Posted by Steve B./Marvin, et al on 11/1/2001, 11:52 am

Quick... Posted by Steve B. on 9/ /2001, pm ...somebody tell me again what's so bad about the Lutheran Church. I have difficulty these days remembering why I was so dissatisfied with it. Why was it that I left it for the madness of the Pentecostal/charismatic world? Here on this board, those who survived the collapse of the church that I chose instead of the Lutheran church include a fellow whose hobbies are collecting child pornography and writing letters to swimsuit models; others who are so confused that they no longer believe Jesus is God; and still others who are so burnt out that they want nothing to do with any church. Meanwhile, my relatives and friends in the Lutheran Church continue on, stable and confident in God's Word. They think Jerry Falwell's style is a little too blustery for their tastes, but they see nothing particularily wrong with saying national calamities might be a sign that the nation has gone too far down the wrong path. They are believing, trusting, humble, repentant, praying, studying the Bible. They aren't too flamboyant, though. My great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents all spent their lives in the Lutheran Church, quietly seeking to live their lives according to God's Word. They couldn't have told you who Servetus was, but the last time I saw my grandmother, she did tell me, in her lilting, north-German accent, "Well, Steven, if you don't see me the next time you come up here [to her farm in North Dakota], it's because I'll be with Jesus." That was 1978 when she was 93 years old, still active keeping house for herself and my bachelor uncle Vernie (Werner). (She also told me, amused at herself, “I never t'ought I would live to be so olt.”) Though I was not aware of it at the time, looking back I think she was probably quite concerned about this brooding, long-haired grandson of hers that had hitch-hiked up from Nebraska to visit. As things happened, I did not see her again after that visit. I moved to Seattle in September of 1978. The next month, “God led me to the Chapel.” In May of 1981, I got a call from my father the morning after the Bible College banquet to tell me my grandmother had died. I am somewhat glad that she probably never knew that I had left the Lutheran Church for a place like the Chapel. My parents were too dismayed and hurt to tell even (maybe especially) their relatives. I did not make it back to the farm until this year, twenty-three years after the previous time. While there, I visited her grave at the small cemetery beside the country church three miles up the highway. Her body is buried beside my grandfather's. She was married to him for 52 years. They bore and raised six children in the farm house he built for her on the North Dakota plains. It is joyfully symbolic to me, pleasing and amusing at the same time, that their graves are marked by a large headstone that says, simply, "Born". They are indeed. But of course she had already told me that that's not really where she is. My grandfather has been gone since 1965, and therefore I don't have many real clear memories of him. I mainly remember him as seeming rather stern and having such a thick German accent that I could barely understand him (his own father had emigrated from Germany as a young man). I do have one rather vivid memory involving him, however. In the summer of 1963, as we always did, we visited their farm in North Dakota to spend about a week. Pope John XXIII had died recently and the magazines at the time were full of speculation about who the next pope would be. Look magazine published big, glossy photographs of each of the dozen or so cardinals who were the leading candidates. My brothers and I were fascinated by these photos for some reason, and spent some amount of time poring over them and (I think) actually placing bets on who would be the next pope. One afternoon we went and got the magazine out of the magazine rack, turned it to the section on the cardinals, and found that every page of it had been ripped out at the spine. I hadn't been aware of it, but my grandfather had been observing our interest with disgust. He did not think it proper that good Lutheran boys should be looking at photographs of Catholic cardinals. Well..., sorry. I don't know what got me off on that. I think I was just nostalgic for the days when being a Christian meant seeking to live one's daily life by the Bible, and there wasn't much disagreement among the Christians I knew on what that meant. Nowadays I find myself trying to explain (to people who were members of the Chapel, even!) why the Bible does indeed show Jesus is God, why collecting child pornography isn't exactly considered Christian, and why our nation and government might indeed deserve some form of chastisement from God. In any case, here's a prayer from the Web site of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod for this time of national calamity. I thought it rather good, myself: Gracious Heavenly Father, You are the God who created the world and everything in it and, as the Scriptures say, "Behold, it was very good!" But sin and Satan spoiled that perfection. The fallen state of mankind is evident as Satan again and again and again rears his ugly and vicious head through the acts and deeds of evil men, wreaking wanton, deliberate destruction, devastation and death. In Your mercy, oh God, look down with favor upon your people. Grant comfort and consolation in the midst of confusion to traumatized individuals and families who have lost their loved ones through this unthinkable and tragic deed. Grant stamina and fortitude to those who respond to this disaster. Grant wisdom and courage to President Bush and our national leaders as they plan appropriate action and response to the perpetrators of this preposterous plot. Enable us, as your people, to continue to place our trust and confidence in you as we endeavor to fulfill our mission to share the great news of forgiveness of sin, life and salvation through the death of Christ on Calvary's cross, sealed by His victorious resurrection. We pray this in the name of Jesus, the Savior of the world and the Lord of the universe. Amen ---------- My viewpoint.... Posted by Marvin on 9/21/2001, 2:07 pm , in reply to “Quick...” Steve, You ask someone to tell you what’s so bad about the Lutheran Church. I’ll give you my take on it. I personally don’t think there’s a lot that’s “bad” about the Lutheran Church, but I would say there’s a lot that just isn’t there. To explain what I want to say, let me quote a famous line that was spoken by Orson Welles while playing the role of Harry Lime in the 1949 movie “The Third Man”: “In Italy under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed... but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did they produce? The cuckoo-clock.” In the Lutheran Churches, they’ve got the spiritual version of Switzerland’s 500 years of brotherly love, democracy and peace—and the spiritual version of all they’ve accomplished in spreading a dynamic, truth-filled liberating Gospel to the ends of the earth. What would we call it, in spiritual terms, that the Lutheran Church has produced? A dove clock? Every hour a dove comes out and goes “Coooo... coooo....” Wouldn’t that be peaceful? At Chapel, yes, maybe we had the spiritual version of Italy under the Borgias, but immense, endless numbers and amounts of things God had in store for man were accomplished there, that have never been heard of in Lutheran churches. Does God want us to take the Switzerland approach to his plan for the salvation of mankind and not accomplish any bad by not accomplishing any good either? I don’t think so. Or just settling down to a quiet, comfortable, wholesome life, but not making any strikes against the forces of darkness? I think not. Being on this fallen world is being in a war. Turbulent, tumultuous things are going to have to happen for God’s will to be accomplished on it. I say it’s not so much a question of what’s so “bad” about the Lutheran church as it is a question of what isn’t going to be accomplished through it. Or at least, I should say, through it, as it is in the state we know it today; that is, if some parts of the Lutheran Church were to change, become dynamic dispensers of the truths and workings of God, maybe that would change my words—although I know that isn’t going to happen with all of the Lutheran Church. What if a guy who was born with no arms asked, “What’s so bad about my arms?” I would have to respond that you can’t truthfully say that there’s really anything “bad” about his arms. You said: “Here on this board, those who survived include a fellow whose hobbies are collecting child pornography and writing letters to swimsuit models; others who are so confused that they no longer believe Jesus is God; and still others who are so burnt out that they want nothing to do with any church. Meanwhile, my relatives and friends in the Lutheran Church continue on, stable and confident....” And I say yes, you about summed up the situation there. If any good is going to be accomplished in this fallen world, it can only be accomplished at the expense of some bad coming from it too. God wants the whackos in this world to get saved, to walk with him and to learn his ways. The worst criminals, the drug addicts, the underworld, the insane, the Wiccans, the Satan worshipers, all of them. He loves them. He wants them with him in eternity. Many of them will be (after getting saved, I mean). But the Lutheran Church, for the most part, can’t bring that to them. (Continued)