- A baseball cap turned backward - subtracts 40 points from a persons I.Q.
- Major league players that pack a chaw - lose 50 I.Q. points.
- Motorcycle riders that split lanes to pass at 60 MPH - will die soon.
- Democrats have a new motto: Take from you/Keep half/Give the balance away
- American Diplomacy: Spit on friends and spend on our enemies.
- The United States has a huge debt - so we spend more
- Those who step off the curb without looking for cars first - should wear a blindfold
Rev. Robert Neubert / Wisconsin
History says people are born to instinctively try to be better than their neighbors. There are infinite examples but let me stick to one. I've a nephew who is the Pastor of a small Lutheran Church in rural Wisconsin. I really don't know him very well - which is very much my loss. For one thing he grew to maturity in Oregon some 1200 miles away from where I lived in California. I didn't have an opportunity to watch his progression closely. To me he was always a clever, smart kid with odd interests. I also remember no sports activities, a disturbed home life, and his efforts to be on the behavior fringe of his classmates. Instead of baseball or football he was interested in architecture, history and zombies. Just a shade off the norm. Through most of his teenage years he was a bit unkempt, taller than his classmates, and wore his hair uncut in long stringy blonde strands. He was articulate but very quiet. Something of a loner most of the time. Nice. Polite. Different.
History says people are born to instinctively try to be better than their neighbors. There are infinite examples but let me stick to one. I've a nephew who is the Pastor of a small Lutheran Church in rural Wisconsin. I really don't know him very well - which is very much my loss. For one thing he grew to maturity in Oregon some 1200 miles away from where I lived in California. I didn't have an opportunity to watch his progression closely. To me he was always a clever, smart kid with odd interests. I also remember no sports activities, a disturbed home life, and his efforts to be on the behavior fringe of his classmates. Instead of baseball or football he was interested in architecture, history and zombies. Just a shade off the norm. Through most of his teenage years he was a bit unkempt, taller than his classmates, and wore his hair uncut in long stringy blonde strands. He was articulate but very quiet. Something of a loner most of the time. Nice. Polite. Different.
Rob was headed for the ministry before he was 20 years old. His family were staunch Lutherans and it was clear that was the path he would take. Rob has a wife and child now, and a successful small church. He seems quite happy and certainly has come out of his shell. He is now an outgoing young man, sports minded, physically active, and an effective church leader.
Switch subjects. I admit to having an argumentative personality, and I also admit to being a sceptic of religion; the Christian church in particular. My childhood and early church experience was with the Presbyterian denomination. I attended Bible Studies and religious education classes. I became part of what was then called "The Westminster Fellowship", a group that encouraged debates on religious topics. When I left home for military service, I began to notice that more and more questions about the church were bothering me. I continued to read more and studied but still determined that it was impossible for me to accept "faith" over "logic". By the time I left military service I remained very much "at sea". If asked I told others I was a Christian "doubter".
Now, after my adulthood has nearly gone by, and clearly influenced so many terrible and (non-religious?) facts about Christianity, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, I pulled away from my Protestant Church and started to think more about theology. I had already discovered that the Christian church had fostered (1) so much prejudice, (2) sponsored so many wars, and (3) caused as much misery as happiness over the years, I officially became (in my own mind) a Carefully Reasoned Christian. This description indicated (to me) that the truth as taught by the Christian church, Catholic or Protestant, could be determined only by logical reasoning. Acceptance by faith alone must be considered to be, at best, questionable.
Let's switch back to Rob. He's a confirmed Lutheran and therefore a Protestant Christian. The founder of that denomination, Martin Luther, was a perfectly awful person. If he had lived today he'd be in jail or perhaps even dead. Martin Luther, (1483 - 1546) during the latter part of his life was a loud and persistent enemy of the Jewish People. He urged their harsh persecution and expulsion from Christianity. A few years before he died Martin Luther wrote the book "In The Jews and Their Lies." I will quote from the book:
- Jews are a base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth.
- They are full of the devil's feces . . . which they wallow in like swine.
- The synagogue is a defiled bride, yes, an incorrigible whore and evil slut.
- They (the Jews) should be shown no mercy or kindness, afforded no legal protection.
- These poisonous envenomed worms should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time.
- We are at guilt in not slaying them.
Those few examples are typical of Martin Luther. His anti-Jewish rhetoric contributed significantly to the anti-Semitism rising in Germany. Most anti-Semitic books written in Germany during Hitler's ascendancy contained references and quotations from Luther. The Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia said: "The German people ought to heed these words of the greatest anti Semite of his time, Martin Luther." Martin Luther's views leave little doubt that his promoting of Christian anti-Semitism ultimately laid the social and cultural basis for modern anti-Semitism, and was a persistent influence on Germany's attitude toward it's Jewish citizens in the centuries between the Reformation and the Holocaust.
Okay. Enough said. My question for Rob: The Lutheran denomination got off to a rocky beginning. Martin Luther established the general character of the church. Martin Luther was a vicious proponent of anti-Semitism and assured this evil was an influential factor in the early Lutheran church.
1. Is it still?
2. Specifically when was it abandoned?
3. Is anti-Semitism still found in modern
German Lutheran Churches?
4. Or any other Lutheran churches?
German Lutheran Churches?
4. Or any other Lutheran churches?
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