The Secret Wireless

#shoutyourabortion Go ahead.  You can shout.  Scream until your lungs give out.  But it won't work, because it is not the silence that is your problem.  It is the whisper. The case against abortion is becoming more solid.   The videos are piling up.  It is clear that abortionists are not only killing babies, they are harvesting their organs and selling them, padding their bottom line.   And that means you have been dead wrong about abortion. If you have been privately scandalized by the fleecing of the unborn but have not spoken publicly, or even failed to share your views and convictions with your close friends, then these videos leave you without defense.  You should have been speaking out long ago.  You should have stood up for the defenseless.  You should have shown compassion for hurting and confused mothers.  And shouting now will not silence the whisper. If you have supported abortion rights, if you have been pro...

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....

G.K. Chesterton had an interesting observation about boredom: "The sun rises every morning.  I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction.  Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising.  His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.  The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy.  A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life.  Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged.  They always say, 'Do it again'; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.  For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.  But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. ...

  Can a Lutheran say, "My sin killed Jesus"?  Or is it better to say, "The wrath of God the Father killed Jesus on the cross"? The question was posed by a fellow pastor on Facebook a few days back and stirred up a few answers from various people.  Here is my response: If my sin did not kill Jesus then the Gospel is null and void.   Not only is this statement "ok", it is a necessary aspect of the proclimation of God's Word. The concern raised by several pastors was that by placing the blame for Jesus' death upon my sin I might be attempting to take some credit for the redemption of the cross.  This is, of course, not the case as anyone could easily tell you.  Saying that my sin caused the death of Jesus does not give me any credit from the positive effects of that death and more then saying that my drunkenness killed three innocent bystanders gives me credit for the foundation started by their family to combat drunk driving.  When I say t...

What is hidden will be revealed.   What is said in the dark will be spoken in the light.   What is whispered…shall be proclaimed from the rooftops!                 In the Gospel lesson Jesus is sending his 12 disciples out as missionaries, as apostles, ambassadors, to carry his message throughout all the towns of Israel.   After warning them about the viscous opposition that they will face, Jesus goes on to comfort them, to embolden their witness, with His promises.                     Praise and thanks be to God that He did, for if He had not, we would not be here.   We would be tree-worshipping pagans, slaves to lawlessness, impurity, sin, and death.   Without the sending of the Apostles, there is no Christian Church, there is no salvation, there is no hope.     ...

It is well past Mother's Day, but tomorrow is Father's Day.  Maybe this post can count for both. The two most valuable spiritual lessons concerning church attendance that I have learned in my life have come from my parents, one lesson from each. My father tells the story of attending Confirmation classes with Pastor Jording.  The class was talking about going to church, and so the good reverend asked, "How many of you have to go to church?"  Every child in the room raised their hand.  Then Pastor Jording replied, "No, you don't have to go to church.  You want to go to church." Attending worship, receiving God's gifts, these things are a privilege.  They are a blessing, not a curse.  My father taught me that. One summer Sunday, as our family of four drove to the early 8:00am worship service, I asked my mother, "Since we don't have to go to school in the summer, when can we stop going to church?" Without missing a beat she repl...

"Hate is impatient and cruel, hate is envious and boastful, it is arrogant and rude.  It insists on its own way.  It is both irritable and resentful; it rejoices in wrongdoing, and scoffs at the truth.  Hate gives up easily, believes nothing, hopes nothing, endures through nothing. "Hate ends everything." In life there are these two: hate and love.  You either love God or hate God.  You love your neighbor, spouse, child, parent, employee, boss, and friends or you despise them.  You cannot be neutral. There is not middle ground. There is no fence to ride. Hate is not something that bigots do.  It is not something that fascists do.  Hate is something that husbands do, something that fathers, wives, mothers, sons, daughters, friends, and relatives do.  It is something that I do. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind.  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  Anythi...

(To read the first sermon in this series click here .) What did 3000 people do after they had been baptized?   They devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching.   They began soaking up Christian doctrine.                 Now, I think I know what you are thinking when I say “Christian doctrine”.   You think: “Ugh!”   How boring.   How dreadful.   How pointless.                 But doctrine is nothing more, and nothing less, than what is taught.   It is the teaching of the Christian faith, the content of what we actually believe.   So 3000 people were baptized at Pentecost, as we discussed last week, and they immediately immersed themselves in Christian doctrine.                    Obviously teachin...

 You may think that you know me because you read my blog.  But you are wrong.  You don't know me. The internet is a wonderful thing, and it allows us to communicate with people all over the world.  It also, however, allows us to create alternate versions of ourselves, avatars they are sometimes called.  So you don't know me.  You know my avatar. And this can be confusing for people.  Today people gush over the "raw" or "authentic" posts or articles that they read.  They assume that they are getting a real person.  We become "friends" on Facebook.  Maybe we think we have some really close Facebook friends.  But it is all an illusion. What goes on the internet only goes on through a series of filters.  This happens in personal communication too, but the filter there is only the human brain.  With the internet, blogs, Facebook, etc. the medium also serves as a filter. I have been thinking about this post for week...

          I read a blog post recently from a self-professed narcissist.  It was a confession of sorts written by a woman who has been cheating on her husband who happens to be a soldier deployed overseas.  He is a military hero and she is running around behind his back, apparently with several men, and is planning on divorcing him when he gets back.           As bad, as horrifying, as that all sounds, that is not really what shocked me.  What got to me was the fact that the people commenting on her post were all very supportive.  They thanked her for being honest words.  They were glad that she gave it to them "raw".           The problem is that giving words of support to a person who is engaged in such wantonly destructive behavior is not only unhelpful, but dishonest.  It is ultimately unloving and even hateful. ...