Of Rust and Tattoos

I just tried to salvage the front door to our house. I'd started noticing rust coming through the paint a while back, but with all my other concerns couldn't do anything about it. I'm finally well enough to do something. So I stripped it of all its extraneous hardware. Numbers were placed elsewhere. They're more noticeable in their new location anyway. The door knocker I packed away. That meant I have a few holes to patch, but a bit of car putty and sandpaper would take care of that.

I took some 150 grit to the worst of the rust. It flaked. Not a good sign. Sure enough, the rust was worse than I'd thought. It'd eaten clean through the steel of the door. So I looked over the door more closely, and with my fingers. Sure enough, there was a large bubble to the left. That means the surface rust just revealed a greater cancer lying beneath the paint.

Now, I could spend a great deal of man hours and supplies and wind up with a door that looked like it had been repaired (one hole was in the detailing), or I could bite the bullet and buy a new one and have it installed. Priming and painting I can do. Installation is another thing altogether.

The point is, before we bought the house someone painted that sucker with rust already on it. We changed the color of that paint, giving it even more protection. It's taken seven years for the rust to finally eat through the coats of paint. So now we are at the point we are. A bit of prevention at the first would have solved this.

It's not really about the money we are shoveling out for the door and the installation, although there is that. It's about that lack of care for the things given us. It's about stewardship. It's like that commercial of that kid destroying his toys just to prove that one certain car gets a load of testing. My kids wouldn't have had any toys for a while had they treated theirs like that.

There are basics and essentials that need to be taken care of up front. It has been the setting aside of the Confessions and through that the Word of God that has turned synod into the bureaucratic nightmare that it is, instead of the supportive institution to its pastors and congregations that it was meant to be.

We slap the paint on top of paint through all sorts of commissions and reports to cover the fact that the Confessions are being eroded like rust on steel. In countless congregations what can be seen is there is no unity in practice according to the Word of God and the Confessions. Moreover, the demand that we depart further from the Confessions increases. The rust spreads no matter how quickly we slap that paint on it.

Furthermore, because of the rust and the coats of paint to cover it up, significant dialog on the issues that matter by using the Confessions and the Word of God is getting to be well nigh to impossible. The issues are no longer the focus, the paint and rust (rulings by commissions and reports) are!


A friend got himself a Luther Rose tattoo in honor of the installation of Matt Harrison as President. “Big deal!” I thought, “That’s an honorific? Better yet, study more the Confessions.” Of course, to cut this one some slack, I’m not a tattoo person, and he already does spend a good deal of time with his nose in the Confessions, which he honors in his practice.

The local Methodist church proudly displayed Luther’s Rose in front of their church for several months. It isn’t “ours” anymore. It also belongs to the place of “Open hearts, Open minds, Open doors.” Their demonstration of Luther’s Reformation symbol at a place which rejects so much of what the Reformation won demonstrates that merely slapping a Luther Rose on a thing is no indication of unity in doctrine and practice. Two hours after the installation of Harrison on Sept. 11, St. Andrew’s Anglican Cathedral in downtown Jackson, MS, is having a come-one-come-all Eucharist in memory of 9-11. Christ’s Supper isn’t His anymore. That same practice is observed and encouraged among many of our own LC-MS churches, too.

The LC-MS is on the cusp of repentance or rejection. She can either stand as the true repository of Luther's Reformation inheritance, in which her Confession is that of the Apostolic Church, or she can slide into conformity with those around her. A few more coats of paint and who would know the difference, anyway? I pray my friend didn’t waste a good tattoo. There is much to celebrate this Saturday, but there is also much work ahead.

Emi and Maps from Here to There

Emi came to our house this summer. She spent her week again with us, all by herself. We picked her up in Little Rock and drove her down. She travels well, as she should. She’s made enough trans-Atlantic flights in her short life to take in a six-hour road trip like sand does water.

The first thing Emi did arriving at our place was pick a bowl full of blueberries–certainly a must if there was to be a tea party and muffins with Grammy in the morning. Emi helped make the muffins, of course. One of my students had given me a perfectly lovely tea set as a birthday gift. Little did they know what a treasure it would become.

Emi's daddy drove down with her little sister Lianna to pick her up. This gave Mommy some much needed rest during this last part of her pregnancy. Also, traveling is becoming hard on her right now. Lianna is two now, quite a handful, but so very precious. The three planned to go from here back to Arkansas to Cindy's parents' house. Her dad had a very mild stroke July 4, and the Army gave John time off to help him out around the house and with his recuperation. The night before they left here to go back to Little Rock Emi and her daddy studied maps to plan their route. Emi is fascinated with maps, an influence from the Dora show.

Emi is five-nearly-six. She has a late birth date, November. So she begins Kindergarten behind many other children born in her year. That’s often a blessing. She’ll benefit from that edge of maturity. Emi had already gone to VBS before coming to see us. One evening the television happened to land on a show in which a woman was knocked out or laid out or otherwise incapacitated. “Oh, Grammy,” Emi cried out, “she died!”

It wasn’t yet clear whether the show actually had taken that turn, but Emi perceived it to be that way. As I was trying to think of a response, she continued. “Don’t worry. She’ll come back alive again.” Now I didn’t know what to think. Was she already tainted by too much tv or video games, having seen too many characters ‘die’ only to been seen as ‘alive’ elsewhere? I decided to let Emi keep talking and let her tell me what she was meaning.

“Jesus died and He came back alive again. She died and she will come back alive again because Jesus forgives our sins.”

There it was, simple as can be. During Rev. John Rutowicz's lecture of The Augustana Ministerium's Challenge of Eastern Orthodoxy William Weedon can be heard to say, “Death is original sin made evident; and the converse is also true: original sin is death made visible.” Emi has already locked in the kernel of that maxim. For Emi, death is evidence of sin needing Christ’s forgiveness, and restoration to life is evidence of Life in Christ. Nice stuff even when a little child speaks that which flesh and blood has not revealed.

Emi with her pastor, Larry Peters of Grace Lutheran, Clarksville, TN, on the day she died and was resurrected in Christ.

Feminism That Leads to Christ

Mary writes a beautiful post at the Concordian Sisters of Perpetual Parturition titled Why pregnancy is good for me. It is a gripping confession of a young Christian woman rejoicing in her pregnancy.

 

Æons ago when my own babies were very young, I picked up C. S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy. Apart from whatever else it is, it is the finest treatise on feminism that I’ve read—especially That Hideous Strength. I’d not suggest reading this last volume without having read the first two, but it is in this final work that the previous two come together.

 

In That Hideous Strength, Jane considers herself locked in the opposite of what she regards marriage to be. Marriage ought to be a source of mutual comfort, but she finds hers to Mark to be a source of solitude. They have mutually consented not to have children. They are a mutual source of small unspoken irritations to each other. The silence between them is the greatest of solitudes.

 

Jane is confronted, at last, by her decision not to have children. The Director, a sort of Father-figure, reminds her that she is not a Christian wife. And since she chooses not to have children from this married union, she is living as though she were a virgin. She is a neither-nor.

 

“You mean,” said Jane slowly, “I’ve been repressing something?”

 

The Director laughed; just that loud assured bachelor laughter which had infuriated her on other lips.

 

“Yes,” but don’t think I’m talking of Freudian repressions. He knew only half the facts. It isn’t a question of inhibitions—inculcated shame—against natural desire. I’m afraid there’s no place in the world for people who won’t be either Pagan or Christian. Just imagine a man who was too dainty to eat with his fingers and yet wouldn’t use forks!”

 

Reading this Trilogy was when I began to really understand the insidious grip of feminism on myself. Ask me truly and I will tell you sincerely: the greatest feminist alive today is me. I do not say that for bragging rights. I tell you this because in all my years of trying to combat the feminism within me, I am unable to do so.

 

There is a simple reason for this that is not so very simple. Although feminism and original sin are not the same, because feminism mocks original sin, it is nearly impossible for anyone now living today to escape the influences of this all-pervasive worldview. First, feminism is a deception. It deceives the hearer to thinking that is an authoritative voice for woman and her needs, as well as society in general.  Second, because feminism considers itself to be authoritative, it presents itself as a movement for empowerment. The individual is her own authority. This is the key to the wrongful use of individualism. This is the same thing that the serpent promised our First Mother when he said she would be “like God.”

 

Eve was deceived into thinking she had to do something in order to be like God, when she was already made in His image. We spend much energy trying to do anything but our vocation—that which God has placed in our hands to do—and trying to take credit for it as if that is what will grant us salvation. This is the core of feminism, and its root is original sin. Mary speaks eloquently of how God has reclaimed her through the repentance of pregnancy.  

 

I can no more free myself of my feminism than I can free myself of my sin. Still my pastor frees me of it, often and much with his word of Absolution in my ear and his hand upon my head. And daily and much my Baptism keeps me free of it, daily and much. In this there is much to rejoice about feminism, as Mary has found—for it brings women back to Christ.