Summer school of Faith, 2019

I've been following Charles Craigmile's  summer lectures for 5 or 6 years. This summer's program will address many of the issues facing us in our culture. He's interesting, has a sense of humor, and is well prepared. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcS6WXVr6GU  He's not a priest, pastor or professor, and instead is a businessman. I've watched the first lecture--outstanding, and the 2nd is on line, they will be off during July 4 week.

The distorted Gospel of liberal Christians

A member of a UCC congregation thought I was singling out her branch of Christianity in a previous post. I wish it were only UCC-ans who had the problem of following another Jesus (the community organizer Jesus), but it's mainline Protestants in general. I simply observed that you can tell Obama is a Christian because he follows the path of the UCC by imposing change and repentance from the top down instead of allowing God to work in the sinner. I won't go into all eleven pages of a sermon given at a WordAlone convention in 2007 by Rev. Prof. Karl P. Donfried, Dr. of Theology, but here's a brief summary in that presentation of what's happening in my denomination/synod, ELCA, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, with headquarters in Chicago.

“. . . the ELCA has, for all intents and purposes, jettisoned Scripture as the anchor of our faith by removing it from its creedal and confessional context and because the ELCA has allowed those who reject this Lutheran context to be among its most prominent interpreters. Instead of proclaiming a Gospel of grace and redemption that calls sinful humanity to repentance and new life, the ELCA adamantly promulgates a message based on secular humanism that is fixated on issues of racism and sexism, and that is more concerned with establishing new rostered racial justice monitors than it is with feeding and nurturing the ordained pastors of this church. This alien and distorted Gospel, no longer drawing on the deep wells of Scripture as classically interpreted, is now actualized through a political agenda of good works that is hell bent on rectifying the injustices of a selfish and violent world with superficial language about “social justice” that seems to aspire to the highest levels of naiveté. At every corner exuberant banality appears to be the order of the day."

As a way of explanation, UCC is way out in front in "good works" and revising Biblical texts to change the world (since Jesus didn't or couldn't), the latest being marriage of homosexuals, adding homosexuals to clergy rosters, and falling head first in the cesspool of modern environmentalism that will eventually destroy any hope for an improved life for third world citizens. But that's only because they are the oldest in the United States being descendants of the Puritans. The Lutherans didn't even have a hymnal in English until about 130 years ago, having come here not from England, but Germany, Scandinavia, the Baltics, etc. and eschewing "diversity" and the English for about 100 years.

The other day I took something into the church to be photocopied--a list of the beautiful paintings by Jeri Platt of mission work in Haiti (second floor, Mill Run campus). I glanced down at the staff member's desk and my eye fell on a printout that included the words, "diversity" and "social justice." Groan. Probably sponsored by a government grant like our summer lunch program, but I just didn't ask. It's too upsetting to see the church and the gospel co-opted by the "exuberant banality" of government-speak.

4026

Why I lose faith in the experts

There is so much green goo on the environmental bandwagon, it's no wonder it's a slippery slope to humanistic destruction. There are wonderful, humane, spiritual and Biblical reasons to protect and respect our earth, many of them also fiscally sound. Others are pure nonsense, designed to make a buck or three. Like this description for an education course my husband received today from AIA

"A Living Systems Approach to Design: The impact of human activity exceeds our planet's capacity to accommodate change, ultimately harming Earth's ability to sustain life. This session, presented by architects Chrisna du Plessis and William Reed, explores the new realities, and responsibilities architects face when must consider how human and natural systems can evolve together."

Now let's compare that to this

"[Look at a midnight sky] It still reverberates from the Big Bang of its creation 13.7 billion years ago. . . Gamma-ray bursts release more energy in a blink than our sun can produce in a billion years." Robert Lee Hotz WSJ, 8-3-07

One or both of these descriptions of life has to be wrong. One says earth can't withstand the measly gasoline engine in the United States and Europe, the other says it created itself with no outside help almost 14 billion years ago, killing off millions of generations of species in trial and error before man ever appeared to dig an oil well.