“Make Your face shine upon Your servant, and teach me Your
statutes. My eyes shed streams of water,
because they do not keep Your law.”
(Psalm 119L:135-136)
When you look out at those who
walk in the darkness does it bring tears to your eyes? Weep for those who do not know the Lord. They are as wayward children who do not know
that they do not have the light of the Father in them. Be one who shines the light of Christ in your
countenance that you may be a witness of the goodness and mercy of the
Lord. He sends you as His witness.
Lord, I know that I have not been a good witness of the faith. Teach me to be consistent and willing to
serve You in every circumstance. Guide
me according to Your goodness that I may live out the faith I proclaim that I
have. Teach me Your precepts that I may
practice them in public and in private.
Help me Lord to be a consistent witness of the promise of Your grace and
mercy.
Holy Spirit, minister to my heart
that I would be consistent in the faith You have given me. Take away those places which conflict with
Your precepts that I would now and always abide in You as You abide in me. Lead me this day to practice in those places
where I am not consistent or faithful.
In all things, help me to be one who shines the likeness of Christ for
all whom I meet. Amen.
Devotion for Tuesday, May 21, 2019
written by Jeffray Greene | May 22, 2019
“Turn to me and be gracious to me, after Your manner with those who
love Your name. Establish my footsteps
in Your word, and do not let any iniquity have dominion over me. Redeem me from the oppression of man, that I
may keep Your precepts.” (Psalm
119:132-134)
Notice that the plea is not just, “do this.” It understands that those who love the Lord may make the request. Your relationship with the Lord is not based upon the law, but upon love. See through the deception of this age that everything is give and take. It all belongs to the Lord and He has given us promises based upon love. Love the Lord and love your neighbor as yourself.
Lord, I hear the words and see what you are saying but I am motivated by the conditionality of everything. Help me O Lord to see through the fog of this age’s thinking to come to the place where I am led by Your love and seek You first in all things. Guide me O Lord that I may dwell in Your presence and abide in Your love forever. Keep me close to the precepts You give that I may learn to love.
Lord Jesus, You have come that we may learn to love as You love. You are Trinity and are the embodiment of love. Come to me and lift me up to be with You that I may now and always abide in the goodness of Your presence. Help me through all of the situations in which I find myself that I may abide in You as You abide in me and learn how to be more like You this day. Amen.
“Your testimonies are wonderful; therefore my soul observes them. The unfolding of Your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple. I opened my mouth wide and panted, For I longed for Your commandments.” (Psalm 119:129-131)
Do you long for the revelation of the Lord? Too many quickly read and then forget. They do not savor the Word the Lord gives which is like a rich mine that never ends. Do not become weary of what the Lord will say for He will uncover the layers of goodness that He has for those who come to Him. The Lord is the fount of all goodness and He freely shares with those who come to Him.
Lord teach me to love the inner parts of the truth You reveal through prayer, meditation and the reading of Your Word. Guide me according to Your goodness to see more each day. Do not let me weary of growing in the grace You have given me, but come to the place where I delight in all that You have in store for Your faithful. Lead me in Your Spirit to grow in wisdom and stature.
Thank You Lord Jesus for preparing and leading the way. Lead me this day in what You know I need to discover. Guide me according to Your goodness to see in You the hope for all people. Lead me in the way of righteousness that I would learn to walk as You walked upon the earth. Prepare me and help me to willingly be prepared for all that You have in store for me as Your faithful servant. Amen.
Devotion for Sunday, May 19, 2019
written by Jeffray Greene | May 22, 2019
“Therefore I love Your commandments above gold, yes, above fine gold. Therefore I esteem right all Your precepts
concerning everything, I hate every false way.”
(Psalm 119:127-128)
What has the most value? Things that come and go or that which is
forever? We often lose sight of the
truth of every situation and focus upon the created rather than the
Creator. Look to the Lord first and know
that all of His commands are good and righteous. Know that in Him is the hope of every
generation. Do not walk in the false
way. Taste and see that the Lord is
good.
Lord, I have been chased around and have chased around many false paths
that have gone nowhere. Lead me O Lord
in the way of righteousness that I may now and always walk according to the
goodness of Your way. Teach my heart to
cherish to goodness You have directed and walk in the way in which You
lead. Grant me the true wealth of
righteousness.
Lord Jesus, lead me this day to
walk according to the goodness of all of the precepts that You have
revealed. Let me not be hindered by
temptations along the way, rather keep me steadily on the straight and narrow
path which You have prepared. Walk with
me Lord Jesus that I may learn from You as Your humble servant. Teach me how to obey all that You
command. Amen.
“Deal with Your servant according to Your lovingkindness and teach me
Your statutes. I am Your servant; give
me understanding, that I may know Your testimonies. It is time for the Lord to act, for they have
broken Your law.” (Psalm 119:125-136)
The world is filled with excuses
and loves to blame. This world claims to
have a plan, but the world’s plans fail time after time. Look to the Lord who will lift you up to be
in His presence. Know that the way of
the Lord is from everlasting and to everlasting. Be guided by what is eternal that You may
walk in the way of life. The Lord will
bring about all things according to His will in His perfect time.
Lord, teach me to rely upon You for all things. Guide me according to Your goodness to see in You the only hope for this or any age. You are God and there is no other. Lead me into the life for which You are preparing me through salvation that I may live at all times in harmony with all of Your decrees. Keep me close to You, Lord, that I would hear Your voice above the noise of this world.
Come, Holy Spirit, and minister to my spirit. Clear the path that I would walk this day in the way of salvation. Lift me up according to the Father’s perfect plan to do what is pleasing in His sight. Let not any hindrance come my way that would cause me to falter; and guide me according to the eternal precepts which have already been spoken. Help me listen to You this day and follow according to Your Word. Amen
“I have done justice and righteousness; do not leave me to my
oppressors. Be surety for Your servant
for good; do not let the arrogant oppress me.
My eyes fail with longing for Your salvation and for Your righteous
word.” (Psalm 119:121-123)
When you look out on the world,
what do you see? The crying out of the
wicked continues first here and then there.
It has been this way in this and every age. Amidst the cacophony of this age is the
still, quiet voice of the Lord speaking to those who hear Him. Do not be dismayed, nor waver in listening to
the voice of the Lord, but come into His rest as He prepares You for eternity.
Lord, I am tempted all day long.
There are so many things around me that tug at me. Guide me out of the noise and into the
stillness of Your voice. Lead me
according to Your goodness that I may never fail to walk with You and in Your
ways. Help me overcome the adversity of
this age that I may be found amongst the faithful. Keep me on the path of goodness for Your
name’s sake.
Lord Jesus, You are the One who
must lead for I cannot see ahead all the pitfalls that come upon Your
faithful. Lead me this day that in You
alone would I trust. Help me through
every temptation that I may abide fully in You as You lift me up to become ever
more like You. Save me from myself and
hold me fast to what is right and good always.
You are the way, the truth and the life.
Show me the way. Amen.
“You have removed all the wicked of the earth like dross; therefore I love Your testimonies. My flesh trembles for fear of You, and I am afraid of Your judgments.” (Psalm 119:119-120)
In what do you hope? Is it in your own understanding? Come to the Lord and know that He who created
all things knows the obstacles that hinder walking with Him. Do not be excessively afraid of the Lord’s
judgements, but embrace them and live into the life which He promises. Be one who can give a good testimony of His
goodness to You. He who created you has
redeemed you by grace.
When all is said and done, the wicked shall be no more. Only that which is right and fitting for
eternity shall remain. Lead me to invest
in what is good that I may be more than a shell when I stand before You. You have given great promises that lead to
eternal life with You. In the hope of
all of Your promises, lead me through all circumstances to come into Your
eternal presence.
Lord, You have spoken these
promises and added to them the promise that You will never leave nor forsake
those who trust in You. Lead me this day
to abide fully in You as You abide in me.
Lead me according to Your promises that I would now and forever hold
fast to the truth which You have spoken.
You are the Savior who guides and leads those who trust in You now and
forever. Amen.
Devotion for Wednesday, May 15, 2019
written by Jeffray Greene | May 22, 2019
“Sustain me according to Your word, that I may live; and do not let me
be ashamed of my hope. Uphold me that I
may be safe, that I may have regard for Your statutes continually. You have rejected all those who wander from
Your statutes, for their deceitfulness is useless.” (Psalm 119:116-118)
What is it that keeps you in the
right place when things get difficult?
Do you rely upon yourself? Know
that the One who is from eternity has given us the means to abide always in the
truth of His Word. Come to Him and be
comforted in season and out of season knowing that He who loves you knows all
that you need. Be comforted in the hope
that is eternal, and abide in Him.
Lord, I hear these words and my mind knows them to be true but my heart is sometimes far away. Bring to remembrance all the goodness of Your grace and mercy that no matter the situation I may abide in the hope You alone can give. Keep me close to Your Word that I may now and always abide in You and the promises which are sure. Create in me a willing heart, O Lord.
Word made flesh, You have come
that we may have life and have it abundantly.
Guide the thoughts of my mind and the inclination of my heart to dwell
in You, the only place of security. Lead
me according to Your Word to live in You as You live in me. Let my mind remember all of the promises You
have spoken that I may not be led astray by others who would bring me to
abandon hope in You. Amen.
Women and Justice is an example of postmodernism gone viral within the Body of Christ, seeking to destroy it, and if the ELCA hopes to remain Christian in a way that will permit them to be recognized as such by other Christians not held captive to the postmodern mindset, they must not only reject it, but the worldview that informs it.
All Christian communions functioning within the increasingly-postmodern West must be on guard against the same virus that has so deeply infected the ELCA. We must fortify our immune systems against it if we hope to not have our health compromised… or worse, to die as non-Christians mouthing Christian-sounding words.
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Postmodernism Gone Viral: What Is Disingenuous About the ELCA Social Statement
“Ah! Words! Just words!” the person shouted to the man at the lectern whose speech had just concluded. “Who told you culture is a search for coherence? Where do you get that idea from? This idea of coherence is a Western idea.”
Coherent
or Incoherent?
I heard Ravi Zacharias tell this story. With a quickness of wit that I can only marvel at, he responded to the person (whom he later learned was transgendered) by saying, “Before I answer you, Madame, let me ask you this, then: would you prefer that my answer be coherent or incoherent?”[1]
The view from the front of the chapel in the Desert Retreat Center, where the coaches training event was held, looks out on the beauty of Arizona’s Sonoran desert.
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that congregations can sometimes feel so desperate to call a pastor, any pastor, that they rush through the call process and sometimes make a bad decision. And if the process drags out, they become so discouraged that they simply drift – and some members just leave, often permanently. An experienced coach helps them understand that they really can see – and take – one small, necessary “discipleship step” after another; and each small step can strengthen their faith, prayer life, discipleship, fellowship, stewardship, and outreach.
The CORE Voice Newsletter Looks Different … Very Different!
Change in direction
Lutheran CORE is trying a new format for its newsletter and moving away from its traditional glossy magazine-style newsletter to one that is easier to read on small devices like cell phones and tablets. There will always be a printable version, but CORE will also have versions of the newsletter on our website and on Facebook that will make it easier for our readers to decide which articles they want to read and which they prefer to skip. We will also send out a version via email. If you would like to be added to the email list, please contact [email protected] with your name and email address.
In the March issue of our newsletter, CORE Voice, we included information about the ministries of two of the pastors who were going to be presenters at the Rekindle Your First Love event. Another one of the persons who was scheduled to be a presenter, NALC pastor Wendy Berthelsen, heads up a non-profit Christian teaching ministry called Call Inc., which mobilizes ordinary people “called” by Christ Jesus our Lord to “incorporate His call” into all of life, 24/7: home, family, church gathering and “glocal” (local to global).
Pithy Responses to CORE’S April Letter from the Director
Blinding speed
I am continually blessed and encouraged by the very positive and uplifting responses which I receive to my letters from the director, articles in our newsletter, CORE Voice, and other written communications. It is good to know that people read our materials and appreciate, value, and support our work. The responses I received to my most recent (the April) letter from the director were no exception.
One NALC pastor wrote, “There have been times when I have wondered why CORE staff and adherents remain in ELCA, but after reading this letter, I am thankful that you are still there. If you were to leave, it would please them because they wouldn’t have to deal with your wisdom any more. . . .
This program, for adults with special needs and sponsored by St. Timothy Lutheran Church, has been serving Chicago’s Hermosa neighborhood for nearly 30 years. Meeting monthly since 1990, the Uncle Charlie program serves an average of 50 residents from eight group homes on the northwest side of Chicago.
Postmodernism Gone Viral: What Is Disingenuous About the ELCA Social Statement
written by Brett Jenkins | May 22, 2019
by Brett Jenkins, member of the board of Lutheran CORE
Editor’s note: Originally called “Draft Social Statement on Women and Justice,” the document which was developed by the ELCA Task Force on Women and Justice and which has been approved by both the ELCA Conference of Bishops and the ELCA Church Council for consideration by the 2019 ELCA Churchwide Assembly is called, “Faith, Sexism, and Justice: A Lutheran Call to Action.” The ELCA Churchwide Assembly will take place in August 2019.
“Ah! Words! Just words!” the person shouted to the man at the lectern whose speech had just concluded. “Who told you culture is a search for coherence? Where do you get that idea from? This idea of coherence is a Western idea.”
Coherent or Incoherent
I heard Ravi
Zacharias tell this story. With a
quickness of wit that I can only marvel at, he responded to the person (whom he
later learned was transgendered) by saying, “Before I answer you, Madame, let
me ask you this, then: would you prefer that my answer be coherent or
incoherent?”[1]
It is a dangerous proposition to write about someone else’s writing; history is full of literary, philosophical, and political critiques that were complete misfires (often cleverly worded) because the author misunderstood what he was reading. They did this because, not being part of what Charles Taylor would aptly deem the “web of interlocution” from which the original document arose, they misunderstood what was being proposed in the first place.
Having left the ELCA, grateful for the friendships and even some of the formation I enjoyed there but much more grateful to leave behind the posture of defensiveness that necessarily accompanied my ministry as a self-consciously orthodox Christian within it, I wondered actively about the idea of writing this article. I even resisted the pressure of colleagues to do so. I am a pastor of the North American Lutheran Church, and this newsletter has already featured one excellent critique by another NALC pastor, Rev. Cathy Ammlung as well as a critique by ELCA pastor, Stephen Gjerde. Both articles were detailed and incisive, so what can I add to them?
Analysis of the Introduction
Actually I can add one thing: an analysis of how the introduction of the ELCA’s proposed social statement Women and Justice represents the broader conflict of worldviews active within our culture, of which I am, indeed, still a part.
Rev. Ammlung noted in her critique numerous points on which the draft social statement was not only out of step with the Christian (and Jewish) traditions of 2000+ years, but even seemed internally incoherent, out of step with itself. Indeed, as Rev. Ammlung noted pithily, “It’s hard, though, to see in this draft how God’s revealed Word is greater than the sum of feminist, intersectional, and ‘gender/sexual justice’ language.”
Impossible
It is not hard to see—it is impossible to see, for there is no evidence to the contrary in the document, nor should we expect there to be. The constellation of “feminist, intersectional, and ‘gender/sexual justice’ language” emerges from a larger worldview wholly at variance with the Scripture’s line of sight, that of postmodernism.
Gender Feminists
In 1994, doctoral candidate in Women’s Studies at Wellesley, Christina Hoff-Somers, recognized that a foreign ideology had hijacked the equity-seeking feminism of the movement’s progenitors, separating the movement into what she deemed “equity feminists” and “gender feminists,” the latter being the product of postmodern thinking married to the aims of feminism. The feminism with which most readers will be familiar from their time as an undergraduate, on a seminary campus, or from the shriller, attention-getting voices on the nightly news is of the gender feminist lineage, which frequently claims that those Hoff-Sommers characterizes as “equity feminists” are not feminists at all, for they do not share the postmodern presuppositions that undergird their narrative and analysis.
Power
To whit, rooted in the work of theoreticians like Derrida and Foucault, postmodernism sees all social interactions (like the proposed social statement) as “word games,” and word games with only one goal: the exercise of power.
Language of Justice,
Science and Religious Truth
In such an account of the world, there is no way to discern good from evil, truth from falsehood, for all such language is merely a ruse, a “word game” to disguise the naked aggression of one person or group against another. In the view of postmodernism, we are all possessed of worldviews incommensurate with one another and irreconcilable, so our only alternative is civil war through our word games. The intersectional feminist gender-fluid activist by their own reckoning uses the language of justice, science, and religious truth but is merely a campaigner for their own peculiar position—just like everyone else.
Civil War Through
Word Games
Postmodernism allows for temporary alliances but not ultimately the pursuit of jointly-held truth or justice. Witness the growing voices within the gay community expressing relief in the fact that they came of age before the rise of transgenderism because they believe if they were coming of age now they would be forced into hormone therapy and miss out on the adult identity they now espouse. Because postmodernism believes in no higher truth or objective reality to which language correlates but only the exercise of power, it can never be more than a sophisticated exercise in narcissism, an assertion of self over-and-against everything and everyone else.
Sophisticated Narcissism
“Everyone else” necessarily includes God, of course… at least if God is purported to do anything other than underwrite our own self-perceptions and exercise of power through our word games. The postmodernist can use the language of “the Word of God,” but they cannot mean by it what Christians have historically meant—a revelation of something we could not have known without the active initiative of God. Nor can they mean by it what Lutherans have meant by it when they distinguish within that Word Law and Gospel. For both Law and Gospel reveal to us a self so impoverished and depraved it is impossible to affirm, the Law by revealing our inability to be righteous and the Gospel by revealing that we can only be saved by Christ’s righteousness, one utterly alien to ourselves.
Incoherence of
Postmodern Thought
There is a reason why the great theologian Augustine defined sin using the phrase in curvatus in se—“being turned in upon oneself.” When we turn within, seeking something affirmable by God, we cannot find our prelapsarian innocence, and what we produce is the incoherence that characterizes all postmodern thought, including the ELCA’s proposed social statement Women and Justice. The founders of postmodernism actively sought to reject the “Logo-centrism” of Western culture, that is, the logic—the coherence—born of a worldview flowing from a belief in the Logos, belief in an ordering principle within the world that does not take its cues from autonomous human actors.
God Brings Order
and Love
Of course, in the case of Christians, that Logos “became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14) God’s first act in the Book of Genesis is to call order forth from the primordial chaos, and He uses His Word to do so. The God revealed by the Scriptures is the bringer of order, of coherence. The amazing news of the Gospel is that this bringer of order does not look upon our profound disorder—our sin—and simply destroy both it and us. In the words of one of my favorite LGBTQIA+ authors, “It is not the perfect but the imperfect who have need of love.” The Gospel is that God knew this long before Oscar Wilde and “so loved the world, that he gave his only Son”—the order-bringing Logos—“that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Order is Inherently
Hierarchical
Unfortunately, the God who brings order and coherence to not just the created order but our own lives in spite of us is necessarily antithetical to the worldview underlying the ELCA’s proposed social statement, for order is inherently hierarchical; it privileges truth over falsehood and so some narratives over others. This God also calls us away from the contemplation of ourselves—away from seeking affirmation of any sort, no matter what we find within our experience—and to the contemplation of Jesus Christ, in whom alone we are to find our un-hyphenated identity. Far from the postmodern de-legitimization of distinctions inferred by postmodern exegetes, Galatians 3:27–28 (“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”) teaches us that only Christ is acceptable to God and so we are to find our true identity in Him, not in any other identity, real or imagined.
ELCA Anti-logic
The unity gestured to by Paul as he ends this thought is not incidental. Just as the word adhere means “to stick together,” so the word cohere means “to form a whole.” The unity in justice that is to characterize the Body of Christ and claims to be sought by the ELCA’s latest social statement cannot be pursued using it as the mechanism, for its own internal logic is anti-logic; it reviles any coherence that would not privilege every self-perception and self-identification.
Viral Attack
Virus attacking immune cells
A virus uses the body’s own self-defense system to undo an organism. The ELCA’s proposed social statement Women and Justice is necessarily incoherent because, in ways I assume its authors may not even be aware of because they have probably not read the primary texts that gave birth to postmodernism (Foucault and Derrida are, after all, inordinately difficult authors to plow through), it appropriates the language of truth and justice, sin and righteousness, Law and Gospel, and uses them virus-like to hobble and, if possible, undo the order-bringing work of God’s Word, inverting its meaning as necessary in order to serve an agenda not born of the Word itself. Women and Justice is an example of postmodernism gone viral within the Body of Christ, seeking to destroy it, and if the ELCA hopes to remain Christian in a way that will permit them to be recognized as such by other Christians not held captive to the postmodern mindset, they must not only reject it, but the worldview that informs it.
Moreover, all Christian communions functioning within the increasingly-postmodern West must be on guard against the same virus that has so deeply infected the ELCA and other mainline, revisionist Protestant bodies as well as (smaller) sections of the Roman Catholic and even Orthodox churches. It is in the water around us, and we must fortify our immune systems against it if we hope to not have our health compromised… or worse, to die as non-Christians mouthing Christian-sounding words.
Justice can and must be pursued for not just women and minorities but all people without de-privileging the truth or re-writing the Word of God. The Logos—coherence Himself—demands it.
