At this point, and after my recent post “Angry Child” I feel it necessary to explain how I see a Lutheran pastor. The same probably applies to pastors of many other denominations. They are well dressed, ‘spiffy’ as Addie would say, their hands are well manicured, their demeanor is very gentleman-like, they are well educated and they come across as very trustworthy …and of course, honest.
So far so good. Now.. here are my thoughts. These men are representatives of the Word of God, right? What then would be their utmost important goal (or should be)? Most definitely to show people the way to God! Yes? And there only is one way.. according to what God says in his word.
The one way to God is to know Jesus Christ as Savior!
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. That whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” – John 3:16
This however, I have never heard from one Lutheran pastor.. ever! Growing up as a pastor’s daughter, I was required to behave like a ‘fine’ person, to know scripture, to make my Confirmation. I was not one time told how I would receive eternal life. Yes, as a pastor’s daughter I could not have told you how to be saved.
No, the pastor’s I knew in Germany were employees, paid by the state. I learned later that my father had wanted to become an architect but was forced to become a pastor because it was in the tradition of his family. His father was a pastor and his father before him too, so Theo was to be a pastor, and a pastor he became! Not from conviction nor calling, but a vocation.
Dad defied the Nazi’s and did ask questions and speak against Hitler from his pulpit, which was something that most pastors did not dare to do. But with the great respect I do have for dad and for how he voiced his opinion in the face of personal danger, I did not hear of Jesus and salvation from him.
I decided to question a Lutheran pastor about his views concerning this. It turned out that this pastor had no idea.. what the way to God is. I am not saying, that all of the previously described men have the same lack of knowledge.. but either way.. this shocked me. How can a pastor that has no knowledge of what God says about this.. lead a congregation in following Christ? Scary, to say the least. My explanation about this is that all and everything in certain churches has turned into stiff ritual. Ritual and Form. This has nothing to do with what God says. The Gospel can be understood by a 2 year old. It is that simple. The simplicity of the Gospel has gotten lost in these churches.
Lost in Form, Ritual and cold stiff meaningless habits. This is what “Religion” is. Religion is not the same thing as a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.
Even money comes into the picture here. Your money gifts do not get you to Heaven. Jesus does. Do we hear this message in many of our churches?
I for one.. never did.
Maybe it’s just me, but since this is my blog.. I feel that I should talk about it. In my words: “Satan did it again, he successfully buried the simple truth in a bunch of lies.” Yes, the father of all lies was and is very successful in hiding the very simple truth.
I had to say all of this because to those who do not know Jesus Christ, it causes confusion. As for me.. I found this very simple truth because of some selfless, loving lay-people.. here in America, who showed me the Way. God bless them!
You Lutheran and many other pastors, let little me tell you this: What we need from you is the expounding of the word of God.. yes this entails all of the OT and other scripture that are difficult to understand.. You have studied all this and should be well able to explain it to us. Now please gentlemen.. explain to us how we find this personal relationship with God. If you yourselves do not know this, then I urge you to humble yourselves, pray, and look at it again. It is the most important thing you can do, and you will be answerable to the Most High!
Now go, visit the sick, care for the needy, teach the Gospel and be humble. God will take care of your needs.. I dare say that you don’t even have to plead for donations and money, because if you do what God demanded of you (and all born again believers) He will see to it, that you will be taken care of. This is the best way I can explain what I needed to say. My blog would be incomplete without me having spoken out on this subject. And those.. to whom this may concern, will hear what I said. Now “Go into all the world”.. ladies and gentlemen..!
“By grace you have been saved, not of works lest any man should boast” – Ephesians 2:8
“Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” – Acts 4:12
“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” – Romans 5:8
I am including my post today as it mirrors your blog!
Well said Miss Addie! No pulpit has ever said it better! It appears the tradition of preaching the gospel has not missed a single generation but continues through you AND Yvonne!
Here is confirmation of the message for today!
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.” (Hosea 4:6 NKJV)
I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” quoted from the pulpit over the years. And truer words were never spoken. The church at large is ignorant of God’s Word, for lack of spending time in study!
But I can’t think of many sermons I’ve heard on her rejecting knowledge, and today that is true in great abundance around the world.
I love the old saying, “the devil tried to destroy the church, and when he couldn’t, he joined it.” His twisting of God’s Word began in the garden and continues this day. And everyday I see evidence of people who believe they are following Jesus going down a path that becomes wider with every step! (Matthew 7:13)
The Truth is being preached, but people prefer a softer gentler message. They are rejecting knowledge and following a “different Jesus”. (2 Corinthians 11:4)
The Truth is hard! The walk is full of persecution and rejection often by people we love or respect. The Truth is lonely because it requires separation from idols that others refuse to lay down. The Truth is painful because it requires obedience to God’s Word and laying aside pride in humility and transparency! The Truth means dying daily on our cross, not just wearing it around our neck.
(1 Corinthians 15:31)
Why would God send His Son to die for our sins, admonish us to repent up until the very last book in The Bible and then let us live like kings and queens here and give us our every desire for a cushy life? Isn’t that what is being preached? The nonsensical Gobleygook that is being embraced in the name of Jesus is plain rejection of The Truth that has the only power to set us free? The counterfeit message entraps and enslaves and is accomplishing its goal of sending people to hell!
The sugar coated gospel twisting mercy and grace into a salvation that guarantees ones admission into a glorious eternity, bears no resemblance to the walk that Jesus Himself said we must walk!
“Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”(Matthew 16:24 NKJV)
The uncompromised Truth, brings freedom through obedience! No more fear. No more worry. No more anger. No more rejection. (Worry, fear, rejection are all torments from the devil; a result of the sin! They are unbelief!)
Freedom from fear and worry is available and can’t be bought through a pharmacy nor is it bestowed by a benevolent god that nods at our sin. Their god’s very acceptance of our sins would not have required Jesus’ death for our salvation.
Freedom from the consequences of the sin, we harbor in our heart, IS available through obedience (repentance and confessing our sins one to another as commanded in James 5:16). THAT freedom (from past sins that are brought into The Light) and deliverance is received when we come to the end of ourself and willingly give up all rights to our will for His will! It’s a “whatever it takes God” moment that changes a lifetime!
“It’s so simple, but simple is the hardest thing you will ever do!” Chet Murrell
Jesus came to set the captives free, and He still IS!
Repent before it gets worse! “Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.”
Even so – MARANATHA!
Thank you Addie for your transparency! You and I are living proof that God is still setting the captives free! Connie B.
You have great wisdom and insight into not only what is needed in this world but of human nature and “religion.” It is somewhat surprising to me that a pastor would not be familiar with what God’s word has to say about Christ and salvation. This is the theme of the bible. I hope that your dad knew Christ but his eternity is already decided. This is why it is critical to know Christ now and to “wake up” (Rom. 13:11). On a side note, I really enjoy the pictures that you are sharing with us. Thank you and don’t stop!
Das war hochinteressant, Addie, was Sie da geschrieben haben (u. jetzt muss ich auf Englisch umsteigen, Verzeihung)! I spent 7th thru 9th grade in Germany, attending school there (meine Mutter stammte urspruenglich aus Pommern u. wollte zurueck in die Heimat [in diesem Fall Schtuagrt, aka Stuttgart]), and my mother insisted I attend the whole year of Lutheran Konfirmationslehre. We had only ever attended church before that, once/year at Easter, at a dead Lutheran church in Denver, where I spent my grade school years. So, I was not at all keen about the whole enterprise, but what brightened it up was (a) the young seminary intern (hatte fuer den so’ne Flamme, LOL!), (b) the boys there, (c) the fact that my mother would pay for a black velvet dress with a white lace collar for the actual ceremony (we were dirtpoor there in Germany, & I was wearing 6 year old hand-me-downs)), and (d) that afterwards, deeming me a “full adult,” she’d finally let me wear pantyhose (which were a brand new invention in those days). All such genuinely good reasons for going to those lessons. 😉
Fact is, they NEVER taught the Scriptures, much less gave us the Gospel. It was all schier Gefasel, and it only caused me to hate religion and church all the more. (Add to that my exposure to a couple of Baptist Sunday school classes when I was 3 [so awful that I vomited on the Spring green grass on Easter Sunday], and encounters with various facets of Catholicism, and you can see why I developed an intense aversion to all things churchy). Plus, I thought only weak people needed the crutch of religion. I refused to be enslaved by ANYthing at all: cigarettes, drugs, booze, fashion, Bolshevism or silly church rituals/formalism. (Nobody ever informed me that being a Christian is not a matter of “religion.”)
Little did I realize that just as the body needs food, so does the soul. So, when my soul started hungering for something greater than all the world has to offer, I had no idea that it was the heavenly Manna, Jesus. I searched all over, thinking I’d find the answer in pantheism (tho at the time, I did not know that particular word), or in non-antisemitic pan-Germanicism, or in the Greek philosophers, or in Annie Dillard’s books, or Hermann Hesse’s. But they all ended up being empty cisterns.
Then, during my junior year in college (ironically in France, of all places [take THAT, Voltaire and Encyclopeistes: God has a sense of humor! 😉 ], He convicted me of my sin nature (tho at the time, I didn’t know He was the one behind the epiphany), which He did using my copious readings on the Holocaust: “You, LM, along with all the rest of humanity, are capable of the same type of atrocities as the Einsatzkommandos.” SOCK IN THE SOLAR PLEXUS! **ME**?? Upright, clean living ME? I never cussed, fornicated, boozed, smoked, did drugs or hung out with any bad peers. I loved learning new things (both academically and in crafts and other things) and got good grades; I was hugely productive, and obeyed my father to a T (my mother had sent me back to live with him when I was 15). So, after that insight, I was absolutely HORRRRRRified by this thing the Bible called the “sin nature” (which at that point I did not yet know). For me, sinners were those who committed the glaring evils: pedophiles, rapists, murderers, torturers, prostitutes, embezzlers, perjurers, drunks, junkies, smokers. Little did I know that God’s x-ray vision also sees the “microscopic” sins, the ones inside the mind and soul.
5 months later, someone led me to the LORD, and I started devouring the Bible from cover to cover.
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What I think happens, in Christianity as in Judaism, is reification, aka spiritual sclerosis. Over time, regardless of the denomination, formalism and ritualism always creep in again and take firm hold (this is the doing of the flesh: it likes to flatter itself that its various systems can achieve what in fact only Jesus was able to attain). Then, God has to once again raise up a Moses, or a Paul or a Luther, to shake up the stiffness and stiltedness.
Thank you so much for sharing your story, Licht! You’re a wonderful writer! All glory so clearly goes to Him when he finds us in the most unlikely places! (France) 😉