The Nihil Rule

"Grok, generate an image based on this blog post" It's four years old, but I would endorse reading the whole thing.  Recognizing Critical Theory | Stand Firm (standfirminfaith.com) . I'll focus on two pieces. The first is the narrative: "In broad terms, the narrative tends to work along the following lines. The Gospel is less about God saving sinners from eternal condemnation through the righteous life, substitutionary death, and glorious resurrection of his Son than it is about God’s solidarity with the oppressed and his demand for justice. God identifies with the poor, the victim, the minority, the immigrant. God picked a particular group, the Jews, liberating them from slavery. He sent his prophets to speak truth to power, offending exploiters and giving hope to the exploited. He came in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, as an impoverished peasant, a refugee threatened by a murderous king, an immigrant born to an unwed mother. He sought social justice. He refus...

I read Taboo, so you don't have to. "You shouldn't publicly share your views on gay marriage. You shouldn't try to convince gay non-Christians to stop living like they are. There is a time, after lots and lots of love and lots and lots of gospel, when you can talk to your LGBTQ+ friends who profess Christianity about their biblical sexuality" So we see why Mike Novotny gave us poor advice last week : he inverts the proper ordering of law and gospel. Speratus, help us out! The law reveals the guilt of sin and makes us conscience-stricken; but then the gospel enters in the sinful soul to quicken. Come to the cross, trust Christ, and live; the law no peace can ever give, no comfort and no blessing. You cannot profess Christianity while living in active unrepentant sin. We have to be shown our sin before we recognize our need for a Savior. The WELS statement on human sexuality , Third Article, point 6, identifies this correctly:  We cannot accept that a Christian with...

Year C - Advent - A Real Christmas on Vimeo This post brought to you by the mutual conversation and consolation of the brethren. Take one minute and watch the teaser video for the current WELS-ordained sermon series "A Real Christmas." Pay attention to the signals we are sending. The scene opens with two children of differing race interacting with an Advent calendar. The words on the screen speak to guilt over not creating a 'perfect' Christmas. An almost faceless mother (we presume, based on the wedding band) a few shades darker is reading a Bible to her kids. Now let me be clear - I have no issue with interracial marriage or adoption. Both are free, but very serious choices for the Christian to make after careful and prayerful consideration that God's will be done. What I take issue with is the projection of values that our synod leaders criticize us for lacking, namely WELS Congregational Services is the same entity that distributes the WELS statistical summary...

  I read Taboo, so you don't have to. "[T]here's something I need to tell you about transgender people, something that deserves 110% of your attention, especially if you are a follower of God who loves the entire world. The experience of gender dysphoria is so agonizing that, according to the America Academy of Pediatrics, 42 percent of trans teenagers have attempted to kill themselves. Forty-two percent! And not just thought about it, but actually tried it. That means 42 percent of those precious souls have grabbed a razor blade or a bottle of pills or a gun and attempted to escape the brutal battle in their brains. The daily struggle of gender dysphoria is so heavy that trans teens will try to end their lives three times more often than their non-trans friends. I need you to understand that. Before you minimize this with some crude joke like, 'well, I'm identifying as a unicorn today,' before you post some snarky meme, remember those kids are killing themselv...

  MLC is at it again - or was at it again: I stumbled on a 2022 Open Learning seminar entitled " Ministering in an Age of Diversity " which ticks all the wrong boxes. Six presentations and at least four of them are deemed worthy of the title Woke in the WELS . Let's dig in! The first presentation is entitled "Theory to Practice: Navigating Through Today's Curriculum" by Dr. Kari Muente . We start out with a woke woke wordsalad par excellence : ...it is a continual practice and it is important that we are constantly reflecting on that practice and growing and as our WELS classrooms do become more academically culturally socially emotionally and linguistically diverse it is our responsibility to then go beyond just best practices but engage in evidence-based instruction and curriculum that ensures that all of our students have equal access to the curriculum... Around the 23 minute mark we are introduced to five philosophies of education ranging from perenniali...

I read Taboo, so you don't have to. "I'm not sure about Sodom, but the rest of Scripture is clear." On page 79, Mike Novotny wants to be too cool for school by attempting to disprove that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah had anything to do with homosexual relations. Skip back a few pages and you'll find his reasoning. "Let's start with Genesis 19, the story of Sodom. Do you know it? Sodom stinks. God says its stench wafts up to heaven and turns his stomach. God send angels in disguise to investigate. A man named Lot welcomes them into his home, but that's when the men of Sodom pound on the door. "Where are those men?!" they demand. "Bring them out so we can have sex with them." When they try to break down the door, the angels step forward, strike the sex-crazed mob blind, and rush Lot's family out of Sodom just as fire falls from heaven and destroys them all. And if you grew up in church, that's all the proof you need...

(Dropping this at 4PM on a Friday is rather ominous) The Conference of Presidents (COP) has finished their work on a pastoral brief addressing Critical Theory and justice . (Note: the link is to my Google drive. The WELS distributed this initially to Pastors, and it will be published online next month.) The CoP is comprised by the Presidents of the twelve WELS districts and this document was authored by them and any consultants they chose to bring on. The impetus for this document was a memorial for the 2023 Synod Convention. Here is the original memorial as published in the BORAM : During the convention there was a fair bit of conversation on the memorial and it's wording. Much of the conversation belied a poor understanding of critical theory and social justice (although a few Pastors were very on point in their comments) and how it is affecting the laity. Ultimately the memorial was revised and accepted. The revised language follows: Comparing the two, you can see the 'mista...

I read Taboo so you don't have to. In chapter 9, Mike describes something that made him want to hide under a pew: "Our church invited a guest speaker to talk about his struggle with same-sex desires. The speaker was honest and vulnerable. He admitted that despite all the attempts, he couldn't pray the gay away. That's when an older Christian raised his hand. "Hiow can you feel that way?" he yucked. "I can't imagine feeling that way about another man."  We talked about homosexual ideation in our discussion on Video 1 when Ben told us that empathy necessitates putting ourselves in homosexual shoes and in Video 3 where Bill tells us that LGBTQ+ stories that are not in line with God's will and word are worth listening to. In both cases we appealed to Scripture - Psalm 1, where the blessed man is described as not walking in the counsel of the wicked or stands among the sinners, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and likewise to Jude whe...

  Following on the heels of the recent  post on seminary accreditation , I received a copy of Knruxate , the annual magazine of Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, which featured an article entitled  Commendation From Outsiders  offering Presidents Treptow's perspective on accreditation. The Lord's timing is fantastic as it offers me an opportunity to critique with the groundwork already laid (also, did you notice Let the Little Children Come to Me landed on Pentecost 20, which featured Mark 10:2-16? That wasn't planned, fam, but it gave me a smile during the Gospel reading. God is good!) One of the reasons Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary (WLS) decided to pursue accreditation was a desire to have outside eyes look at its overall program. The seminary’s governing board and the faculty, desiring to improve in their synod-assigned work of preparing men for service as pastors in WELS, sought out an accrediting agency to provide an objective assessment of the seminary’s work. An ob...

  I read Taboo, so you don't have to. Over the next few months I'm going to drip out midweek installments of Mike Novotny's Taboo. I do not recommend you read this book, and the posts here will help explain why. This week we'll kick it off with a softball anecdote from the last chapter of the book: "Earlier this year, I met a man who, along with his wife, worked for a pro-life ministry. He told me how they invited a young woman to stay in their guest bedroom while she got on her feet. But the girl liked to party and, one day, found herself pregnant." *record scratch* One does not go to a party and simply find herself pregnant  like catching the common cold. This soft-pedalling of sin particularly when it comes to LGBTQ and women is pervasive throughout the book. 

What follows is the skeleton for a blog post that, God be praised, I did not have to flesh out on Wednesday morning following the election. The outline shows a progression of starting with individual scriptures, using scripture to define principles, using principles to interpret biblical stories, and finally using our doctrinal statements (the least authoritative source of the four) to show the witness of the Scriptures is that a woman in authority is a sign of God's judgement. God be praised that we were spared the greater judgement by God in two of the last three election cycles.  Thesis: A vote for a woman President is a vote for God's judgment.  1. Biblical Admonitions We start with specific Biblical directives. a. God, in announcing His judgement on Judah: Isaiah 1:7 - the current immigration crisis is a sign of judgement Your country is desolate, Your cities are burned with fire; Strangers devour your land in your presence; And it is desolate, as overthrown by strang...

TGC 420 — On Cross Bearing - YouTube "A lot of Christians will turn God into in into an inactive kind of deistic teddy bear by saying 'oh well no God doesn't uh you know...' like when Hurricane Katrina happened and lots of Christians were saying 'well this is because of the Mardi Gras' then you have the other Christians who come to the rescue and the Lutherans who come to the rescue and say 'well don't be an Enthusiast it's not because of Mardi Gras' ... Why not? Are you serious? I mean why we don't believe that God punishes, is it also because of your idolatry in your heart? Maybe you should examine that. I mean I I'm not saying that we that we are able to perfectly pinpoint everything and know the ways of God: the spirit blows where he wills and you know God holds the wind in his hand right, but at the same time we shouldn't act as if God doesn't punish as if He doesn't bring disasters because of because of sin. This wasn...

Note: images throughout (except the Galatians meme) are from Berg's presentation. The Rev. Dr. Michael Berg delivered this presentation at the 2024 National Conference on Worship, Music & the Arts, and it can be viewed online . Let's take a gander. First - it is my understanding based on the testimony of two or three witnesses that the Bergs are democrats. In which case the cover art (and the majority of art throughout) is pretty rich insofar as depicting those across the aisle as abusing the image of our Lord and Savior for political means. We all recognize the majority of the WELS leans republican (in my opinion, for legitimate reasons aligning with our theology). This bias in imagery paints a picture of a problem that in my humble opinion does not exist - can Berg point to a WELS pastor or teacher who has used this kind of imagery on social media?  Berg opens with stories from both sides of the aisle - Barbara Bush encouraging her Pastor to pray for Bill Clinton, and Oba...

'Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth—to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people—saying with a loud voice, “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.”' - The Revelation of Jesus Christ, 14:6-7 ... I would commend to you Rev. Travis Berg's Reformation Day sermon (2023) for your edification.

The font is effeminate and the cross looks like it's denoting an exception or clarification,  but we work with what we're given! ... If your church is following the WELS Foundation Series , which takes the three-year lectionary and transforms it into a set of sermon series, then you might find the following in the front of your bulletin  (and if your pastor is a true 'company man' he will be preaching on Daniel, per the recommendation) :   LIVE LIKE YOU’LL LIVE FOREVER: LIVE A LIFE OF COURAGEOUS WITNESS Jesus repeatedly told his followers that living as his disciples would bring hardship. Living life according to God’s Law is going to make one appear odd in the eyes of the world, perhaps even evil. Sharing a message of mankind’s sin and God’s gracious salvation can cause offense. So why not just stay silent if that makes life easier? Why not keep our faith private? Answer: because we are going to live forever. In gratitude for Christ saving us and giving us eternal life...