Choices, choices and AdChoices. Our hyper-consumer culture overwhelms us with all the choices we can make to please our whims. For all the hyper-individually focused advertising that is pushed at you, you as a person are lost. You are just a consumer whose only value is what you can spend.

Our Adchoice mentality affects our faith. We say we can be spiritual on our own with a custom order Jesus on our terms. This consumeristic spirituality caters to our self-centeredness. The whole “ME and Jesus” private relationship is not biblical, but blasphemous. This misguided, “Me and Jesus” spirituality not only runs counter to scripture, but even more, it degrades God’s saving work. We are redeemed as we are part of God’s people. Our ultimate communal expression is communion where we are joined to Christ and one another (1 Cor 10:17). Certainly, a self-centered spirituality will not require us to participate seriously in a church community.

If you revel in being a severed foot cut off from the body of Christ because us other Christians stink and you are more holy than us, I am offended! Who are you not to grace us with your unique embodiment of sinfulness? Who are you to think you can have Christ without us? Who are you to withhold the work of the Spirit in you to bless others for God’s glory?

The Way of Christ is not about and cannot be just a personal relationship with Jesus. Our faith has been handed down through the faith community. We are individually members of the body, the Church, but there is no severed foot faith separate from the body. The weakness of this self-centered faith in the United States is apparent from the weakness of individuals to pass along the faith.

Following Christ is not a private individualistic affair. Yes, you are to have a personal connection to Christ. While we do have our personal and solitary times with the LORD, we are baptized and called to exercise our faith in God by how we live with one another. We are to meet together to encourage one another in the faith, rather than flying solo to be picked off one by one in spiritual warfare. (Heb 10:23-25) If even the Son of God needed a small group of disciples to do faith with, why would we think we can sever ourselves from the body and be okay?

That we are to follow Christ with one another is abundantly clear throughout the New Testament (see below). We worship together. We experience life and salvation together. We are bound together. In Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others (1 Cor 12, Rom 12:5). So, we forgive one another. We bear one another’s burdens. We share God’s love with one another. We are to be devoted to one another in love. We are to honor one another above ourselves. Rather than slacking, we are encouraged to do more and more life together as God’s people.

Don’t be a sinner alone.  You are redeemed by Christ to belong to His people, not to go life alone. To be clear, if you are doing faith as a severed foot without fellow sinners, you are unbiblical and disobeying Christ. So as baptized Christians joined to the Body of Christ, actively engage your spiritual life by living it out in the temple of God’s people (1 Pet 2:4-5). Embrace the Spirit-given blessing of belonging to the family of God.  Come join your brothers and sisters in Christ so you may more powerfully grow in knowing Christ in your life.

May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give y’all a spirit of unity with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together y’all may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Rom. 15:5-6)

Your servant in his Church, Pastor Douglas

(See Jn 13:34, Rom 12:10, 13:8, 1 Cor 3:16-17, 12:12-14, 2 Cor 13:11, Gal 5:13, Eph 4:2, 4:32, Phil 2:5, Col 3:13, 1 Thess 4:9, 5:11, Heb 3:13, 10:23-25, 13:1, 1 Pet 1:22, 1 Pet 3:8, 1 Pet 5:5, 1 Jn 1:7, 3:23, 4:11-12)

Don’t play with dead fish! Mom said don’t bring it home thinking we’ll eat it! A dead fish is useless and worthless.

What are we to do with dead faith? Since a fish is a symbol for a Christian, maybe we can see how a dead faith isn’t much different from a dead fish.

Why do we declare a dead fish dead?  Most obvious is that it doesn’t move. Ever poke someone who was still to see if they were still alive? I try poking motionless Christians to see if their faith is alive. They don’t like it.

If our faith has no action, is it faith? James declares that faith with no action is dead (James 2:17). A living faith moves us: moves us to worship and praise our living God, moves us to pray and read his word, moves us to share Christ and bless others for His sake.  A faith without the life-giving Spirit is dead (James 2:26). And a dead faith is as useless as a dead fish because it is not living the aliveness that God intends (James 2:20).

(A faith that is about making ourselves feel good about our righteousness is not faith in Christ. I will cover that in a future article.)

If our motionless faith is just words; an empty lifeless confession that we are a Christian but no swimming in life as a Christian, then our faith is dead. If our faith is just the stripes of ancestors and heritage from days gone by but does not inspire fresh living today, then, well, even dead fish have stripes. Knowing facts about God or Christ is like a dead fish skeleton. You can see the outline, but a skeleton alone does not manifest life. A static dead faith isn’t just infertile and lifeless. Not having a living faith means we lack life-changing love, but rather are full of worry, obligation and tedium.

Why bother having a faith that is dead? Should a dead faith Christian just become an atheist to become dead to God all together?  Should we just drop the farce of faith? NO!

Embrace your dead faith. Yes, you are dead in your faith and also dead in your sins where you stand. But God excels at dealing with the dead. “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”(Eph 2:4–5)

You have every privilege as a dead fish Christian to call upon God to make your faith alive. You are baptized. You are baptized into the death of Christ so you can be raised to a new life in Christ. (Rom 6:3-6)

Are you content to be a motionless, dead fish Christian or will you pray for your faith? God promises to give you life. “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” (Rom 8:11)

So, I invite you to drag your dead faith butt to worship. Sit there in the pew in your grave clothes of this dull, exhausting existence to hear the Word of God. Dead fish Lazarus didn’t come out of the tomb patting himself on the back but rose up because Christ spoke to him (John 11:43-44).  Christ calls you to be alive with faith.

“He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him.” (1 Th 5:10)

Your servant in his Word, Pastor Douglas 

Note from our Executive Director: Many thanks to Kevin Haug, ELCA pastor in Texas, for his article about the Sparkle creed.  This so-called “creed” has received a lot of attention and stimulated a lot of discussion since its recent use during a worship service in an ELCA congregation in Minnesota.  We should all be alarmed over the way in which this statement rejects Biblical teaching and orthodox theology in its promoting the LGBTQ agenda and transgender ideology.  We are saddened but not surprised as we read of many ELCA pastors who are praising it as a way to connect the Christian faith with life today.  We are also saddened but not surprised by the total silence of ELCA leaders about it. 

“Pastor, what are we going to do about this?”

Those words were spoken by one of my octogenarians after she heard two news stories about the “Sparkle creed,” a statement that received national attention because of its use at an ELCA Lutheran Church in Minnesota.  The congregation recited it at worship, posted the video online, and it went viral.

The “Sparkle creed” has actually been around for a year or two, but it was not until conservative news sites and blogs discovered it that it caused a bit of an uproar, and that uproar is not without merit.  However, care needs to be taken when addressing this issue. I will attempt to show why.

First, let me define creed as a statement of belief.

In a very real way, everyone has a creed of some sort.  Individuals have creeds. Organizations have creeds. Individual congregations have creeds.  In fact, many biblical scholars say that the first creed was quite simple: Jesus is Lord. Those three words actually led to the death of Christians who would not say the Roman creed: Caesar is Lord.  

Because everyone has a creed, one could argue that having a creed is actually a neutral concept.  People believe all sorts of things. That they believe them is undisputed and neutral, but what they believe can be problematic and either good or bad. For instance, if I believe that all human beings are endowed by their Creator with fundamental rights, then that is a creedal statement.  And I would happily argue that it is a good creedal statement for various reasons.  Someone could hold a different position: that human beings are not endowed with rights from a Creator, but that governments decide what rights a person should or should not have. I would argue that this isn’t a very good position to take, but that doesn’t prevent some nations and people from holding it.  

To change positions literally requires a conversion process as many, if not most, creedal beliefs are actually statements of faith not statements of science.  For instance, science is practiced by using the scientific method: state a hypothesis; test and measure to see if the hypothesis holds water; formulate a theory; test the theory repeatedly.  Is the scientific method a true way of getting knowledge? Well, you have to assume that it is.  You have to trust that it is.  You cannot test the scientific method by using the scientific method.  Philosophers call this circular reasoning. Trusting that the scientific method is an accurate way of obtaining knowledge is a creedal belief. It is a deep, foundational belief, but it is a belief none-the-less, and one does not change those sorts of beliefs easily.

Which brings us to the Creeds of the Church, and I am intentionally capitalizing the letter C on both of those words. There is a reason for this as I shall get into shortly.

Within the Christian Church, there are three, recognized, orthodox Creeds: the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed, and what you need to realize about these statements of faith is this: these Creeds were recognized by the whole Church as true affirmations of the Christian faith.  They were based in Scripture. They were developed over time or argued over or carefully thought through. They were not put together in a pastor’s office to make a particular group or segment of society feel welcomed or accepted.

In general, they were written to stomp out heresy. They were written to unify a divided Church. They were written to solidify and codify what the Church believed about God the Father, Christ the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  And as such, they are not to be trifled with.

Imagine for a minute if you will, gathering with a group of Christians circa 250 A.D. You are in hiding because Christianity is still not a recognized religion of the Roman Empire. It is the Easter Vigil, the time that it has become traditional for converts to be baptized into the faith. As the baptismal liturgy begins, the presider looks into the eyes of the converts. He begins addressing them and asks them three questions: Do you believe in God the Father? Do you believe in God the Son? Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit? And the converts begin reciting what they have been taught about who God is; who Jesus is; and who the Holy Spirit is. These statements have come together over decades of persecution and trial. Speaking them would immediately set these converts apart from the dominant culture and could lead to arrest and persecution.  Such is the nature of the Apostles’ Creed.

Or consider a church divided by various sects all claiming to represent the one true faith. Yet, those beliefs are contradictory at times. Some are not grounded in scripture. Some are off the charts. What does it mean to be a Christian? What are the foundational beliefs? Is this world truly, totally evil? Does only the spiritual count? Was Jesus indeed fully human and fully divine or a really good human being only adopted by God and infused with the divine Spirit?  What do you Christians truly believe? And bishops from far and wide gather to hammer such things out.  They consult deeply with the scriptures; argue their points vehemently and passionately; and put together a statement of faith which declares: this is it.  These are the non-negotiables. It is accepted by the church council and has stood the test of time for centuries. Such is the nature of the Nicene Creed.

The “Sparkle creed” shares none of this history. It was written for entirely different reasons and has not even come close to being vetted by the whole Christian Church on earth.  In fact, the majority of the Christian Church on earth would outright reject it. 

Therefore, it follows, that it has no standing to replace the Creeds in worship.

I mean: if someone wants to say that they adhere to the “Sparkle creed,” then they can personally say that they believe exactly what is in that statement. If a congregation wants to go so far as to use this creed in worship, then they are free to do so, but I strongly believe it should be introduced as a statement of that individual congregation, not of the Christian Church–it is not “the faith of the Church, the faith in which we baptize.” 

For to use it in such a manner is to actually separate one’s self and congregation from the global Church.  It is to become myopic and rather self-centered. Arguably, it is creating one’s own personal faith and religion—dare I say one’s own god.

And yes, I am quite aware that I belong to a denomination whose founder separated himself and then many congregations from the larger Church body of the time. The irony is not lost on me; however, Luther didn’t mess with the Creeds.  He affirmed them and what they stood for repeatedly. He didn’t tinker with the Creeds or try to change them for he never wanted to split with the Church of Rome.  These statements of belief were not up for negotiation or reformation. They were good “as is.”

They still are. They are meant to hold us together despite our disagreements on secondary issues. Trying to put “sparkle” in them only causes more division.

Leave the Creeds alone.

IT SHOULD NOT SURPRISE ANYONE

It should not surprise anyone that a movement is developing to get the ELCA to commit a massive breach of trust and to eliminate any provision for traditional views and those who hold them.

In my August letter from the director I told about some of the more significant actions that were taken by the 2022 ELCA Churchwide Assembly.  One of the most alarming was the overwhelming approval of a resolution “to authorize a possible revision of the social statement on Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust” which “reconsiders the church’s current concept of the four positions of bound conscience.”  (These four positions can be found on pages 19-21 of the 2009 social statement.  They provide a way for there to be a place of respect for traditional views and those who hold them.  A link to the document can be found here.)

At least there were a few people who spoke against this resolution, and 12% voted against it, but still it should be obvious to all that the days of the ELCA’s claiming to honor bound conscience and to provide a place for those who hold traditional views are over. 

In my August letter I wrote that I am certain that the ELCA actually never intended to honor traditional views.  The language regarding bound conscience and the four positions was placed within the 2009 social statement only to obtain enough votes to get the social statement approved, and even then it was barely approved.  One needs to look no further than the ELCA’s total embrace of ReconcilingWorks and its choice of keynote speakers for the 2018 youth gathering to realize that confessional Lutherans with traditional views are not welcome.

But how will it happen?  A recent statement from Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (ELM) suggests a possible path.  This organization describes its mission in this way.

“Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries organizes queer seminarians and rostered ministers, confronts barriers and systemic oppression, and activates queer ideas and movements within the Lutheran Church.”    

On September 7 this organization released a document entitled “ELM Churchwide Assembly and Bound Conscience Statement.”  A link to the full statement can be found here.

In this document they say, “The ELCA must address our sins of racism and ‘bound conscience.’”  It then says, “As Lutherans, we confess our participation in these systems, yet we continually fall short in the ways to overcome these systems of oppression.”  “Sin” and part of the “systems of oppression” – that is what Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries is challenging the ELCA to join with them in calling traditional views of human sexuality. 

I am sure that no one who had been paying attention thought that bound conscience was anything more than temporary.  In some places it was ignored right from the beginning.  What is new here is explicit language with which bound conscience might be repudiated and the means by which it might be done – through a public apology by the Churchwide Assembly and the Presiding Bishop.

The statement from Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries describes recent times when the ELCA has made a formal apology.

• “In 2019, the Churchwide Assembly adopted a formal letter of repentance to commit to examine the church’s complicity in slavery, and to acknowledge ‘the ELCA’s perpetuation of racism.’”

• Also in 2019 the ELCA made a formal apology to the African Descent community.

• “At the 2022 Churchwide Assembly, Bishop Eaton formally apologized to the worshipping community of Iglesia Luterana Santa Maria Peregrina for both individual and institutional racist harm done to the congregation & the Latine community.”

And now Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries is calling upon the ELCA to make a similar apology to the LGBTQ+ community.  Their document states, “Queer people in the ELCA deserve an apology and behavior consistent with repentance for the harm caused by ‘bound conscience’ and policies like ‘Visions and Expectations.’”  “Vision and Expectations” is a document that was approved by the ELCA Church Council in 1990 to describe what the church expected of its leaders but then removed from use by the ELCA Church Council in March 2020 because its more traditional views and expectations were “a source of great pain for many in the ELCA.”

Bound conscience and traditional views are now a sin – on the same level as racism and other forms of systemic oppression.  What should alarm every Lutheran with traditional views is the fact that Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries always gets what it wants.  They wanted the ELCA to remove the word “chastity” from its revised version of Definitions and Guidelines so that ELCA public theologian Nadia Bolz-Weber would be able to remain on the clergy roster while bragging about her sex life with her boyfriend (to whom she is not married), and they got what they wanted.  If Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries gets its way (which they always do) sooner or later – maybe in 2025, maybe in 2028 – the ELCA will officially repent and apologize for permitting pastors and congregations to teach and live according to what the Church has been teaching for two thousand years.

But while the ELCA grovels and repents as Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries tells them to, do not expect them to repent for breaking their promises to honor and provide a place for traditional views and those who hold them. 

In my August letter I also wrote about another resolution that was approved by the Churchwide Assembly which should cause great alarm for confessional, traditionally minded Lutherans.  The assembly voted to direct the Church Council “to establish a Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church” which would be “particularly attentive to our shared commitment to dismantle racism” and would “present its findings and recommendations to the 2025 Churchwide Assembly in preparation for a possible reconstituting convention.” 

The question naturally arises, Who will develop this revised version of the 2009 human sexuality social statement and possible reconsideration (rejection) of the four positions of bound conscience?  Also, who will be appointed to this “Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church”?  You can be sure that those who have been driving the process to get things to where they are today have been busy, working to make themselves the dominant factor in the process.  Many of these people have said that they do not believe that any “white male over the age of sixty” should be allowed to have anything to do with the process, and the Statement from Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries urges “the committee tasked with reconsidering ‘bound conscience’ to include ‘new, young, and diverse’ voices and those that have been most harmed by ‘bound conscience.’”  The ELCA has made it very clear that high on its list of priorities for the coming years is to reach “one million new, young, and diverse people.”

The ELCA Church Council is scheduled to meet November 10-13.  We assume that among the actions taken will be the appointment of people to the Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church and the task force to review and revise the human sexuality social statement.  We all know that once you know who is on the committee, you know the outcome.  We will keep you posted. 

* * * * * * *

VIDEO MINISTRY

Each month we feature two videos – the most recent addition to our video book reviews, and a recent addition to our CORE Convictions videos.  The CORE Convictions series is being designed particularly for those who wish to grow in their knowledge of Biblical teaching and Christian living as well as for those who want to know more about how Lutherans understand the Bible. We also want to provide this resource for those who do not have the opportunity or the option of attending a church where the preaching and teaching is Biblical, orthodox, and confessional.

Here is a link to our You Tube channel.  In the top row you will find recordings from both sets of videos – in the order in which they were posted, beginning with the most recent.  In the second row you will find links to the Playlists for both sets of videos.  We now have five videos in our CORE Convictions series.  Many thanks to retired AALC pastor James Hoefer for his video on “The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit.”  His video will be featured in December.

This month we want to feature a video book review by Pastor Chris Johnson and a CORE Convictions video by Pastor James Lehmann.    

“LIVES AND WRITINGS OF THE GREAT FATHERS OF THE LUTHERAN CHURCH”

Many thanks to Chris Johnson, LCMC pastor and secretary of the board of Lutheran CORE, for his review of this book, which is edited by Timothy Schmeling and Robert Kolb.  A link to his video can be found here.

Pastor Johnson begins by reminding us of the phrase, “If we can see farther, it is because we are standing on the shoulders of giants.”  He sees this statement as true in many areas of life, including theology, and as well illustrated in the biographies and writings of twenty-one theologians who came after Luther from the 1550’s to the late 1600’s.

Some of these men were educators, some were brilliant systematic theologians, some were preachers.  Some were known for their poetry, their hymnody, or their devotional literature.  They served in many different ways, but they were all very gifted and dedicated to the Christian faith as understood by the Lutheran Confessions.   

Some were known for their polemical style, which is quite understandable since they lived during tumultuous times.  They faced many challenges and endured great suffering, such as during the Thirty Years War and from the plague.  Many experienced deep pain and sorrow from the death of several family members. 

They fought hard battles, were attacked on many sides, and suffered great losses.  They lived during a period of Lutheran history that we often ignore.  But according to Pastor Johnson, it is a great gift to us to get to know them and what they did.  They were men of faith who were dedicated to the Lutheran Confessions.  We would do well to learn from them as to how they persevered and remained true to the faith no matter what. 

TEACHING THE FAITH TO CHILDREN OF ALL AGES 

Many thanks to NALC pastor Jim Lehmann for his video, a link to which can be found here.  According to Pastor Lehmann, teaching the faith to children of all ages “may be easier than you think.  It does take discipline to make disciples.  It starts before a person can understand the language of faith and continues when language may be lost.  Join me for some ideas.”

The temperatures are cooler here in Arizona, and the Sonoran desert is lush and green from the summer rains.  No wonder the Snowbirds are returning.  We are constantly being reminded of God’s goodness.  May you also experience His blessings.

In Christ,

Dennis D. Nelson

Executive Director of Lutheran CORE

As we entered 2022, and I faced the deadline for this article, I found myself struggling with what to write; what topic did I find compelling enough to spend time seriously reflecting upon?  What in the Church’s life was I passionate enough about at the moment that I thought I could add something substantive to Her discussion and deliberation?

Surprisingly for me, I had trouble identifying that thing.  Oh, sure, there was plenty that concerned me, problems around which my thoughts tend to eddy and swirl as I seek some pastoral, theological, philosophical, or practical understanding, strategy, or stance, but what was lacking was the passion that typically makes me put pen to paper — or hands to keyboard.

Passion… it is a word with a storied history in the Church.  In my first ecclesial job as a youth minister, our church’s youth ministry decorated the youth room wall with the words “Faith, Passion, Service.”  Upon visiting, a colleague commented, “Passion is something I think my youth already have plenty of… I’d think more about discouraging that.”

But the Church Fathers — the pastors during the Church’s greatest period of missionary expansion did not feel that way.  C. S. Lewis has introduced many modern Christians to the distinctions between the four Greek words for love through his book The Four Loves, and as a result, many Christians think of storge (affection), philos (friendship), and eros (infatuation with the beloved, not necessarily sexual) as immature or degenerate in comparison to the New Testament standard of agape, Christ’s own self-sacrificial love.

But this is not the way the Church Fathers spoke.  They spoke of God’s divine eros that burned for lost humanity so completely it agape’d the world enough to give His only Son… to give Himself.  Far from fearing passion, a Church whose largely convert members had drunk deeply of the wine of Roman success, who had tasted fruits imported from every corner of the conquered empire (now redubbed “the civilized world”), who had participated fully in the “good life,” the Pax Romana for which so many had given their lives in labor or battle, had come to realize that far from their passion being too great, it was too small.  This was a Church quite literally world-weary, who would have agreed whole-heartedly with Lewis when he preached in war time,

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”[1]

They would have agreed with this because they made a distinction that we post-enlightenment, postmodern, post-truth people, whatever our religious convictions, fail to make.  It has been noted by some that we represent “psychological man,” products of what Charles Taylor terms in his eponymous book A Secular Age.  We are people who, however we think of ourselves — straight or gay, cis-gendered or trans, conservative or progressive, believing or unbelieving, a sack of meat directed by selfish genes or made in the image of God — we are a people who almost ineluctably conceive of our identities as emerging from a murky subconscious that is fundamentally comprised of appetites. 

For us, love is almost always conceived of as downstream from appetites in which we are not fundamentally different from animals.  I have 1600 hours of C.P.E. to my credit, and I can tell you that while theological conversation is by no means absent from my cohort groups, it must always be respectfully conditional (to make room for disparate, even conflicting convictions), but the psychological theories that form the substance of our didactics are not so much deferred to as referenced in ways that establish their authority.  These theories, whether Freudian, Behavioral, Object-Relations, or of some other school, all stipulate appetite (conceived of as need) as fundamental and love as an experience later articulated on the basis of such.  Appetite is the water within which we swim, the air we breathe to nourish our sense of self.

This was forcibly brought home to me by my daughter when at age nine she ebulliently showed me one of her bug-eyed Beanie Baby stuffed animals.  After waxing eloquent about how much she loved it, she paused then thoughtfully added, “but you know, I’m pretty much programmed to feel this way about it because it has big eyes.  All mammals are programmed to respond to their babies that way.”  As she skipped back merrily to her play, I not only celebrated inwardly that somehow the brute biological “fact” had not diminished her childish joy, but marveled that this Christian homeschooled, thoroughly-churched girl without social media or unsupervised internet access had somehow been catechized so thoroughly by our culture’s tacit view of humanity… I hoped she would not later be seduced by its reductionism, the storge of a mother for her child diminished to mere genetic necessity.

The Great Tradition of the Church views humanity very differently, in a way that should not sit as peacefully alongside our modern biological and psychological conceptions, as it too often does. If we are truly made in the image of God, the template of our souls is not the paltry desire that modernity stipulates and Kierkegaard lamented.  Rather, what is fundamental to our identities is love — a divine eros that burns hotter than we can imagine, for “our God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:29)

The ascetic tradition of the Church cautions us about passion, but in this, it does not mean the passion of love — any of the four loves about which Greek is so articulate in comparison to English.  Our elder brothers and sisters in the faith knew well from personal experience that appetite could easily obscure love as the prime mover of the soul, for it offered easier and immediate (albeit temporary and incomplete) satiation of the desire that is one of the many aspects of love.  Love desires the beloved, not as a possession but as simply its object, the sun around which it orbits.  A robustly Christian anthropology would see appetite as parasitically imitating love, seeking to consume or possess the thing or person desired, not as the foundation upon which rarified “conceptions” of love would later be built.

The seeds of ascetic Christian spirituality are already evident in 1 Corinthians. There the Apostle Paul states:

²⁴ Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. ²⁵ Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. ²⁶ So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. ²⁷ But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.[2]

We must not let the force of the Apostle’s words here be softened as I have heard too many well-meaning preachers do into weak-kneed warnings, back-handed reassurances that we might not “finish well.”  The salvation that is by grace through faith may be lost — we may be disqualified — if our appetites convince us that their satiation is the face God’s love takes for us, if our trust in them slowly but decisively supplants our faith in Christ.

The sexuality debates that have riven the Church of late should put a recognizable face on the process, at least for readers of this periodical, but I do not wish to direct this warning toward those who have appetites with which I do not struggle; I need this strong medicine myself, as the consumerism of our unbelieving culture’s annual Christmas bacchanal has brought into sharp focus for me.  I say, “brought into sharp focus,” because what I am seeing as I write this reflection is true of me all year around; though I call myself a Christian, though I believe I have faith, the shape of my life (which reflects the shape of my soul) is still largely formed by the unsanctified narratives of our cultural moment.  My life is far more driven by appetite than I would care to admit on most days.  I too often shop for new theological books rather than re-read those in my library whose arguments I have digested but whose wisdom eludes me in the daily practice of Christian discipleship.  I too often tune-in to pedagogic YouTube videos rather than practice my guitar.  I too often numb the pain of a day in which I have dealt with the tragic consequences of life in a world ruled by the power of death and the devil or the sinful choices of people who know better with a scotch or a mindless movie than with prayer and time with the Great Physician who alone can heal my infirmities.  Too often, my appetites direct my activity rather than my faith.

In that last sentence, I nearly wrote, “my appetites dictate my activity.”  The great hope we have — the promise of discipleship and evangelical freedom — is that I used the proper verb, and that with the help of the Holy Spirit, our history need not be our destiny.  To be sure, “we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves,” but while we are bound, Christ is not and He may direct us differently.

I am coming to believe we focus so much on what we are saved from that we too often neglect what we are saved for.  The 2007 film Amazing Grace about the life of William Wilberforce begins with his motion to abolish slavery being defeated on the floor of the British Parliament because some of those who had promised to vote for it were given tickets to the Comic Opera by his opposition.  The modern equivalent would be binge-watching a Netflix series when, led by the Spirit through our faith, we should be praying, consoling someone, enjoying time with a friend, reading Scripture or similarly engaged.  How many key moments have each of us missed when, through Jesus Christ, God had a Spirit-led motion upon the floor of our lives?  Appetites distract, dim, and partially satisfy, making us forget — and so fail to enjoy — the promise of the freedom for which we were saved.

The acedia, the sloth, the deadly sin of passionless-ness with which I began this little reflection is a sign to me that I have been too much with my appetites, that they have been directing me in spiritually unhealthy ways, leading me to seek satisfaction too often on the penultimate rather than the ultimate.  I generally love the Christmas season, but this year for the first time I found myself discontent and eager for Twelfth Night to arrive so we could begin the process of undecorating.  This year, for the first time I understood in my bones the words of the twentieth century theologian who said, “the only time I don’t feel like a hypocrite is when I am in liturgy.”

The feast of Christmas is over, and I am ready for the fasting of Lent to begin, not because I cannot bear to feast, but so that the joy of feasting — dining with Our Lord — may return.

 

[1] C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses

[2] 1 Corinthians 9:24–27 (ESV)

Background Notes: One of the dangers and difficulties of discussing almost any issue these days is how easily any discussion can become highly divisively politicized.  It is not the intent of Lutheran CORE to speak either for or against any political party or candidate.  The political views of the friends of Lutheran CORE cover a very wide spectrum.  In this discussion of Contemporary Critical Theory we are neither endorsing nor speaking against any political candidate or party.  We are discussing an issue which we feel is critically important for Christians to be aware of and be prepared to deal with.

The First Reading for September 6 was from Ezekiel 33, where God compares the role of the prophet to the role of a military sentinel.  Verse 6 says, “If the sentinel sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any of them,” God will require the blood of the people at the hand of the sentinel.  In the same way, verse 8 says that if the prophet does not warn the people, God will require the blood of the people at the hand of the prophet.

Lutheran CORE defines its mission as being a Voice for Biblical Truth and a Network for Confessing Lutherans.  As a Voice for Biblical Truth we feel called by God to serve as a sentinel to warn people of forces and movements in our world today – even in the church – that are incompatible with if not actually hostile to the historic, orthodox Christian faith.  This is in addition to our role of alerting people to ways in which orthodoxy is being challenged and compromised within the church today.

One of the mindsets and movements that are growing and prevailing today – within our culture and, unfortunately, even within some segments of the Church – is Contemporary Critical Theory.  There are two articles within this issue of CORE Voice which deal with this very powerful and I believe very dangerous force within our world today.  This first article is intended to give you an overview and introduction to Contemporary Critical Theory.  If you are not already familiar with this way of thinking, I am certain you will recognize it as the mindset behind much of what is happening in our nation and our world today.  The second article is a longer and more detailed evaluation and critique of Contemporary Critical Theory.  The intent of this second article is to show how this mindset is incompatible with and even a threat to the historic, orthodox Christian faith.  Many thanks to Brett Jenkins, NALC pastor and former member of our board, for writing the second article.

There is a major difference between the claim that “there is no truth” and the claim that “there is truth, but we have a hard time seeing it on our own.”  While those who are more orthodox-minded may be inclined to assert the latter, those who are not so orthodox-minded may be inclined to assert the former. The former has its roots in the claims of Contemporary Critical Theory.

Contemporary Critical Theory asserts that all knowledge is “socially constructed.”  Therefore, there is no single, objective body of knowledge which all must accept.  All of knowledge is rooted in experience, and we all have different experiences.  My experience will be different from yours; therefore, the knowledge that is “socially constructed” by me may be different from the knowledge that is “socially constructed” by you.  There is no body of knowledge which is wholly objective, as every area of knowledge is tainted with subjectivity.  “Even the field of science is subjective.” (Robin DiAngelo & Öslem Sensoy). 

Because we all have different experiences, we all have different levels of access to truth. The degree to which we have access to truth depends upon positionality: that is, I may have greater access to truth than you do, or vice versa, based on our respective positions in life.  Greater value is given to the perspectives of those with positions in life that give us lived experiences that may provide us with greater insight on the topic(s) discussed.

The idea that there is such a thing as objective reality is looked upon with great suspicion, or even rejected entirely.  Some say that, historically, those in positions of power and privilege have falsely claimed that things which are subjective are actually objective and have used these false claims in order to marginalize and oppress those without power and privilege. Some also say that the privileged misuse these false claims in order to normalize forms of injustice that we should not be accepting as normal. When this is done, “Those in power sleep well at night; their conduct does not seem to them like oppression.” (Richard Delgado).

Contemporary Critical Theory pays great attention to the particular demographic status of the person, and, based on that status, to whether the person might, in context, be considered privileged or marginalized (i.e., rich or poor, white or black, male or female, straight or gay, cisgender or transgender, etc.). The marginalized have the benefit of lived experiences which the privileged simply cannot experience first-hand.  Because the marginalized have greater access to truth than the privileged, the voices of the marginalized are considered to be of greater value than the voices of the privileged. That is especially, but not exclusively, true of matters in which the lived experience of the marginalized provides particular insight into the matter being discussed.  For example, a powerless person who has experienced discrimination at the hands of a person in power will be better equipped to explain such discrimination than a person in power who has never experienced such discrimination first-hand.

Contemporary Critical Theory warns that those with power and privilege do not easily give up their power and privilege.  Rather, they establish institutions, rules, norms, and claims of objective truth in order to establish and protect their dominance in society.  Those in power use all those institutions, rules, norms, and claims in order to subject the powerless to marginalization and oppression.  When the dominance, power, and privilege of the privileged are challenged, they cast doubt on the validity of the claims of those who challenge them.  Consequently, the act of questioning those who are marginalized, especially when done by those who are privileged, is frowned upon, looked upon with suspicion, or even forbidden entirely.

These are not just the opinions of a small number of peculiar individuals.  Rather they are ideas that have spread far and wide in our society, even within the church.  These ideas are driving forces, though not the only driving forces, behind several contemporary movements in the political and social arenas.  These ideas are widely, but not universally, accepted.  They have their critics, on the left as well as on the right.  And there are those with more nuanced positions who will partially but not wholly accept these ideas.  Nevertheless, the influence of these ideas is strong, with variants on the left and on the right.  It is critically important for us to be aware of them, in order that we might be able to respond effectively.

Dear Friends in the Risen Lord:

Every morning – when I turn on my computer – I wonder, “How much worse is the news going to be today than it was yesterday?”  How many more confirmed corona virus cases will there be?  How many more people will have died?  What kind of greater precautions will we need to take, and what kind of greater restrictions will be placed upon us?  How much more will the stock market plunge?

In the midst of all this, we need encouragement, a source of strength, and hope.  What greater source of encouragement, strength, and hope could we have – and could we be able to share – than the good news that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead?  He is with us in our struggles, and He has defeated our greatest enemies – sin, death, and the power of the devil.

I would like to share with you four sources of strength and hope from the account of the Israelites’ crossing the Jordan River on their way to the Promised Land, as recorded in the early chapters of the book of Joshua. 

First, in Joshua 1: 2 the Lord said to Joshua, “My servant Moses is dead; now proceed to cross the Jordan.”  The Lord did not say, “Moses is dead; you might as well give up.”  Nor did He say, “Moses is dead; so why not go back to Egypt.”  “Moses is dead; it will never be the same again.” Or “Moses is dead; what hope do you have now?”  Rather the Lord said, “Moses is dead; now proceed to cross the Jordan.” 

We have heard it said over and over again.  We are living in unprecedented times.  We were not prepared for this, nor did we see it coming.  We do not know how long it will last or what life will be like after it is over.  We know it will be different, but we do not know how it will be different.  In many ways Moses is dead.  The realities, resources, and support systems that we had been counting on no longer exist.  And they disappeared so quickly.  But just as God said, “Moses is dead; now proceed to cross the Jordan,” so God is saying to us, “Life will be different, but it is not over.”  With God’s presence and power – with the hope of the resurrection – we will be able to get through this.  One year from now we will be able to look back and say, “God is good, and He saw us through.”  Moses may be dead, but we still need to and we still can cross the Jordan. 

Second, three times in the first nine verses of Joshua 1 God says, “Be strong and courageous.”  In verse 6, verse 7, and verse 9.  “Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

It would be very easy today to be frightened and dismayed.  We have many, very valid reasons to be frightened and dismayed.  Just like the disciples of Jesus, on the evening of Good Friday, had many, very valid reasons to be frightened and dismayed. 

But the angel told the women who came early on Easter Sunday morning to the tomb, “Do not be afraid.  I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.  He is not here.  He has been raised.  Come, see the place where He lay.  Then go quickly and tell His disciples that He has been raised from the dead.”  (Matthew 28: 5-7)  So we, too, need to see the place where He lay.  We, too, need to see that the tomb is empty.  Then we, too, need to go quickly and tell people that He has been raised from the dead.  This year – during the upcoming Holy Week season – may God give you even more strength of conviction and mountain-moving faith, so that you will be able to believe with power and with boldness, “Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead.”

Third, in Joshua 3: 2-4 we read that the leaders of Israel went through the camp and commanded the people, “When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord our God being carried by the levitical priests, then you shall set out from your place.  Follow it, so that you may know the way you should go, for you have not passed this way before.” 

What do we need the most as we go through a national and global crisis unlike any we have experienced before?  We need to know that God is with us and that He goes before us, “for (we) have not passed this way before.”  I remember a poster I had on my wall in my dorm room in college.  It showed a mushroom cloud from an atomic explosion.  It asked the question, “Is there a future?”  It gave an answer from God.  “Yes, I am already there.”

Paul describes Jesus as “the first born from the dead.”  Jesus has already gone through the experience of death ahead of us.  And He has broken the power of death over us.  Therefore, “nothing in all of creation” – and that includes the corona virus – “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  (Romans 8: 39)

Fourth, Joshua 3: 15-16 tell us that “when those who bore the ark had come to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the edge of the water, the waters flowing from above stood still . . . while those flowing toward the sea of the Arabah, the Dead Sea, were wholly cut off,” so the people were able to cross over on dry ground. 

There was a miraculous crossing of a body of water at the beginning of the time of leadership of Moses (the Red Sea), and there was a miraculous crossing of a body of water at the beginning of the time of leadership of Joshua (the Jordan River).  But there is a significant difference between the two.  In the case of Moses and the Red Sea, God sent a strong east wind that blew all night.  In the morning there was a dry path. The people did not need to step into the sea until they had a dry path.  In the case of Joshua and the Jordan River, somebody had to step into the water first before the flow of the river stopped and a dry path became available.

I know that I, for one, would like to have a dry path before I have to step in.  But that is not the way it always goes.  It sure would be good to know how this pandemic will end and how long it will last, but at this point we do not know.  But still we need to step in, take necessary precautions, help those who are most vulnerable, and see this time as an opportune time to show the kind of courage and compassion that Christ can give. 

I remember several years ago a woman who was very close to dying from cancer read the lessons on Easter Sunday.  Never before had those Scriptures passages spoken so strongly to me as they did that day as they were being read by someone who would soon be dying and who believed with all her heart that Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life.

This Easter season may your faith in Jesus be even bolder, your hope in Jesus be even greater, and your love for Jesus be even stronger.

Dennis D. Nelson
Executive Director of Lutheran CORE
dennisdnelsonaz@yahoo.com
909-274-8591

P.S.

Our prayers are with all confessional Lutheran pastors as you find and develop ways to stay connected with your congregations, give your people hope, courage, and strength, and reach out to your communities during these most unusual times.  On our website you can find a list of some congregations that are livestreaming and/or posting recordings of their worship services.  A link to that list can be found here.  Please let me know if you would like to be added to that list.

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

Matthew 28:19-20

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.

Joshua 1:9

Jesus Told Us to Go

Go, and do not be afraid. At once these instructions are both so easy, and yet for many Christians they are also so difficult. Despite God’s clear command to teach others about our faith and His reassurance that He will be with us, American culture is in the midst of a staggering trend against evangelism. In 1993, a Barna Group study showed that 89% of Christians believed it was the responsibility of every Christian to share their faith. By 2018 that number had dropped 25 points to only 64%. 65% of Christians said they share their faith by the way they live instead of (not in addition to) talking to people about Christ.

Why the Hesitation?

Why are people so hesitant to open their mouths and declare the name of Jesus? Yes, we should be living out our faith with our actions, but Jesus specifically said to “teach” people. That requires us to talk to them. Yet so many Christians are afraid to do so.

Have you ever heard any of these statements?

Conversations about religion always become so heated.
What if I don’t know how to answer their questions?
How do I even get the conversation started?

These are all common refrains that hold people back from talking about their faith. The reason they hesitate isn’t because they don’t know they should be evangelizing. It’s because they’re afraid they don’t know how.

Two Main Fears

In my experience people’s hesitancy is largely driven by two main fears. First, “How do I get the conversation started without sounding awkward?” Second, “What if I don’t know how to answer the other person’s questions?” What follows is a brief introduction to how we can overcome these fears while at the same time showing courtesy and respect so as to keep the conversation cordial.

Talk with People

First, how do we begin the conversation? For starters, we need to talk with people and not at them. We may have a whole list of important information about the gospel and we just have to get it out. We launch into a rapid-fire monologue, taking short breaths in between sentences, so the other person doesn’t have time to interrupt our incredibly important litany. After all, if they get a word in edgewise we might get sidetracked from our list.

Shields Up!

When we talk at someone, our primary concern is to convey all the information we think they need to hear. But when we talk with them we are more worried about listening to what they have to say and engaging in a two-way dialogue. The moment someone senses you are talking at them their defenses will go up and any opportunity for a meaningful conversation will be over. They’re not listening to you. While you’re rambling on, their mind is planning out their counterattack.

Talking at someone places the focus on us. Talking with someone places the focus on them. The people we are speaking to are individuals, not targets. Showing respect to someone means being invested in who they are, not just in what you want to tell them.

For many people I’ve probably just ratcheted up the anxiety level even higher. After all, it’s a lot harder to talk with someone than it is to talk at them. If I’m talking at a person, I’m in complete control. I don’t have to worry about anything they might say because … I’m never giving them a chance to say anything. But engaging in a dialogue is scarier. All of a sudden I have to worry about what someone else is going to say to me, and that’s what I don’t know if I can handle.

But dialogue doesn’t need to be scary. In fact, it’s a lot easier than many people think. There are three easy steps that can serve as a broad outline to any faith conversation, and with just a little bit of practice all of us can all become more comfortable declaring Christ both with our actions and our words.

First Pray

The first step should be the most obvious but is one I think too many people today skip over. Pray. God has told us not to be discouraged because He will be with us. Do we believe Him? Walking with us in our times of need is an incredibly small thing compared to dying on the cross. If God did the latter, shouldn’t we be able to trust Him to do the former? Yet we live in a culture that tells us to pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps and praises individual accomplishment. So ironically even in much of our ministry, many Christians try to “do it on their own” without first stopping and asking the Holy Spirit to be a part of what they are undertaking. Just like we should pray before every ministry meeting, we should pray when we set out to evangelize.

Then Look for Opportunities

Second, we need to look for opportunities. They’re all around us. Most of the time we’re just not paying attention. Michael Ramsden, President of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, tells a story about a time he was in a hair salon and overheard the owner say to a stylist next to her, “My business is doing so well but there must be more to life than this.”[1] That was an opportunity, and he took it. There is more to life than succeeding in business, no matter what our culture says. By paying attention to what was going on around him, Mr. Ramsden was able to start up a conversation that led to an hour and fifteen-minute discussion of the gospel.

Keep Doors Open

Not every opening will be that obvious. Recognizing when these chances arise will often require us to have at least a basic understanding of the topics that are permeating our culture. Maybe it’s a meme circulating on social media. Maybe it’s the acceptance speech some Hollywood celebrity just gave at an awards show. Maybe it’s the latest blockbuster in the movie theater. People are always talking about something, and those “somethings” very often will open the door to a discussion on faith. The question is simply whether we are going to walk through it. We don’t need to immerse ourselves in every aspect of contemporary Western culture. But at the same time, we can’t be completely oblivious to it either. Paul knew what the Greeks valued when he spoke at the Areopagus. We need to be aware of what unknown god our culture is worshipping.

Ask Questions

So, we’ve prayed, we’ve seen an opportunity arise, and now we’re wondering how to seize it. What do we say to get the conversation started? That leads into step 3, ask, don’t tell. This one seems a bit counter-intuitive to some people. If we have all this information we want the other person to hear, shouldn’t we be the one doing the talking and they be the one doing the listening? Actually, you can accomplish even more by primarily using questions, plus you gain some other important advantages.

Questions invite the other person to speak. They can’t shut down because you are talking at them if they are doing most of the talking. But even though they are doing most of the talking, you are actually in control of the conversation. Questions determine which topics are up for discussion, and you are the person asking all the questions. Finally, questions foster conversation. When one person is asking a question and another is giving an answer, there are two people invested in the discussion. Our goal is not to lecture, but to listen and have a dialogue.

Greg Koukl has a fantastic book called Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions. Anyone who wants to learn more about how to effectively evangelize should have a copy, read it, and keep it handy. Koukl calls his primary tactic the “Columbo Tactic,” named after the famous television detective played by Peter Falk. Columbo was famous for asking question after question while investigating a case, and our approach to evangelism can look very similar.

Three Ways to Direct a Conversation

Koukl explains three ways we can use questions to direct a conversation. The first is to use them to gather more information. An example is, “What do you mean by that?”[2] When a person makes a statement, the first thing we should do is ask a question. Something of the variety of “What do you mean by that?” not only allows us to make sure we are understanding them correctly, but sometimes it gets the other person to think through what they’re saying. In today’s social media age, many people are merely repeating slogans they’ve heard that sounded good, but they have no idea what they actually mean.

The second way to use questions is to reverse the burden of proof. Koukl’s example for this is, “How did you come to that conclusion?”[3] There is a trap that almost all of us have fallen into from time to time. Someone makes a statement that we know is false. Our immediate instinct is to explain to them why it is false. So, we launch into our long explanation, rattling off all our evidence, convinced that in the end the other person will come around and see things our way. If we do that, we end up talking at people again and their defensive walls will spring right up.

There’s a better way to handle this situation. When someone makes a statement that runs contrary to what God has told us to be true, just ask them a question. Start out by making sure you are understanding them correctly with “What do you mean by that?” But then follow it up with “How did you come to that conclusion?” It may surprise you to hear that the vast majority of conversations I engage in with people when they make claims like this never need to get past this second question. Most people have no idea how they arrived at any particular conclusion. Their claim wasn’t borne out of some rational evaluation of the arguments and evidence resulting in a well thought out conclusion. They read some meme online that they agreed with, so now they’re just repeating it. If someone else makes a claim, it is not your job to refute it. It is their job to defend it. Asking them politely “How did you come to that conclusion” is one way to respectfully place the burden on them, where it belongs.

The third way Koukl suggests we can use questions is to make a point.[4] This is where you finally have the opportunity to inject all that information you have inside your head into the conversation. But you still need to resist the temptation to talk at people. The most inviting way to insert information into the discussion is to use a question. “Have you ever considered…?” “What do you think about…?”

Ask, Don’t Tell

There’s a fundamental difference between merely telling people information and asking them questions about it. When you tell, you may come across as if you believe you are smarter or superior. But when you ask, you are showing genuine interest in them and their opinions. At the same time, you are inviting them to think through something they may not have thought about before. They are much more likely to do so if they don’t feel like they are being “preached at.”

Suppose you know absolutely nothing about embryology, but you hear someone say, “Christians have no right to object to abortion unless they’re willing to take care of all the extra babies that will be born if abortion is outlawed.” You can still ask them a “what do you mean by that” type of question. For example, “I just want to make sure I’m understanding you correctly. You’re saying that no one has the right to object to unborn children being killed unless they’re willing to take care of those unborn children, is that right?” You could follow it up with a question of the “how did you come to that conclusion” variety. “How is it that my not having the resources to personally take care of a child makes it okay to kill it?”

Too often people hesitate to evangelize because they don’t think they know enough. They want to leave that sort of thing to the “professionals,” like their pastor. But each and every one of us is expected to share our faith, not just those in church leadership. Anyone can ask questions, so all of us know enough to get out there and get started.

Admit You Don’t Know

But what if someone says something that you don’t know how to answer? That is one of the biggest causes of anxiety, and yet at the same time it is one of the easiest questions to answer. If someone asks you something you don’t know how to answer, you politely say, “I don’t know the answer to that. Let me look into it and I’ll get back to you.” Then you politely end the conversation.

Conversion Is the Holy Spirit’s Job

We often put way too much pressure on ourselves. We think that each and every conversation needs to result in the other person accepting Christ or else it was useless. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have to remember that conversion isn’t our job. We can’t convert anybody anyway. That’s the Holy Spirit’s doing. Our job is to do as we have been instructed, so that if the Spirit wants to use us as an instrument through which He works, then we are obediently available.

To Sum It Up

Greg Koukl describes a more modest goal he sets for himself when engaging in evangelistic conversations. “All I want to do is put a stone in someone’s shoe. I want to give him something worth thinking about, something he can’t ignore because it continues to poke at him in a good way.”[5] We worry so much about what other people will say because we think we need to have all the answers. We don’t. Just set yourself a modest goal and get out there and share the gospel. First, pray. Second, look for opportunities. Third, ask, don’t tell. Use questions to gather information, to reverse the burden of proof and to make a point. We all know that we should be sharing God’s good news. Hopefully this basic outline can help reassure you as to how.

---

[1] Centre for Public Christianity, “Conversation Apologetics – Michael Ramsden,” March 24, 2018, video, 44:32, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MJb5_2CABI.

[2] Greg Koukl, Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,2009), 49-52.

[3] Ibid., 61-64.

[4] Ibid., 77-87.

[5] Ibid., 38.

Have you ever preached the Gospel
to people who don’t care about anything but the present moment?  Or to put it differently, can you imagine
sharing the good news with people who don’t believe that the past and future
have any claim on today? 

Past, Present, Future

A Facebook group to which I belong recently shared a “Preaching Moment” video by Thomas G. Long, homiletics professor at the Candler School of Theology, in which he addresses this situation.  According to Long, the so-called “narrative” mode of preaching has become less effective in recent years because fewer people view their lives as a story with a past, present, and future.   

“The narrative mode of preaching addressed this need: the need is, I have heard the gospel; I know the biblical message, but I am not existentially engaged with it,” Long explains.  “And therefore I need to move from knowledge to delight.”  Narrative preaching seeks to move listeners from passive knowledge of the Gospel to a lively faith in it by telling stories that help listeners see themselves within the grand narrative of Scripture. 

Location on the Timeline

But you know how stories work: they
typically connect the past, present, and future, making sense of how one event
touches another.  What if the culture to
which you preach lacks that sense of time? 
That is, what if it lacks not only knowledge of the biblical narrative
but also what Long calls narrative
competence, the ability to view things in chronological relationship and
locate oneself within that timeline? 

Referencing an Oxford scholar named Galen Strawson, Long points to the rise of people who understand themselves in this “episodic” way.  People who think “episodically” know that certain things happened to them in years past, but they insist that those things don’t have a material effect on who they are today.  Moreover, they don’t view their present in light of any anticipated future. 

Instead, the present moment alone becomes the workshop of identity.  A person’s origins, experiences, and ultimate destination have no necessary bearing on beliefs and moral decisions.  “Who I am today may not be who I am tomorrow” — we’ll have to wait and see.  (You may read Strawson’s argument here.)

You and I, like Long, may disagree with this episodic interpretation of human nature.  It seems, perhaps, a bit defensive, like an argument for how someone wants things to be more than a confession of how things really are.  But now consider some of the trends that we see in our culture and churches. 

Trends and Doom

In the realm of identity politics and intersectional theory, both personal and national identities can be forged through hard breaks with the past that disavow its relevance for the present.  Perhaps the past is viewed as too oppressive or indecent for serious consideration, even to the point of rejecting the literary and artistic accomplishments of prior eras due to their supposed moral degeneracy. 

Likewise, scientific and
quasi-scientific foretelling of the earth’s future can sometimes paint such a
vision of doom as to deny any real future at all.  Ecological prophecy can leave people anywhere
from dismal about tomorrow to blithely unconcerned about it.  The future looks as impossible as the past
looks dangerous, rendering both irrelevant for the present.

Torching the Church’s Past

We have whiffs of this episodic malaise
in the church, too.  Some of its leaders seem
intent on torching the church’s past, perhaps deeming it too white, too
capitalist, or too cis.  Better, they
say, to remake the church in light of present sensibilities alone.  Others, in their radical calls for social
justice, appear almost to despair of any future change, their cries
increasingly vengeful.  Where, one might
wonder, is their enlivening hope in the advent of Christ?  You can always smell a church without a
Christ-centered vision of the future, especially if you’ve had prior experience
in smelling corpses.

How Now Shall We Respond?

So Strawson and Long may have
touched on something significant.  Their
reflections dovetail with what others have noted about the growth of a “new
paganism” in America, given that many non-traditional spiritualities also lack
a clearly linear conception of time.  
But now the question is: how shall confessing Lutherans respond? 

First, we should answer for
ourselves the basic challenges that the episodic mindset poses to our
confession of faith.  For example, speaking
of forgiveness necessarily assumes the relevance of both the past and the
future to the present.  Forgiveness only
matters as part of a story where people are otherwise responsible for their
past action and face condemnation in the future.  But why should that be?  Why should my actions yesterday have any
claim on who I am today?  Don’t Lutherans
believe in a “new Adam and Eve rising daily” before God? 

Why the Past and Future Matter

In response, Lutherans might start
with what we consider the hallmark condition for freedom and life before God: “the
righteous shall live by faith.”  Trust in
Christ justifies the sinner, Scripture says, and just a little reflection on
the nature of faith will reveal why the past and future matter as much as the present. 

Simply put, trust is necessary for
happiness.  It is trust that allows us to
form commitments that provide us with daily security and open the future to
such fundamental things as love and family.  
At the same time, trust thrives on the past and anticipates a future.  Whether it’s trust in God or trust in our
neighbor, faith in anyone depends on the reliability of that person, a
reliability that is only known through the narrative of that person’s past.  As a colleague of mine points out, you may
consider yourself as free of your past as you wish, but your boss may have
other thoughts.  A boss relies on your
dependability in anticipation of the company’s future success. 

Why Trade Freedom for Bondage?

Having reflected on those
connections between happiness, trust, and time, confessing Lutherans may then critique
the episodic mentality and answer its challenges with the renewing Word.  By way of the Law, we may press a culture
that seeks to ignore the past and future with a simple question: why would you
trade freedom for bondage?  Why give up
the necessary conditions for trust
and commitment and love (the life God would have for
you)? 

Indeed, why not acknowledge things
for how they really are, even if it means finding yourself saddled with a
history of wrong?  Facing our past error ultimately
sets the stage for greater trust, commitment, and love in the future by
exposing our unreliability and asserting that both God and we hope to end
it. 

Then, having exposed the happy
life’s dependence on both the past and the future, we may introduce the
narrative of God’s utter dependability.  His
trustworthiness, pictured through the history of Israel and fulfilled in Jesus,
not only justifies the existence of sinners now — they exist for His glory, as
it turns out — but it also opens the future with the promise of their ultimate
healing.  Preaching this faithfulness of
God starts to root a rootless culture into His narrative. 

Rise of the New Adam

It also allows us to grant the
episodic mindset at least one gracious nod. 
Inherent to episodic thinking is the desire to be continually new.  As noted earlier, some might say that
thinking episodically is good Lutheranism. 
“Don’t Lutherans believe in a new Adam or Eve emerging daily?”  Yes, it is essential to faith in Holy Baptism!   Recognizing that the past and future play a
role in shaping identity should never steal from the believer that fresh joy of
Christ. 

But now we can see what makes such joy possible.  The believer only comes to newness of life by trusting God’s trustworthiness over the sinner’s unreliability.  That is, it only comes by way of repentance, and that repentance is made possible only through trust in God’s mighty works and what they promise in the world to come.  Only through this intersection of the Biblical narrative and one’s personal narrative does the New Adam arise. 

I’m not writing these reflections to advocate a renewal of narrative preaching.  To the contrary, I agree with Long that the narrative preaching of the last century has probably enjoyed its heyday.  But consideration of how the church and its neighbors divide over one key aspect of narrative (time!) may help us speak the Gospel.  It may lead us to understand better why some people are not hearing us, and how we may overcome that divide with the good news that turns past, present, and future into a really good time.

I
was thoroughly blessed through reading the recently published memoirs of Dr.
Robert Benne.  Many thanks to Dr. Benne
for writing them and to the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau for publishing
them.  Reading Dr. Benne’s memoirs
reminded me of when I saw the 1989 movie, “Born on the Fourth of July.”  While watching that movie, and while reading
Dr. Benne’s memoirs, I felt like I was reliving several of the years of my own
life. 

I
was born ten years after Dr. Benne, but like him I grew up in a culture that
supported and encouraged the Christian faith. 
He grew up in a small town in Nebraska. 
I was born in Minneapolis and spent some of the formative years of my
life in a small town in Iowa.  At that time
the world was trustworthy and safe, America was great and good, and right and
wrong were clearly defined (page 77). 
Bob Benne met his first black persons in college.  I had my first Asian friend in seminary. 

I
experienced and was dramatically changed by the same social and cultural
dynamics that strongly affected him, though at an age of ten years
younger.  We were both influenced by the
liberal idealism of the early 60’s.  Like
him, I came to view the church mainly as an instrument of social transformation
(page 83).  I identified with his
self-description, “I tried to swim with the radical tide” (page 88).  I was amused by his comment, “I became a
‘social justice warrior’ before the term had been coined” (page 106).  He mentioned that while teaching at the
Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago he worked with the Ecumenical Institute,
an organization that offered introductory courses to the Christian faith,
workshops on anti-racism, and training in community transformation.  I remember while attending college near
Chicago hearing a presentation by one of the staff members of the
institute.  I was stirred by what he said
and was determined that that is what I wanted to do after graduating from
seminary.

I
could identify with Dr. Benne’s then sharing the story of how he came to
realize the spiritual bankruptcy of that view of the mission and message of the
church.  He described himself as a
“wanna-be radical” who got “mugged by reality” (page 90).  He came to see how, by viewing the church
primarily as a vehicle of social transformation, he had reduced its
transcendent message to merely human efforts (page 89). 

I
greatly appreciate the way in which Dr. Benne shares so personally, openly, and
honestly the story of his own spiritual and ministry journey.  He feels deeply and articulates boldly and
clearly the seriousness of the departure of much of American Lutheranism from
the historic Christian faith.  He feels
the pain, and he can articulate the issues. 

In
the final pages of his memoirs he describes the events of the last twenty
years, including the formation of LCMC (Lutheran Congregations in Mission for
Christ), Lutheran CORE, and the NALC (North American Lutheran Church).  He states wisely and accurately, “Though
church schisms are undoubtedly serious matters that should be undertaken with
trepidation, it has seemed clear to me that the schismatic party was actually
the ELCA.  It simply collapsed before the
‘progressive’ American culture, as did other mainline Protestant denominations.
. . . The ELCA bishops, whose first duty was to defend the orthodox truth,
failed miserably” (page 167).

I am very grateful to Dr. Benne for writing these memoirs and am very thankful for the opportunity to read them.  I also want to thank Dr. Benne for the role he has played in the formation and life of Lutheran CORE and the ministry that he continues to have. 

Dr. Robert Benne currently teaches Christian Ethics at the online Institute for Lutheran Theology. He was Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion and Chair of the Religion and Philosophy Department at Roanoke College in Virginia for eighteen years before he left full-time teaching in 2000.  He founded the Roanoke College Center for Religion and Society in 1982 and directed it until 2012.  He continues at Roanoke College as a research associate in its religion and philosophy department.  A link to the ALPB (American Lutheran Publicity Bureau) website where you can order a copy of his memoirs can be found here.

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