I enjoyed this. Thank you for reiterating how we need to not become/stay a part of the zeitgeist. I especially appreciate the continued sounding of alarm on CPH publications. I wish I could go back to naively believing that I could trust their products.
We have just seen a congregation lose its bearings because the pastor and other leaders refused to deal with willful, unrepentant and public sin. Those trying to sound the alarm and begging for these sins to be rebuked were told that they were breaking the 8th commandment.
Yes, sadly, it's been about a whole generation since the majority of the synod has practiced church discipline. Part of the reformation of the Lutheran Church will be bringing the congregations and the synod as a whole to recognize that although church discipline is not a mark of the Church, it is not something we can simply dispense with. We have to learn again how to practice it faithfully.
Is there anything lay people can do other than to try to find a more faithful church? The attitude seems to be that those committing such sins are poor weaker brothers who are caught up in sin and should be pitied, not rebuked. Where does this belief come from? It's rather telling that those expressing concern are the only ones being rebuked. This seems to be a trend synod-wide.
It's hard to comment on the particular case you're talking about without being the pastor there. Sometimes people are poor weaker brothers and we have to deal gently with them. But when someone is committing an open sin, the loving thing to do is rebuke them so that they can repent and be forgiven, as our Lord teaches in Matthew 18: "If he repents, you have won your brother." There are sins of weakness that we bear with out of love. There are also times when excommunicating people would cause more harm to the congregation than simply suspending them from Holy Communion. Why this has become the norm in the LCMS is, at the end of the day, simply unfaithfulness and a lack of love for the church as a whole and the sinning brother. Changing it in congregations where church discipline has fallen into disuse is not an overnight process either, and that may be some of what's going on in this congregation. What laymen can do about it is in part just what you're doing--letting the pastor and leadership know that you want them to call unrepentant sinners to repentance. The other thing that can be done is to follow the directions of our Lord in Matthew 18. If you know a member of the congregation is living in adultery or stealing but it's not publicly known, you "go and show him his fault between the two of you," then go to him with one or two others, then tell it to the Church. If a congregation refuses to rebuke unrepentant sinners, and it's not simply a matter of the pastor trying to teach the congregation what God says about church discipline and being patient until the majority of the church gets it--but if they simply say, "We're not willing to do this," it may be that it is time to look for a congregation that wants to hallow God's name. But I caution here that many times it is the case that a pastor wants to see the keys rightly administered in the church, but has to deal with a lot of opposition to it, and he has to use his judgment, guided by the Holy Spirit, about how to lead the congregation to more faithful practice.
After reading your essays on women I thought of asking you to comment on the CTCR's 1985 report on "Women and the Church", and then I reread this essay on sin. I'm thinking the CTCR was bending the knee to the god of Equality from the American Interim, with their "findings" cloaked in pseudo-scholarship.
I have not read "Women and the Church," so can't comment. Overall, though, I don't think most of the giving way to the American Interim we see in the Church--whether in the LCMS or outside--is conscious. It's more that the religious prescriptions of the edict have been with us so long and have not been fought against with the word of God, that people have adopted them as the Word of God. It is usually a matter of ignorance and weakness. That's why those points at which the Interim contradicts the word of God have to be exposed. Then when people see that the Word of God contradicts feminism, for instance, many will repent, although they may resist it at first. Those who do not will come under the Lord's judgment, no matter how much they may be or claim to be "confessional Lutherans" in other points of doctrine.
Many construct for themselves a dead faith ... which exists without repentance and good works; as if true faith and the evil intention to remain and continue in sin, could exist in a single heart at the same time! ... Against this harmful illusion, we should often, with all diligence and seriousness, repeat and impress upon Christians, who have become righteous by faith, these real, immutable, divine threats of punishment. Solid Declaration, Article IV, par. 15, 32.
Read this recently and thought it fit well with what you wrote.
A post par excellence, putting in words many things I have thought, and railed against in conversations with brothers and sisters.
On the matter of minimization of sin, it reminded me of a line in K. Saness (the Latvian writing of the name but I believe the author was american) explanation of the Augsburg Confession, where he said that sin was simply and only (I do not have the book right now but the quote was to this effect) an orientation away from God, which I found very strange when reading it. Perhaps it is a theological justification for this?
Also, I recently had a camp from my Academy where we had a couple of lectures on addiction. Basically, the core of the idea there was that an addiction was a bondage of the will to the substance/habit, where the mind itself was bound to justifying and gaining continuos consumption at the expense of everything else - and to get out of it one basically has to stop trusting their own mind (this is why in AA meetings they start with "I am X and I am an alchoholic", because you have to admit it). And one way, and really, the primary way this happens is that they hit rock bottom (though for some not before death). Therefore the best way to help addicts is to not help them (something that my personal experience has borne out) and let them face the consequences of their habit. That reminded me of something that was impressed upon me during Catechisis is that 'being gay' is best viewed as an addiction to Sodomy (it certainly explains the extremely promiscous nature of the relationship and the fact that most 'homosexuals' are a result of past familial or other such trauma, for which all addictions are coping mechanisms). In that sense by being too forgiving, we are actually really helping them damn their souls because for some getting ostracised may very well be part of hitting that rock bottom. (A course mate of mine also brought up the idea that an overly generous diakonia may be disgenic to the more mundane kinds of addictions also).
Yes, there is a tendency among some to speak as if sin is nothing other than to be "turned in on one's self", and therefore the fact that some people's sins are more grave than others is not very important. But it is very important in the care of souls that you address the truth about a person's specific sins. It is also important dogmatically that we say the same things about God He says about Himself.
Your point about addiction is very well taken. It is absolutely true that people who "make it" in AA are people who accept the devastating reality of their addiction and need divine aid to save them from their malady. I also think it is a problem with our pastoral care or our spiritual perceptiveness that in the church we no longer know how to help free people from the various sins that bind them that we refer to as addiction--drugs and alcohol are one, sex another, gluttony another. A factor in this is that we no longer call them grave sins. But when people go get treatment for these addictions, at least in America, they are always put on a program that is moral/spiritual, though not Christian. That is worthy of more thought.
I mean, especially with drug and alcohol addiction there is a medical side to it that the Church shouldn't try to do. But there is obviously a spiritual and moral component of addiction that maybe an earlier age of Christians who knew how to care for souls would have been able to address better.
I enjoyed this. Thank you for reiterating how we need to not become/stay a part of the zeitgeist. I especially appreciate the continued sounding of alarm on CPH publications. I wish I could go back to naively believing that I could trust their products.
We have just seen a congregation lose its bearings because the pastor and other leaders refused to deal with willful, unrepentant and public sin. Those trying to sound the alarm and begging for these sins to be rebuked were told that they were breaking the 8th commandment.
Yes, sadly, it's been about a whole generation since the majority of the synod has practiced church discipline. Part of the reformation of the Lutheran Church will be bringing the congregations and the synod as a whole to recognize that although church discipline is not a mark of the Church, it is not something we can simply dispense with. We have to learn again how to practice it faithfully.
Is there anything lay people can do other than to try to find a more faithful church? The attitude seems to be that those committing such sins are poor weaker brothers who are caught up in sin and should be pitied, not rebuked. Where does this belief come from? It's rather telling that those expressing concern are the only ones being rebuked. This seems to be a trend synod-wide.
It's hard to comment on the particular case you're talking about without being the pastor there. Sometimes people are poor weaker brothers and we have to deal gently with them. But when someone is committing an open sin, the loving thing to do is rebuke them so that they can repent and be forgiven, as our Lord teaches in Matthew 18: "If he repents, you have won your brother." There are sins of weakness that we bear with out of love. There are also times when excommunicating people would cause more harm to the congregation than simply suspending them from Holy Communion. Why this has become the norm in the LCMS is, at the end of the day, simply unfaithfulness and a lack of love for the church as a whole and the sinning brother. Changing it in congregations where church discipline has fallen into disuse is not an overnight process either, and that may be some of what's going on in this congregation. What laymen can do about it is in part just what you're doing--letting the pastor and leadership know that you want them to call unrepentant sinners to repentance. The other thing that can be done is to follow the directions of our Lord in Matthew 18. If you know a member of the congregation is living in adultery or stealing but it's not publicly known, you "go and show him his fault between the two of you," then go to him with one or two others, then tell it to the Church. If a congregation refuses to rebuke unrepentant sinners, and it's not simply a matter of the pastor trying to teach the congregation what God says about church discipline and being patient until the majority of the church gets it--but if they simply say, "We're not willing to do this," it may be that it is time to look for a congregation that wants to hallow God's name. But I caution here that many times it is the case that a pastor wants to see the keys rightly administered in the church, but has to deal with a lot of opposition to it, and he has to use his judgment, guided by the Holy Spirit, about how to lead the congregation to more faithful practice.
After reading your essays on women I thought of asking you to comment on the CTCR's 1985 report on "Women and the Church", and then I reread this essay on sin. I'm thinking the CTCR was bending the knee to the god of Equality from the American Interim, with their "findings" cloaked in pseudo-scholarship.
I have not read "Women and the Church," so can't comment. Overall, though, I don't think most of the giving way to the American Interim we see in the Church--whether in the LCMS or outside--is conscious. It's more that the religious prescriptions of the edict have been with us so long and have not been fought against with the word of God, that people have adopted them as the Word of God. It is usually a matter of ignorance and weakness. That's why those points at which the Interim contradicts the word of God have to be exposed. Then when people see that the Word of God contradicts feminism, for instance, many will repent, although they may resist it at first. Those who do not will come under the Lord's judgment, no matter how much they may be or claim to be "confessional Lutherans" in other points of doctrine.
Many construct for themselves a dead faith ... which exists without repentance and good works; as if true faith and the evil intention to remain and continue in sin, could exist in a single heart at the same time! ... Against this harmful illusion, we should often, with all diligence and seriousness, repeat and impress upon Christians, who have become righteous by faith, these real, immutable, divine threats of punishment. Solid Declaration, Article IV, par. 15, 32.
Read this recently and thought it fit well with what you wrote.
A post par excellence, putting in words many things I have thought, and railed against in conversations with brothers and sisters.
On the matter of minimization of sin, it reminded me of a line in K. Saness (the Latvian writing of the name but I believe the author was american) explanation of the Augsburg Confession, where he said that sin was simply and only (I do not have the book right now but the quote was to this effect) an orientation away from God, which I found very strange when reading it. Perhaps it is a theological justification for this?
Also, I recently had a camp from my Academy where we had a couple of lectures on addiction. Basically, the core of the idea there was that an addiction was a bondage of the will to the substance/habit, where the mind itself was bound to justifying and gaining continuos consumption at the expense of everything else - and to get out of it one basically has to stop trusting their own mind (this is why in AA meetings they start with "I am X and I am an alchoholic", because you have to admit it). And one way, and really, the primary way this happens is that they hit rock bottom (though for some not before death). Therefore the best way to help addicts is to not help them (something that my personal experience has borne out) and let them face the consequences of their habit. That reminded me of something that was impressed upon me during Catechisis is that 'being gay' is best viewed as an addiction to Sodomy (it certainly explains the extremely promiscous nature of the relationship and the fact that most 'homosexuals' are a result of past familial or other such trauma, for which all addictions are coping mechanisms). In that sense by being too forgiving, we are actually really helping them damn their souls because for some getting ostracised may very well be part of hitting that rock bottom. (A course mate of mine also brought up the idea that an overly generous diakonia may be disgenic to the more mundane kinds of addictions also).
Yes, there is a tendency among some to speak as if sin is nothing other than to be "turned in on one's self", and therefore the fact that some people's sins are more grave than others is not very important. But it is very important in the care of souls that you address the truth about a person's specific sins. It is also important dogmatically that we say the same things about God He says about Himself.
Your point about addiction is very well taken. It is absolutely true that people who "make it" in AA are people who accept the devastating reality of their addiction and need divine aid to save them from their malady. I also think it is a problem with our pastoral care or our spiritual perceptiveness that in the church we no longer know how to help free people from the various sins that bind them that we refer to as addiction--drugs and alcohol are one, sex another, gluttony another. A factor in this is that we no longer call them grave sins. But when people go get treatment for these addictions, at least in America, they are always put on a program that is moral/spiritual, though not Christian. That is worthy of more thought.
I mean, especially with drug and alcohol addiction there is a medical side to it that the Church shouldn't try to do. But there is obviously a spiritual and moral component of addiction that maybe an earlier age of Christians who knew how to care for souls would have been able to address better.