Someone congratulated me for dealing with ELCA instead of the Chicaneries in WELS. They belong to the same tribe. ELCA is just a few months ahead of the Church and Change agenda. Those who get on the Pietism-Enthusiasm-CGM bandwagon are most likely to stop at Atheist Alley for a long stay.
ELCA was born in Pietism, fermented with political activism, and calcified with the quota system. Only radicals can have a say in ELCA today.
Wedge issues work well in dividing and destroying churches. First there is a little tolerance requested humbly, as Augustine noted. Next, the wedge issue asks for an equal say, as a matter of justice. Once established, the wedge issue assumes total dominance as the only possible answer to the situation. Any other position is ridiculed. Any person representing the traditional viewpoint is pilloried.
No matter how absurd and anti-Biblical the wedge issue, it will divide families, friendships, congregations, and synods. Bureaucrats dodge topics that may divide, so the wedge issue always wins.
5 comments:
What a fitting end for fraudulent teachers of the Word.
The primary wedge issue in the false gospel of Universal Objective Justification. It is a New Age doctrine that has been driven into the Lutheran Synods, hearts and minds. Most do not seem to mind the cold blade on their shoulders. By the grace of God some do.
The continued dabling in the New Age, Emergent church, doctrines by the Church and Change folks continues to feed the problem. Compare the UOJ doctrine taught in the best selling New Age book The Shack with the WELS UOJ doctrine. They are exactly the same. Here are the C&C quotes on this issue:
"Thanks for the hint. I heard _____(Leonard Sweet) speak at an "emerging church" conference
this year and he didn't disappoint. Great choice!"
Michael Borgwardt
"Full disclosure - this is Joel Kluender speaking - not Jennifer, my wife. I've been following the thread on Leonard Sweet and his being invited by some WELS congregations to the Church and Change conference. I have taken a look at his book online and I must saythat what I have found is extremely disturbing.
****Here is a direct quote from his book Quantum Spirituality.
"What tradition supposes Wesley to have discovered at Aldersgate is
that Logos is an energy-releasing event. Energy flows are absolutely
indispensable to the emergence of life, whether biological or
spiritual.ý Just as farmers are said to provide only 5 percent of the energy necessary to produce crops--the energy of nature provides the other 95 percent--so general reason or logos provides only the energy of receptivity in the divine-human encounter that leads to Logos . God provides the rest by other means." (p. 68)
***And here is another quote:
"But the energy of divine love was assembled in matter in
the human form of the Logos-Christ. Jesus is God's most sublime
manifestation of energy matter" (p.64) And here is my (Joel's) response:
THESE ARE NOT JUST THE INERT, BENIGN MUSINGS ABOUT GOD BY A
PHILOSOPHER FASCINATED WITH PHYSICS. THESE ARE FALSE DOCTRINE!
IN THESE QUOTES SWEET HAS TAKEN THE CLEAR AND CONCRETE TEACHING OF
THE INCARNATE CHRIST, AND COUCHED IT IN NEW-AGE THEOLOGY
MASQUERADING AS "NEW LIGHT".
TO TEACH THAT WE HAV ANY PART IN OUR CONVERSION GOES AGAINST THE
CLEAR TEACHING OF SCRIPTURE. THAT IS WHAT THE FIRST QUOTE DOES -
SUGGESTING THAT OUR logos OR REASON PROVIDES 5% AND THE OTHER 95% COMES FROM GOD. BLASPHEMY!
THE SECOND QUOTE THAT JESUS IS "GOD'S MOST SUBLIME MANIFESTATION OF ENERGY MATTER" IS TANTAMOUNT TO DENYING THE ETERNAL DIVINITY OF CHRIST. JESUS IS NOT A "MANIFESTATION" OF GOD. JESUS IS GOD.
IN SUMMARY, IF A SPEAKER WHO ESPOUSES THESE VIEWS IS BEING WELCOMED INTO WELS CIRCLES, THERE IS A MAJOR PROBLEM IN THE WELS.
FOR THE RECORD, I AM AN ELECTRICAL ENGINEER, WITH A MASTERS DEGREE
IN MICROELECTRONICS, AND I HAVE TAKEN GRADUATE COURSES IN QUANTUM
PHYSICS. WHAT THIS GUY IS TEACHING IS NOT QUANTUM PHYSICS, IT IS
BIBLICAL HERESY. ROMANS 6:23 AND JOHN 3:16 SAY MORE OF WORTH TO US AS CHRISTIANS THAN ALL OF THE QUANTUM PSYCHO-BABBLE IN THE WORLD. WE IN WELS SHOULD
WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH IT."
Joel Kluender
"No matter how absurd and anti-Biblical the wedge issue, it will divide families, friendships, congregations, and synods. Bureaucrats dodge topics that may divide, so the wedge issue always wins."
And, yet, these spineless jellyfish have the gall to tell me how to think and act after caving in on issue after issue.
In response to Brett Meyer,
Informative comment, thanks so much for the information on New Age and its false teaching. Leonard Sweet!! Can the WELS stop embarrassing themselves?
So John Buchholz was your pastor*&^@! The contempory father of UOJ! During the 2005 convention, nobody stopped him. Remember the 2006 five part article on UOJ? Where was the out-cry? For all you sports fans, here is a quote from the March 2006 article from FIC:
"Faith does not make our salvation. That alredy exists because of Jesus. This is easily illistrated by the following example. A spots fan may say, "I believe that my team will win today." The person's belief doesn't cause the team to win. What about when the team wins, and another fan refuses to believe it? That fan's erroneous belief doesn't change the reality of what happened. Whether you believe it or not the victory is a fact."
I Know how Pastor GJ "likes" analogies, so I thought this worth typing. I appreciate Brett's devotion to the true doctrine. Pastor Jackson couldn't do the blog without you.(well now he could, but it wouldn't be the same) And to think, your family was asked to leave you. Now that is worth a letter to FIC.
In Christ,
from WELS church lady
The pin you have pictured is used to pin together steel framed concrete wall forms. The pin is pushed through a slot in one from and into the adjacent forms slot. Another pin is then inserted into the pin's rectangular slot; a nail (perhaps an 8d duplex) is then inserted into the round hole to secure the second pin, tacking it into the plywood face of the concrete form.
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