Caleb on WELS:
Here they can beat the hell out of two Christian people who
in faith bring up a theological issue and use them as an object lesson for
others to view who might want to think for themselves and question doctrine and
practice. Yet they will not adjudicate or refract Mark Jeske’s apostacy thru
the reverse side of that theologically pharisaical prism and drag him through
the same scrutiny as Joe and Lisa.
So at the end of Mark Jeske’s life, I was musing to myself,
when he has to meet his maker and is convicted of his abject and arbitrary
apostasy; by his own theology he can say “Hey Lord” you know already I was
forgiven for the sins I was convicted before I was born, and you being all
knowing and all; --surely new “I was just kidding.”
Hey everybody gets a pass, and besides you just were not
around during my lifetime and because of my aura, I just had to take the big
“G” on and have it monogramed on my sweatshirt. People just kept throwing
theological spit balls at me like “efficacy of the Word of God” ; they just did
not know what they were talking about. They were all leaving the church but I
came to their rescue; not any efficacy of the Word, but “me” and my peeps and
Thrivent and Church and Change and popcorn and pop singers in short skirts. So
what if we became sinners to get sinners in our temple of sin, we packed them in
didn’t we? Hey!! ask the Holy Spirit if He didn’t know me;---Hey !!!! keep
those flames off me!!!! Hey isn”t that Schliermacher, Bultman, Heideigger and
Barth, what in tarnation are they doing here?
All we had was the Bible which we (along with my buddies
Schaller, Koehler, and Pieper) could twist and bend like a Philadelphia Lawyer.
Thank God we tossed the confessions aside as they were so tedious and
obstructive—got in the way really as my head hurt every time some layman spouted
them out or some other relic of a pastor had this permanent wedgy in his shorts
and made us read them;--yuk gag me with a spoon.
The Wawautosian way was much better than what the paper popes
threw at us in seminary—albeit they didn’t bother us too much with that stuff.
It was so much easier this way; speaking to the “corporate Christian
population” every Sunday spewing slogans like a totem pole at a liquor store
selling cheap liquor with its soporific potions on of how to deal with life’;s
little coughs and calamities from week to week.
Yes kind of like Time of Grace (Wrath) which was the only
elixir that soothed the down trodden’s soul from week to week. Yet I didn’t
let things like visitations, administering the means of grace; such as
individual confession and absolution, slow me down as we had to many fish to
fry in communicating to the masses. Oh wait a minute; confession and
absolution was instructive if I needed to get something on somebody; then I
would make an exception.
It was the “Efficacy of Mark Jeske’s elixir which funneled
true Christianity to the visible church every week, now this was a Ponzi scheme
that actually worked. There was always an unlimited supply of people whose
brains you can twist like a pretzel. In other words, we didn’t worry about who
went out the back door because there is always a reservoir of people you could
entice through the front door. It was easy, all you had to do when people left
thru the back door is lower the tolerance level of sin to get them running thru
the front door. Hey I wonder if those slot machines were installed in the
Narthex of the church before I left!!!! Darn it all I bet Pastor Heubner got
them at Grace. Oh so much work to do and so little time on this earth to do
it. Lord just did not have enough time
Front door evangelism was always the best. You could always
speak in positive and glittering generalities and you really did not have to get
real deep in biblical scholarship in preaching and teaching as long as you hung
on to the “culture”s apron strings. You didn’t have to bother with the folks
going out the back door as they were a waste of time anyway; all that visiting,
having to pull out that dusty old bible and try to administer the law and the Gospel to one individual
sinner---yuk not cost effective at all. Too much time spent when there were
other opportunities (souls) to save.
We did all this effectively and efficiently. I even
administered business concepts like goals and objectives to achieve the greater
goal in God’s (my) Kingdom. We even had it down to a “unit cost analysis”
determining how much it cost to get a soul in the barn so if our unit cost went
up we could always smooze the people at thrivent;--in a Christian sense of
course, and they would always pony up with some manna. I even got on the board
of control;---talk about real efficacy. What really started to piss me off
however is when someone suggested to implement those concepts to evaluate me
personally. Of course I would have not of that. After all Jesus was beyond
scrutiny.
And then there were all the criticisms from the so-called
orthodox side of the Church. This is where St. Machiavelli was most instructive. It was
so easy to keep the sheep in line with just a modicum of theological thuggery,
extortion, back biting and slander; all in the name of the Lord of course. You
see we have socialized the people in the WELS with regard to the law—10
commandments if you will , that they must actually accept a second set of books,
one for the Priesthood; and one for the membership. Kind of puts the scrutiny
on them and off us;-so to speak—tee hee just a little priestly humor Forgive my
impertinence.
Your eminence after all these wonderful works I have
performed in my life as your vicar on earth how can you judge me as nothing
other than one of your saints. All the downtrodden we reached, drug addicts,
pimps, whores homosexuals, divorced, weak in spirit, (ex Lutheran ministers);
all those classes of unbelievers who would not have come to their Lord except
thru me and my peeps. All were told they were forgiven before they were born
so whatever they are, or did (or will do in the future?) is past, just make a
decision to come to Christ and all is forgiven. Now once you accept this we
will go to the sanctification side of the coin (church work, giving money ect)
and you will be on your way. Your eminence, what could be better than that?
My Gosh this is better than the Roman Church could have concocted.—Hey what are
all these popes doing here anyway?
Hey !!!, where are Joe and Lisa, why aren’t they down here.
Hey!!! open the door its getting hot down here.
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Baazboy wrote: Caleb, Welcome to the WELS. Now, leave an offering so we can get matching Thrivent funds.
