I enjoy watching the humorless taking issue with obvious satire. No, I don't mean Norman Teigen. One person raged about the World Headquarters of Ichabod, a hyperbole so obvious that I did not think it needed an explanatory note. Another thorn was the use of "Mrs. Ichabod," surely a major thorn in his anonymous side.
When I began reading news blogs, I noticed the trend of using the blog names for family members. Instapundit referred to his wife as Instawife and his daughter as Instadaughter. BlackFive called his son Little BF. If something makes my friends laugh and my opponents rage, I am going to continue.
Here are some things which edify or enrage, depending on the reader:
- Funny photos of animals.
- Quotations from orthodox Lutheran writers.
- Quotations from false teachers.
- Writing about the past.
- Writing about the present.
- Writing about the future.
Back to the Book of Concord. This is serious but may cause some to smile.
If Lutherans really subscribed to the Book of Concord, they would drive intellectually lazy pastors out of town, pelting them with dog manure, a statement the Synodical Conference (or its twitching corpse) subscribes to:
12] And what need is there of many words? If I were to recount all the profit and fruit which God's Word produces, whence would I get enough paper and time? The devil is called the master of a thousand arts. But what shall we call God's Word, which drives away and brings to naught this master of a thousand arts with all his arts and power? It must indeed be the master of more than a hundred thousand arts. 13] And shall we frivolously despise such power, profit, strength, and fruit-we, especially, who claim to be pastors and preachers? If so, we should not only have nothing given us to eat, but be driven out, being baited with dogs, and pelted with dung, because we not only need all this every day as we need our daily bread, but must also daily use it against the daily and unabated attacks and lurking of the devil, the master of a thousand arts. Introduction to the Large Catechism, Book of Concord
I would love to catch sight of a Doctrinal Pussycat chasing a Church Shrinker out of town, pelting him with dog manure, followed by the entire District Mission board, laity and clergy alike.
Instead, a DP serves both as criminal defense lawyer (for the false teacher) and prosecutor (for the person who dares to question the false teacher). The false teacher is defended, kept in place, or promoted. The person who questions this is pounded like a tent peg into the ground or given the Sisera treatment with tent peg and mallet (Judges 5:24).
The various Lutheran entities are not only unLutheran. They are anti-Lutheran. Those were the gold old days, when a favorite hymn chosen was Methodist. Now the rock band is mandatory for aging Boomers who should know better by now. It's bad enough to watch ancient reptilian bands like Rolling Stone slither onto stage. Now we are supposed to be converted in church by cheap imitations of a bad concept.
Now that I have a digital organist, I enjoy picking the finest Lutheran hymns without regard to the number of sharps or flats, the novelty of the melody, or the popularity of the hymn.
I get to watch the second counter on Mr. Bose, to help me repeat a verse. That has taught me something. Many hymn verses take 30 seconds to sing. A longer hymn verse is 1 minute. Every so often, one hymn will take 1 minute, 30 seconds to sing. If a hymn verse takes all of 1 minute to sing and has 10 verses, the congregation takes 10 minutes to sing the entire hymn in all its eloquence and beauty. More likely, 10 verses will take 5 minutes, which we often waste watching a string of commercials on TV: "I believe in miracles!" featuring sobbing fast-foods.
Nothing reflects our true confession of faith more than the worship service. Missouri and the ELS have made sections of the Book of Concord part of the worship service. WELS tends to make the explanation of the Second Article of the Creed replace the Creed, a novelty I never understood, especially in the light of "everything is adiaphora."
Lutheran hymns--and all great hymns--glorify God and teach the Word of God. If the goal of church music is to entertain, then only that goal will be attained. I observed a Willow Creek service one Sunday. The deadness of the service and the total lack of a Gospel message was most impressive. No cross was seen on the building or in the worship area.
But Willow Creek services cannot be condemned by someone who has never been there, as one Northwestern College professor said, and even if someone has been there. The Synodical Conference Lutherans have to admit that have spent millions of dollars joining the Enthusiasts in disparaging Lutheran doctrine and worship.
Look at the senior ministers of the LCMS, WELS, and ELS. They are the ones who have deliberately ignored--even defended--the growth of false doctrine. Perhaps their conscience is bothering them now, so they are starting to murmur against the Church Shrinkers. Too bad their fellow pastors, whom they shunned as vermin, cannot join them in finally addressing apostasy. You see, when those dissenting pastors were extended the Left Foot of Fellowship, these surviving senior pastors joined the shunners and made their classmates unpersons.
I told my friend, who was fired by one District Pope and called a jerk by another, "If you want a friend in the Lutheran Church, buy a dog."
