Dear ELCA

dear ELCA you have been tricked I'm sorry I don't know a nicer way to say it I've been watching your assembly videos almost all of them now reading the resolutions and the social statements and I can see in them that you mean well that you're driven by a concern and compassion for your neighbor which is good but that in fact is part of the trick now I know I'm an outsider I left or almost twenty or more than twenty years ago and I admit that I haven't been paying much attention to your conversation until a few weeks ago but I've been listening carefully since then and I hope that you will welcome a couple of observations from an outsider first you've been tricked into thinking that uncertainty is humility it's not it is not arrogant to be sure of the things that God has told us there was a bit of hubbub in your convention regarding lines 639 - 641 of a declaration of inter-religious intent the declaration states hence we must be careful about claiming to know God's judgement regarding another religion or the individual human being who practices it God on the other hand says you shall have no other gods and God when he gave Moses the first commandment when he gave Moses the Ten Commandments was talking about other religions God it turns out has a very poor opinion of anything claiming to be God and he calls people worshipping false gods idolaters now the first commandment might be uncomfortable but it is certainly not unclear and to pretend that we don't know what God thinks about the worship of other gods is not humility it is in fact a breathtaking hubris theological uncertainty it seems to me is almost a starting point for your conversations you've seemed to be more interested in what you can't know about God than what you can know about God you can't put God in a box that was almost the conversation stopper it was like the theological assertion that ended all theological debate and I suppose for what it's worth it's true if God doesn't want to be in a box low to the person trying to stuff him in but it must be equally true that if God wants to be in a box woe to the person trying to pry them out of the box but this it seems to me was the entire agenda of your Assembly God has placed himself in boxes for us and first in the in the body of Jesus and in the manger and in the tomb and in the prophetic and apostolic word God has put himself in the scriptures the Holy Spirit has given us assertions so that we know the mind of God the Bible then is God in a box or God in a book and it's no good trying to pry them out and it's and it's not safe to try but with the pry bar of higher criticism wedged against the fulcrum of uncertainty and with all the might of culture you were trying to achieve this humility of uncertainty now I'll admit it's true enough that there are things about God that we cannot know in fact most of the truths about God we cannot attain with our own resources which is why God has spoken to us through the prophets and the apostles and through Jesus himself God has spoken and to act as if God has not spoken as if he has not spoken to us about the worship of other gods or about marriage and men and women or whatever else to act as if God has not spoken is wrong and it's dangerous remember that old Hindu proverb that says there was three blind men in a room with an elephant and one man felt his tail and said it's a vine and the other man felt his leg and said it's a tree trunk and the other man felt his ear and says it's a fan or a banana leaf or something like that it's all fine I suppose that the blind men would have to have and a humility about their own assertions in in light of the valid the other men's observations that is until the elephant opens his mouth and says I'm an elephant and then humility looks much different humility then is saying this is an elephant in the scriptures humility and faith and certainty all go together they're not separated from one another faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seeing Hebrews 11:1 it is a trick to think that uncertainty is humility you've also been tricked into setting love against the commandments at some point in your theological conversation a line was drawn and compassion stood on one side and the commandments on the other charity was on one side and the law on the other love was on one side and truth was set in opposition to it on the other and you have in this way confused God's mercy for his permission you've made Jesus the champion of tolerance instead of the savior of sinners let me give you an example the law of God says that a man not ought not to act like he is married to another man that's simple enough but at some point in the last generation it was determined that this sentiment is unloving in order to be compassionate to the L and the G we have to throw out the commandments regarding marriage and sexuality particularly the commandments that address the L and the G the Scriptures another example say that we are created male and female which is simple enough but sometime in the last five minutes of our cultural conversation it was determined that this binary is oppressive so in order to be compassionate to the T and the Q and the plus I think also we have to throw out the clarity of God regarding male and female and here's the trick this is where the wool gets pulled over our eyes so easily you've been tricked into thinking that these are the only two options it's either love without the law or the law without law now I suppose that if love and the law were opposed to each other we would all want to be found on the side of love but these two are not to be separated from one another Dodd's law is not hate speech God's truth concerning male and female and his Commandments concerning marriage as a man and a woman are not oppressive and they are not stifling they are life-giving in the most fundamental sense the law of God has given to us because the Lord loves us and because he desires the best for us both in showing our sin and in showing us how to live the law of God is a gift that comes from God's love therefore love says st. Paul is the fulfilling of the law and the law gives shape to our love to weaponize love against the commandments of God is to lose them both and I'm afraid that you have been tricked into doing precisely this now if you're still here and you're still tracking with me I want to ask two things of you maybe offer two challenges first I'd like you to consider reading Martin Luther's large catechism I don't know of anything better that addresses these things and it's Lutheran and I really question that divides the church he takes up in there now you can download it for free but look if you want a copy of this thing I'll send you one if you go to Wolfe Muller dot Co slash dear ELCA and you fill out the form there I'll send you a copy of Martin Luther's large catechism for absolutely free my gift to you and to your family and second I want to challenge you to call up your local lc/ms pastor I'll put a link in the description to find the closest one consider this an ecumenical dialog and if you're near Austin Texas give me a call invite the guy out for coffee at McDonald's or whatever free trade coffee place you like to go to and if he's confused about the invitation send him this video and tell him that I sent you ask this guy about the distinction between law and gospel ask him about the scriptures ask him about the love of God about the death of Jesus about the forgiveness of sins and ask him any other theological questions that you've been wrestling with now I'm convinced that certainty and humility go together and I'm convinced that love and the law go together and I'm also convinced that the best way that you can see this in reality is talk to a Lutheran pastor about life and about theology and I hope you'll let me know how it goes I'm praying for all of you God's peace be with you [Music]

Channel: Bryan Wolfmueller

Views: 21,149

Rating: 4.7852883 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: Ohhh75FK57c

Length: 9min 53sec (593 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 03 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/revken86]

Not really much to say about this.

"I haven't paid attention to any of the conversations in the ELCA for the last 20 years, but allow me to pretend I know what I'm talking about."

If you want to talk about false humility, there you go. I find it ironic that most of the people I talk to who have issues with the ELCA haven't taken the time to do their reading and their research. It's not possible for you to understand the process and decisions the ELCA has gone through over the last 20 years when you've been out of the loop for that long, and it doesn't look like you made any effort to engage that process. You won't understand some decisions until you do.

While I understand where you're coming from when you talk about the ways in which God has chosen to be revealed, which provide some certainty for the partial understanding of God we have, I think you err too far in the other direction. "The Bible is God in a box" was the most concerning way you described it. I'll refer back to the first commandment here, "You shall have no other gods." Too often, instead of understanding the Bible, as Martin Luther puts it, the cradle that holds the Word of God (the Christ), Christians instead idolize the Bible AS God, and I worry you're falling too far in that direction. The Bible is not "God in a box", packaged neatly and completely for our consumption. It reveals God to us through the witness of generations, and it is an incomplete witness.

Especially regarding the sexuality debate, if you don't engage the decade-long process that produced the Social Statement "Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust", a decade of intense prayer, discussion, listening, Bible study, writing, and revision, there's no way to understand how the decisions made in that statement (and even then, it's not a statement that says very much) can be understood as faithful interpretations of the Word of God. The Statement itself acknowledges there's no consensus in the ELCA, lays out the various arguments and their justifications, and pretty much leaves it at that. While your position is an acceptable one in the ELCA, I encourage you to at least read that Statement so you understand how your position and other positions are arrived at and considered. (Side note: as is so common, while you mentioned gay, lesbian, and transgender people, and mocked queer people, you didn't even mention bisexual folk like myself--we're the "B" in LGBTQ)

The end of the video was not unexpected, but disappointing nonetheless. It matches my personal experience. It seems almost impossible for the LCMS, when engaging the ELCA, to resist trying to recruit. This angers me more than anything else, and is the reason for the tone of this response.