Archive for Faith
One Battle After Another
Understanding the permanency of the internet, I usually I reserve writing a blog post for something with a long-term view, not reacting to every transgressive thing that shows up online. I will draft a post, then walk away, and sometimes when I come back to it, I am glad I didn’t post it. It doesn’t meet the bar of “what will someone in the future get out of this?” and “does it edify the reader?” or “Is the title misleading as to what the message is?” Of course, the other error is to make the perfect the enemy of the good. I really do have to get over myself.
With the infiltration of AI into our lives, I am wondering if I am making a mistake to not post more frequently, if for no other reason than to signal to others that this is a real human being, in this time and place, and not a manipulative chatbot.
A few things sent me along this line of thought. The first was watching the movie, “One Battle After Another”, once it started winning awards. I try to keep my finger on popular culture, and it was free on one of our streaming services, so I watched it. Seeing violence glorified (along with illegal immigration and drug trafficking) really didn’t sit well with me. You would think that we would recoil from violence and crime those who perpetrate it, that there is no justification for it, but as the expression goes, “When ‘it goes without saying, pretty soon it will have to be said” let me explain. When I was a young person in the 60’s and a teenager in the 70’s, there were radical groups who were robbing banks and killing police officers and bombing buildings. The scene in the movie when Perfidia Beverly Hills shoots and kills a security guard crawling across the floor? That type of thing really happened. And worse. And more than once.
The putative model for the fictional radicals in “One Battle After Another”, the Marxist far-left-wing Weather Underground, it fizzled out after 1977. Unlike the movie, no one hunted the radicals down and killed them. In fact, two members, Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayers (son of the CEO of Commonwealth Edison and the beneficiary of an excellent legal defense) had their charges dismissed and went on to academia. Mr. Ayers famously said, “Guilty as hell, free as a bird” after his acquittal. When Barack Obama was running for president, there was some concern raised about his association with them, which didn’t gain any traction. Unlike the radicals, there is no apparent real-life parallel to the weird secret racist cabal in the movie, but I couldn’t say that anything like that never existed.
It left me in a state of deep sorrow.
Then there was an article in The Atlantic called “The People Who Marry Chatbots”, was so dispiriting it created a sense of urgency. I am not going to link it because I am sure it is readily accessible, pushed by an algorithm into gazillions of inboxes and feeds. Hopefully it is well understood now that chatbots are “yes-men” just validating whatever you say or think. A person who really loved you would have the courage to tell you when you are doing something wrong. I am thankful that the church is speaking out on the inhumanity of AI and how it is antithetical to the worth and dignity of the human person. Still, I grieved for the lost and vulnerable who have been sucked into trading real people, created in God’s image, for chatbots.
The final. self-imposed mistake: while waiting for new seasons of my favorite streaming shows to drop, I lost patience, succumbed to boredom and started watching “Industry”, a series which had run three seasons before I discovered it. A little background here – I spent more than a little bit of my career, not in investment banking, but providing outsourced services to clients like the fictional “Pierpont & Company”. During my career, I had pretty lengthy exposure working in white-shoe outfits like that, and as a service provider, how to unobtrusively blend into those environments, where I got a very close look at them. I was also young once, starting out in life and career, making mistakes, both personal and professional.
But the level of inhumanity towards other people portrayed in the movie, the article and TV series was chilling, the intense, reckless self-focus and cruelty was heartbreaking, and even frightening.
I am of a different time, but there were enough built-in structures that taught us about our world -school, media (including the still relatively new medium of television), the church. And of course, adults – who had lived through the events of history and learned their lessons. Young people today don’t seem to have any knowledge or experience of history, and apparently we have done a very bad job of transmitting history, and modeling leadership, humanity, justice and faith.
So, now we have young people who feel like it’s okay to lie and steal and take property that belongs to other people and to kill people who they disagree with. That they have no obligation to anyone other than themselves. To the point where they actually create simulated creatures to have “relationships” with. To the point where people who had nothing to do with any past injustices (like slavery) “owe” other groups reparations out of their “privilege”). As I write this, in Minnesota, dozens of Somalis and Somali immigrants have been convicted of fraud. It is now believed the level of fraud totals nearly $10 billion dollars and goes back to 2018. Immigration and Customs Enforcement swarmed Minneapolis/St. Paul. The scale of the crime is unprecedented and it is not unexpected that illegal immigrants should be dealt with in accordance with the law. Protesters predictably showed up, and a 37-year-old woman, Renee Good, was shot dead by an ICE agent. Her partner was standing in front of the car that Renee was using to block the street, heckling the agents, Renee disregarded orders to get out of the car and started it up. Shots were fired. Make no mistake, no one should lose their life in this way. I don’t believe the tactics used by ICE are all justifiable. But before this happened, law enforcement had become the enemy. Officers have their faces and addresses posted online and receive death threats. Their families are not safe.
Even for the faithful, it is easy to feel helpless and hopeless and wonder “where is God?” when we are surrounded by depravity and doing things that are clearly against His Law and good will for us.
There is sin, and evil in the world. When we let our circumstances – good or bad – define who God is, the Devil, the Prince of Lies, tries to persuade us that we do not need God or cannot trust God and disrupts our faith.
In church, I found solace and courage while I was waiting for my programs and podcasts to resume on KFUO https://www.kfuo.org/ (“Christ for You” broadcasting since 1924). Following the church calendar, for the twelve days of Christmas, programming is devoted to celebrating the birth of our Savior. After Epiphany, “Sharper Iron” started again with exegesis on Genesis. First, an episode on how the first words of Scripture, fit into the rest of the story. Moses is traditionally and historically held to be the scribe of the first five books of the Bible. Then as each daily episode progresses, the pastors help braid together the truths contained in it, starting with who God is. Because inasmuch as people try to treat Genesis as a ‘textbook’ about the process of creation, it is far more revealing about eternal, almighty, ever-present God Our Father, the Word (His Son), and the Holy Spirit.
Hearing God’s Word brought me back to the reality of our world, the reality of the love of God, and confidence to pray as He commands. To rely on His promises, and not on my thoughts or feelings. I may not be able to discern the rule of God, His control over all things, but it is there. To trust Him, to believe in His Son, the Word made Flesh, our Savior, and in the Giver of Life, the Holy Spirit. Listening to the pastors teach on the very first words of scripture brought me back to the reality of creation, and redemption, and the promise of Christ’s return and the eternal Kingdom.
When our pastor preached a sermon on praying for all of our leaders, some parishioners said to him they were not going to pray for leaders they disagreed with. His response: it is even more important to pray for them, because they need God’s guidance. https://www.kfuo.org/2023/01/07/concord-matters-010723-luthers-small-catechism-the-lords-prayer-4th-petition-giving-thanks-even-our-government/
Christ exhorts us to pray for our enemies. Yes, very difficult to do. But – we dare not begrudge others the grace that has been given to us in Christ Jesus. We are all sinners. We would suffer eternal death and condemnation but for the grace of Christ, paying the penalty for our sins on the cross. Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His love for us in this: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”.
God uses our trials to bring us closer to Him. In days of old, He has spoken to us through the prophets, but in these latter days, He has spoken to us through his Son. God sent His Word, His Son into the world to save all people.
After focusing on the Incarnation of our Lord — God becoming flesh — during the 12 days of Christmas, the season of Epiphany emphasizes the manifestation or self-revelation of God in that same flesh of Christ. During the season of Epiphany, we are reminded that about how Christ was revealed to first Gentiles, the Magi. They were astrologers, always watching the sky. They saw a star that didn’t move with the rest of the stars, but was fixed. They marveled at this – who can make this happen? – and learned enough about the promised Messiah from the Jews to go and look for themselves, to see who controlled the stars. They knew enough to know they were going to see a powerful king, and brought tribute and gifts. They came away transformed.
I pray that all will hear the truth about our triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That the reality of the Word of God will touch your lives and draw you to our Savior, our Redeemer, our only hope.
Christian
There is a commercial for Chase apps on television right now, there are two little girls walking around on opposite sides of the street with their mothers, each pair going door to door with a little wagon full of chocolate bars for some fundraiser. At the outset of the commercial, the mothers wave at each other, but the little girls give each other chin thrusts worthy of Joe Pesci in the movie “Goodfellas”. Background music is a song with the refrain, “I’m the champion, champion, I’m number one”. One girl is using the Chase mobile app and it appears this is why she is able to sell her wagon load of faster than the other girl. quickly, who is portrayed held back by neighbors, good customers who do not have the app and are giving her currency. At one point, a man is pulling some cash and change out of his pockets, which falls on his porch. The little girl, with her hand out, rolls her eyes and gives a look of pure loathing and contempt to this man and another, presumably to her mother, that seems to say “can you believe this guy?” Charming. You have come to this man’s home and asked him to buy some of your chocolate for your team, and he is doing just that, and this is how you behave towards him, to his face.
I wonder if anyone else sees this commercial through the same lens, or if there are whole generations of children who have not been brought up to interact with other people, kin or neighbor, friend or stranger, as anything other than a means to an end instead of a human being that God loves. Of course, we can’t expect children to know how to view other human beings unless we teach them, particularly by modeling that behavior for them.
Let me start from the place that we can no longer assume that anyone has sufficient cultural literacy (to say nothing of actual Christian catechesis) to know the very basics about Christianity. We humans are created by God in His image, and since the Fall, God has been reaching out to His people, to bring His people and all of His creation to back to Himself. He spoke to His people through the prophets, but in these latter days He has spoken to us through His Son, Jesus Christ. All who believe in the gospel will be God’ children and have eternal life. The Nicene Creed is at the bottom of this post.
As we confess in the creeds, we are all sinners, all have fallen short of the glory of God. We sin against God in thought, word and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We cannot free ourselves from our sinful condition, and that is why God sent His only Son, Jesus Christ to take our punishment, to die for the sins of the world, and rise from the dead on the third day. In baptism we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and become part of the body of Christ. God the Son, and all who believe in Him have forgiveness of their sins and eternal life, now and in His eternal kingdom. Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead, to bring all things back to Himself, and His Kingdom will have no end.
My parents met in their sophomore year of college in the 50’s, and married at ages 24 and 25 after a long courtship that lasted through college and my father’s required military service. My mom taught Sunday school, my father was a deacon and elder in the church, and to people who knew him best, he carried his faith with him into every aspect of life, although it was not always evident. Although he could gin up ribald jokes, and some of his phrases by today’s lights qualify as politically incorrect speech, Dad truly desired to serve the Lord. He took risks for, and stood up for (again, 21st century term) marginalized people. Not in a way that was for virtue signaling, but because it was right. And he didn’t draw attention to himself. If he saw a good professional, he would hire them no matter race, color or creed. If a Chicago-based congregation needed worship space and our sanctuary was available after our services, they could use it. He was sensitive to welcoming people, treating them like anyone else. These fellow Christians using our facilities happened to be all Black, but they were Christians first and foremost. In the early 1970’s, the civil rights movement still very active, and Dad was very attuned to the realities of modern life, especially the political and social realities and the racially charged atmosphere of Chicago and its suburbs. But Dad walked the talk: Christ is the Lord of all. And the church is not a political organization.
Over my life I have come to realize how well the under shepherds in the church of my childhood worked to form the people of God. When I was in my early 30’s, I joined the Lutheran church, and due to my baptism and formation in another mainline liturgical Protestant denomination, it was not a difficult transition spiritually. I was not aware there was a schism in the Lutheran Church that led to a split into two bodies. One day, around 1993 I think, someone casually mentioned that the body I was now a part of, the Missouri Synod, did not ordain women. Wait, what?
As a child growing up, I had seen maybe one or two female pastors. I only dimly remember it because they did a workmanlike job of leading worship and it didn’t cross my mind that it was remarkable. We were focused on the Scriptures – in that venerable that mainline denomination, in those days, from the time a child could competently read, about 3rd or 4th grade, they were presented with their own Bible. The importance of the Word of God was continuously reinforced at home, in church, in our lives. “The Kingdom of God is coming, indeed without our prayer, but we pray to be a part of it.” The characteristics of who is preaching the Word cannot overtake the Word.
Fast forward to today. That church that I grew up in was closed and the last service was held in 2024. The building that our congregation completed in 1971, after worshiping for a long time in the local middle school, was torn down shortly afterwards. Even though my folks had attended a different church in another town since the 1980’s until their deaths, and I had been a Missouri Synod Lutheran for decades, seeing that building demolished was still like a death, but a death that happened some years prior, and now the empty body, long devoid of its spirit, was also gone.
After Dad’s death in 2012, I went to a service at that old church. It was good to see a few familiar faces from very long ago, but it was disturbing to hear these same people being led in a service of what sounded like affirmations – “Lord, help us to become the people we want to be” – not the Word of God, not the Law, not the Gospel. I was confused from the start, maybe in denial – looking at the bulletin. It looked like it had the vague outlines of a liturgy, but that was it. The woman leading the service, I thought, she must be an interim or lay leader? Didn’t I hear there were interim clergy filling in at the local churches? Maybe this was an aberration.
There was a lot of talk about the food pantry, the clothing ministry, all of the good things they were doing for the community, but no mention of the Lord we serve. This is not the church. This is like Rotary, or Habitat for Humanity. The church performs charitable works in the name of our risen Lord and Savior. Without Him, “all of our righteous acts are like filthy rags, we wither like a leaf, we are carried away by our iniquities”. We have violated the First Commandment and made gods of ourselves.
Some time later, I went back to that church to an Advent service, thinking maybe that earlier visit was a fluke. There was no mention of the long-awaited Savior, or our need for one. Instead, the same woman talked about Mary and “the Patriarchy”. I waited. Jesus’ name came up in the hymns, but it seemed incidental. It was then that I realized, the church of my youth was absolutely gone. I was in a strange place.
I took some time to research what happened and learned that apparently this body had also split into two entities, and my old church had become of the type that religion writer Terry Mattingly might call “NPR at Prayer”, back in the 1980s when my parents decamped. This former church had become a place where , as H. Roland Neibuhr wrote, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.”
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/955337.The_Kingdom_of_God_in_America
I started this post with my sorrow and dismay over a commercial where little girls appear to be completely focused in on themselves, to the exclusion of others, and their mothers don’t seem to know they should be doing anything to countermand it. I mourn that our culture reinforces the ideas that only ‘champions’ are of value; that there are churches claiming to be Christian who preach that one can be saved by their own works – did Christ die for nothing? That it doesn’t matter what you actually do, or if it is a sin, or why (because you can justify yourself), what matters is that some people think you righteous by some current standard, and that you post about it, and you will live forever. See: First Commandment.
Decades ago I crossed over a then-short theological bridge from the church of my youth, to the safe harbor of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and I didn’t realize that bridge fell down, and the body behind it sunk into oblivion.
That building is gone, along with the false teaching that occurred when the body lost its way. But – the Gospel is still being proclaimed, in all of its truth and power, in other places. But – the Word of God is eternal. The Lord does not desire the destruction of the lost and the wicked. Faith is the work of God the Holy Spirit.
Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. (Isaiah 55:6-7)
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10-11).
THE NICENE CREED
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is,
seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven,
was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.
Amen.
Purls Before Swine 