Theological Inconsistencies

I love the Colbert Report.

But as funny as it often is, I am not ignorant of the fact that it is a show that uses humor to try to push a liberal agenda, and I am sure that as with The Daily Show, it will become more painful and angering to watch as we get closer to the election year.

I was watching yesterday afternoon, and they were playing a rerun of a recent show where Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was promoting her book Failing America's Faithful: How Today's Churches are Mixing God and Politics and Losing Their Way. She stated that her main point was that the church has become too concerned with the three issues of abortion, homosexuality, and stem-cell research, and has forgotten the feeding of the poor and helping those who are hurting.

What really caught my attention is that she said "Nowhere does the Bible talk about abortion, gay marriage, or stem-cell research. Nowhere in the Bible is stem-cell research specifically mentioned, but caring for the poor is." She put A LOT of emphasis on the fact that these three issues are not mentioned by name, yet the evangelical church has rallied around them.

From there, Stephen Colbert quoted a verse that I cannot find specifically find. It had components of Leviticus 18:22 and Romans 1:24-28, regarding homosexuality, but mentioned God putting them to death, which I cannot find. Leviticus says they shall be cast out, and Romans says they "receive in themselves the penalty of the error that is due them."

Townsend got this knowing look on her face and proceeded to explain how there were issues back then that were different than now and should be treated differently. She used slavery as an example, saying that there were verses in the Bible that seem pro-slavery, but our fathers during the Civil War understood that the Bible was for freedom and justice.

A person could've gotten whiplash just listening to how quickly she went from "Christians shouldn't be dealing with issues that the Bible doesn't literally speak about" to the completely opposite stance of "we don't take the verses literally that are there."
Now, the author's view is that Christians in the churches need to stay in their churches and be active in insisting that the churches return to the role of caring for the poor and having mercy on them. The book description states: "individual actions can return our churches to their traditional role as shepherds to their flock. "

Kennedy-Townsend's first error is this: the main role of the church is to administer the Word and the Sacraments. That is - it is to faithfully preach and teach the Word of God faithfully to her people and to grant the forgiveness of sins through the Bible, Holy Baptism, and Holy Communion. The main purpose of the Church is to nourish its believers in the one true faith. Then it can go on to providing for the needs of believers and unbelievers alike, as they are led by God.

The Church holds to God's Word, and if there is something in our society that is so clearly against God's Word then we are supposed to proclaim that it is wrong, and we definitely as a body of believers, are not supposed to embrace it, but to do what we can to counteract it. Killing helpless babies in the womb of its mother is destroying God's creation, and Scripture does speak to it. Psalm 139: 14-16, for one place - it talks about how God regards us as precious even when he was knitting us together. And to prey on our unborn children in the name of science is just a further descent into that evil.

That is not to say that we should focus ONLY on these things, but the idea that the church is fixated on these issues to the exclusion of all else (even the politicized evangelical movement) was a brazen exaggeration on her part, as well. And to indicate that there is no relationship with our faith and what we do with our bodies, especially when it goes against the Scripture is also a convenient lie. The Bible is clear that if we are wilfully rejecting Scripture, we are willfully rejecting God, and you can feed all the poor in the world, but if that only comes from the figurative goodness of your heart and not from a desire to serve the God who considered sin to be so serious that sent His only Son to die on the cross because it was the only thing that could destroy sin's hold on us -- then we are still damned to Hell.

We fight for the babies because they are being denied the chance to be baptized, to hear God's Word and be saved. They cannot fight for themselves. We fight against the normalizing of homosexuality because God's word doesn't just call it a sin, but call it an abomination and specifically says that is not what man was meant to do.

Something Kennedy Townsend doesn't acknowledge is that it is because of a desire for mercy that we speak out against these things. We want to bring healing and God's forgiveness to those who have had abortions. We want to bring healing to those who seek to have relationships that are outside of God's order, because we do not believe that this is good for their everlasting souls. And we do not want to see a culture that is joyous and glorious fall apart because they prey on their own young. We seek to show God's love, but we cannot do so without pronouncing God's judgement.

And we fight against these evils because we cannot quote God's Word as authority in one instance, and expect to have anything to stand on when in the next breath we say that it is irrelevant.

Of Faith and Mortal Sins

This week has been an interesting journey for me, theologically. Last week, I made a statement in a post on a Lutheran email list about how we are in an age where many people can and do get up out of the beds on Sunday mornings that they share with someone that they are not married to, go to church, and not even be aware that God does not hear their prayers.

This set off quite a controversy, as occasionally can happen on this list, though not a hostile one (fortunately, we are blessed in that hostile discussions rarely happen. There are lists where I wouldn't dare to type a word for fear of attack). It really surprised me that this is what jumped out and caught people's attention, because it was only a sentence or two in a discussion about the third use of the law. What really surprised me was how strong the response was of "How can we say God doesn't hear their prayers? I sin constantly, even repeated sins. If this is the case, how do I know that God hears my prayers?"

As Lutherans, we are diligently taught that one sin is not worse than another. This is true. All sins are a result of our sinful state and all merit death without Christ as our Savior. Yet we can fall away, and we can be in a state of impenitence. I knew I'd read that God doesn't hear the prayers of the impenitent. So I went to the Bible and found these verses:

John 9:31 -"We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does His will, God listens to Him.

Psalm 34:15-16"The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.

"Psalm 66:18"If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.

"Proverbs 15:29"The Lord is far from the wicked, but He hears the prayer of the righteous."

and there are others.

I also found this in the Smalcald Articles from Luther:

It is therefore necessary to know and to teach when holy people, aside from the fact that they still possess and feel original sin and daily repent and strive against it, fall into open sin (as when David fell into adultery, murder, and blasphemy), faith and the Spirit have departed from them. This is so because the Holy Spirit does not permit sin to rule and gain the upper hand in such a way that sin is committed, but the Holy Spirit represses and restrains it so that it does not do what it wishes. If sin does what it wishes, the Holy Spirit and faith are not present, for St. John said "No one born of sin does commits sin." Yet it is also true, as the same St. John writes, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."

Open sin. It still did not make a difference, in fact, some continued saying "we cannot say that they have no faith" and others seemed to be more panicky about "how do I know that I am not in that state over some other sins of mine?" Someone pointed out someone who habitually says "God damn" not meaning to damn anyone, but a regular part of their vernacular. While I could clearly understand myself while all sin is rebellion against God, that there were some sinful states, such as choosing a career as a thief, that refused to put any trust in God to provide for our needs, that utterly reject God's law and guidance in their lives....being able to find the words that express it clearly seemed to be outside of the vocabulary I was given as a Lutheran. Even the last part of Luther's statement didn't help to clarify what protection our faith gives within the context of these verses. Does God consider us to be the sinners that are mentioned in in these verses, or even though we sin, are we covered by our baptism into Christ's death and resurrection, and where would that place people who believe but are living in open sin? How is this sin different from the ones that I commit and struggle with every day? I didn't want to continue any further, because I didn't want to say anything that would cause more distress until I was on a surer footing.

I went to the "Apology of the Augsburg Confession" in The Book of Concord and swam around in Article IV, Justification (wow..I highly recommend reading this...really reading it. It's beautiful. I've perused it before, but not like this). Several times, I found a phrases like this:

"But we are talking about a faith that is not an idle thought, but frees us from death, brings forth a new life in our hearts, and is the work of the Holy Spirit. Therefore this cannot exist with mortal sin, but whenever it appears, it brings forth good fruits...."

First of all, one thing is clear from the Apology......to start it all out, we need to define the word "faith." Because it is clear that are people who are engaged in living together, who get abortions, who steal or worse for a living (lest you think I am focusing on sexual sins), who think they have faith. We think they have faith. But the Apology is very clear that there is a difference between knowledge of God or even of Christ and His death and resurrection, and true faith. As the Bible and the Confessions so aptly point out, even Satan himself believes that Christ rose from the dead.

"Paul clearly shows that faith does not simply mean historical knowledge, but is a firm acceptance of the promise," Melancthon writes. Faith is active, grasping, reaching, clinging to Christ. Faith is brought about through the Holy Spirit and after the terror that results from being condemned by the Law, it clings to Christ in penitence. After that, the Holy Spirit creates us anew; He regenerates us, and new impulses toward good arise. Good works must follow, as Scripture tells us and the Augsburg Confession states. If they do not, and if a person continues to unite themselves willfully to open sin, or enters into that state, their faith is dead. But as Christians, we believe that dead does not mean without hope, as in the case of the Prodigal Son, and so continue to hope for their repentance and return as long as their heart is pumping blood through their bodies.

But back to that quote I mentioned above. If I had only seen it once in the Apology, it might have escaped my notice. But repeatedly I saw the phrase that faith cannot exist with mortal sin. "Wait a minute," I thought. "All sins are rebellion against God. He can't mean the Catholic tendency to divide sins up into trivial sins, serious sins, etc. Eating the fruit off the tree which God commanded Adam and Eve not to touch as warranted the condemation of mankind as surely as mass murder does! " But he said it over and over again, and since he was talking to Catholics (and since, while written solely by Phillip Melancthon, it was signed by many theologians who affirmed it, and our church body holds it up as a true reflection of Biblical beliefs), and there is no refutation of our belief in this classification at the same time, I decided to look it up, so I Googled it.

St. Aquinas.com gave a clear definition here, along with a list of what the Catholics consider to be mortal sins (note: these seem to vary depending on who says):

Mortal sins destroy the grace of God in the heart of the sinner. By their very grave nature, a mortal sin cuts our relationship off from God and turns man away from his creator. St. Paul’s letter to the Hebrews tell us that "if we sin willfully after having the knowledge of the truth, there is now left no sacrifice for sins" (Hebrews 10:26)

It also said:

In order for a sin to be mortal sin, it must meet three conditions:

1. Mortal sin is a sin of grave matter
2. Mortal sin is committed with full knowledge of the sinner
3. Mortal sin is committed with deliberate consent of the sinner

Now that's what I was getting at. Too bad we don't believe in it......but yet, its right there in the Apology, repeatedly. So my husband suggested that I look up sin in A Summary of Christian Doctrine by Edward W.A. Koehler, which is a standard text on systematics that is used in Lutheran colleges - its kind of a summary of Pieper's Dogmatics, written for the common man to understand, and is considered a reliable classic in LCMS circles. Bam! Pages 71-72 "Classifications of Sin."

(f) Venial sins are sins of weakness; they are limited to believers, and do not kill faith, because they are not done intentionally. In themselves they are real sins and are worthy of death, but through faith Christians have forgiveness for them. Mortal sins are such as kill faith, and drive the Holy Spirit from the heart, because no man can sin wilfully and intentionally and at the same time believe in Christ for the forgiveness of sins.

So, really, there are two issues here. Defining faith as something that is active, not just an acknowledgement of Christ, and an awareness that there are (and we confess) willful sins that we can enter into that kill faith and drive the Holy Spirit from the heart causing God to depart from us until we come to repentance.

I like what Koehler says about faith:

"Merely to accept facts and statements as true is not faith. But if
these facts and statements mean something to us personally, if we feel sure that they will help and benefit us, and if we trust in them for such help, then we believe in them; then we have faith....Faith therefore is an emotional attitude of the heart plus an act of the will (emphases mine)."

So with this example, a person who is living with someone else is not trusting in God to provide for her guidance in what a godly relationship should be, to provide for her wellbeing, even to provide for her physical welfare. She is taking the guidance for action in her own hands, and wilfully not loving God, not loving her neighbor (her parents - even if they don't object...living God's commands is what honors our parents; those that she attests to that she is a Christian, those that she worships with, and definitely, she is not showing love to the person that she is uniting herself with by not loving them enough to insist upon a Godly union, leading him down the path of eventual damnation with her. The kind of love that she feels toward him is not true love, a love that wants what is only good and right for the beloved, but in previous days would still be called what it is, lust.) Obviously, you can switch the gender of the pronouns here.

Now I want this to be understood, just because the Holy Spirit leaves our heart doesn't mean He gives up on us. If we were to enter into such a sinful state, He would still work on us and call us to repentance, and I don't think any of us can deny the existence of those who have committed many a mortal sin who return to the fold. The Parable of the Prodigal Son itself shows us this, as well as the entire Old Testament history of the children of Israel. the Death of Faith has a strong sense of finality, but as Christians, we don't believe that death has to be final, though it is certainly woefully serious and grievous.

And I am not trying to be legalistic either, going around classifying sins. To the contrary, I was wondering why, as Lutherans, we don't talk about this more in these terms? I only have heard them in regard to discussing the Catholic view of making penance for different degrees of sin, and that, we clearly reject.

The panic and alarm that was shown in this discussion on the email list was very real. The questions regarding our own sinfulness caused palatable distress. Reading this, having words for it, brought comfort to me to have an answer to all my questions, "Why don't my own sins put me in a state of separation from God? Have I done enough to warrant this? Doesn't this seem rather arbitrary? How is it different to be sleeping with someone, or to have bad thoughts or to have sworn when someone cut me off, or to struggle with the feelings that I sometimes have toward being a pastor's wife, or to flake off on days that I know that I should be diligently working with my kids on their lessons (and far worse)??" Hopefully, it will help some of the others that had these questions, too.

I know that there was a time in my life where I can now clearly say "I had no faith." I knew God, I believed in the resurrection of Christ, yet it made no difference to me in my life and in my choices, and I found God to be an angry God, and I was angry with Him. In fact, I can see two periods where I was clearly separated from God, even for my first few years as the wife of a pastor. Yet the Holy Spirit kept working on me and He brought me back to repentance and a life of faith.

And on the flip side, what is also comforting is that for the majority of us, as Christians, the majority of sins that we deal with are not sins that put us in this position, which is where this discussion went. We also take comfort in the fact that when we are faced with such temptation we are given the strength by the Holy Spirit to handle it. We have His protection. Sure, there are some venial sins (wow, that doesn't feel right) that can become mortal sins if we let them take control (i.e. yelling at our kids, rather than being an occasional situation, becomes an attitude and habit of abuse), but again, we live a life of repentance that is the life of the Christian, continually receiving God's forgiveness and His strengthening and protection. He will work to convict us of our sin, call us to repentance, and will give us the strength to endure and conquer...and He has died for all sin so that it does not separate us from God...our faith reaches out and grasps that assurance.