Onward Christian Soldiers

Our church holds an annual joint service (“joint” as in “together” not as in “The judges say that’s okay, they smoke big joints, too"!”) with a local Catholic parish and as we were driving there a few months ago, The Child™ asked me if Catholics think Lutherans—which we are—are going to hell and I told her, “Of course.”  Then she asked me what the Lutheran faith teaches and I told her that we espouse the same belief as does every major religion which is that if you don’t belong to that religion, as soon as you die you go straight to Hell.  And, I continued, in our case it’s even worse because the Lutheran Church has Synods: Missouri, Wisconsin, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and perhaps others, and you have to be a member of the proper Synod (in our case ELCA) or it’s Lake O’ Fire for you. 

Now, I should point out that Laura knows, and has known since she was 3 or so, when I am feeding her a line of bullcrap.  She knows that this is not what I personally believe.  In fact, I can’t even remember why I brought the story up, although the possibility that I used the whole thing an excuse to get the Cheech and Chong video in not only cannot be ruled out but may in fact have been the sole reason for it.

But I did want to talk about ELCA.  A few months ago, by a solid majority, the church voted in national assembly to permit openly gay members of the clergy who are in “committed relationships” to serve as pastors.

This has ignited what Jesus would have called a shitstorm in the church.  The largest congregation in southeast Michigan, for example, reacted by leaving ELCA and forming a brand new (non-gay) synod of their own.

Our parish held a meeting on the subject last night and I’m sorry I missed it.  At a breakfast with some of our members this morning, they told me all about it.  (Name Withheld) told me that (another Name Withheld) summed it up best when he said, “Hate the sin but love the sinner.” 

I said, “To which sin was he referring?  The sin of passing judgment on others?”  He didn’t have much to say after that. 

I’ve told Laura, who knows when I’m feeding her a line of bullcrap and has since she was about 3, but who also knows when I am telling her what I believe, that the way people react to  homosexuality provides the single best example of the concept of Inverse Proportionality.  That is to say, the less something is somebody else’s business, the more they care about it.  Since there is nothing that is less somebody else’s business than sex, it is sex—and specifically how others engage in sex—that people care about more than anything else. 

I call bullcrap on all of this.  Jesus told us to love one another.  E.O.S. (End Of Story).  

I guess that’s all I have to say today.