The Secret Wireless

On August 19, 2015 the Center for Medical Progress released yet another video detailing the closed room practices of Planned Parenthood and their partner StemExpress in procuring fetal body parts.  These groups have been harvesting the organs of aborted babies, exchanging money, and using the flesh for scientific experimentation.  It is sickening.  The videos are not for the faint of heart, but if you desire to watch you can find them here . In the most recent video a former procurement technician for StemExpress, Holly, relates the story of how she came to know she could no longer work for this agency.  She tells of how another technician called her into a room where she was cleaning a newly aborted baby (so newly aborted that the heart would still beat when pricked by an instrument) to prepare it for organ harvesting. Holly was told that day she would be harvesting the baby's brain.  The other technician began the process by making an incision under the ...

Is sex becoming boring? My mind pondered this idea a few days ago on my way into Saint Louis.  Before you cross the Mississippi River into Missouri there is a certain strip club one must pass on the interstate.  Said strip club always has a billboard advertising the latest special feature.  As you might guess these billboards do not vary greatly.  The billboard is usually a photograph of a woman from the shoulders up looking rather seductive and inviting any travelers to stop in.  This time, however, was different.  As I passed the billboard there were no women.  Rather than advertising the club’s newest dancer, they were advertising “wrestling midgets”.  So the naked dancing women were replaced by short, clothed, male wrestlers.  I don’t get it.  Has sex really gotten that boring?  A more serious example stuck in my mind comes from a PBS documentary I caught just a few minutes of several months ago....

The Biblical David is a favorite for many people.  And who can blame them?  He is courageous, handsome, intelligent, charismatic, and eventually, powerful and rich.  Most men want to be him and most women want to be married to him. So it is no wonder that upon reading the history of David people want to identify with him. And so they begin to make comparisons from their life to his. He becomes a model for their life so that they can justify certain behaviors or certain personality traits. "Well, David was passionate, so I can be passionate too."  That sort of thing. The problem with people, no matter how good their intentions, comparing themselves to King David is that, well, they are not David!  Certainly the Lutheran Confessions mention that Christians can use the saints of years gone by as examples, but that is according to their vocation, not their life in general.  So, unless you are a shepherd, king, or polygamist, you are out of luck. You s...

[from bigfotot.com] Men and Anyone Wishing to be One, Get a grip. One fairly consistent fruit of the Spirit is self-control.  You would hardly know it by looking at the church today.  Christians rarely exercise any more self-control than the rest of society.  We are an indulgent culture and little interested in denying ourselves anything that we mildly desire. Take fasting, for example.  Jesus seems to assume that His disciples will fast in His comments on the Sermon on the Mount.  He gives some right and wrong reasons to fast.  Today, however, most Christ-followers seem to have taken a fast from fasting. I am not advocating for mandatory fasts or any mandatory piety at all.  Rather I wish to encourage all Christians, and especially men, to practice self-control at all times. Saint Paul writes in I Corinthians 9:27,  "I discipline my body and keep it under control."  Near the end of the letter he admonishes them: "...act lik...

Fathers, It does not matter if you are married or divorced, if you live with your children or only see them periodically.  If you have children, then you are a father.  And if you are a father you have a calling from God. Ephesians 6:4 is a clear, if brief, exhortation for us all when it comes to being a dad: " Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord ." Perhaps some of our difficulty with fatherhood has come from a confusion over what it means to "discipline" your children.  We tend to use that term as a synonym for "punishment".  We believe that it is a father's duty to punish when wrongs are done.  Don't spare the rod. Yet this seems to fly right in the face of what Paul is saying to the Ephesian fathers.  "Don't provoke your children to anger."  A father who is all punishment and rules is certainly going to provoke anger in his offspring. Rather,...

Gentlemen, It is long overdue that the Church takes a closer look at what it means to be a husband and father.  We have decried the devaluation of men.  We have lamented the dearth of leadership on this subject.  We have moaned and complained, but no one seems to be doing much about it. One major issue is that we too often take our visions for manhood, husband-hood, and fatherhood from the culture, particularly the popular culture, and not from the Scriptures.  Martin Luther started us off on the right track when he filled his Table of Duties in the Small Catechism with Scriptural references that concern our various vocations.  It would be fitting for us to expand on that work, to consider what the Scriptures say concerning the roles, duties, and vocations, of husband, father, and man. The importance of all this was highlighted to me this past year when preparing to teach a lesson on I Timothy 3.  In 7th and 8th grade reli...