Life, times, and musings of a seminarian & family
I’m listening live to the restored Issues Etc. They’re recapping the last three months. The gag order is off. “We’re not funded by LCMS, Inc.” I look forward to them getting back down to business of religious commentary. Listen now or later at www.issuesetc.org!
Vicar Christopher Gillespie
Immanuel Lutheran Church of Frankentrost
Saginaw, Michigan
Sixth Sunday after Trinity (June 29th, 2008)
Text: Matthew 5:20-26
Tags: anger, hatred, reconciliation
Today Anne and I celebrate our ten year wedding anniversary. She’s in Indiana and I’m in Michigan. We talked on the phone but that’s a pretty anticlimactic way of celebrating. She’s coming home tomorrow. So I must wrap up the various sundry tasks I’ve started in the family absence.
Where has ten years gone? The best marker of the time are the children. I wonder where the ten years went but then I look at Ethan and figure “there’s 7 1/2 yrs.” Then there are all the moves - Oak Park mini-apartment to big apartment to Lockport home to Fort Wayne home to Michigan vicarage and now moving back. Then the life changes - student to father to retail sales to seminarian to vicar to fourth-year something-or-other. Life is quite the journey, no doubt.
Tags: anniversary, wedding
While whittling through the stacks of accumulated paper, magazines, and books of vicarage, I let the TV play back the Matrix trilogy. I enjoy the films, mostly for their creativity, stylized appearance, and interwoven narrative. Philosophically though, I find much to dislike. But contrary to some, I don’t mind engaging popular media that carries themes and messages contrary to my own faith and ethic.
One of the central themes of the Matrix is there is no fate. We are masters of our own destiny. Consequently, hierarchies are only controls which must be overcome for freedom to exist. With all sorts of mind-twisting ramble, the films seek to a present a relativist view of life, especially where hierarchy in family and society is overcome.
I’ve joined, have you? Plus, the $25/yr goes to help the new Issues, Etc. If you’re a Lutheran layperson, consider joining now.
(Yes, the site is a bit ugly but functional)
photo credit: gruntzooki
Socialists made eugenics fashionable
In the United States socialist writer Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and the mother of the abortion movement, called for a radical eugenics approach as early as the first years of the 20th century. She wrote of the need for “a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring. It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them. Herein lies the key of civilization.”The key of civilization. Unlocking the doors of a hell once unimaginable but now, after the Holocaust, the Ukrainian genocide, Pol Pot and Mao’s mass slaughter, entirely within the grasp of contemporary sensibilities. History is often clouded by fashion and the whims of the victorious. Because some of the most pernicious intellectual criminals of the past century wore red they have escaped condemnation. It is time for the clouds to clear and the fashions to change.
Tags: abortion, birth control, Darwin, eugenics
Touchstone Archives: Baby Pew Sitters
I understand the concept of “children’s church.” I sat in pews with small children before I was ordained. I know the constant juggling of Cheerios and crayons, the winces as plastic toys hit the tile floor, the random shrieks of babies, and the “whisper” of toddlers that carries halfway to the pulpit.
The Concordia Theological Seminary community invites you to listen to the Morning Office held daily at 10:00 a.m. The audio from the Chapel service is posted daily, and is typically available by 12:00 p.m. (Eastern). Click on the day of the week below to begin replay of that day's chapel service.
