The First Article of the Apostles’ Creed: Creation

 I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.

 What does this mean?

 I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them. He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife [spouse] and children, land, animals, and all I have. He richly and dailyprovides me with all that I need to support this body and life. He defends me against all danger and guards and protects me from all evil. All this He does only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me. For all this it is my duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him. This is most certainly true.    [Martin Luther’s Small Catechism http://lcms.org/bookofconcord/smallcatechism.asp]

The biblical God is not a once-upon-a-time Creator who set everything in motion and went on vacation. The biblical God actively creates out of the primeval chaos and actively sustains His good creation. His Son Jesus tells His disciples that the Father knows what all His creatures need before (or whether) they ask (Matthew 6). He gives us all that we have and are. Notice all the action verbs in Luther’s explanation to the first article: gives, provides, defends, protects, does…. Because this God is so active in His creation, many Christians have spoken of Him as Providence, the One who provides.

 In order to understand Luther the biblical theologian, the reader must always look closely at his work. His emphases vary based upon whom his conversations partners happen to be. In the case of the Small Catechism, Luther is writing for parents, so that they can better teach the basics of the Christian faith to their families. Luther emphasizes in article one of the Apostles’ Creed God’s fatherly work. He makes clear that God’s work doesn’t happen in a vacuum nor do we live in one. Evil is always the counterforce seeking to undo the Father’s good and gracious will.

 For Luther, evil is not simply the necessary yang to the biblical God’s yin. Evil is the spirit of rebellion that first responded to God’s Wholly Otherness with the proverbial 1960s chant: “Hell, no, we won’t go.” Evil is the false claim to ownership and authority that belongs to God alone. Evil is known by his deeds – the attempt to undo creation by rebelling against God’s good and gracious will that sustains creation. If the biblical God knows everyone’s needs and provides for them, then evil seeks to subvert that plan by inviting as many as he is able to convince to deny and destroy God’s good creative work.

 Evil is self-absorbed. Evil is narcissistic. We can trace the origin of sin to evil, because sin rebels against its Creator responding to His Goodness with self-absorption and narcissism. Instead of responding to our Creator with thanks, praise, service, and obedience (demonstrating that we are really hearing God by doing what God wants), we humans join evil’s rebellion against God. As I have often said, one does not even need to open the Bible to Genesis 3 to see how God’s creatures have rebelled and continue to rebel against the One whom Harry Wendt, author of the Crossways Bible Study, calls: “Our Maker and Owner!” Human history is the story of our rebellion against our Creator.

 Evil is, as C.S. Lewis once wrote, “God’s ape,” the one who mimics his Creator by creating counterfeit stuff. Think of how Hannah Arendt labeled as “the banality of evil” brilliant Nazi doctors making a science of destroying their neighbors – Jews, Gypsies, the disabled, homosexuals, and, yes, pastors who called their work sin and evil. Think of the abortion lobby as a whole, and not just its worst perpetrator in Pennsylvania, who plan the destruction of God’s unborn creatures while euphemistically calling their work “women’s health” and “women’s rights.” Think of those who, like Nazis, first label the unborn as “unpersons” and then use the cells they have stolen from their original design to live as persons outside their mother’s wombs in order to accomplish all kinds of “interesting” experiments for the benefit of those who claim to be more valuable. Evil is self-absorbed, narcissistic, and utterly rebellious against God!

 Evil subverts the orderliness of God’s good creation. How he does so is dastardly complex. And, yes, I’m being deliberately personal in the naming of evil and not in the poetic or metaphoric sense. As Scott Peck noted in “The People of the Lie,” evil is a personal, malevolent force that seeks to seduce other creatures to do his will. Jesus says the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10). Evil’s prints are all over the public health disasters that come from those who want nothing to stand in their way of acquiring shamelessly and without any regard for the consequences of their choices. How many carcinogens have destroyed lives, families, and communities because evil kept insisting that people could hide their mistakes and failures? How many marriages were destroyed because a narcissist decided it would be fun to take what she or he wanted without regard for who might be hurt? How many crimes began with no thought of anyone but ME?     

 Now, notice again how Luther emphasizes the proper distinction between Creator and creature. God does all His creative work out of fatherly, divine, goodness and mercy – not because there is some intrinsic merit or worthiness in His creatures that obligates God to reward us. Indeed God’s original assessment of His creation as “very good” was the original Artist admiring His work and not some self-made adorability that we brought to the picnic. When we join in evil’s rebellion against our Creator, sinful humanity destroys the Creator’s very good work like a couple of bratty kids on the beach wrecking in a matter of seconds the sand castle that has been lovingly, carefully crafted.

 The first article of the Apostles’ Creed covers what many call “natural law.” It covers everything from the basics of the birds and the bees to the raw materials and building blocks of creation and even to seasons and tides and weather patterns [and yes, evil can and does subvert any and all of these]. We are here by God’s design and not by random selection. There is an orderliness to creation that is intricately marvelous. As the psalmist put it, we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139). We humans have been made “little lower than the angels” and have the capacity for co-creation (Psalm 8). We are stewards and caretakers of all that God has made including that Leviathan which God made for the sport of it (Psalm 145). To work with God for His good and gracious will is responsible living. To take what we want without thought of anyone living or yet to come is not.

 There is a common sensibility about the care of God’s creation that can be grasped by those who don’t yet “thank, praise, serve, and obey” God. Yes, sometimes, those who assess their place in the order of things from a rational perspective have a better grasp on how to care for God’s creation and their neighbor that eludes those of little and childish faith. The agnostic or so-called atheist who feeds the hungry and cleans up after a disaster is closer to the will of God than the childish Christian who prays before deliberately cheating the neighbor. Exceptions to the rule do not disprove the rule nor are they an argument against faith or piety.

 The proper distinction between Creator and creature is kept when we respond with thanks, praise, service, and obedience to the God who creates out of fatherly, divine, goodness and mercy…which we never deserve. As Luther says, “this is most certainly true!”

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“…For I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers [and mothers] upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Exodus 20:5b-6).

            This is one of those Bible passages that sets 21^st century relativists on edge. A typical response might sound like this: “You see! Now that’s why I’m not into religion. Who can believe in a God of wrath who is so intolerant? I’m just not willing to even talk about that stuff. I don’t believe that.” Rather than a sophomoric (or even childish) kneejerk response to words that have shaped Western civilization for the better part of two thousand years (and Hebrew religion for, at least another 1200 years), let’s delve a little deeper into the challenge they represent to the so-called autonomous self.

            Within the ten words (commandments) of Exodus 20, these words are particularly attached to the commandment against having other gods. Those that descend from the Reformed branch of Christianity divide the commandment against having other gods into two with their 2^nd commandment (a doff of the hat to the iconoclastic controversy) being the words immediately preceding the highlighted quote “You shall not make for yourself a graven image….” The most severe (even in hip disguise) won’t have stained glass pictures of Jesus or, for some, even a cross on their buildings.

            The majority of Christians, which include us Lutherans, do not confuse religious artwork with idolatry as do many American Protestants. We simply move from the commandment against having other gods to the commandment against misusing God’s name. Notably, Martin Luther came out of hiding in the WartburgCastle to defend the use of religious art to teach the illiterate (which today would include the biblically illiterate) the story of salvation and urged Christians to paint the biblical stories on the exterior of their homes as part of gospel proclamation. But I digress.

            When you go to a theater to see a play, an opera, or a film, you will eventually suspend your disbelief long enough to be engaged by the story. The combination of art, skill, and craft by those telling the story will frequently sneak past your defenses and, if you are not given to critical thinking, will often move you emotionally to the place where the storyteller wants to take you inspite of your self-assurance about your autonomy. If you don’t spend some time reflecting upon what the storyteller wanted you to feel, you may swallow the whole enchilada without much resistance.

            Now think about what happened, for instance, when Israel entered into the arid land of Canaan where their neighbors were largely Baal worshipers. Baal was the rain god whose help local farmers needed to survive. [Anyone who has spent some time in the wonderful anthropological museum in Mexico City can see ample illustrations of the kind of pre-Columbian idols that celebrated the fertility gods and goddesses of a much more ecologically diverse part of the world, but you get the idea with the exaggerated secondary sexual characteristics of the idols.] Baalism was immensely popular and very difficult to eradicate, because it used sacred prostitution as a form of Baal worship. The farmer “slept with” the prostitute to get Baal in the mood to “rain upon” the earth goddess and make her yield crops. Needless to say, Baal worship had a great marketing scheme.

            So…the people whom God had rescued from slavery in Egypt, with whom He had made covenant by grace alone, easily forgot Whose they were as they assimilated into the local Canaanite culture. To continue the analogy, they went to the BaalTemple and were “moved” by their feelings to worship other gods. [One Lutheran pastor wickedly responded to the grow-your-church-at-any-price storytellers by suggesting that if you want to get lots of young men into church we should bring back temple prostitution along with free beer. Wouldn’t that work so much better than rock music and a preacher in jeans?] Ah, but the problem was, then, that the iniquity of the fathers and mothers was visited upon the third and fourth generation by their worship of idols. They forgot who and Whose they were, and how could God help those who didn’t want His help?

            Cultural religion, which is religion that pays mostly lip service to its God or gods, is doomed to die out in three to four generations (if not sooner), because it has a real god or goddesses unrelated (or tangentially related) to the purported religion. [I used to laugh at the shameless ploy by some nondenominational preachers in DallasTX who would tell people they could continue to be whatever denomination they were and still attend their churches. Of course, they were either Baptist or Pentecostal preachers that dropped the label so that it wouldn’t turn off the sheep they were trying to steal. Yet, if the sheep had been more-than-culturally attached to their churches, they wouldn’t have been seduced by a different way.] This is the very reason that people who joined churches in the 1950s, when it was expected of all red-blooded Americans, produced the baby boomers that either left their churches in actuality or “left” their churches in teaching and practice.

            I would submit that the real religion that many parents in the 1950s practiced was materialism in the name of a one-size-fits-all American God. They taught their children to be consumers, and that’s what we are today – a nation of consumers. We go after what we want. We go after what we like. We go after whatever seems meet, right, and salutary to us regardless of what the biblical God has to say about it. We can and do ignore the Ten Commandments or, better yet, rewrite them to say what we think they ought to say.

            All of that can work for an entire lifetime and, from a this-life perspective, for generations of those that “hate” the biblical God’s commandments. If each of us is the center of our own relative universe, well, then, what’s the harm in disregarding God? But, if God is God the Maker and Owner of the Universe, then all of us consumers eventually reach the end of our shelf life. What if we don’t all end up as road-kill? Suspending our disbelief and even unbelief for a minute, what if the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who has made Himself known in His incarnate Son Jesus is actually the God to whom we must give an account of our lives at the end of all things? OOOPS!

             The God who calls Himself a jealous God never coerced anyone into fearing, loving, and trusting Him. Never! And that God will let us have our way, even if it is a hell of a way to go! Indeed He is rather tolerant after all. He tolerates our saying “No!”

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife (spouse), or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his cattle, or anything that is your neighbor’s”

What does this mean?

We should fear and love God, and so we should not abduct, estrange, or entice away our neighbor’s wife, servants, or cattle, but encourage them to remain and discharge their duty to him.” (Luther’s Small Catechism, Tappert 344:19-20)

            The problem with coveting is not as much about where it can lead (adultery, theft, or even murder) but what is at its heart. Coveting, like all the other commandments, is commentary on our breaking the primary command: “You shall have no other gods.”

            When we do not fear, love, and trust God above everything else, this results in a palpable expression of rebellion against God and, as such, it becomes idolatry (placing anyone or anything above God).

            The easiest misreading of this last commandment is that one’s spouse is one’s property that another dare not steal. No! When one’s spouse promises to forsake all others and to cling only to her or his spouse, she or he becomes God’s beloved gift to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish until death do us part. It is no small thing that the marriage of man and woman is likened to the relationship between Christ and His Church, between God and His people. The otherness of the spouse is integral to marriage. One’s wife or husband is not property. She or he complements us by her or his otherness.

            In our day, even some who call themselves Christians have returned to a Greco-Roman worldview in which intimate relationships are hardly more than about hooking up for a time with whomever whenever. The height of this pre-Christian (and other than Jewish) worldview is the deliberate substitution of the word “gender” for “sex.” Gender is a linguistic construct and allows the person to define the self (the ultimate narcissism). Sex is a matter of being born either male or female, being defined by the Creator who creates both men and women in His image. Gender makes one accountable only to the self. Sex is a matter of being what one has been created to be by God who calls us to account for how we live in a particular body (male or female).

            This tenth commandment, like all the others, is part of a larger metanarrative, a story by which people live. Within the Hebrew Bible, this commandment is part of the metanarrative by which pious Jews live. Within the Christian Bible, this commandment is part of the story which God’s Son Jesus lived perfectly and into which a Christian is baptized. In classic Lutheran terms, this commandment declares God’s good and gracious will for His people. We follow the One who has done all things well, and when we deviate from this metanarrative we break God’s heart by falling short of His glory.

            Admiring another is not coveting. It is no different than admiring the beauty of a work of art, a piece of music, an excellent performance, or a moment in space and time like a sunset or a thrilling athletic contest. Coveting is listening to the devil’s empty promise that the acquisition of someone or something else will answer one’s deepest needs and longings. Admiring God’s good creation is about giving God the glory that is His due. Coveting leaves us, and not the object of our coveting, at the center that belongs only to God!

            When we want what we want when we want it, we deny that our heavenly Father knows our needs even before we ask. We deny that He will provide for us in due time. When we delay gratification to wait upon the LORD, we place ourselves in His hands. When we refuse to delay gratification, we heed the seductive voice of the old tempter who always asks: “Did God really say…?”

            Luther commends us to read through the commandments prior to going to confession in order to examine our lives in the light of God’s Word. They drive us to our knees to confess that we have rebelled against God and harmed our neighbor. God intends by His Law to drive us to His love and mercy in Jesus Christ! Our response to God’s love and mercy is to ask His Spirit’s help to delight in His will and walk in His ways to the glory of His holy name. Amen.

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.”

 What does this mean?

 “We should fear and love God, and so we should not seek by craftiness to gain possession of our neighbor’s inheritance or home, nor to obtain them under pretext of legal right, but be of service and help to him so that he may keep what is his” (Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, Tappert 343-44).

The stories we choose to live by are powerful. I’m thinking of how true that is on the morning after the 2012 Presidential election. In the winner-take-all system that dominates how we elect a president, an evenly divided country re-elected a president who came to office with the shortest resume of any president in recent memory. He was re-elected despite an unemployment rate hovering around 8%, despite millions more being on food stamps, despite trillions of dollars added to the national debt, and despite having a highly successful, highly partisan campaign organization that has, after four years, yet to show it can lead a deeply divided country. (You should read Edward Klein’s “The Amateur” to hear what many of the people who know him best have to say.”)

Instead of being held accountable for amazing failures and political missteps, largely ignored by a fawning mainstream media, the president’s re-election campaign successfully sold enough voters in enough states on the idea that his opponent, a man with a history of success in business and in bi-partisan leadership as a governor and about whom voters at exit polls said would better be able to handle economic recovery, should be resented for having been successful. Of course, it did not help that a “secret” film clip showed the former governor talking about the culture of victimization that, he said, many embrace in the USA.

Essentially, the president’s campaign sold just enough Americans on the idea that coveting the success of others, including their larger homes (of which ironically the president and his wealthiest supporters own at least one) is an acceptable story to live by. If the story of the 80s was captured in the words of fictional character Gordon Gecko as “greed is good,” then the story of the president’s 2012 re-election campaign is “coveting is good.” Covet your successful neighbor’s house. It will stoke your anger that you don’t have one, and what? Your neighbor shouldn’t have one either? No, that’s not quite it. No, your neighbor should apologize for her or his success, and give you more of what she or he has earned as a kind of guilt tax to what end. The famous caricature of wealthy East Coast liberals is, “I feel guilty about what I have, but please don’t take away our summer home onMartha’s Vineyard.”

The stories we choose to live by are powerful, and ultimately they will be judged by the one true God to whom all will give an account of their lives (a metanarrative, or grand over-arching story, that most Christians have lived by for 2,000 years). Yes, that means that the person that has acquired wealth through something other than hard work and frugality will be held accountable by God. Yes, that means those that have cleverly duped the vulnerable will be held accountable by God. Yes, that means that those that have blamed others rather than take responsibility for their lives will be held accountable by God. There is only one true God who will judge the living and the dead at the last.

Twenty years ago, the late Richard John Neuhaus wrote a book entitled “Doing Well and Doing Good.” Neuhaus, a former Lutheran pastor and then Roman Catholic priest, made the case not only for capitalism but also for the person of faith to use money out of love for neighbor. In many ways, Neuhaus was fleshing out the Lord Jesus’ words: “To whom much is given much will be required.” Neuhaus was instructing successful people on how to use financial acumen and success to do God’s good and gracious will.

The Christian story does not provide a blueprint for how to set up a fair system of taxation. Encompassing the whole Bible as God’s written Word, the Christian story is directed at individuals that live within penultimate political and economic systems and structures. Some systems and structures are better or fairer than others. The proof is always in the observable and measurable behaviors of those that lead and govern over the course of time within particular systems and structures.

We can say that Soviet Marxist-Leninism was a bad system, because there is a seventy-year body of evidence to prove it. We can say that fascism particularly in Nazi Germany (but also inItaly and Spainwas bad), because there is a distinct body of evidence to prove it. We can also say that capitalism with all its excesses is better than socialism or even feudalism, because there is a body of evidence to prove it. And yet capitalism, along with all systems and structures of this world, is penultimate. God will be all-in-all at the last. That is why the psalmist writes, “Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no help. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish” (146:3-4). Caveat emptor! Let the buyer beware of the story bought!

The Lord warns us against coveting a neighbor’s house, because coveting is idolatry. The house becomes a god that cannot save or deliver. Coveting can lead to jealousy, bitterness, theft, or even worse! Out of the heart, Jesus says, comes all manner of evil. The one who covets ruminates over what she or he doesn’t have and grows more and more dissatisfied, and to what evil will that lead?

On this morning after the 2012 presidential election, having stayed up far too late and having listened to far too many pundits, I am convinced again that the stories we choose to live by are powerful. As long as we have breath, we can pick and choose which stories to cling to, or, in the case of some Christians, which parts of which stories we will choose. As the psalmist said, don’t put your trust in anyone other than the one true God. Everyone, including you and me, will die and give an account of what we have done with the lives that God has given us. Those that choose evil over God will be cast into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, says King Jesus in Matthew 25.

 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

 What does this mean?

 “We should fear and love God, and so we should not tell lies about our neighbor, nor betray, slander, or defame him, but should apologize for him, speak well of him, and interpret charitably all that he does.”

 Much has been made about the connection between the 2^nd and 8^th commandments. God wants His name protected, and God wants to protect our names, too.

 I have often used this example with middle school students. Suppose you are a student in a large school where it is almost impossible for everyone to know everyone else’s name. A teacher sees a student misbehaving in the hallway between classes. What a difference it makes if she knows your name. Once your anonymity has disappeared, then, there is power in a teacher knowing your name. The teacher now connects misbehaving with your name. Once that happens your name bears a certain reputation – fairly or not.

 The 8^th commandment is among the commonest broken, and people do it with impunity right up until the moment it gets so out of hand that the recipient of false witness decides to sue the speaker or writer for slander or libel.

We have often seen how a news story gets major play in the media only later to be proven to be untrue or the facts significantly different than portrayed. If there is a retraction, it is presented almost invisibly – hidden in a small paragraph tucked away almost invisibly.

We have become accustomed to the sleaziest kind of political advertisements that, again, rate a high Pinocchio factor. In Logics 101 you learn that the ad hominem (personal) attack is a logical fallacy. Too many voters, like sheep, are led astray by ads that don’t pass the 8^th commandment test.

In church circles, the 8^th commandment gets broken so regularly that a lot of Christians don’t get that they have just committed a kind of murder – destroying the neighbor’s good name. Let me be clearer. When we destroy a person’s good name by attributing to the person the worst kinds of motives or attributes or behaviors, we are, in essence, taking that person’s life as it was before we bore false witness.

Pastors, like other leaders, are often sinned against by wagging tongues. We get so used to it that we stop defending against a goodly amount of it right up until someone attacks our families, and then that’s when the gloves come off, as it were.

 In childhood and well into adulthood, I used to grieve deeply over false witness borne. In time, I came to remember what Mom or Dad used to say: “Consider the source.” Those that bear false witness don’t realize that, in so doing, they are making a kind of name for themselves that is less than flattering. To be known as a gossip is a terrible thing. To be known for constantly maligning others, now that’s an even worse reputation.

Rabbi Ed Friedman wrote a number of leadership books about family systems in which he compared synagogues and churches to families. Leaders ought not to let others define them (usually unfairly). Rather leaders need to say who they are and what they are about and to stay in touch with those with whom they have conflicts. Good leaders aren’t always liked, but they are usually respected. Good leaders don’t allow others to get away with speaking half-truths and outright lies. They do that not by personal attacks but by, again, saying who they are, what they believe, and what they will and will not do.

It is not bearing false witness to tell the truth when we have all the facts. It is breaking the 8^th commandment when we assume the worst and say the worst about our neighbor. Luther makes the point that we ought to err on the side of generosity when speaking of our neighbor. It’s still breaking the 8^th commandment if we say something like, “Sally may be adulterer, but she sure dresses nicely.”

All sin and fall short of God’s glory. The very public sins of others can be an occasion for self-examination to see whether we have failed or are close to failing in such a way. These can be cautionary tales especially when teaching our own children about temptation and the dangers of giving in to our old Adam or Eve. The book of Proverbs is filled with warnings about such recurring dangers for the young and not so young.

If we sin, we ought to confess it within a private confession or within a confidential relationship with a sister or brother in Christ. A good confessor will always help us to examine how we moved from temptation to full-blown sin and then encourage us in the amendment of life while offering the assurance of God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ.

 A dear friend once failed publicly and received a great punishment from his superior. Of course, even after significant work at amending his life, the superior refused for the issue to be done with once and for all. There was a kind of formal forgiveness without mercy. My friend said, “I’ve come to that place where I know that I have confessed my sin, amended my life, and have received God’s forgiveness. I won’t allow anyone to continue to treat me as if I haven’t confessed, made amendments, and been forgiven.” And so my friend no longer had any expectation of a healed relationship with his former superior, and he got on well with his life. Eventually, the former superior got his own public humiliation for his own failures. What goes round comes round!

 There’s a great lesson in that story. When we make a lot over the supposed or actual failures of others, we’re usually turning a blind eye to our own. Pride goeth before a fall!

 Luther writes: “This commandment, then, embraces a great multitude of good works which please God most highly and bring abundant blessings if only the blind world and the false saints would recognize them. There is nothing about a man or in a man that can do greater good or greater harm, in spiritual or in temporal matters, than this smallest and weakest of his members, the tongue” (Large Catechism, Tappert 404:290-91).

The Seventh Commandment

“You shall not steal.”

What does this mean?

“We should fear and love God, and so we should not rob our neighbor of his money or property, nor bring them into our possession by dishonest trade or by dealing in shoddy wares, but help him to improve and protect his income and property”

(Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, Tappert edition).

One of my favorite older dark comedies (1978), “The End,” stars Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise. Reynolds’ character has just learned he has a terminal illness. Leaving the doctor’s office, he stops at a Catholic Church to make his first confession in 35 years. A very baby-faced Robby Benson, “Fr. Dave,” is the only available confessor; he insists on being called “Dave.” The confession begins: “Bless me, Dave, for I have sinned…I think I would rather call you ‘Father.’” He continues, “I sell real estate for a living.” Fr. Dave asks, “It’s a sin to sell real estate?” Reynolds’ character responds: “It is the way I do it.”

Writing almost 500 years ago, Luther gets at this in the Large Catechism where he writes, “…a person steals not only when he robs a man’s strongbox or his pocket, but also when he takes advantage of his neighbor at the market, in a grocery shop, butcher stall, wine-and-beer-cellar, work-shop, and, in short, wherever business is transacted and money is exchanged for goods or labor” (Tappert 395:224). He adds: “The same must be said of artisans, workmen, and day-laborers who act high-handedly and never know enough ways to overcharge people and yet are careless and unreliable in their work” (395:226). With just a slight change in vocabulary, these words still apply today.

One wonders what Luther would have to say about thieves on Wall Street or those that purposely bankrupt a company to deprive retirees of their earned pensions and benefits. Luther warns: “A person who willfully disregards this commandment may indeed get by and escape the hangman, but he will not escape God’s wrath and punishment” (397:234). Luther reminds us that the Christian story does include theHighest Courtfrom which there is no appeal.

How does one positively strive to do God’s good and gracious will in this regard? Luther explains: “…help him [your earthly neighbor] to improve and protect his income and property.” One thinks of helping to build a Habitat for Humanity house or doing home repairs for the elderly poor as accessible mission projects for Christians of a wide variety of ages. Those involved in disaster relief or retirees helping to build a church are two more significant examples. Because, as Harry Wendt of Crossways Bible Study says, money is stored labor, Christians can always contribute to Lutheran World Relief (lwr.org) or others on the front lines as a way of being there without doing the work.

Christians involved in teaching English as a second language here in the USor tutoring those that cannot read can also be part of helping the neighbor improve and protect his income. If you can help someone become literate or assist them as they prepare to earn a GED, then you have captured the spirit of the 7^th commandment. The grandparent or godparent or teacher that urges someone to develop and hone their skills and talents is likewise doing the Father’s good and gracious will.

It is more challenging, at times, to be a supervisor or boss who has the painful task of firing someone or reassigning them to a different position. You also are doing God’s work as you hold someone accountable for poor performance and help them to find or point them towards work that they could more likely embrace with enthusiasm and diligence. We do no one any favor, indeed it is irresponsible, when we allow them to continue to “steal” from others by not performing their job adequately. Because we are all frightened by the thought of losing income, we sometimes have to try to reason with someone who is anxious and unable to accurately assess her or his own performance.

Pain is a great teacher. Indeed our best lessons are learned through pain. Many an unhappy, underperforming worker has, in time, been able to say that the loss of a job they hated turned out to be the best thing that ever happened. Sometimes the worker chooses retraining for new work or uses the same skills but in a new environment, and that person actually thrives in a new setting. There is, after all, a word for someone who takes money to do things that violate both body and soul, and no one really wants to see him- or herself in that way.

Pain is also a great teacher for those that hire, fire, and reassign. Most pastors do not have adequate training before they become heads of staff. Sadly, pastors learn from their mistakes, and those mistakes are always painful for the employee, the pastor, and the congregation. Invariably, when a church employee is fired, hurt extends outwards into many relationships in the congregation in a way that would never happen in most workplace settings. It becomes emotional gasoline that feeds fires that are slow to put out and leave long-term damage. Pain is a great teacher, and pastors become better but not infallible bosses. Most pastors in larger churches would gladly have an administrator to serve as a buffer precisely because they have lived either with keeping an employee too long or have been vilified for letting go someone who was not a good fit in that parish.

Theft is, then, much more than the wrongful acquisition of some thing that is not one’s own. It is lying to God and neighbor about the basic stuff of day-to-day living. Mostly the thief steals from him- or herself by pretending to have a right where one has no right. As the Lord Jesus explained in John 10:10, the thief (Satan) comes to steal, kill, and destroy. So, then, the source of all theft is the one who tempts and seeks to deliver us into evil.

The gifts of Scripture and scriptural prayer are essential resources for keeping the 7^th commandment. Christians live under God’s command and judgment as we manage God’s things and God’s people in this life, and we need God’s Word and prayer to help us to be wiser stewards. As with all the commandments, the 7^th convicts us of sin and drives us to the cross of Christ for repentance and forgiveness. We live in God’s presence. He has given us our lives and all that entails as the witness stand where we respond to God’s providence and grace. We have been created to serve the neighbor as God wills!

The Sixth Commandment

 You shall not commit adultery.

 What does this mean?

 We should fear and love God and so we should lead a chaste and pure life in word and deed, each one living and honoring his wife or her husband. (Tappert edition)

[Many thanks to the Rev. Dr. Nathan Yoder for his helpful presentation: "The Orders of Creation in Lutheran Theological Discourse." The forthcoming publication of Dr. Yoder's dissertation will be a gift to thoughtful Christians.]

 At the heart of the sixth commandment is God’s good and gracious will for men and women. The marriage of one man and one woman is the fundamental human institution for which people were created and from which new people are intended to originate. Sex is, first and foremost, something very different from gender (a linguistic construct that, in our day, implies that we create ourselves in our own image). God created humans male and female, both created in the image of God, both created to yearn for one another and to be fruitful and multiply. The Lord Jesus reaffirms His Father’s good and gracious will by quoting Genesis 2: “for this reason a man leaves father and mother and a woman her home and the two become one flesh. What God has joined together humans must not separate” (Matthew 19:4-6). The normative sexual desire is for the opposite sex. God’s original gift of sexual desire is in order that men are drawn to women and vice versa in marriage – to say, “This one and no other.”

 In the Large Catechism, Martin Luther writes that Christians do not divorce. He reflects the Lord Jesus’ own clarity about His Father’s good and gracious will: divorce is a sin. It violates God’s good and gracious will that one man and one woman live in a lifelong covenant of faithfulness – reflect God’s own faithfulness to His people. So, then, why is there divorce? Why are some marriages so abusive and ungodly? Why do so many governments and courts want to change the meaning of marriage in our day? Why are so many children born out of wedlock and forced to live in poverty? Why are pornography and prostitution and sexual assault so pervasive? Why do so many people engage in sexual acts outside of the marriage of one man and one woman in a lifelong covenant of faithfulness? Why are so many people afraid to commit? And why do some people have desires and longings that are not for the opposite sex?

 The answer is sin, our age-old rebellion against God. The traditional reading of Scripture understands that the brokenness of creation even affects the object of our desires and longings. Harry Wendt, author of the Crossways Bible study program, says sin is not so much that we break God’s Law as it is that we break God’s heart! After centuries of post-Enlightenment “progress,” even many that call themselves Christians no longer hold fast to the biblical teaching of God’s good and gracious will for men and women and the families they create. Euphemisms abound. Sexual sins are promoted as “liberation,” “women’s health,” and “human rights.” In our day, many assume that even Christians cannot resist temptation and cannot control what they do with their sexual yearnings and longings. This has lead to biblically indefensible changes to moral theology.

 Bible scholar David Instone-Brewer has written two books (“Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible” and “Divorce and Remarriage in the Church”) in which he argues that many Christians do not know how to deal with the sin of divorce. Brewer leads his readers through a careful examination of biblical texts within the context of Judaism and early Christianity and offers some helpful pastoral advice for dealing with Christians that have, for whatever reasons, been divorced. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has also produced a very helpful study on divorce and remarriage with some particular attention given to pastoral divorce (see www.lcms.org). The Catechism of the Catholic Church lends clarity also about marriage as a sacrament and why the Roman church has such an extensive annulment process for divorced Roman Catholics.

 Caroline Simon, professor of philosophy at Hope College inMichigan, has written a new book: “Bringing Sex into Focus: The Quest for Sexual Integrity.” In a recent interview in Christianity Today magazine, Simon differentiates between sexual incontinence, continence, and chastity. She says, “In the case of continence, one successfully struggles and does the right thing even in the face of strong temptation. In the case of incontinence, a person might have exactly the same desires as a person who is continent, and struggle just as hard, but lose the struggle with their desires. This element of internal struggle is what differentiates incontinence from the vice of lust. The lustful don’t struggle. They just find using other people for their own purposes and following their own desires so natural and habitual that they don’t even know that there should be some restraint exercised, but the difference between the first two states, continence and incontinence, and full sexual integrity (chastity) is that a virtuous person in any kind of realm, including the sexual realm, is habitually, naturally, and without struggle acting in the right way” (February 2012, 51).

 During the Lenten season, the Church reminds us that God’s Son Jesus was like us in every way without sin (Hebrews 4) and is able to help us resist temptation as He did (Mark 1:9-13). The Lord Jesus’ sinless death on the cross means there is forgiveness for those that commit sexual sins of any sort; however, our Baptism into Christ means daily repentance, daily turning from our age-old rebellion against God. The first of Luther’s 95 Theses quotes Mark 1:14, “Repent” (metanoiete – change your heart and mind). When we repent, it is the Holy Spirit’s work in us. We cannot repent on our own without the Holy Spirit’s call working through God’s Word. We cannot be made right before God on our own. Only God’s sinless Son can take our sin and death to His cross and give us His life and righteousness (total obedience) to the Father as a free gift in the washing of Holy Baptism.

 So, then, how can our Lenten discipline impact our maleness and femaleness? If married, Christian men and women can practice confession, daily repentance, and forgiveness (the living of their Baptism). Our conversations about marriage and family will be shaped by the biblical narrative: marriage is the primary relationship; it is intended to reflect God’s faithfulness to His people. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians challenges men to love their wives as Christ loved the Church by giving His life for her. Wives are to submit (give themselves completely) to husbands as if to Christ. Children, if a married couple has been blessed with fertility, are gifts from God to be nurtured in faith and faithfulness, schooled in a Christian understanding of sexuality, and taught how to be husbands and wives. As children leave home to form their own families, Christian parents renegotiate the meaning of parenthood as priests (blessing and offering up prayers for them) and as encouragers for their married children. Because of sin our age-old rebellion, Christian spouses and Christian parents are constantly confessing, repenting and forgiving, modeling discipleship, and teaching devotion to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 Single persons, whether never married or widowed or divorced, are called to faithfulness to God within the context of their singleness. The discipline of Lent likewise impacts single persons’ maleness and femaleness as bearers and embodiments of the image of God. Paul reminds the Corinthians that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and that what we do with our bodies we do to the Lord Jesus precisely because we are members of His body. Daily repentance, the living of our Baptism, entails examining what we do with our desires and longings knowing that Scripture teaches that sexual acts belong within the context of the lifelong faithfulness of one man and one woman to each other. Spiritual friendships (the Greek word is koinonia) are especially helpful for single Christians to encourage one another to faithful stewardship of their bodies and their relationships. If Christians fail to be chaste, there is both forgiveness and the opportunity to learn from failure – particularly when Christians are self-consciously practicing daily Baptism in the Christian community.

 When we get to Luther’s teaching on confession, we will notice how he encourages Christians to read through the Ten Commandments and to hear God’s Law afflicting us where we have grown comfortable with our rebellion against God’s good and gracious will. The gift of private confession with a pastor is a right place to deal with appropriate guilt or shame because of sin, a right place to hear God’s Word of forgiveness, and a right place to begin a new accountability and honesty before God and others.

 Finally, the witness of Scripture is clear about what is normative behavior for men and women. That polygamy occurs in Scripture is not an affirmation. That all kinds of sexual relationships outside of marriage occur in Scripture is not an affirmation. That all sin and fall short of the glory of God is not a biblical excuse for faithlessness! Men and women are made in God’s image and are precious, lovable, and valuable quite apart from what our brokenness has done to the desires and longings that God originally intended us to have. When we do not fear, love, and trust in God above all else, we disobey God in thought, word, and deed. The rightful response to our knowledge that we have not loved God with heart, soul, and mind or our neighbor as ourselves is to confess our sins, repent of them, and to ask God’s help to amend our sinful lives. That is what Lent is all about.

 [Non-Roman Catholic Christians and RC Christians alike may be surprised at how beautifully and thoughtfully both John Paul II and Benedict XVI have written on the gift of the body, the gift of sexuality, and the gift of human love. Look for JPII’s “Theology of the Body” and BXVI’s encyclical on love.]

[Back to blogging after a few busy holiday weeks and a couple of bouts with illness.]

The Fifth Commandment

“You shall not kill.”

What does this mean?

We should fear and love God, and so we should not endanger our neighbor’s life, nor cause him any harm, but help and befriend him in every necessity of life. [Luther's Small Catechism, Tappert ed.]

Our four-year-old has a love for drawing and painting. She loves bright colors and uses them exuberantly. Her mother is constantly buying more crayons or colored pencils or paint and books and paper upon which daughter can create. Even as she has discovered her own love to create, daughter is asking questions about how God creates. Wisely, her mother tells her that God is the first artist.

Daughter raises other questions about how God creates us male and female. We answer simply that God creates us male or female in our mother’s tummies. She asks if our puppy was created in her doggy mother’s tummy. We answer: “Yes.” When she asks when she will be a Mommy, we tell her when she grows up and marries the right man who loves God and her.

The psalmist says to God: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them” (Psalm 139:13-16).

As the late John Paul II taught incessantly, God is pro-lifelong. God values our lives from conception to the grave. Our value is not based upon our usefulness. Even when our lives began from violence, even when our bodies are different, and even when our bodies have begun to waste away from disease or illness, God still looks at His good creation and says: “Very good!” We Christians teach that each life is more precious, lovable, and valuable than God’s own life. We can say that, because God’s Son Jesus suffered and died in a human body for the sin of the world! God is pro-lifelong.

Because creation is broken since the rebellion of the first parents, human life doesn’t always begin with the loving desire to nurture a child within the normative husband-wife relationship of lifelong faithfulness. Broken humans place ourselves in the center, the place that rightly belongs to God alone. Because of this ongoing rebellion against God, we assert everything in terms of our rights. It’s a very popular notion easily sold by politicians that it’s about what we want to do with “our” bodies. Rebellious women and men tell God: “Keep your laws off ‘my’ body!” More than 53 million Americans have been legally killed in the womb by rebellious men and women. Some insist it isn’t murder…as if the reality of human life were a matter of choice.

More than 53 million Americans won’t be there to be raised by parents who would have willingly adopted them. More than 53 million Americans won’t be there to provide for the retirement years of those generations that threw them away as “unwanted cells.” Our bodies know when we have lied to ourselves in order to commit evil legally or not. How many women and men have stayed awake entire nights living with remorse and sorrow over that legal choice to kill their child – one of the more than 53 million?

One Roman Catholic priest said that murder is objective moral evil. This does not mean that there is no forgiveness for those that kill. It means that she or he must confess the sin of murder when she or he has taken a life precious to God. In the case of murder not sanctioned by a government, there are always legal consequences. The deeper consequences of unconfessed sin before God is that God cannot forgive the one who refuses to admit sin. It is not that God is unwilling. It is that the murderer is unwilling to face the truth about her or himself. She or he will not listen to or admit the truth about the self.

Martin Luther recognizes that the command against murder is not all that God has to say about the value of each life. This command is about valuing life outside the womb. This command encompasses the Lord Jesus’ own command to welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned (Matthew 25). Christians of good will can disagree about a government’s role in providing for the needs of those that do not have, but they cannot disagree about what God expects of those that are His own through the washing of Holy Baptism. We are still called to heed the prophet’s message: “Do justice; love kindness; walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

Many Christian denominations have their own social service providers. We Lutherans have the widely respected Lutheran World Relief (lwr.org) that reaches out to those places in the world where human life is threatened and discounted. Around theUnited States, Lutheran Social Service agencies are involved in adoption, care for abused children and those caught up in substance abuse, in disaster relief, and in care for the profoundly disabled and for the elderly. With our dollars, gifts in kind, and our service hours, we answer the Lord’s call to care for the least of these His sisters and brothers.

Because evil is so pervasive in the world, we Lutherans are typically not pacifists. We place ordained pastors in military chaplaincies and support and encourage those that serve in the military as a type of love for the neighbor threatened by evil. Even though the taking of life in a military conflict (or law enforcement action) is a type of legal murder, we recognize that the child of God who kills in the service of his or her country knows that she or he has taken a life precious to God. The confession of sin and the pastoral care of souls is part of the Church’s ministry to those who answer God’s call to love and protect the weak neighbor from evil by taking up arms in the military or law enforcement.

 Humans caught up in rebellion against God invariably insist that there is no such thing as “normative relationships” or no such thing as a metanarrative (a story that explains the meaning and goal of human life). Not so curiously they rail against traditional Christians as a threat to life as they know it. Of course, they are partly right. Christians that stand for the value of each life bother greatly those that insist that life is a choice rather than a gift. History is a great teacher about which worldview is more dangerous. Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot are just a few of the monsters that have taught that life is a choice and not a gift.

 For a thought-provoking 33 minutes of your life, check out the sometimes shocking and graphic video at:  http://www.180movie.com. 

Don’t let small children watch this!

“Honor your father and your mother.”

What does this mean?

We should fear and love God, and so we should not despise our parents and superiors, nor provoke them to anger, but honor, serve, obey, love, and esteem them.

Our Roman Catholic siblings in the faith talk about the domestic church. It’s a nice turn of phrase that captures the importance of having Christian parents. As co-creators with God, parents not only bring children into the world. In obedience to God’s command to make disciples of all people by baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, parents bring their children for Holy Baptism and make promises to raise them as children of the Light.

As we will discuss in a later blog, Luther quotes the warning from Exodus and Deuteronomy that the sins of the fathers and mothers are visited to the third and fourth generation. This means that bad behavior modeled by the previous generations of parents tends to get repeated until, by God’s grace and mercy, someone finally says: “Enough!”

Which takes us back to the promises made on the baptismal day when parents promise to bring the child to the services of God’s house, teach the child the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the 10 commandments, to place in the child’s hands the Holy Scriptures, and to provide for the child’s instruction in the Christian faith, so that living in communion with the Church, the child may lead a godly life until the day of Jesus Christ!

The antidote to bad parental behavior is Jesus Christ, the firstborn from the dead. When a parent or parents have had bad parental modeling (abuse, infidelity, indifference to God) or bad genes (the tendency to addiction, chemical imbalance affecting mood and behavior), that parent may well need the reparenting guidance of a self-consciously Christian (or Jewish) counselor. But the key is the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ regularly sustaining and strengthening that parent through Word and Sacrament. The parent may well benefit from the regular use of private confession with a pastor who self-consciously practices the care of souls. She or he may also greatly benefit from the mutual conversation and consolation of the brothers and the sisters that happens in self-consciouly Christian friendships (koinonia). In the case of addictions, participation in a 12 step group may be a good supplemental kind of reparenting (not all 12 step groups do a good job of that; one must be selective).

Having said all of that as a way of answering in advance the “yes, buts”, God intends parents to be godly and not rebellious parents. This is sadly why marriages often collapse. Some people persist in their rebellion against God. Of course, rebellion against God spills over into all areas of life and especially marriage and family. Sin is, as Luther said, the heart curved in upon itself. The rebellious spouse is selfish. The rebellious parents are selfish. They are too much in the center to let God be God, and they deprive their children of spiritual development and nurture. This is why a godly spouse rarely sees the conversion of her or his spouse and risks having children that follow the modeling and example of the rebellious parent.

God wants parents to be godly. This means that it matters who we are, and it matters who we marry. People do not come from identical backgrounds. But in choosing a spouse, one should look for someone with a complimentary background. Parents need to create a common culture, so it matters that one’s spouse is able to have a shared culture. Keeping God as center means that having an interfaith marriage is highly problematic and frustrating. Coming from such different worlds, it is impossible to create a shared culture in which God is center particularly because they cannot agree on who God is!

We learn through pain. I learned in my 20s that you can love someone passionately, but if she does not want to share a culture in which God is the center, the relationship will not work. I learned in my 40s that you can love someone deeply, but if she does not want to share a culture in which God is the center, the marriage will not work. It’s heart-breaking stuff that can best be avoided in advance by seeking out carefully and slowly a person who is capable of creating a shared culture in which God is the center, because, after all, that is the family culture from which she or he has come.

Godly parents teach us how to be godly people. Rebellious parents teach us how to be rebellious people. Because we are simultaneously saints and sinners, we are all, at best, works in progress; however, living within the communion of the Church we have the Word and Sacraments, and the encouragement of the saints (living and living with God) to help us with our old Adams and Eves.

Godly parents are God’s representatives in the domestic church. They teach us by word and deed how to be godly people. They model for us growth in discipleship. They show us how to ask for and to give forgiveness. They show us how to be godly spouses. They show us the necessity of godly authority and help us to recognize rebellious and ungodly authority. Godly parents do not pretend to be their children’s friends, an abdication of parental authority. Godly parents teach us how to grow up to form our own godly families.

Christians know that all authority belongs to Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:16). Godly authority recognizes Christ’s ultimate authority. Rebellious or ungodly authority is demonic. It denies that God is God, and, thus, its source is located in the old enemy who asks, “Did God really say?”

Godly parents teach their children to be street-smart and wise in the ways of the world. Along the way, children will spend more and more time away from home under the authority of others. Wise Christians learn to grant authority, even when the people in authority are rebellious and ungodly. This is a necessary bit of learning so that naive Christians do not sabotage their well-being by foolishly refusing to recognize the authority even of those that are rebellious and ungodly.  Wise Christians remember that God will be God, and the rebellious and ungodly will have to answer for their poor stewardship of God’s people and things! Occasionally, we all get a bit of schadenfreude, when bad authority gets its just rewards.

Elsewhere Luther reminds us that this is the only commandment with a promise attached (that you may live long in the land). The history of Israel is, as with the history of the Church, a history of rebellion. Because Israel failed to honor godly parents and authorities, they rebelled against God and lost the land (the Assyrian dismantling of the northern kingdom of Israel and the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and ensuing exile). By not heeding Moses’ final sermon in Deuteronomy, the Israelites did not keep the covenant God graciously made with them at Sinai (Horeb). In the words of the old rock-n-roll song, they had fun, fun, fun til Daddy took the T-bird away.  God owned the land, and He took it away.

It should be noted that Jesus’ parable of the wicked vineyard tenants makes the same point. If Christians persist in rebellion, God will take what is His own and give it to those who will be faithful. This is a warning that too many bishops, pastors, professors, parents, and other Christians are presently failing to heed. Rebellion against God’s good and gracious will clearly expressed in Scripture will result in the loss of authority, churches, and life itself. Again, James warns that not many should aspire to be Christian teachers for they will be judged more severely. Caveat emptor!

God wants us to obey godly parents and authorities, because they are His servants who shape and mold present and future generations to do His good and gracious will. Godly parents and godly authorities are gifts to be treasured. Through their faithful witness and modeling, we learn who and Whose we are as children of God!