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Lutheran Pastor Forced To Apologize For Praying
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This is a very tough situation. I empathize with the LCMS pastor for participating in the ecumenical service. However, the pastor had chosen, at some point in the past, to be a member of a conservative, confessional Lutheran Church body. He knew the rules. He chose to break them.
Bottom line: we Lutherans have a choice between liberal church bodies (ELCA) and conservative church bodies (LCMS and others). If you don’t like the “club’s” rules…join a different club.
I encourage you to see this from the LCMS’ position: worshipping a generic “God” with non-Christians is idolatry. The prayers in that service were not directed to the one true God: God the Father, God the Son, Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Spirit. The prayers were to directed to a god with no name as to not offend anyone else in the room. To us confessional Lutherans that is idolatry and a grave sin.
Do you think that God would have been happy with the children of Israel if they had conducted a joint memorial service with the Philistine followers of Baal? Would it have been ok with God for the children of Israel to pray to a generic God at that joint service so as not to offend their Baal-worshipping friends?
It is a rule we hold dear: Don’t participate in worship services that pray to a generic god. It is idolatry. It is sin.
There are other ways to reach out in Christian love to a hurting community other than committing idolatry with non-believers. We are to love the non-believers. We are to give them the shirts off our back if necessary, but we are NOT to worship a generic god with them.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. Interesting that you introduce the concept of idolatry when you say…”Don’t pray to a generic god.” The opposite of generic is a specific “name brand” god, in this case, the “Missouri Synod” god. Isn’t that the very definition of idolatry?
Well, I’m not sure what point you are trying to make. We LCMS certainly do not believe that we have our own god. If we did, we would not consider you ELCA, Presbyterians, Baptists, Catholics, etc. to be Christians.
We have one God. We pray to only one God. His name is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We hope and pray that our more liberal Christian brothers and sisters will not forget that. We also hope that our brothers and sisters in the ELCA will not let their desire for ecumenical unity to eventually cause them to drop the term “Christian” as being too non-inclusive, bigoted, and narrow minded. I predict that within a generation, most main-line liberal Protestant Churches will have done just that.
I know you don’t like our rules, but no one is forcing you to become LCMS. We did not force the pastor in question to be LCMS. But once again, if you join a “club” and the club has clearly spelled out rules, follow the rules, or join another “club”. It’s as simple as that.
Our real focus should be on the suffering families that lost children in this tragedy. The issue with the LCMS pastor is an internal LCMS matter and should stay that way.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments and willingness to engage. Your comment sparks two things for me…You’ve used a “club” analogy in both comments. Are the terms “club” and “church” interchangeable?
Also, when Jesus went and worshiped in the synagogue, to whom was Jesus praying? The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Or another God? This Sunday, Jesus appears with Moses & Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration. Are the Gods of the Old Testament and New Testament different Gods?
Precisely the problem. We, as a society have removed the “One True God” from our schools, from our media, from our government, we have turned away from Him period. It isn’t Politically correct to refer to Him or to publicly acknowledge the One True God. Ban guns all you want. Continue to try to eliminate any threat to our children or ourselves. Every effort will fall short, just like the Jews of old. Arrogance! Until we turn back to Him with all our hearts, these tragedies will continue to haunt our lives. We can’t control it, no matter how hard we try. Sad.
Thank you for your comment. You and I have very different views on this, obviously. The idea that God uses this evil to punish children is quite frankly abhorrent and quite UNBiblical.