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
If you're looking for a church without sinners, I suggest (a) you'll be looking for a long time; and (b) if your search is successful, please don't join up and spoil it for everyone else.
First contraception, then divorce, then homosexuality. Will the next step be pedophilia or bestiality?
Who was it that said that all heresy begins below the belt?
Who are openly practicing their deviancy while continuing in their ministry, with the approval of their entire church hierarchy, as in the ELCA and ECUSA?
Zero.
I still remember a virulent anti-catholic freeper here who posted that his lifelong Catholic grandmother, who reportedly attended Catholic service every Sunday, was read the Gospel on her death bed by a protestant minister and remarked that that was the first timeshe had heard the Gospel. This was his de-facto indictment of Catholicism and how it had fallen from His word.
I've never seen a clearer demonstration of ignorant bigotry.
(For the uninitiated, the Catholic mass includes a Gospel reading every single mass)
If that is "home", I choose to be "homeless"!
Don't know the reference, but it sounds anecdotal. You will always be able to find individuals that misuse or misinterpret their place.
The existence of individual teachers that sleep with students doesn't mean that I choose that my children are "uneducated"!
The existence of individual policemen that take bribes doesn't mean that I choose that my family is "unprotected"!
And the existence of individual doctors that are deficient doesn't mean that I choose that I am "untreated"
It means that the world is full of imperfect and sometimes misguided human beings and I need to let His ideals guide my actions, not their failings.
His ideals have been occasionally misrepresented, but they haven't changed since His son gently laid them out circa 2000 years ago. The Catholic church today is much closer to those ideals than the human corrupted mess that represented itself as the Catholic church 500 years ago and doesn't merit the scorn that Luther's followers visit upon it.
Go to a strict Baptist, Bible or Evangelical Free Church. Go to a church that is Bible based and passionate about God’s Holy Word. Please do not choose a church just because you like the music. Do not go to a church that is based on man’s traditions which change like the wind that blows. Ask God to lead you to the church that He knows you belong in and trust Him to do so.
I’m a former Episcopalin who waited patiently for either TEC to come to its senses or for ortodox Anglicans in the US to unify under a new denomination. ACNA is too little, too late.
After much meditation and prayer, I decided to answer the call of the mother church and convert to the Roman Catholic faith.
First RCIA class was last Thursday night. I was welcomed with open arms into a loving family. I’m convinced that my decision was the right one for me.
- JP
LORD, WHERE SHALL WE LUTHERANS GO?
Home?
Mel
I don't know, but it is most certainly the truth. Very often even the most elaborate and seemingly abstract heresy turns out to be simply a way for its founder to justify his particular sexual practices.
“First RCIA class was last Thursday night. I was welcomed with open arms into a loving family. I’m convinced that my decision was the right one for me.
- JP”
As a RCIA teacher and a convert, I welcome you home.
Then everyone would benefit. That’s great.
Tell your story to all of the boys abused by priests. Incidents that the Roman Catholic Church tried to cover up, transferring priests to other unsuspecting parishes, and paying off families.
Scorn? Rejection of hypocrisy, yes scorn, that is for God to decide.
"As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!"
Congratulations! It's been ten years since I went through RCIA, from being a very-lapsed Southern Baptist.
“I am convinced the Homos are infiltrating each sect of Christianity to do these things.”
Oh of course they are.
Tell your story to all of the boys abused by priests. Incidents that the Roman Catholic Church tried to cover up, transferring priests to other unsuspecting parishes, and paying off families.
So you let the deviant actions of individuals that don't make up one percent of one percent of the faith write off all of Catholicism for you?
Seriously?
I don't know whether to find that very sad, or merely a convenient rationalization for common anti-catholic bigotry, as it makes as much sense as your son disassociating himself from you and the rest of his family because of the actions of his grandmother.
Given the clear precedent of teachers molesting and otherwise mishandling students and school administrators suppressing the records for liability concerns, can I assume you've removed him from organized education as well? And have you taught him that all law enforcement is to be similarly written off as hypocritical due to the instances of police officers that have been implicated in acts of corruption?
Or do you only treat the Catholic church in this fashion?
But you are wasting your time trying to convince or convert me.
But you are wasting your time trying to convince or convert me.
No, interestingly, I've never felt "holier" than anyone else. More tolerant of other faiths perhaps, but never holier.
And I wasn't trying to convert you. I just always find it intriguing the way people go out of their way to take shots at the Catholic church.
I have always found intriguing the way the Catholic church and their members take umbrage when I object to them taking shots at me.
The reformation is an historical movement. Its effects (good and bad) still reverberate to this day.
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