The Nihil Rule

(they forgot "your log my plank" and "winsomeness")  

Another great insight from Pr. Peters:  " The problem is always Christ -- not the failings of the Christians even though they are many.  Christ is the offense, the stumbling stone.  He says so Himself.  The prophets said it before Him.  So why do we keep crawling into the same pothole of self-importance presuming that our goodness makes people believe and become part of the community of faith or if they don't we must have done something wrong?  This is, by the way, the presumption of half the parachurch organizations out there who want to help us fix ourselves so that we will grow." Pastoral Meanderings: On the offense of truth. . .

"The Lutheran theologian Matthias Flacius reported that he had heard the papal legate Antonius say that one should not read Paul's letters; 'for I know,' he said, 'some people who have become Lutherans merely by reading Paul's letters.' The papal legate Antonius was right." - Der Lutheraner, 1917

 I found this chart very interesting. Click the link to download a PDF version.  From the authors: "I want to be crystal clear about something: bigotry and racial discrimination are real and they have no place in society. Yes, there is ongoing racism. Yes, there is ongoing homophobia. Yes, there is ongoing hatred of trans people. These are morally abhorrent and we all need to work together to bring about their end. The woke religion, however, is not the way to stop these moral horrors. It is making our shared problems more difficult to solve. This is the spirit in which we offer this taxonomy." The second to the last statement is key. The woke region does not want to fix problems, instead of makes our societal problems more difficult to solve. 

  "The root of the problem is buried much deeper than who a beer company wants to put on their can. How did we get here and arrive so rapidly? How should the Church faithfully respond? May I suggest being theologians of the cross and calling things what they actually are instead of bowing in cowardice or in fear of offending someone? Homosexuality is an abomination. Transgenderism calls God a liar. Boys cannot be girls and girls cannot be boys (or cats, dogs, or horses). Cohabitation and divorce destroy families and are sinful. “Inclusivity” targets Christians. Organizations that act as if they love people and will fight for (fill-in-the blank) justice are also abominations in the eyes of God seeking to build up the dividing wall of hostility that Christ, by His blood, has torn down (see Ephesians 2). Fighting against this is Synod’s next significant hurdle to cross. It is much higher than it would have been, but in our silence over the years, we allowed many of these things into

“Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether.” - Neil Postman

  This is a book review of  Resisting the Dragon's Beast: What if God's Servant of the Government Behaves Like Satan's Servant?  by Michael Zarling, a WELS pastor. In it he discusses the beast from the sea from Revelation 13 which is representative of a persecuting government.  The book starts out with the first chapter entitled "Romans 13," dismissing the obvious elephant in the room by explaining by defining submission as 'yielding to authority' and not 'surrendering to power'. This is made clear in other sections of Scripture - wives submit to husbands, but do not have to suffer abuse, likewise with slaves. One thing that surfaced a few times but was not explicitly addressed, but would improve the book: clearly delineate the difference between authority an power. Someone in (or under) authority has the right to do something. Someone in power has the ability, regardless of right. Zarling appeals to the Augsburg Confession article 16 to defend the

"The advantage of a fixed form of service is that we know what is coming. Ex tempore public prayer has this difficulty: we don't know whether we can mentally join in it until we've heard it - it might be phoney or heretical. We are therefore called upon to carry on a critical and a devotional activity at the same moment: two things hardly compatible. In a fixed form we ought to have 'gone through the motions' before in our private prayers; the rigid form really sets our devotions free . I also find the more rigid it is, the easier it is to keep one's thoughts from straying. Also it prevents getting too completely eaten up by whatever happens to be the preoccupation of the moment (i.e. war, an election, or what not). The  permanent  shape of Christianity shows through."  - C. S. Lewis, Letters (1 April 1952)

God be praised. I'm pleased to share this presentation , hat tip to  🥓Texas Morning Coffee ☕️ (@BYECAHELLOTEXAS) / Twitter . This presentation was given at a  South Central District  (WELS) conference by Rev. Paul Seager. My observations:  - Clearly, he's been listening to James Lindsay. The 13 tenants are a dead giveaway, James in a podcast explained how books like to give 5 tenants, but if you read enough books they overlap and give you thirteen. Same with the "long shaft" comment. - He correctly comes to the conclusion (Slide 78, presentation comments) that CRT is antithetical to the Gospel. This mantra is repeated throughout subsequent slides. - Slides 66 and following present an excellent thesis/antithesis between the Bible and CRT on key doctrines. You can download the presentation or use the embedded viewer below. I suggest downloading it as Rev. Seager has notes that the embedded viewer does not present.