Wordsworth Was Correct - Little We See in Nature That Is Ours. Creation Shows the Efficacy of the Word. Apostasy Dominates Today in Lutherdom

Butterfly, by Norma Boeckler.
We spray for flying insects and wonder where the butterflies went.
We plant acres of flower-free lawns
and expect them to feed on Scott's chemicals.

The World Is Too Much With Us

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BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

The world is too much with us; late and soon, 

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— 

Little we see in Nature that is ours; 

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! 

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; 

The winds that will be howling at all hours, 

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; 

For this, for everything, we are out of tune; 

It moves us not.

The second part of the poem may be seen as blasphemous or prophetic, since it describes our current situation. We have so many Hollywood priests and priestesses of pagan religion, guiding us in the way of their enlightenment, suckled as they are in creeds outworn.

                                 Great God! I’d rather be 

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; 

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; 

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

The Lutheran Reformation continued with great strength into the next century and then began to sputter into philosophical arguments with the Calvinists, supported by grand Latin terms but little Biblical understanding. 

When the era of Pietism began with Spener, the seminary students and laity were in a state of famine, so little did they know about the Bible itself. They packed the lecture halls and created cell groups to study the Bible as it is.

Where is our society today? Lutherdom has repeated the errors of Orthodoxism, that period of rationalistic top-doggery where everyone debated trivia in grand, obscure terms they invented from their university educations. After Gerhard, who worked with Chemnitz, are there more than a few old theologians even worth mentioning? They became rationalistic and Pietistic, as if the Reformation never happened.

And now - where are the great oaks of a few decades ago? They have been replaced with willows swaying in the wind. They are clouds without rain, offering nothing but their self-puffery. For example, the Preus brothers - Jack and Robert - for all their faults, went against the leadership of the time and put some permanent potholes in the rush to join mainline apostasy. Jack restored the old tradition of a church leader being a scholar, taking his synod back to Chemnitz, a theologian universally ignored at the time. Robert managed a pretty good seminary and continued to fight battles that were already lost in the LCMS (women usurping authority and teaching men) and anticipated the flight to Rome in Justification and Rome.

The LCMS has gone from translating Chemnitz and writing his biography (Jack Preus) to working with ELCA and playing the banjo. 

Where are the replacements for Jack and Robert? The new potential leaders have been snubbed, silenced, sent to the boonies, and otherwise squashed like bugs. One advances in the various sects by going along with the boys and girls in power. Erase evidence needed in a clergy crime? No problem! Forget something ever happened? The proper response is - "Forget what?" Go to Fuller Seminary? "Sign me up!" Sell bad hymnals and worse Bibles - "There's money to be made here."

A detail of a peacock feather shows what the Creator can do.

Little We See in Nature That Is Ours

The remedy is realizing the complexity of Creation and how that collection of infinite dependencies comes from the Word of God.

Darwin's Black Box explains how our science has looked into the extraordinary mechanical and chemical complexity of microscopic life. Brett Meyer was struck by the ability of a fungus to trap a nematode with a spring trap, a pivotal photograph that moved a gardening expert to abandon his fertilizer and toxin remedies for Teaming with Microbes.

Tachinid Fly - smaller than a housefly -
welcomed in the garden by discerning Creationists.

Dealing with Creation itself shows us how these miracles of design, engineering, and management are all around us. Today I was writing about Tachinid flies in the garden - beneficial and easy to spot - they look like small houseflies, but houseflies are not found in the garden. Later, in moving a Butterfly Bush I spotted a Tachinid fly on the Bee Balm. 

"Thank you little fellow. I do not know how you found my yard or decided to work for me, but I am glad the Bee Balm was a welcome sign for you."

The Tachinid fly will lay eggs on or in - shudder - a pest. The babies hatch and eat their way to maturity, killing the host pest. The double bonus is another generation of Tachinids and far fewer insect pests. But how do we keep the adults happy and well fed? - with pollen and nectar.

"Call security!"
The Flower Fly or Hoverfly is a syrphid fly,
patrolling against pests.

Wiki on Hoverflies:
Aphids alone cause tens of millions of dollars of damage to crops worldwide every year; because of this, aphid-eatinghoverflies are being recognized as important natural enemies of pests, and potential agents for use in biological control. Some adult syrphid flies are important pollinators.

Wiki on Tachinid food:

Adult flies feed on flowers and nectar from aphids and scale insects. As many species typically feed on pollen, they can be important pollinators of some plants, especially at higher elevations in mountains where bees are relatively few.

A constant supply of pollen and nectar comes from a wide variety of plants, most of which are overlooked as not important, beautiful, or useful. Clover, buckwheat, and tiny weeds in the grass are sources of pollen throughout the summer. The plants need pollinators, and God provides many kinds of creatures to do that work.

Denial of the efficacy of the Word is
not different from rejection of Creation.

Likewise, at the bird feeders, the birds eat according to their preferences. Doves will eat from the platform feeder, as the cardinals do, but both are happy to eat from the ground while others scatter perfectly good seed downward for them to enjoy. The tiny birds need to work a sunflower seed over with their beaks to open it up, so they will eat the tiny seeds in the finch feeder most of the time, avoiding the bullying squirrel.

Starlings want the suet and eat it up fast, but the woodpecker family will also eat suet when given a chance. On the ground, Starlings and Grackles will drive beaks into the soil for grubs. Everyone says, "I hate Japanese beetles (June bugs) and Starlings." Pick one or t'other. Starlings eat Japanese beetle grubs, so the Starling fans - like me - see few June bugs. I never got anywhere in the past against the Japanese beetles, whether using Sevin pesticide, My Beetle-Sin hormone traps, or milky spore disease. The birds simply ask for some food, mostly natural, some baths and spas, and shelter for their homes. Their orders come From Above, programmed by the Creating Word and managed by the Holy Spirit.

"Forget Abraham," the faux-Lutherans say.
"The entire world is declared forgiven without faith."

Creation and the Word of God

Creation is one piece of cloth. All the threads are connected, one way or another. Our country is in decline because we began a wholesale abandonment of the Word in the 1930s, with the foundations laid in the 19th Century, when the intellectuals favored Evolution and made fun of Creation.

Lutherans never tire of claiming the Reformation while working against everything taught in the Scriptures, Luther, the Book of Concord, Chemnitz, and Gerhard. The 500th Anniversary of the Reformation promises to be a gaudy spectacle of buffoonery.

We are bigger than the Kentucky Derby.
Come hear us experts on thoroughbred racing.

The WELS-ELS Luther Days fake conference is prelude and foreshadowing of what official Lutherdom will do next year.

Picture a herd of jackasses braying about how they are thoroughbred race horses, so trusted that they will host a convention for thoroughbred racehorses. So they invite the laziest, most obstinate jackasses they know to lead this conference on racing.  And they will call it

The Triple Crown Racing Event of the Century - Biggest Ever!

We have appointed ourselves experts in the finest
racing traditions and ceremonies. That is why we banish
anyone who disagrees with our scholarship, our bloodlines, our leadership.

This Foolishness
shows a lack of connection with the Word of God and alienation from Creation. How can the glorious LCMS, WELS, and ELS maintain such warm relations with ELCA, where the norms of Creation are not only rejected but repudiated in the most obnoxious ways possible.

Like all Enthusiasts, ELCA and their bedmates of the Synodical Conference reject the efficacy of the Word but not the efficacy of their own words. We never stop hearing from them, how they will cure Lutherdom, fix Lutherdom, and make Lutherdom grow again by making it real, relational, and relevant for the first time ever.

Coming from drunks, Sodomites, and degenerates, their tawdry message to join the party should be given the attention it deserves.