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Up one levelGod's Name(s)
I am a trinitarian enthusiast, personally, but I do realize that God's name is not "The Trinity." It bugs me to hear it invoked in worship because it is a conceptual title applied to God, but not God's name. However, another thing that also bugs me is when people suggest that God has but one true name...
Other People's Sins
Already back in 1993 when I was working full time in the pro-life movement, there was a growing realization that Christians had no one but themselves to blame for the increasing number of abortions in this country. Sure abortionists were a convenient and blameworthy target, as were their willing political allies at Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women, but when you looked at the numbers the dirty little secret was that Christians were having more abortions than non-Christians. Planned Parenthood’s own Guttmacher Institute reports that almost 68% of abortions in the United States are sought by Evangelical Christians or Roman Catholics. Clearly Christians need not look any further than their own poorly catechized or poorly supported members to find a way to bring down the number of abortions in the United States.
How to Make a Radical Feminist
Start young. It’s never too early to tell her all the things she can’t do now, because she’s a girl, and all the things she won’t be able to do when she grows up, because she’ll be a woman. Shame her if she doesn’t like playing with children or babysitting. Teach her how gross her body is. Denounce important public figures who are women. Make sure she knows that the only real sin a female can commit is to have have extramarital sex. Make it clear that God is a man...
Reformation Red
In honor of the 491st anniversary of Luther's posting of the 95 Theses, our "skin" on the website today is red. Tomorrow for All Saints' it will be white/gold, and then on November 2nd it will return to green for the rest of the season after Pentecost until Advent makes us blue...
Less than Perfect Children
I have always believed in the equal dignity of all human beings as creations of God, regardless of their mental or physical well being. It is a central theme of my preaching each week to my inner-city high school and junior high students. It is at the core of my pro-life beliefs, and informs my commitment to the social welfare of all people. It is why I find the ELCA social statement on abortion so inadequate, with its belief that the value of a human life is dependent on the willingness of the parents to participate in the sexual activity, the access of the parents to contraception, and the physical health of the unborn child. It was eye opening, therefore, to once again wade into the world of adoption for research on an article that will be appearing in the winter issue of Lutheran Forum. In an industry that is dominated by many well-meaning people, many who share in a pro-life belief in the dignity of all of God’s children, it was shocking to see how children are viewed as rankable commodities...
Include Me Out
A number of months ago I served as the monitor for the hearing on the Sexuality Study for my synod. What was supposed to be an occasion for attendees to speak and me to listen got inverted quickly: I ended up doing most of the teaching, and they did most of the listening, for reasons I predicted awhile ago—no one actually knows what this study is about...
Reorganizing the Church
A Blue Ribbon Task Force has been appointed by the president of the LCMS to address the question of how best to structurally organize the church. Already their initial report, which only presents items for discussion, has generated considerable opposition in the Lutheran blogosphere...
Raise Your Hand If You Hate the Lord
I really thought I was done grousing about ELW. I said my piece about the erasure of military imagery and ran Philip Pfatteicher’s incisive criticism here on the website. But at the time I did both those things I was still using the green book. Of late I have been in a congregation that uses the cranberry book. It’s kind of fitting: real cranberry juice is so intense you can barely swallow it, but the usual stuff you get that claims to be cranberry juice is significantly cut with water, high fructose corn syrup, and other kinds of juice. An apt metaphor for the new hymnal indeed...
Embarrassing Mormonism
I was embarrassed for them. In this equatorial country where the only time neck-ties are worn is when you are in court as a defendant, the Mormon missionaries stood out painfully with their long pants, long shirts, ties and name tags. It was almost as if they went out of their way to not fit in. At present there are about 51,000 Mormon missionaries around the world. They are volunteers working without pay and traveling at their own family’s expense in a place they have not chosen. They simply submit their names to the church and then the leadership of the church sends them out. They have no say, they simply obey...
Two Intra-Ecumenical Proposals
The ecumenism of the past century has enabled a level of respectful, compassionate dialogue that is without precedent in the history of the church. Who would have thought five hundred years ago that Lutherans and Catholics could sit down to discuss justification without an army in sight? Or Lutherans and Mennonites could talk about public office without the former dragging out burlap bags in case a few strategic drownings of the latter were in order?...
Unforgivable Sex
This month it was announced through his publicist that actor David Duchovny had entered rehab for sex addiction. Specifically it was disclosed that he struggled with internet pornography. The good news for Duchovny is that now that he is on the road to recovery, and as such he is in a better position than the estimated 37 percent of pastors who said in a 2001 Leadership Journal survey that pornography was a struggle for them. Even if that number seems high, Focus on the Family reports that 25% of their clergy support calls are from pastors who are addicted to pornography...
One Last Word on Bad Preaching
This one is the most disturbing of all. I have heard this sermon a few times now. It goes something like this...
Speaking of Bad Preaching
My last post on the dangers of the family anecdote and the philosophical introduction jogged memories of other bad homiletical approaches, so while I’m at it, here are three more...
A PK’s Plea
I’m a preacher’s kid who grew up to be a preacher herself, and the experience of being a PK taught me a valuable lesson about using family anecdotes in preaching: don’t! ...
The Way to End Abortion is Through Adoption
I have always been pro-life, in the sense that I have always believed that each human life is God’s precious creation, from the minute-old blastocyst to the last gasp of the elderly. Theologically, this is a no-brainer. As for politics, I have long been of the mind of Plato—people less than fifty probably don’t understand the world well enough to make political proposals, and, as I’m a ways off from that venerable age yet, I will remain wisely reserved on the subject...
The Value of Values
Talking about values rarely leaves one feeling indifferent to the conversation. Perhaps that is why, with few notable exceptions like Robert Benne or Gilbert Mailander, Lutheran theologians have shied away from the political minefield of ethics in favor of safer fields like history. It is far easier to list prominent Lutheran historians than it is to compose a similar list of ethicists...
The Argument from Antiquity
Every so often you hear in the church the argument: “We’ve never done that before, so we’re not going to start now.” Nowadays this argument is generally invoked against things like the ordination of women or of homosexuals. It has a converse expression, too: “We’ve always done it this way,” and therefore to do otherwise is wrong. This I will term the “argument from antiquity” and honestly I find it quite baffling that pastors (or any other Christians, for that matter) ever use it...
Mark’s Indirect Christology
My brother Will once had the misfortune of taking a New Testament class with one of those professors whose chief joy seems to be the destruction of youthful faith for reasons that are more psychological than intellectual. Among other things this professor claimed that “Mark did not believe Jesus was divine in the ontological sense.” Quite apart from the obvious and gleeful departure from Christian dogmatics in a statement like this, the professor was just being an idiot. If you are looking for a full-blown Platonic or other such theory of divinity developed by Mark in which Jesus is subsequently forced to fit, then you will certainly be disappointed. But that says far more about your own preconceptions of divinity than anything else. And if there is one thing all the gospels are determined to do, it is to demonstrate the falsity of your preconceptions of divinity...
Doing Something Practical - Mass
Though mildly irreverent in its portrayal of Roman Catholicism and Christianity in general, I have found the now decade-old British television program Father Ted to be an insightful critique both of Christianity and of human nature in general...
A Sort-Of Kind-Of Cosmological Variant of the Ontological Argument
Hear me now: I am no fan of natural theology. Nein! God considered as a proposition strikes me as laughably implausible. I believe in God because I believe in the incarnate Son, not the other way around. But then, since the Son implies God in the more familiar divine-attribute guise, I do occasionally have to consider God in this form. I’m OK with all the usuals. Immortal, invisible, God only wise, omniscient, omnipotent. I recently discovered, however, a divine attribute that I could not wrap my mind around. This one: God is big.