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A Response to USA Today Article “Faith in America: Get Ready for Change”

August 27th, 2011Post by Norm Fisher

While adding a church to the Evangelical-Lutheran Liturgical Congregations website, I came across this article written by Pastor Pautz of Our Savior Lutheran Church in Muscatine, IA. It is a great response to a USA Today article that you may have missed in the Lutheran Witness.

Pastor Pautz introducing the article by DP Brian Saunders found in the Lutheran Witness:

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This is an article written by our District President – Rev. Saunders which is reprinted from the recent Lutheran Witness. Blessings.  Pastor Pautz

Helpful definitions

A recent USA Today article, published May 16, 2011, by Oliver Thomas entitled “Faith in America: Get Ready for Change” forewarns the Church that “change” is on the way. That is no surprise to the holy Christian Church since “change” is at the heart of her confession. The change Thomas is offering, however, is not the same as the change of the historic Church. Instead, he suggests that the Church needs to change what she believes, teaches and practices. In other words, she needs to change everything.

It is helpful here to define what is meant by change. Change in the holy Christian Church is about repentance. Repentance is change that takes place in the heart and life of the convicted sinner, not the organism called the Church. Repentant change in the Church occurs when the perfect Law of God confronts the wayward and erring soul, bringing the unrighteous to his knees in confession of his sins. The Holy Gospel then rescues the broken soul with the promise of forgiveness in Christ Jesus. At the same time, it creates faith that receives God’s forgiveness. Thus, it is truly change. In short, the change is not in the Church and its creed but in the heart of the sinner whose life is now lead by love for God and for neighbor.

The Church is also, by its very nature, creedal. So, to change a creed means the essence of the organism itself has changed. To change the essence of an organism is to change the organism itself. The consequence of that kind of change is that the organism ceases to exist.
In other words, to change the creed of the Church is not only to change the Church, but it is to speak of no Church at all. Without the creeds, we are left to our own fallible and erring whims for truth. That is why the authors of the Epitome in theBook of Concord write:

“Immediately after the time of the Apostles–in fact, already during their lifetime–false teachers and heretics invaded the church. Against these the ancient church formulated symbols (explicit confessions) which were accepted as the unanimous, catholic, Christian faith and confessions of the orthodox and true church, namely, the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. We pledge ourselves to these, and we hereby reject all heresies and teachings which have been introduced into the church of God contrary to them” (Tappert, 465:3).

Holes in the argument
A few points in the article in particular are worth discussing. First, it is interesting that Thomas points out that the populace today is more attuned to a God who is a “big God and is unbound by Scripture or learned scholars.” And yet, shortly thereafter, he leans on the wealth of knowledge of these “scholars” to discredit the apostleship authority and the hierarchical structure that has formed the current governance in the Church.

Apart from Scripture, we have no way of knowing the Son of God who reveals to us the will of God the Father. While He may be larger than creation, creation cannot believe in Him apart from the Word in which He reveals Himself. That means Thomas is simply in error when he says the Early Church had no clergy structure.

In fact, Paul instructed Timothy and Titus to appoint elders (clergy) in the local parishes where they served as overseers. As such, already in the time of Paul, the Church had formal structure. The Church was also growing, and the larger the group the more necessary it was that there be an organized structure for the sake of maintaining a faithfulness to a common confession and practice. The same is true today.

Next, Thomas makes the argument that the Church will become more counter-cultural. This, too, is no new thing, nor is it surprising. The Church is itself a culture that is in this world but not of it. She has her own language, music, relationships and disposition toward the lost. She addresses the lost with the Gospel (her unique language) that the Holy Spirit may have the venue to bring the erring heart to repentance and faith. The Church has never asked the lost world what it would like her to be based on its opinion of truth. Only the Church has the divinely-revealed truth to offer to mankind. Only she can communicate and bestow that truth upon the repentant sinner.

The Church’s response
Thomas affirms that the change that the Church needs to embrace is “loosey-goosey.” The silliness of that phrase alone is enough to discredit his suggestions. Maybe that is what he means when he says that the Church has already changed its worship times, places and instrumentation and that changing its beliefs is the next logical step.

However, there’s just one small problem with the underlying premises in Thomas’ article: These are not creedal issues. The Church will do the unbelieving world far more good by sticking with its faithful adherence to the Word of God expressed in the creeds of the historic faith.

In other words, the living ought never ask the dead how the living should live their lives. By doing that, the living condemn the dead to an eternal death. The cost of each soul is too precious and valuable to leave the lost to their own ways.

Welcome to the Main Event (GOP Debate)

My Name’s Mollie And I’m A Submissive Wife

August 16th, 2011Post by Mollie

I’ve seen links to this all over facebook and google plus, and thought it might generate some interesting discussion here. One link to it was posted Aug 11th on Ricochet.com. I’ve posted it here under Mollie’s name — Norm

Instead of watching the debate tonight, I had dinner with friends in Littleton. The restaurant had approximately 34 televisions going and all were tuned into the Denver Broncos preseason game. I love Colorado.

So I missed the little brouhaha over Byron York’s question to Michele Bachmann, embedded above. When I think of the top, say, 1,000 questions I’d like to hear Fox News ask GOP presidential contenders, asking Michele Bachmann about her views on submissive wives wouldn’t rank on my list. And you could tell the audience thought it an unconscionably rude or idiotic question.

What I find surprising, though, is how little the culture understands about what the New Testament teaches Christians about marriage. So as a wife in a Christian marriage, allow me to explain. Marriage is my most important vocation. It is the means by which God blesses me and my husband. Ephesians tells us that marriage is an image of Christ and the church.

St. Paul tells spouses to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives are told to submit to their husbands as to the Lord. Husbands are told to lay down their lives for their wives, sacrificing everything for them out of love.

We serve God by serving our spouses and denying ourselves for their good. As Gene Veith has written:

The husband loves and serves his wife, and the wife loves and serves her husband. The unpopular command for the wife to “submit” and the forgotten command for the husband to “give himself up” for his wife are examples of the self-denial required in every vocation. The husband, emulating Christ, sacrifices himself for his wife, who, emulating the church, receives that sacrifice in submission to him.

Today’s culture gets marriage wrong, in large part, because of our obsession with the self. People assume that marriage is supposed to be about self-fulfillment. Christianity, in contrast, teaches self-denial. The irony is that in a Christian view of marriage, both spouses are fulfilled, not by each of them making selfcentered demands, but through the selfless actions of the other.

I fail at this daily but this is what I aim for in my relationship with my husband. Likewise, he aims for this with me. When we sin, which happens all too often, we confess our sins and receive absolution. This is what our daily life is like and I’m thankful to have this teaching about marriage.

The fact is that the husband’s given role — that of complete sacrifice for his wife — is much more difficult than the wife’s role of submission. But something tells me we won’t be seeing anybody ask the Catholic or Evangelical male candidates whether they can be president while holding a Biblical view of marriage that requires this complete sacrifice for their spouse. On the one hand, that’s a good thing. On the other, it shows just how much that vital role — the one that sustains a Christian marriage — has been neglected and forgotten.

World View Everlasting Miracle

Coming out of the girth of protestant evangelism. I am constantly amazed of the practices of the Lutheran Church. Every where you look there is a practice of the church which with the present of the Sacraments magnifies the presence Christ. These practices and traditions help us sinners and reminds us with our senses what Christ is doing for us. For example I was watching the current World View Everlasting Video which Pastor Fisk blessed us with a look at the baptism of his youngest child. Since attending the LCMS church I have been to many baptisms. You see many and know what is happening, yet there is that one time that it hits your and it seem you have a better understanding what is really happening to the child in the waters of baptism. Every baptism I have ever been too the child is dressed in a white robe to represent the gift of Christ blood shed of the Cross for all sins. Yet Pastor Fisk child wore a black robe. The instant we are born we are wearing that dirty, filthy, black robe of sin. That black robe showed the true colors of all our hearts before the washing of Christ blood.  As the waters of Baptism flows over, The Holy Spirit takes the black robe away and gives it to the Man that has a Pure, Holy, and Sinless robe which freely give to cover us up in righteousness. That blackness of that robe should be a constant reminder to us of the scars Jesus Christ carries freely for all of us so we can be righteous in God eyes.

Hypocrisy (Rom 12:9)

[Hypocrisy is] a term and idea that are primarily limited in the Bible to the nt writings. The Greek word transliterated into English as ‘hypocrite’ was used to denote an actor, one who performed behind a mask. Thus the popular understanding came to be that of persons who pretended to be something that they were not. It is interesting to note, however, that hypocrisy does not appear to be so limited in meaning in the nt. The term can sometimes denote general wickedness or evil, self-righteousness, pretense, or breach of ‘contract.’
The best-known passage in the nt describing hypocrisy is Matthew /Matt.* 23:1*/23, where self-righteousness and pretense are both in evidence (cf. also Matt. 6:2, 5, 16; 7:5; 15:7; 22:18; 24:51; Mark 7:6; Luke 6:42; 12:56; 13:15).
Achtemeier, P. J., Harper & Row, P., & Society of Biblical Literature. (1985). Harper's Bible dictionary (1st ed.) (p 414). San Francisco: Harper & Row.