Posted by SB on 4/13/2002, 2:07 pm

I never was Lutheran, but my idea of it is that it’s a denominational church whose people, for the most part, are good, wholesome-minded people, not so prone to getting into trouble in life. And that, for the most part, is a good thing. But the kind of folks I mentioned in the paragraph above just aren’t interested in the Lutheran Church. And, for the most part, it never will be able to reach them. But God wants those people to be reached. At Chapel, we had an overabundance of them. (I can say that, because I’m one myself). What happens when the people in the whacko category I described (which should also include many other mental, physical, emotional and ideological problems) get saved, walk with God for a while, but then backslide? Usually what happens is they go back to being the whackos they were before, or something similar. What happens when Lutherans who grew up good and wholesome, but not born-again, get saved and Spirt-filled, walk with God for a while, but then backslide after a while? What do they go back to? Usually to being the good and wholesome, non-born-again Lutherans they were before (not much for newspapers to fill their articles with). If you have one church that has one of the above groups of people and another that has the other, and an attack from Satan hits the working of God in both of them, which one is going to be in the newspapers and which one isn’t? But does that make it God’s will for the one that isn’t to fail to accomplish God’s instructions on earth? You mention three cases of people and you blame the Chapel for all three of them: 1. One whose hobbies are collecting child pornography and writing letters to swimsuit models. 2. Others who are so confused that they no longer believe Jesus is God. 3. Others who are so burnt out that they want nothing to do with any church. In spite of what I said about people in the Lutheran Church generally not being the kind of people headed for big trouble in life, the fact also remains that there are many people—many, MANY people—who once attended Lutheran churches, but left it and now fit into all three of the categories you described, and much else as well. Why don’t I hear you blaming the Lutheran Church for them the way you blame the Chapel for the few who were there? Many more came out of Lutheran churches. You’re angry, Steve. You’re trying to make points out of things that aren’t there. My answer to your riddle is that people who have no passions are fortunate in that their negative side usually doesn’t provoke disastrous consequences in life, but they are less fortunate in that their ability to enjoy life—and even HAVE life in the true sense it was meant—is greatly reduced, if not eliminated. And they can’t understand what could be so great about something they don’t have and have never experienced, so they criticize the others who do. On the other hand, people who have strong passions can have life and love and all kinds of enjoyments the passionless people don’t have; their great passions also lead them to accomplish many great things that would not be accomplished otherwise. God gave the human race passions that he meant for us to use in our relationship with him. He also knew that in a fallen world, they would accomplish much bad, but he put them there and left them there anyway. It was man who began to establish societies that try to weed passions out of people (and succeed); it wasn’t God who took from man this thing he had originally put in him. It’s a question of lots of good and lots of bad versus a little bit of good and a little bit of bad, or even no good and no bad. Which is better and which is worse to have? I’ll tell you that God’s will is for the most good to happen—in spite of the inevitable consequences that option is going to bring, due to the evil one being the god of this fallen age. ---------- Posted by Steve B. on 9/21/2001, 10:08 pm , in reply to “My viewpoint....” Marvin, Here are the comments I have on this posting. You write “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.” Like what? Connections? People wailing with sounds they claimed were the same as the tongues in the Bible? Prophecies telling us to obey Don? You’ve got me there. I can’t come up with anything in the Lutheran church comparable to those things. But you do remind me of some of the reasons I left the Lutheran church, because you recite the claims that I bought hook, line and sinker as a 23-year-old, unknowledgeable of the specious nature of Pentecostal claims. As I remember more clearly now because of your posting, the Chapel was quite skilled at making one feel guilty for being stable. As in your posting, the stable and the mature were pictured as being in fact dead and “stuck at salvation.” In contrast to the New Testament’s teaching, which held up the mature and stable as good examples, the Chapel’s over-heated rhetoric made maturity and stability almost seem like liabilities. As a result, no one ever became very mature or very stable. We shouldn’t have been surprised that we were done in by a trap that could have only been successful against the spiritually immature and the emotionally unstable. You also write “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.” You’re kidding, right? It has been a common observation (by many besides myself) that people who were saved before they came to the Chapel survived its collapse better than those who were saved at the Chapel. The Lutheran Church gave its members a foundation that accomplished the protection of their salvation in spite of twenty years or more subsequent conditioning by the Chapel. Most of the Lutherans I can think of at the Chapel—myself and my wife among them—came through relatively unscathed while those who knew only the Chapel as their source of Christian teaching went down with the Chapel. You also write “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?” Now it’s peace that is somehow bad? What is wrong with peace? Isn’t that one of the fruits of the Spirit? You also write “You’re angry, Steve. You’re trying to make points out of things that aren’t there.” You’re the one that compared the Chapel to Italy under the Borgias, and now you’re saying I’m trying to make points out of things that “aren’t there”? Explain, please. It sounds to me like you think the Borgias (the Chapel’s sordid underbelly) “weren’t there,” but yet the comparison was yours to begin with. You then write “...people who have no passions are fortunate in that their negative side usually doesn’t provoke disastrous consequences in life, but they are less fortunate in that their ability to enjoy life—and even HAVE life in the true sense it was meant—is greatly reduced, if not eliminated. And they can’t understand what could be so great about something they don’t have and have never experienced, so they criticize the others who do.” First I’m angry, then in the next paragraph I (or my kind, or the kind I defend) have no passions? Your case is not consistent. You’re just digging yourself in deeper and deeper. But besides that, what makes you think you don’t have cause and effect mixed up? That is, you seem to think that “passionless” people (by whom you seem to mean the mature and stable) just naturally end up in the Lutheran Church (or other traditional denominations), and that “passionate” people (by whom you seem to mean the immature and unstable) just naturally end up in places like the Chapel. But after having been a member of both kinds of places, and having observed closely the kind of people in both places, I think the situation is much more likely the other way around. I am saying that I think that the Lutheran Church helps to make the Christians in it more stable, and that the Pentecostal/charismatic churches help to make people more unstable. You also write “You mention three cases of people and you blame the Chapel for all three of them” No. You misrepresent me again. All I did was observe that they did in fact come out of the Chapel, and I add now that in each case they still claim the Chapel as a positive formative influence upon them. You also write “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)