Narrow-minded Lutheran has left a new comment on your post "Commit Whatever Grieves Thee":
Gerhardt hymns are beautiful, especially considering the rough life he had. He would not have been considered a success with today's "prosperity gospel." As I recall, he lost most of his children. He also fought the Prussian Union during a time of great unrest. This is also from memory, but I believe he wrote "Why Should Cross and Trial Grieve Me" after burying one of his children (TLH #523).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Gerhardt
http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Gerhardt.htm
http://www.stempublishing.com/hymns/biographies/gerhardt.html
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GJ - Kierkegaard has a good essay on this, which is too long to recapitulate here. Narrow thinks it is odd that a man with so many difficulties could write such eloquent and thankful hymns. Those who live in ease and comfort, with no illness to plague them or their families, seldom bear much spiritual fruit.
Gerhardt lost all his children except one, and his wife also died. The DPs of his day treated him like dirt. The Olde Syn Conference today is united in its embrace of false doctrine, but they give lip service to Paul Gerhardt. The same thugs of today would have led the mob driving Gerhardt away, as they do today with a different set of victims.
If the pastors of the Olde Syn Conference want to be president of a seminary, they should:
- Plagiarize another man's work and deceive people about it.
- Found a Fuller-clone movement, lead people astray, and attend Gordon Conwell Seminary for a drive-by DMin.
- Attend Fuller and lie about it, promote the Church Growth Movement at every possible opportunity and pretend to study it for the first time, under duress.
- Pretend to oppose false doctrine while kissing up to false teachers, finally landing a sinecure at the Little Schoolhouse on the Prairie, using that position to drive out faithful Lutherans.
