) fathered four illegitimate children; Pope Julius III (1540-1555) shared his bed with 15-year-old Innocenzo Ciocchi Del Monte whom he incardinated at the age of 17; and Pope Gregory XIII (1572-1585) had a son while studying for the priesthood.  We all know the stories of Augustine and other earlier church fathers and their, well, indiscretions.

Celibacy did not suddenly appear but evolved, first under Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085) and Pope Calixtus II (1119-1124), but more profoundly under Pope Innocent II (1130-1143), a monk of Cluny who convened the Second Lateran Council in 1139 with its requirement of celibacy for all diocesan priests and for its singular invalidation of the marriages of priests who were married. It applied to the orders of subdeacon and above with wives or concubines and it threatened to deprive them of their position and its income if they failed to obey.  Most of this is not whispered charge but well founded in record, including the failures of those to whom the vows of celibacy were to be made!

What is Rome to do?  Does it admit that a thousand year practice was wrong or misapplied?  Does it suddenly shift gears and restructure what is built around a celibate priesthood to be something else?  Exceptions are one thing but repudiating such a long past is quite another.  What about all those faithful men who gave up the desire for a wife and a family for the sake of this higher calling?  Were they duped or simply fools or did they have much higher motives?  Unlike the East, Rome does not exclusively create bishops from monastic clergy.  What would this do to the episcopate?  Then there is the vexing question of the Lavender Mafia and the claim of some that homosexuality is firmly entrenched not only among the priesthood but among those in the monastic life.  It could be ended with a simple notice from Leo XIV that it is no longer required but it won't be and it probably will never be ended.  Those who look to Rome awaiting this shift will not live to see it and probably no one will.  It has become part of that long train of doctrines and practices within Rome that cannot be jettisoned any more than they can be argued from history or Scripture as catholic.  So what will Rome do?  They will continue doing what they have done for a thousand years.  It will become harder but the cost of changing is too great to the culture of Rome.  And which pope wants to make such a change only to have it end up with the same division that has plagued Rome since Vatican II in the worship wars of the Latin Mass vs the vernacular?  I cannot imagine that anyone will go there anytime soon.  Can you?

Bonds of affection or ties to truth. . .

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

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

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

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

Fix the Mass. . . Fix Everything

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

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

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

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

Embarrassment, Entitlement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Implications. . .

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

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

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

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

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

I know it when I hear it. . .

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

So dangerous. . .

I wrote long ago that the most dangerous thing on earth is a theologically orthodox person -- both those inside the Church and those outside cannot abide such orthodoxy.  Politically, it would seem that anyone who remotely resembles a traditional view of marriage and family is at least that kind of dangerous person.  Frankly, I do not hear the Church universally promoting that traditional view of marriage and family as urgently and passionately as it should.

Imagine that.  In the space of a few generations in which it was nearly a universal assumption that the goal was to have a world where as many people as possible can get married, have stable marriages, and raise children, this has become anathema to the modern mind.  Indeed, the liberal and progressives are not only not choosing marriage for themselves but insisting that anything close to a traditional view of marriage and the family is the worst kind of bondage and unreasonable in this day and age.  How quickly the time has passed.

A world where as many people as possible marry a member of the opposite sex ought to be normal.  It is surely the expectation of government.  Where is the government going to find the money to take care of people who do not have a spouse to take care of them -- whether in illness or in old age?  Not all the tax money in the world could provide for the people to replace where spouses do for each other and to replace the caregivers who enable perhaps 80% of those over 65 to live on their own.  Yet somehow this is deemed more dangerous than the idea that marriage is patriarchal and unreasonable.

Stable marriages should be a practical value as well.  Though divorce, and particularly no-fault divorce, has created an industry of people trading in their spouses for a different model or abandoning them for a life without marriage, stable marriages are the bedrock of society.  Every child of divorced parents and every child who grows up without one parent or the other knows the blessing of growing up in home with a stable marriage.  Our culture so filled with constant and urgent change would benefit from good and stable homes in which marriages work out their problems and remain stable amid the chaos that too often passes for everyday life today.

Children raised not by daycare or government program or other institutional settings is not some sort of gold standard but the most basic norm of all.  Strangely enough, we live at a time in which people too often presume that parents are not well equipped to care for their children and so-called experts must intervene.  That usually happens among those who did not know a stable home with both parents and so have no idea that this is not only the norm overall but the least a child should be able to expect.  Yet this has also become a radical idea as well.

These are not American goals but universal standards for all nations and peoples and are generally espoused by all religions as well.  Well, at least they used to be.  Man for woman and woman for man, marriage until death parts you, and parents raising their children and imparting values and faith while also providing good examples to them.  But, I am sad to say, this has become a racial thought in America today and in the world overall.  It is no wonder we are in trouble. 

Everyone has a voice -- even God!

The value attached to diversity requires that everyone has a say or at least an opinion -- except, of course, where that opinion violates public standards or is deemed offensive.  Modern societies define themselves on the basis of how well diversity is practiced and how broad the diversity within the parameters of what is deemed the public good.  Even churches have come to define diversity as an element of the Gospel and almost a mark of authenticity.  Why else would their be the constant scrutiny given to how white or how diverse the membership is or how broad the latitude given to dissent or doctrinal disagreement?  We present ourselves as Christians as models of toleration and abhor the hierarchies that would rein in any disagreement or dissent from the doctrine confessed and the practice sanctioned.  Even in a church body like Missouri there is push back against too much uniformity and there is an inherent stripe of rebellion against the idea that we march in lock step the walk of the Synod.

Everywhere everyone has a voice. We give the same honor to personal experiences and individual preference as we would fact or universal truth.  That voice is a mixture of feelings and facts that makes it hard to forge the unity once the hallmark of the Church's identity.  Those who favor such insist that this is evidence of the pastoral character of the Church, not dogmatic (bad word) community but a pastoral one.  We even speak of pastoral liturgy as if worship were more about the worshiper than the One worshiped.  We do not give much more than a momentary nod to the faith and practice of those who went before us except, of course, to prooftext our own deviation from the norms of doctrine and life.  We act as if we were the first Christians, the ones still forming from the fluid diversity of the moment any norms for the future and too often fail to acknowledge that we are those lately come who have inherited a massive witness of faith and practice from those who went before us.

It seems that even God has one voice in this conversation but not a final voice or even a definitive one.  We seem to be perfectly comfortable with the contradiction of view and practice that violates not simply tradition but even the clear word of Scripture.  We find it rather easy to suggest that what others have said uniformly about the Scriptures and what they mean does not apply today and we are free to suggest new and novel interpretations of the Bible which do not conflict with modern norms and values and morals.  Indeed, because God's voice is only one voice among the many voices heard, His voice has almost no authority at all anymore.  That is the consequence of a diversity in which no voice is given priority over others and all voices are equal.  The function of tradition is to preserve the voice of God and the voices of those in the past who have given witness to the unchanging testimony of His voice.  When the present takes priority over the past and God's voice is but one of the many voices heard, every age reinvents itself and every Christianity is reinvented to fit that self.  It ends up being a state of all things being new but with a newness that no longer holds the promise of eternity.  It is for this reason that diversity and everyone a voice cannot is not a mark of the Church nor a sign of its catholicity and apostolicity.  Yet this is what liberal and progressive Christianity has left us -- God must vie for our attention as one of many voices and without any deference given to those who went before us, we end up deciding if God's voice fits us and our times and so will be heard or if God's voice will be dismissed without fear.  So tell that to a room that finds any hierarchy of voices suspect or wrong.

Looking for blame. . .

There are probably many reasons for some of the problems facing the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod today but it has become rather fashionable to look as much for someone to blame as it has for real solutions.  It is tiresome to me that some of the typical culprits in these scenarios have been overplayed to the point where too many actually believe that these are the real reasons for our lack of growth or the problem of filling pulpits.

I am tired of hearing the blame placed upon small congregations.  I am weary of those who spill ink and vitriol against congregations they believe should be closed or merged because they are consuming too much of Synod's resources of both money and pastors and serving too few people.  How odd it is that we have made these small congregations the bane of our existence as if the Word and Sacrament was deserved more by large communities of people than small!  Sure, we have lots of small parishes and so do many denominations these days.  While I suppose there are those who can and maybe should close, the reality is that they are not the reason for a pastor shortage nor are they taking pastors away from places where they might better serve.  Most of these very small congregations do not depend upon full-time pastors but have tapped into the market of retired pastors and those on candidate status or those who are serving in non-parish situations.  You could close them all and it would not free up a ton of pastors to fill the vacant pulpits we have.

Furthermore, many of these congregations are not simply small but isolated and do not have close or reasonably close options for their people if they were to close.  The rural landscape of America has seen an overall decline in people and this is part of the reason these parishes are small.  It is not that they have failed to keep their people or win new converts but the pool of people is diminishing every year as the towns in which they have been planted grow ever smaller.  My own hometown is one such example.  The school is small, main street is deserted, and the population is aging.  This is not due to bad people or bad planning but mechanized agriculture, the fruits of technology, and less need for boots on the ground, so to speak.  The small congregations are surviving because they are serving the population that remains and working hard and creatively struggling to find solutions.  While some dual or triple or even quadruple congregation share a pastor, that presents its own particular need for a certain kind of pastor and sharing arrangements not always possible or beneficial.  God bless them when they work but these are not the end all solutions for every circumstance.

Some think that merging congregations is the answer to all the problems.  Is it wrong to expect that people's loyalties to congregations where they have worshiped for many generations, have multi-generations of family members buried in the parish cemeteries attached to these congregations, or have been taught and believed that this was their church where they belonged for many years could be transferred to other places?  Should we be punishing them for their loyalty and devotion?  Is such loyalty and devotion to buildings or is it to the heritage and history of people who have taught them the faith and and passed on the sacred deposit to another generation?  Should we expect that loyalty is easily shifted to a new place and that all the history and legacy they felt for one identity should be quickly surrendered to be attached to another place?  Ask the legions of Roman Catholic parishes which have merged over the years only to find that the merged parish was empty of the fierce loyalties and associations that were not so suddenly transferred because administrative reasons justified it.  We want our people to be loyal and devoted to the places where they receive God's gifts so should we treat those places as mere access points for such grace?  Merging may work in some places and may not work in others.  It can be useful but will not fix all the problems.

Pastors are sometimes blamed for being unwilling to go where they are needed or for expecting fair compensation as they support their families.  Are those pastors the problem because they have familial ties to certain regions or concerns for the places where they must raise their children?  I am writing as someone who has never served any a congregation closer than a two day drive to my family or a one day drive to my wife's family.  It was a sacrifice to be that far away from parents and grandparents, siblings and extended family and not to be free on the holidays when others would travel home.  There is no denying that it costs the pastor and his family something.  If I had gotten a call closer, who knows if I would have taken it.  But I didn't and yet I am not quite ready to blame every pastor who considers the family factor in their decision to accept or decline a call.  Neither am I willing to condemn pastors who take into the consideration the availability and cost of housing in the calls they receive.  It is a real factor of life for a church body in which parsonages are probably now more the exception than the rule and areas in need of pastors which have housing costs beyond what typical pastors can afford will need to find creative solutions to that problem.

What I am saying is this.  Don't blame small congregations or the pastors and their families for the problems of decline or the pastoral shortage in the LCMS.  Instead of looking for someone to blame, we need to look for answers and solutions to serve all the places where we have parishes and to help them grow as much as they are able.  Along with convenient scapegoats mentioned above, we would be wise not to blame doctrine or the liturgy as the reasons for our lack of growth, shortage of pastors, or struggles as a church body.  For what it is worth, I do not believe all the statistics that say that non-denominational evangelical congregations are the only ones doing better.  In a culture of people looking for transcendency, it is hardly logical to conclude that churches that give people what they say they want over truth are going to win any of the battles before us.  But some of these are probably fodder for another post on another day.

For whom the bell tolls. . .

I lifetime ago a member of my first parish had died and the family was looking for a fitting memorial.  They had a connection to an electronic carillon company and so it was settled that we were getting a carillon.  Well, it was not really a carillon but a player that played tapes of bells over a loudspeaker set up on the steeple of the church.  We were thrilled, however.  At first we had it playing every hour with a hymn and then we toned it down to a bell on the quarter hours and an extended bell on the hour with a full hymn at 9 am, 12 Noon, and 6 pm.  We thought it was great.  Apparently a neighbor did not.  Although you could not hear it everywhere, it did carry through the very small town and even out in the country.  It carried too well for some ears.  They complained.  To their credit, the town officials did not bother with the complaint.  We were hurt, however, that anyone would have the audacity to complain about a church bell.

Forward about 30 years and my last parish got two real bells on a bell tower with ropes that had to be pulled and with the sound not of a loudspeaker amplifying something but an authentic sound piercing the neighborhood.  We rang it only for worship and funerals.  It did not ring hourly nor did it sound out a familiar pattern.  Just a couple of bells at different pitches, sounding better or worse according to the guy who was pulling the ropes.  I do not know if anyone has complained.  The neighborhood is already loud with the sound of a five lane highway in front of the Church, motorcycles speeding down the asphalt, ambulance, firetruck, and police sirens, and the occasional truck using the engine to brake.  The bell probably gets lost in all that noise.  I am sure that somewhere somebody is thinking I wish they would stop ringing that dang bell.  Oh, well.

We do not hear bells much anymore.  The noises of a busy life and crowded roads have taken over and bells have fallen out of favor—even in churches.  It is secular noise without the intrusion of the sacred.  I am sad about that.  I think back to the small city of Hudson, NY, across the river by the same name from where I served.  At one point, it had 8 different Lutheran congregations (from Estonian and Latvian to German to groups that broke off for one reason or another).  Now but one Lutheran remains and it was a break off group that managed to survive.  The others do not even have buildings to remind us of their past anymore.  Once, however, they had steeples and bells along with the other Christian churches in that small but very old city.  Even the Roman Catholic parishes were divided—Italian, German, Polish, Irish, etc... Now those steeples are quiet and with that silence comes another sadness as we remember what was and is no more.  The once thriving ethnic congregations and those who broke off for real theological reasons and not simply because they could not get along with the pastor all had bells to sing out their presence.  Now there is the awkward silence of mergers, consolidations, closures, and demolished buildings. 

The sound of Christianity has exited America with the buildings and communities that once thrived in them.  We are too enlightened to let ethnicity or language or culture or even doctrine divide us anymore.  Strangely enough, the forced marriages of need or aspiration inevitably led to decline and not to success.  That is certainly the track record of Lutherans.  With all our grand plans has come the tragic reality that the bell tolls no more in most places—except in memory.  Kingdom building did not lead to victory but to defeat and Christians are struggling to remain orthodox and to remain a presence anymore.  The greater sadness is that too many who once appreciate churches and what they did are relieved by the silence and the faded echos of their presence on the streets, roads, and boulevards of America.  I wonder if it would have been different if we were not so apologetic about presence, about the sound of that presence in bells and in conviction, and about passing on that legacy more proudly to those who followed us.  I would like to think so.

There are communities still flourishing—and not simply the ones who have turned their churches into living rooms filled with people seeking entertainment along with their inspiration.  I was privileged to be a part of two of those.  They each grew during the time I was there (though I am not taking credit for that).  They were intentional communities of faith, keeping their conviction vibrant and their confession of doctrine full, along with a faithful practice of our liturgical maximums.  At this point they remain strong, filled with the sounds of people, babies crying, instruments playing, kneelers dropping, choirs singing, hymns sung with gusto, chant and, yes, with bells.  We do what we can to make sure that we are not too quiet.  I hope we are all doing that. 

 

Good camera work, great subject material. . .

I happened to run across this link to a spectacular set of photos from Peter Li whose work capturing the sacred spaces of England and other lands is simply amazing.  You can look at it here although there may be other websites to showcase his gift and the wonderful churches he photographs.  The subject material of the camera is itself amazing space.  Beauty is certainly not an end in and of itself for Christians but why on earth would beauty not be an ally and component of faithful Christian worship?

If there is a cause for beauty, is not that cause the Gospel of Jesus Christ?  At one time the Church was not simply the place for art and beauty but its patron and cause.  I fear that age has escaped us.  It is hard to justify spending money on beauty when construction budgets exceed plans and dollars are short and the urgent need for missions ever present in each spending decision.  We seem to have forgotten that we ought to be building not for a moment but for a long span of time in which the faithful will be gathered into that space, nurtured there in Word and Sacrament, and children raised up into the faith.  We seem to have forgotten that the Church is not simply another place where beauty lives but the place where an exclusive beauty lives -- the beauty of that which serves the Word in the same way music does.  The Word can have several servants and we need not choose.  The glory of song and instrument along with the glory of art and beauty (even in ceremony!) raise us up from ourselves to behold in eye what the ear hears.

While it might be nice to be able to build a space from the ground up, there is no more urgent cause than to make the structures we have serviceable to the liturgy and a gift to the eye while the people gather around the Word and Table of the Lord.  It can be done.  It is being done -- though not often enough.  We have a gift to give the world and Christ has entrusted that gift to us to preach and teach and also to present in visual form.  Let us raise the eye to God, give testimony to the voice of the Gospel in the beauty of the place where that Gospel has called us, where the Spirit works to enlighten and sanctify us, and where we receive the gifts that nowhere else can be found. 

20,000 babies or none. . .

In 2020, actress Michelle Williams stood on the stage of the Golden Globes to receive accolades for her performance and in her speech she described the abortion that had allowed her the chance to choose her career instead of motherhood.  It was heralded at the time as a political call to action for those places where abortions are not freely accessible and gave thanks that she lived where abortions were freely accessible.  Not being one to watch such events, I probably did not comment on it at the time.  It was more of the drivel that passes for feminist propaganda in a world where it has become normal among the elite, the educated, and the economically gifted.  Sacrificing children on the altar of fame, as the video put it, was and, perhaps, still is a sacred tenet of the woke.  How odd it was then when I found out after another such event six years later that an actress used her moment in the sun to laud motherhood.

Ironically, the headlines draw attention to her as the first Irish actress to win an Oscar—not to her own testament to motherhood, to her want to have more babies with her husband, and to her wish to spend her future helping her daughter discover the wonder of life.  I guess that part of it was not news but it should be.  For a long time now, motherhood has been portrayed as a curse, a drain on ambition, a sacrifice of career, and, worst of all, the loss of your very identity and personhood.  Daughters were listening and so were sons.  Now we live in a world in which the fertility rate in the US is about 1.6 children per woman (below the replacement rate of 2.1), and, lower still in most of Europe—around 1.2 to 1.5 in countries like Italy and Spain. 2026 will likely see for the first time deaths exceed births in the UK.  Nearly everywhere it is accepted that women choose not to have children, regret having them, or are embittered because of the sacrifice having a child means to their careers and perceived success in those careers.  Could it be that this is changing?  At least that the other narrative is being challenged?

There was one more thing.  The same kind of crowd that erupted in applause in 2020 for the pro-abortion speech erupted in applause for this tribute to motherhood.  Were they simply being nice or were they realizing that the old narrative was crashing down upon everything as birth rates drop and the world looks at the graying of the population as being the face of our future?  I could say a great deal about this in terms of Christian faith and life but I will let this stand for now.  

 

  

When death is merely a choice. . .

On December 30, 2025, Canadian law allowing Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) was invoked to oversee the euthanasia of 26 year old Kiano Vafaeian. The young man was in no immediate health emergency and his only medical conditions were diabetes, lost vision in one eye and seasonal depression.  Yet these conditions were enough to allow the authorities to approve the procedure.  While series, especially the diabetes, none of these conditions was at the point of death considered life-threatening.  In fact, millions of people live productive and useful lives with some form of limited vision, including losing the use of one eye, with seasonal depression, and, according to the government, one in ten Canadians over 20 has been diagnosed with diabetes.  

The Canadian government lists five conditions on MAiD.  Four are relatively pro forma: a person must be over eighteen, make a voluntary request, give informed consent, and be eligible for treatment under Canada’s socialized medicine scheme.  The other criterion is less straight forward—the patient must have a “grievous and irremediable medical condition.” The illness, disease or disability must be serious. The patient must also be in an irreversible and advanced state of decline. Additionally, the individual must “experience unbearable physical or mental suffering.”  Finally, the suffering cannot be relieved in a way that the patient finds acceptable.  It may be relieved by treatment, medication, surgery, etc., but if the patient finds the treatment unacceptable, then the disease automatically qualifies the patient for MAiD.

Since most of you do not live in Canada, you may be wondering why this matters to you.  First of all, it is a matter of degree.  What happens in Canada is, in large measure, what is under consideration in the more liberal states of the US although we are typically years behind the implementation of such.  In other words, it is coming our way.  As of 2026, assisted death, also known as physician-assisted suicide or medical aid in dying, is legal in fourteen U.S. jurisdictions: California, Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. These laws allow terminally ill adults to request and receive medication to end their lives peacefully.  Things are generally moving in Canada's direction here as well.  At some point, the word terminally will be changed to reflect the judgment of the individual that whatever the illness, the treatment is deemed unacceptable to the patient and euthanasia is requested.  That day is coming and perhaps is already now having its foundation laid in public law and public opinion.  After all, we have already decided that it is okay to abort a fetus to prevent them from even being born into a life that the mother has deemed not worth living.  How long will it take to extend that privilege to those already born?

Framing the whole thing with a word other than euthanasia or assisted suicide only increases the chance of this becoming acceptable in law and in the mind of the populace.  Death with dignity is one such phrase used to mask what is really being requested and really being done.  It always helps if you use the word choice somewhere in the title or explanation as well.  In any case, it is worth keeping a look out for this issue to become normal in the thinking of people and the crafting of laws.  Imagine that -- we judge death normal but God decides it must be answered with the power of life and the resurrection!

An indecent world. . .

As if our world could not be more in need of common sense and common decency, an appeals court last month decided that biological men should be permitted to enter an all-female spa that serves a clientele of females ages 13 and up.  In Olympus Spa v. Armstrong, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that Washington state can indeed enforce an anti-discrimination law to allow a biological man to enter the spa if he identifies as a woman. The Korean-inspired women’s spa limited admission to females only because its services involve full nudity for Korean scrubs, communal bathing, saunas, and massages.  The Washington State Human Rights Commission then entered into the picture alleging that the spa violated the state’s public accommodation law and the Washington Law Against Discrimination.  Whereupon, a three-judge panel for the 9th Circuit dismissed the spa’s First Amendment arguments for free exercise of religion and freedom of association in a May 2025 ruling.  Then, in March, the 9th Circuit this week denied a rehearing in the case by the full bench.  One dissented from this denial, insisting that the “supposed adults in the room have collectively lost their minds.”  I might add, so has the Washington State Human Rights Commission and anyone who holds with them.  It is the triumph of absurdity and stupidity in the name of an ideology masquerading as civil rights and has pretty much sealed the deal that we live in an indecent world in which such absurdity triumphs over decency and common sense every day of the week.  In a decent society, it is common sense that women and girls require privacy in their intimate spaces. 

I am amazed that this had to be argued under the cause of free exercise of religion and freedom of association.  Whether that is the law or not, there was a time in which decency was presumed and that was enough to prevent minors from being exposed to nudity without their consent or the consent of the adults in whose care they reside.  But not now.  It would seem that the Washington State Human Rights Commission and the 9th Circuit have decided that there is no such thing as decency or the protection of the minor and that the supposed female in possession of male genitalia has rights greater than any other in such a case.  I am not pointing this out so that people can be outraged -- I am writing about this because it proves the absurdity of our legal system without a hint of reason, common sense, or decency in pursuit of an absolute ideal that would require the surrender of all of this for the sake of male genitalia.  In other words, the supposed female with male genitalia has a right to be seen that is greater than the rights of anyone to privacy.  Again, truth is always stranger than fiction.  While I am fairly certain this will be overturn, the mere fact that it could be decided almost proves the entire point of the problems we have with the American judicial system today.  

 

 

A curious problem. . .

From what I have read, Rome is on its way to excommunicate the SSPX, a traditionalist group promoting the Latin Mass and, it would seem, uncertain about Vatican II.  The issue is over their decision to go forward with the consecration of a bishop or bishops in July of this year.  Apparently most everyone is sure that this is what is going to happen although at least one bishop is urging everyone to slow down.  So the point being made is that if the SSPX consecrates a bishop who had not received approval or endorsement from the pope.

What is curious to me and, I would think, a problem in Rome is that this is already a practice.  Rome has granted to China the authority to decide on its own who will be bishops of the Chinese version of the Roman Church.  There is supposed to be some sort of dialog or conversation between China's governmental minions and Rome but that has not been the case.  China has gone ahead and decided for Rome who will be the bishops and Rome seems not to make a fuss over it.  Curious to me is that Rome has decided the Chinese version of the Catholic Church is more important to them than the traditionalists across the world who prefer the Latin Mass.  It is not just the Mass, however, but a group intent on being more Roman than just about anybody else in the Roman Catholic Church -- in doctrine and practice.  They are not important but a Chinese faction intent upon being as little Roman as possible is definitely the preference of the leadership.  How odd!

But, of course, it is not odd.  That is typically how things have gone in Christianity for some time.  Take the Anglicans, for example.  They find the problem people to be not those who question the Bible or nearly everything creedal or confessional but those who take it all as seriously as they can.  Globally, Anglicans are divided between those who want to be Anglican and those who like the name but not the doctrine once called Anglican.  Or the Methodists.  Remember, that the United Methodists disunited not because some wanted to push the boundaries of Christian belief or Methodist identity but because some wanted to keep it.  The conservatives had to go.  Not the liberals but the conservatives were the bridge too far.  Lutherans have the same story.  Those who like the name but who pick apart the Confessions and minimize the Catechism and who are content to live outside the tradition claim the high ground and the conservatives are seen as the problem child of Lutheranism.  Wow.  When did this happen?  How? Why?

A long time ago I said that the most dangerous Christian of all is the one who truly believes and intends to live within orthodox and catholic Christianity.  I wish it was a problem for all of us but it does not seem to be so.  Those who live on the liberal and progressive side of Christianity have claimed the high road in this battle and made the conservatives look petty, small, and narrow minded.  How strange it is to be the ones who pay attention to the words, creeds, confessions, and liturgies of the Church as normal and normative and then be asked to leave or shown the door.  But there it is.  It has happened nearly everywhere across Christianity.  Maybe the Pope will back away from Francis and closer to Benedict but I doubt he will do much more than slow the drift to the left that seems impossible to stop.  In every Christian tradition, the conservatives have become the bad guys and those who take the faith with a grain of salt have become the good guys.  Maybe the SSPX will be excommunicated or maybe not but I think we have all seen the handwriting on the wall.  Zealots are not welcome in Christianity and zealot simply means those who pay attention to the words of Jesus, believe in the facts of the Scriptures, confess the doctrine drawn from them, and practice consistently with that faith.

He did not die right away. . .

While ruminating upon the account of the Fall, it occurred to me that things in the garden did not quite go as expected.  At least as Adam and Eve had expected. Life in the garden had but one grave restriction: "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden," God said, "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." (Genesis 2:16-17, ESV)  You shall surely die.  But Adam did not and neither did Eve.  At least not right away.

Adam’s was not the original rebellion -- not in the sense of Eve only but in the context of the rebellious spirits in Heaven.  Adam was not the first sinner.  Eve's bite had preceded Adam's and there might have been a chance for Adam not to follow Eve in this sin.  But that did not happen.  Adam did eat.  He ate with Eve and together they incurred the full weight of the words of warning God had given to them.  But they did not die.  At least not yet did they die.

It would have been a relief to Adam if he had died, right there in mid bite.  It would probably have been a relief to Eve as well.  If sin were accompanied by the immediate death that ended the opportunity to sin more or sin again, it would have been a relief.  He did not die in the sense that at that moment of sin his life was required of him but Adam did die.  He died the slow and agonizing death replete with guilt and shame and the constant re-enactment of his act and of his plight in his mind.  Day after day it played out.  First in the banishment of Adam and Eve from the garden that had been their delight and their downfall.  Then in the labor that turned marriage from simple gift into burden and work.  Then in the labor that brought for a child's voice amid Eve's cry of pain.  Then in the labor that toiled against the ground, the insects, the weather, and the blight that fought against every seed put into the ground.  Then in children who grew up to challenge instead of follow.  Then in clans who divided up and competed for nearly everything.  Finally in the threat of death that turned time into a precious commodity and made every ache or pain into a warning shot that today might be the day.

Worse, the death that would have been a relief if it had come at that moment turned Adam into an agent of death -- a murderer as well as one who had been murdered by the king of lies, enticed into the shadow from the light.  Eve had been murdered by the devil and she had murdered Adam by taking him into her sin and when he made it his own she was relieved of the guilt or as much of its as she could be.  This is what Jesus said.  “He was a murderer from the beginning (ap’ arches)” (John 8:44).  The sinners who live as the sons and daughters of the rebellion no longer imitate the God who made them but showed in their words and actions that they belonged to the devil.  “He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning (ap’ arches).” (1 John 3:8)  Oh, it would have been so much easier if Adam had simply ceased to breathe and fell into a clump of bones and flesh in which the breath of life no longer lived.  But that is not what happened.

Adam and Eve and all that were born of them through the ages and generations became sons of the devil until Christ released them and redeemed them.  Only in Christ are the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve set free from death and free from the curse of being agents and instruments of that death upon others.  It was not simply a rebellion that came with consequences but a mark on the soul of man.  The Fall of man came not from an instant of death but from death occupying his very soul and the deception that lured Adam and Eve in came at a cost of their very selves.  Only when another would come to wear their flesh and to live without this guilt and shame could redemption become possible.  Only when Christ set free those marked for ownership of another, to live as an agent of death and murder, and under the shadow of death for themselves -- only then could salvation come to the dead.  We did not need a Savior like we thought we imagined but someone who rescue us body and soul, setting us from from the dominion of one who is only death to the One who is only Life.

How are we using AI?

After seeing the umpteenth AI generated profile pic that was cartoonish or pop art, I am beginning to wonder about all of the promises the proponents of AI have made.  We have been told that artificial intelligence will relieve the workers of mind numbing repetitive tasks of assembly lines and manufacturing.  We have been told that AI will drive trucks more safely than people and transport people better than the cabs and ubers we have depended upon for a long time.  We have been told that AI will be able to do the dull tasks of computer data entry and routine evaluation to allow the people the freedom to do more (what that more is, we do not exactly know).  We have been given so many promises that this thinking technology will do for us but so far it has not exactly delivered on those promises.

We can use it to create cute memes and profile pics to make us look cool or better than real life.  We can use it to create research papers we either forgot to do or never intended to do for ourselves.  We can use it to manufacture pictures and videos of nature and events which seem to be real but we all know are not.  We can adjust the records of reality to suit our politics or to insulate us from liability.  We can do all of these things but in the end we find ourselves struggling to know what was AI and what was real.  It has left us with a great question mark over things that were once rather easy to count upon as real -- whether we like that reality or not.

I am reminded of the great promises of the internet and social media.  And of the disappointments that have accompanied each.  All the power and possibility of the world wide web has been squandered on porn and scam artists.  In the same way, the hopes and dreams of social media have been dashed on the rocks of bigotry, hate, bullying, and predatory behaviors that now make us want to protect our children from it all and somehow figure out how we can survey it all without being hurt.  Yes.  There was a time when we thought it would help our isolation and call us out of our depression or ease the ever present fears.  So much for that.  Instead we have seen all of these increase with every advance of the platforms designed to relieve the problems.

In the Church what began as a curiosity has probably developed into a bad habit.  We use AI to invent reviews to make us look better than we are, to create sermons and Bible studies when we were pressed for time, and to figure out what the nones and unchurched are looking for in a congregation.  Is AI helping or hurting the Church and her mission?  These are the questions we ought to be asking of ourselves and of the way we have been so quick to think that technology has answers to the problems we face as Church.  

There are great questions for the world outside the Church as well.  What about the tremendous demands laid upon our power grid or the data centers being planned for across the nation?  How many windmills does it take to plug in all the drives and fuel the memory modules that AI will require of us?  Sadly, there is probably more interest in this side of things than the morality of it all or the confusion that has left us unable to decide what is created and what is real.  The Church ought to have a voice in this conversation.  What is moral and right and salutary about the use of AI is precisely our realm -- if we can back away from it all enough to think about it.  Under all of the moral challenges is the question of how we use our time and whether AI helps us to do something more noble with our time or squander it before the broken promises of screens.  Until this happens, I fear we will waste more time on AI generated goofiness.   

A lifetime ago, my small town in Nebraska was filled with business and farms and kids and life.  Today the main drag is a ghost town.  There will come a time when you will not be able to buy a gallon of milk in town much less the groceries, clothing, lumber, hardware, produce, meat, paint, tackle, cars, farm implements, and everything else needed for everyday life then and now.  Amazon has replaced the local businesses and the big chains now provide what we need -- albeit 30-50 miles away from where folks live.  Is it better?  Has life improved?  I fear that one day we will awaken and what big box chains and delivery to the door has done to small towns will happen when AI takes control.  I am not trying to be prophetic but to suggest that we ought to be more concerned about this side of things and not just if it works.