We don’t naturally want to forgive. If someone has hurt us, and then they apologize, maybe then we’ll forgive. But until then, we keep it, and it burns our soul like acid.
Now think again about what we heard in the Passion account today. Jesus does the opposite of what comes naturally to us….
Read MoreThe Concordia Publishing House Podcast interviewed me on my book (Dis)Ordered: Lies about Human Nature and the Truth That Sets Us Free. You can watch below, or listen to the podcast by clicking here.
Jesus, the enfleshed God, stoops down into our filth. The emperor becomes a servant. The earth is a graveyard filled with innumerable rotted corpses. Their dust clings to the soles of our feet. The ancient sin corrupts our hearts. But Jesus, the enfleshed God, cleans us and feeds us, as a father cares for his children. This is love. Not mere sentiment, but bold action. Action that costs….
Read MoreA gem from Luther:
Christ is nothing other than sheer life, as his saints are likewise. The more profoundly you impress that image upon your heart and gaze upon it, the more the image of death will pale and vanish of itself without struggle or battle. Thus your heart will be at peace and you will be able to die calmly in Christ and with Christ, as we read in Revelation [14:13], “Blessed are they who die in the Lord Christ.”
LW 42:104
The University of Helsinki announced this week they are awarding Greta Thunberg with an honorary doctorate in, of all things, theology. It’s fitting, I suppose, since climate activism has become a religion in its own right….
Read MoreMy book (Dis)Ordered: Lies about Human Nature and the Truth That Sets Us Free is now in stock at Concordia Publishing House. It’s also available to pre-order (paperback or Kindle) at Amazon.
Here’s the opening of the first chapter, entitled “The Authentic Self”:
Underlying the rapid changes in today’s society—particularly the acceptance of homosexual “marriage” and the celebration of transgenderism—is a more fundamental question: What does it mean to be human? Descartes’s famous dictum cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”) began a philosophical cascade of rooting man’s identity within his own mind: my cogitation defines me. Our society is in the process of replacing truth with feelings, and unmooring sex from marriage. This is a central cause of the profound instability we all feel in Western culture. It is unlike anything we have experienced in living memory. Today, our society seems to be focusing more on feelings than thoughts. This is resulting in instability in established institutions like marriage and human sexuality.
People are searching for authenticity, but that search is only leading them away from the Author. We are disconnected and discontent, and someone must bear the blame. Into this void, a doctrine of demons is becoming the state religion. The catechists of this religion have doctrines of sin that obscenely reverse the Ten Commandments. At the core of this new religion is the rejection of a God who creates and a mankind who receives life from the One who made them. This chapter will examine how the doctrines of this new religion have developed, and will also set forth man’s true nature, purpose, and destiny.
You can learn more about the book, and download the first chapter for free, by clicking here.
If we charted the history of the age for admission to communion, you would see it be very low for well over a thousand years, then rise sharply in the ages of rationalism and pietism, until the mid-to-late twentieth century when it begins to come back down. There are a number of factors involved in this, but underlying it all is this question: what makes a person ready to receive the Eucharist? …
Read MoreThere is a spiritual realm. There are demonic powers. And if our eyes were opened, we would see it at work in our world, with terrifying intensity.
Demons harm people. In today’s Gospel, Jesus warns about the danger of people being freed from the demonic returning to its servitude, because—the image goes—the house was not furnished. There was no change….
Read MoreOnce they walk, we don’t carry our children anymore. Until they’re sick, or something is wrong; then we revert to treating them like babies, carrying them, wishing we could take all their burdens unto ourselves.
But we can’t. This father knows that. That’s why he says to Jesus, “I carried my son to you.”
How many times had he made similar journeys, carrying his son to physicians, priests, anyone who might be able to help?
His boy seems to have two problems: he’s alalon - what we would today call “non-verbal” - and he has seizures. They cause him to writhe on the ground, foam at the mouth, grind his teeth, and then be non-responsive.
The father attributes all this to demonic activity.
It’s quite natural to say, “Well, today we know better. We have sciency words for it: autism, and seizures.”…
Read MoreTemptations are rarely grandiose. On occasion temptation to a front-page-headline kind of sin comes along. Most of our temptations appear as innocuous choices. Small, daily things tempt us to take baby steps away from God’s Word.
Frequently we should pray the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus teaches us there to ask for help: “Lead us not into temptation.” This takes on urgency once we realize we are constantly under spiritual assault….
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