I had the misfortune of stepping on broken glass in the kitchen. The big chunk came out, but glass tends to sliver and fragments do not show up on an x-ray. The podiatrist explained that to me as he prepared to dig for glass and take it out. To operate, all he had to do was spray something on the bottom of my foot to make it numb. In a few seconds he was able to dig around, clean the wound, and find some fragments.
I had to come back, too.
The Lutheran Left works the same way. They numb people up first, then operate to remove the Gospel. Give them the credit they deserve - they have succeeded, decade after decade.
When Paul Kuske, Floyd Stolzenburg, and Roger Zehms started Pilgrim Community Church, some people were a bit shocked. Naturally, Kuske denounced me at a conference meeting for daring to question the dishonesty of the enterprise.
But PCC could find no takers for their generic mission, so they folded. Denying the liturgy, confessions, and hymns, they sank beneath the waves with watery groan, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.
Lutherans used to be shocked at leaders denying the Lutheran name "to be successful." No more. The synods love it and fund it, punishing anyone who objects.
One LCA leader (LCA!) screamed about entertainment evangelism and threw the magazine down from the pulpit during his sermon. In contrast, Roger Kovaciny swore about my paper on the Means of Grace and threw it from his pew during the conference. My essay became the last chapter in Liberalism: Its Cause and Cure.
Readers can look around and see vast multitudes numb about what is going on in their church bodies. If the same things had been out in the open a decade ago, screams of pain would have been heard at headquarters and acted upon. No longer.
The process continues. Numb it up. Diaprax. Look up that term - diaprax.
