Natalie's Story

Natalie Gessert gives an interview to "Lutherans Alive"--a video ministry of the Southwest Pennsylvania Synod, ELCA. Natalie is in the first year of her call to Oak Grove Lutheran Church in Zelienople, Pennsylvania.

Just in Case You Thought the ELCA Churchwide Assembly Had the Final Word in the Culture Wars

HOMOSEXUALITY: Not innate, not life-long, not unchangeable

Pediatricians caution educators on dealing with sexual orientation and gender confusion among students
via Virtue Online
accessed April 28, 2010

News release from American College of Pediatricians
April 5, 2010

The American College of Pediatricians cautions educators about the management of students experiencing same-sex attraction or exhibiting symptoms of gender confusion. These concerns are outlined in a letter and fact sheet sent by College president Thomas Benton, MD, to all 14,800 school district superintendents in the U.S.

Dr. Benton also alerts them to a new Web resource, FactsAboutYouth.com, which was created by a coalition of health professionals to provide factual information to educators, parents, and students about sexual development.

"As pediatricians, our primary interest is in the health and well-being of children and youth," Dr. Den Trumbull, vice president of the College explains. "We are increasingly concerned that in too many instances, misinformation or incorrect assumptions are guiding well-intentioned educators to adopt policies that are actually harmful to those youth dealing with sexual confusion."

The College reminds school superintendents that it is not uncommon for adolescents to experience transient confusion about their sexual orientation and that most students will ultimately adopt a heterosexual orientation if not otherwise encouraged. For this reason, schools should not seek to develop policy which "affirms" or encourages these non-heterosexual attractions among students who may merely be experimenting or experiencing temporary sexual confusion. Such premature labeling can lead some adolescents to engage in homosexual behaviors that carry serious physical and mental health risks.

There is no scientific evidence that anyone is born gay or transgendered. Therefore, the College further advises that schools should not teach or imply to students that homosexual attraction is innate, always life-long and unchangeable. Research has shown that therapy to restore heterosexual attraction can be effective for many people.

Optimal health and respect for all students can only be achieved within a school by first respecting the rights of students and parents to accurate information and to self-determination. It is the school's legitimate role to provide a safe environment for respectful self-expression for all students. It is not the school's role to diagnose or attempt to treat any student's medical condition, and certainly not the school's role to "affirm" a student's perceived personal sexual orientation.

The American College of Pediatricians is a national organization of pediatricians and other healthcare professionals dedicated to the health and well-being of children. The College produces sound policy, based upon the best available research, to assist parents and to influence society in the endeavor of childrearing.

To read the letter to school superintendents, Click Here. http://factsaboutyouth.com/wp-content/uploads/Superintendent-LetterC_3.311.pdf

To read the fact sheet provided to superintendents, Click Here. http://factsaboutyouth.com/wp-content/uploads/Facts-on-full-sheet-Apr-1.pdf

To go to the homepage of the American College of Pediatricians, Click Here.http://americancollegeofpediatricians.org/

Law on the Left, Law on the Right, Caught in the Middle Again

When the Law is established without Christ, we have tyranny. When the Law is thought to be ended without Christ, we have anarchy--which is really just tyranny by the most easily offended. Caught in the middle, we go to our graves and await the resurrection. Preached on the Fifth Sunday in Lent, series C, March 21, 2010 at Wilmington Lutheran Church, Arnegard, ND

The texts were:

Isaiah 43:16–21

Psalm 126

Philippians 3:4b–14

John 12:1–8

The DEMANDING Word of God

The Word of God will not be content to be just one word among many. "So says the Lord...," must the only word, the defining word, the word which clarifies the world to us and us to ourselves.

Erich Auerbach writes thusly:

The world of the Scripture stories is not satisfied with claiming to be a historically true reality--it insists that it is the only real world.... Al other scenes, issues, and ordinances have nor right to appear independently of it, and it is promised that all of them, the history of all mankind, will be given their due place within its frame, will be subordinated to it. The Scripture stories do not, like Homer's court our favor, they do not flatter us that they may please us and enchant us--they seek to subject us, and if we refuse to be subjected we are rebels.

Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature

Erich Auerbach

Princeton University Press; 50 Anv edition (April 7, 2003)

http://www.amazon.com/Mimesis-Representation-Reality-Western-Literature/dp/069111336X/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

"No such thing as Christian Ethics!"

So says Dietrich Bonhoeffer according to Thomas Pearson.

who posts a well argued and researched paper on the subject at the

Journal of Lutheran Ethics.

"Bonhoeffer and the End of Christian Ethics"

Especially apropos to our current situation in the ELCA is the following paragraph found near the end which turns the ELCA's current fascination with being "communities of moral deliberation" into further evidence that it is becoming less and less a church called into existence by the Word of God and more and more a social club with illusions of holiness sustained by its own busy-ness.

24] And Bonhoeffer would be likely bemused to hear a proposal that the Church should be "a community of moral deliberation." There are many venues in the secular world that might well serve as centers for moral deliberation - institutions, professions, community organizations, among others. But why the Church? Given Bonhoeffer's singular vision of the Christian Church as stripped of any pretense to ethical or religious expertise - or expertise of any kind - it would seem that the Church might be the last place to look for moral deliberation. Like the stricken hearers of Peter's speech in Acts 2, however, the Church seems forever obsessed with finding something productive to do. Ethics is a serious subject in our culture, even if more often observed in the breach. So the Church is regularly tempted to deflect its gaze from the center of its life, and to take up those matters which will keep it busy, including moral deliberation. In so doing, we squander our freedom. Bonhoeffer would have none of it. Bonhoeffer's last months at Tegel were not filled with ethical fulminations against an oppressive political regime that had abandoned all pretense of seeking justice. There is very little indication in his final letters that he was engaged in standard moral deliberation, of discerning causes or proposing solutions. Instead, he engaged in praying, preaching and pastoral ministry, those actions of ultimate significance for the Church, carried out in the midst of an extreme attenuation of the penultimate: a manifestation of his Christian freedom. Bonhoeffer was by that time quite starkly beyond good and evil, beyond "religion," where the cross of Christ was the only living icon for those who must surely die. In our day, as the Church faces its peculiar trials in a world pious but no longer religious, it is likely he would encourage us to do the same.

Question on Performative Language

Tim. Thanks for your excellent comments. For some reason I cannot post on my site, so I am responding here.

The question I have relates to the distinction between the being of the Word, the knowing of the Word, and what the Word does. What exactly is this relationship? Does what the Word does determine the being of the Word, or simply our knowing of it?

Even if we know the answer to this, however, we are still faced with the question of the identity conditions of what the Word does. How exactly do we know that life is communicated by the Word, (in spite of the fact of death), when we cannot know what would count as the ontological contour of such life? What does it mean exactly for the Word to do?

Sometimes things are very obvious until we start to think about them really hard. If I cannot specify the precise conditions under which life and forgiveness are decidedly not communicated, how can I know for sure when they are? This is a general problem for all who want to think deeply about the hidden nature of faith and salvation.

Dennis

Thanks for your excellent post!

The Contender

The funeral sermon preached for Charles Aasen who contended for the joys of married, family, and civic identity but could not contend for victory over the devil, the world and our sinful selves. Against that triumvirate of evil Christ is the ONLY contender and he has already won the victory! March 18, 2010 in Trinity Lutheran Church of Alexander, North Dakota

The text of this sermon can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=376997949705