Posted on 08/22/2009 5:15:57 PM PDT by rhema
As one whose profession it has been for many years to observe the plight of Christianity, I am always grateful for signs that our God is truly a Jewish God - one with a hilarious sense of irony. This happened again during the ELCA's national assembly, which will go down in history as a singularly boneheaded display of unfaithfulness.
Just as delegates worked themselves up to their decision to allow homosexuals in committed relationships to serve as pastors, a highly selective tornado knocked the cross off the roof of Central Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, where some of their shameful meetings took place.
I could not help grinning: This was truly Old Testament-style: God sometimes uses nature to make a point. Of course you will have to believe in these things in order to grasp their ramifications. If on the other hand you accept Biblical truths only selectively, as did the majority of the Minneapolis delegates, then this incident could only have been a random occurrence - you know: as random as the beginning of the universe.
I was then reminded of another display of God's irony 40 years ago in East Berlin when a television tower, the tallest building in the whole city, went into operation. Walter Ulbricht, the East German Communist party leader, had ordered it built to symbolize the superiority of the Marxist-Leninist worldview that was the state religion in his land.
When the tower was inaugurated on a sunny day, the Communists were shocked. Its rotating ball-shaped dome consisting of hundreds of thousands of metal prisms reflected the sun in the shape of a huge cross regardless of the time of the day. Ulbricht's regime invested millions of marks to rid their edifice of this embarrassing phenomenon. It did not succeed. To this day, an enormous shining cross keeps dominating Berlin, which has alas become the most godless capital city in Western Europe.
To Christians in Germany this amusing episode serves as a reminder of who is still boss -- even after 56 years of Nazi and Communist dictatorship, and the demented two decades of secularization that followed Germany's reunification in 1990.
Until then, East Germany called itself German Democratic Republic, or GDR, for 40 years. Germans used to quip that this acronym stood for a threefold lie. The GDR was neither German, nor Democratic, nor a Republic. One wonders whether a similar analogy could not be made for the ELCA now that its national assembly of this denomination supposedly committed to the "Sola Scriptura" principle stressing the authority of Scripture.
Is it still "evangelical"? Surely not. Is it still "Lutheran"? No way. Is it in fact still "Church" in the original sense of this word deriving from the Greek vocable "Kyriake" (belonging to the Lord)? That depends on which Lord are we talking about - God or a wimp who does not care whether His word is mocked? The Greek word for church is "ekklesia," meaning "called out." In the light of the ELCA's new sexuality decision we must ponder the identity of the Spirit the largest Lutheran church body in the United States seems to follow these days.
To state it bluntly, there is nothing Lutheran about what has happened in Minneapolis. We have witnessed 19th century cultural Protestantism gone wild -- the theologoumenon that Christ and the highest expressions of aspirations of culture are in agreement. But what are at any given time the highest expressions and aspirations of culture? Do they not come across as Zeitgeist, or spirit of time? Were not Nazism and Communism two murderous manifestations of a Zeitgeist? The genocidal "choice" ideology that has slaughtered more than 50 million unborn children in America since the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 certainly falls into the same category.
Aghast, faithful Lutherans wonder: "Lord where shall we Lutherans go?" Why is it that we Lutherans so often lose our way just at a time when no message is more needed then ours? Let it be known that there exists a paradoxical tension between Christ and culture: The certainty of being forgiven sinners through Christ's redeeming work on the cross frees us to engage the world with all its foibles but not to embrace them as the ELCA has just done.
I observed the ELCA's Minneapolis proceedings on my computer and murmured, "Lord, have mercy." Then I remembered one of my favorite lines in the Psalter: "He who sits in the heavens laughs" (Psalm 2:4). It's really good to have a Jewish God occasionally sending selective tornados and marking a godless edifice with a shining sign of the cross.
----Uwe Siemon-Netto Ph.D., D.Litt. is Director, Center for Lutheran Theology & Public Life, St. Louis, Missouri
The reformation is over.
"Oh, really?"
This needs a Lutheran ping.
My first thought...
Read the Ablaze! program....Missouri Synod is next.
Maybe WELS might be the last bastion of true protestant Christianity.
ping. So happy to no longer be ELCA, unfortunately, some in LCMS want to go the same way.
Come back home...to the Catholic Church. Luther set off some horrible events, but he probably meant well...and I’m sure even he would be disgusted at what’s going on in the church named for him now.
The reformation is not over. Post Tenbras Lux (after darkness, light).
Sadly, we had to quit our local building with the "Lutheran Church" sign out in front a few years ago. They tried to teach my youngest son that Almighty GOD was just very possibly a woman. Even when I called the head pastor, he argued with me as to GOD's sexuality. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT ?????
Nam Vet
This former ELCA Lutheran went to the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. No brainer.
“Come back home...to the Catholic Church. Luther set off some horrible events, but he probably meant well...and I’m sure even he would be disgusted at what’s going on in the church named for him now.”
Unlike the Catholic Church of today (or yesterday, or the day before that...)
/s
I, myself, am not Lutheran (former Presbyterian turned Baptist) but genuine believers may be found in many "fundamentalist" denominations.
These disenfranchised ELCA folk, who feel comfortable with the "liturgical tradition" of the Lutheran Church, would be most welcomed by their MO Synod brothers and sisters.
Come to the WELS
LCMS is in the process of ‘re-inventing’ itself. They even are considering to change name. I don’t consider this to be necessarily bad, though
Yes I believe that argument would have taken place. My cousin, a normally educated and rational woman, gave me the same argument years ago. She’s a faithful ELCA member, BTW.
..or a WELS Church - depending on availability
That's easy. Back to Biblical Christianity...the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Unfortunately, yes.--I thought my first post might redirect folks to this same article which I posted this morning in the Religion forum.
Lutheran (EL C S*A) Ping!
* as of August 19, AD 2009, a liberal protestant SECT, not part of the holy, catholic and apostolic CHURCH.
God = 1, ELCA = 0
good for you God.
Whether or not that is true (I have no position on it although I suspect it is a highly subjective matter, Westphalia not withstanding) there has been roughly half a millennium of anti-papist conditioning that makes it highly unlikely that a majority of the protestant flock could truly in deed and heart return to Catholicism.
Protestants don't universally agree on much, but in my experience, they are unified in their contempt for us.
What’s the word from the LCMS?
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