Posted on 06/07/2009 2:56:42 PM PDT by lewisglad
News of Dr. George Tiller's death was only hours old last week when bloggers began asking the question: What kind of church accepts a doctor who performs abortions into its membership?
"I wonder what kind, if any, preaching against sin this church did since Tiller felt welcomed there," opined Blue Collar Todd, who declares on his blog that "liberalism, or sometimes called progressivism, is a false religion that stands in total antithesis to biblical Christianity."
Todd has already made up his mind, and so have others who called or e-mailed me this week to criticize a column I wrote describing the desperate circumstances that brought people to Wichita to obtain late-term abortions.
But I'll take a swing at the pitch anyway.
What kind of church would embrace George Tiller? A church that believes the creator endowed human beings with both conscience and intelligence, to enable us to wrestle with the complicated questions. A church that recognizes that one's relationship with that creator can't be dictated by a central authority, or proscribed by a narrow list of rules.
Tiller's church, Reformation Lutheran in Wichita, Kan., is one that trusts its members with the freedom to decide on matters of conscience. It holds that a choice made for good reasons and in good faith does not separate a human being from God.
Some call this "relativism," and blame it for a decline in morals and corruption of society.
I call it freedom. And, as with the right of a woman to decide on what terms to bring a child into the world, we should be vigilant against anyone or anything that would take it away.
(Excerpt) Read more at voices.kansascity.com ...
What implication do you see in this ?
“Perhaps a more pertinent question might be: What kind of church embraces and admires Tiller’s murderer ??”
Do you see some “moral equivalence” in that sentence ?
Any declaration that “one abortionist is worth more than 60,000 babies ?
Could it be you see an unwanted mirror ?
“Thou shalt not murder” is one of those “narrow rules” that enlightened people do not follow and enlightened churches do not insist on. The left has completely accepted the ideology of Neitzsche, where self-proclaimed “supermen” are “beyond good and evil” and they create their own morality through their “will to power,” and they exercise this will to power against “lesser” humans. Killing innocent life is something strong people “wrestle with” and finally, because they are supermen, they learn to despise the lives of lesser humans and even rejoice in killing them. These useful idiots have no idea how close they are to thinking like the Nazis.
Then the churches would be empty. There would be no need for the churches.
Tiller was excommunicated by the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.
Bingo. It's in the instructions.
I have emailed the pastor to ask him the obvious question: “How could a church allow a baby killer to usher?”
I was traveling into and out of Wichita when they caught the BTK guy. One lady at the plant actually knew him and went to his church.
They had no idea he was that kind of monster.
I can think of plenty of churches that would accept Tiller in the congregation. After all, who among us hasn’t sinned?
Having said that, I think the more pertinent question would be, “What kind of church would endorse Tiller’s beliefs and practices?”
Tiller had not ‘sinned’: he was ‘sinning’.
This may have already been stated. I’ve not read all the comments yet...
This not the right question. The question should have been “what kind of church allows an abortionist to be a member and an usher”.
All sinners should be welcome, but not all should be members, let alone given ranking.
I Corinthians 5:
But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.”[b]
Sure am glad I don’t go to either of your churches. I screw up once and *BOOM* — instant shunning.
I prefer God’s mercy, thanks.
The leader of his church has the obligation to ask him if he endorses the sin of murder in the form of abortion, and if he affirms the sin he is not repentant and should be excommunicated.
A Laodicean Church
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
If he attended my church and was public about it, he would likely not be permitted to receive the sacraments until such time as he repented, nor would he be allowed to exercise any sort of a leadership role (usher, lector, choir, parish council, ccd teacher, cyo coach, etc., etc.), but the only way I could see where he would be utterly shunned would be if he did something directly as a threat to public decency and order within a Mass: for example, if he got up and started cursing the homilist as he preached a pro-life homily, if he tried to steal the Body of Christ during communion, and so on.
****Sure am glad I don’t go to either of your churches. I screw up once and *BOOM* — instant shunning.****
Do you affirm to them that you screwed up and that you do not endorse the sin? If so you are repentant and do not need to be shunned. Perhaps counseled and/or exhorted if you involved other congregants.
And then don’t forget all the children and grand children on into
eternity never born of those 60,000 killed.
When I speak of excommunication, I speak of revoking the status of membership in the church... “A formal ecclesiastical censure that deprives a person of the right to belong to a church.”
That is separate from shunning, which is up to the congregants as each situation is unique and may involve complicated interpersonal relationships.
What church is doing that?
And why would it be more pertinent?
How is Roeder's act more heinous than Tiller's slaughter that you think that it's more pertinent to question a church that "embraces and admires" Roeder than a church that "embraces and admires" Tiller?
We're talking one murder of a serial killer verses 60,000 murders BY a serial killer.
What kind of church would embrace and admire Tiller? No church that God is part of, that's for sure.
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