Archive for category: October

by Pastor Michael Lockwood

Years ago, when I first began reflecting seriously on the idolatry of contemporary society, my goal was to understand the beliefs of those outside the church so I could bring them the gospel.

Yet the more I reflected on the idolatry of the world, the more I realised that the same idolatry had infected the church and my own heart too. Just as the ancient Israelites were tempted to worship the Lord and Baal as well, so we easily slip into thinking we can serve Christ without relinquishing the idolatrous agendas of our society.

In past ages, people worshipped gods of wood and stone. In the West today, we mostly just worship ourselves. This problem is as old as Adam and Eve, who wanted to be like God. Nevertheless, our society has sunk to new lows with its dedication to the worship of human beings, and all too often we Christians fall into the same trap. I therefore will explore three ways in which this idol is evident in us and our world and how the true and living God can set us free.

THE PROBLEM

1. Who do we love? We love ourselves.

Our secular world can propose nothing greater to live for than individual happiness and equates happiness with the fulfilment of our desires. Thus, the goal of life is to get the world around us to give us what we want.

This idolatrous self-interest is not restricted to those outside the church. The reality is that we all love ourselves too much. We may not always like ourselves, but we are self-interested and want the world and even God to revolve around us and give us what we crave. Often, we put a religious spin on this. We slip into thinking that if we are sufficiently virtuous or pious, God and those around us should reward us by bending to our will. We are then inclined to get angry with God or lash out at others when this strategy fails.

Furthermore, the church often panders to this idolatry. Pastors become people-pleasers. Churches try to cater to people’s felt needs, hoping to be rewarded with popularity. In the process they lose sight of giving people what they really need, the Bread of Life.

Paradoxically, this pursuit of our own happiness does not bring happiness. We were not created to be at the centre of the universe, and neither God nor the world around us will allow us to pull them into our orbit. Such efforts just lead to frustration. It is God’s will that will finally be done, not ours, whether we like it or not.

2. Who do we trust? We trust ourselves.

Our society repeatedly tells us to believe in ourselves and its fundamental assumption is that there must be a human answer to every problem. No matter what confronts us, we are told that human work and ingenuity can engineer a solution. This appeals to our sinful pride, which wants to be able to say, ‘We can do it’, rather than giving glory to God as the one who provides.

People in the church are not immune. All too often we say we trust in the Lord when our behaviour shows that we are really trusting in ourselves or other human beings. For example, what do we do in a crisis? Often, we call a meeting, in which we pray for two minutes and then plan and strategise for three hours. We never dream of calling on the church to pray all night as we see in Scripture, and as I have witnessed among Christians in Nepal. This pattern reveals the extent to which our faith is really in ourselves and not in the God who answers prayer.

This idolatrous self-reliance is expressed in how we relate to all three members of the Trinity. For example:

• Our Heavenly Father promises to care for our earthly needs. Yet often our prayerlessness, workaholism and desperate groping after earthly things reveal that we are really trusting in ourselves to provide.
• Our Lord Jesus Christ is the one who justifies us. He alone makes us acceptable in God’s sight and worthy to hold our heads up high. Yet too often we seek to justify ourselves instead and turn our own righteousness into an idol we put in his place. We make excuses, point the finger, pass the buck, exaggerate our virtues, downplay our vices, go fishing for praise and try to claim that the wrong we have done is really right, instead of confessing our sins and glorifying Christ as the one who forgives and saves us.
• The Holy Spirit is the one who enlightens us through his word, works faith and its fruits in our hearts, and so builds God’s church. Yet all too often we seek to enlighten ourselves and turn our own wisdom into an idol. We neglect God’s word as if we are too clever to need it or set it aside for the sake of human opinions. Then we try to build the church or reform our own lives through our own efforts.

These efforts inevitably fail. Like all idols, the idol of the self demands great sacrifices from us, but then it lets us down since we have neither the strength, virtue, nor wisdom to take God’s place. Whether we like it or not, we are totally dependent on him. When we act like we do not need him, we guarantee that we will end up sinking exhausted under the weight of our foolishness, failure and sin.

3. What do we fear? We fear everything.

Our humanistic society is an anxious place. This is the hallmark of idolatry. When we turn to idols, trusting them to provide for us and take our fears away, they inevitably fail us, so the fears remain. The same is true when we trust in ourselves or other people. The more we do so, the more anxious we will be about our performance and the things we cannot control.

The COVID crisis did not create this anxiety, but it has revealed it. In this crisis, our society has fractured into two camps, both of which are driven by fear. One side has been fearful of COVID and has trusted in human measures like masks, lockdowns, and vaccines to manage this fear. The other side is more fearful of things like censorship and creeping authoritarianism and has fought these fears with social and political activism. Whatever the merits of these respective actions, both sides would be less frantic if we spent more time looking to Jesus.

THE SOLUTION:

The God who gives us every good thing by grace.

The good news in this situation is that the true and living God wants to give us by grace all the things we have vainly tried to supply for ourselves.

This true God has come to break us out of our narcissistic self-focus. He wants what is best for us and is able to deliver. Yet he knows that this involves us dying to our destructive self-centred desires.

True joy is not found in getting whatever we want, but in learning to want what God wants. The blessed life is one that revolves around him and his will for us, which is always gracious and good. We are free to live this way, since he has promised to give us everything we need by grace, apart from our self-centred striving.

God has got our backs, so we can forget about ourselves, and instead focus on serving him and those around us as he calls us to do.

This same God now calls to us: ‘Trust in me. I will give you by grace what you have failed to provide for yourselves. I will feed you, clothe you, protect you, heal you, forgive you, honour you, empower you, delight you, instruct you with true heavenly wisdom, and welcome you into my kingdom.’

Furthermore, this God has come to calm our fears. The most frequently repeated command in the Bible is ‘fear not’.

Fear the Lord and him alone and then you will have nothing to fear, since he is gracious and he is mighty, and he has conquered everything that can bring you harm.

When Peter took his eyes off Jesus, he became afraid and started to sink.

How often have we not done the same? Yet while his eyes were on Jesus he could walk on the waves. The same is true with us.

By ourselves we can do nothing. We cannot provide for our earthly needs, save ourselves from death and hell, still our fears or fill the aching void in our souls.

Yet the true God is calling to us and saying: ‘Look to me, and me alone, in every dimension of your lives, so that your cup runs over with what my grace supplies.’

Rev Dr Michael Lockwood serves as a theological educator for LCA International Mission and has recently been called to teach in Taiwan. He is the author of The Unholy Trinity: Martin Luther Against the Idol of Me, Myself, and I.

by Mick Hauser

It is difficult to know where to start when writing about the subject of idolatry. I’d like to approach it with some humour, but it’s such a hard-hitting topic, how can you do that?

Australian Lutheran pastor Rev Dr Michael Lockwood, who has also written for this edition, has penned a book on Luther’s understanding of idolatry entitled The Unholy Trinity. Its central thesis is that the self and its desire to be covered in glory rather than with the blood of Christ lies behind all idolatry.

And we continue to make innumerable idols, chiefly with our imaginations.

‘Idolatry is an attempt of the imagination to take the divine and make it visible, to make it understandable, to make it manageable’, say the authors and Lutheran theologians Gene Veith Jr and Pastor Matthew P Ristuccia, in their book Imagination Redeemed.

Martin Luther, his fellow Protestant reformer John Calvin and 20th-century Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer all agreed somewhat that the imagination was an idol factory.

Our imaginations seem to be unrelenting in creating idols. Even within the church, faithful Christians have a habit of unwittingly chiselling out idols, abstract or otherwise.

We often take aspects of a divine promise or gift and idolise them. For instance, freedom, love and wisdom or reason.

These are aspects or qualities of divinity, but torn away from the person of Christ, created and carved into abstract notions or principles, they become idols.

The most common idol according to Luther is mammon – money, property, riches or any material wealth. They are created gifts that we mistake for God. In our materialistic world and culture, we don’t have to look far to find the influence of mammon on our lives.

Idols, too, especially most recently, often dress themselves with the garment and scales of ‘justice’. For instance, freedom for everyone is good, especially for me! Ethical philosophical systems easily become idols. ‘Virtue signalling’ is a product of idolatry.

A little more hidden is the idolatry we find surrounding the chief articles of the church, our confessions. I don’t mean that the Book of Concord itself is an idol – although this would be and is concerning – but I mean the idolatry that seeks to copy closely the articles of faith, but with distortions that can be manipulated.

We idolise the office of public ministry, the pulpit and the authority it holds and the voice that it gives.

We idolise the keys to the kingdom too, to bind and to loose sin as we become the judges of the world, offering up an opinion on everything and pasting them all over the cyberworld. We are very ready to declare someone as unspeakable and another to be worthy of mention.

A little closer to our hearts though, the idol of self-love has always told us that we can be whatever we want to be. In our pandering to one another, we thought that loving our neighbour meant agreeing with them and reiterating the lie.

Now we reap what we sow. People modify their bodies, not only in their gender, but some go so far as to want to look like a different species altogether.

Science fiction often imagines cybernetics or beings that are part-human and part-machine, leaving humanity facing a struggle to maintain control. In many cases, the progress and ultimate survival of humanity are held up as the leading ethical principles of what is just and right.

Living for eternity seems to be the goal for many, as we idolise life itself. We have literally locked up those who threaten life with sickness.

We cast aspersions and mock those who stand against worldly tides. Idolatry has infiltrated all levels of society and it is a religion in itself.

Lord have mercy on us! We have plenty to turn away from. Help us, we pray!

Pastor Mick Hauser serves as a lecturer at Martin Luther Seminary at Lae in Papua New Guinea.

As the in-person sessions of the 20th Convention of General Synod approach, LCANZ members are asking whether the ordination question will be on the agenda once again. It will be. Six proposals on the topic have been presented for discussion by delegates. Three of them refer to the Theses of Agreement. The following document has been prepared for delegates and other church members interested in this conversation. Endorsed by the General Church Board, it provides a summary of the proposals about ordination to come before Synod, as well as the status of the Theses of Agreement.

Ordination of women and men – the proposals before General Synod

Six proposals relating to the ordination question are before the 20th General Synod and will be considered at the in-person sessions in February 2023:

• three proposing to remove TA 6.11 from the Theses of Agreement
• one proposing that the LCANZ allow two practices of ordination
• one proposing that the General Church Board (GCB) work through the theological, constitutional and governance requirements in establishing one church with two different practices of ordination, and reporting back to General Synod in the form of a proposal for discussion and potential endorsement
• one proposing to give a peaceful dismissal to those congregations unable to live under the current teaching of a male-only pastorate and exercise their right to withdraw membership from the LCANZ.

Some proposals refer to the Theses of Agreement, particularly TA 1.4 and TA 6.11. The GCB is aware that, across the church, there are various levels of understanding of the Theses of Agreement and has approved the following summary.

Theses of Agreement

What are the Theses of Agreement?

The Theses of Agreement are the common consent of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Australia (UELCA) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia (ELCA) on matters of doctrine which were in dispute between them. They were adopted by the respective churches in the mid- to late-1950s.

The journey to union of the two Lutheran churches had a number of false starts in the early part of the 20th century. The concerted effect to renew union discussions began in 1937–38, but it was not until 1941 that the official meetings of representatives of the two churches began. The various theses were adopted by the joint committees between 1948 and 1956. Aspects of Theses 5 ‘The Church’ were adopted by the joint committees in 1965.

Although the clarification on matters of doctrine was predominantly settled with the adoption of the Theses of Agreement by both churches, the way forward on cooperation and fellowship was only resolved with the Document of Union, which was registered by the churches in 1965. The Theses of Agreement was recognised in the document as acceptance of the expression of the common consent of the two churches and was made part of the Document of Union.

At the constituting convention of the Lutheran Church of Australia (LCA) in 1966, the General Synod adopted the LCA Constitution and resolved other matters regarding the amalgamation of the new church. The Theses of Agreement is not part of the LCA Constitution; however, its status as a document of the church has been articulated since the constituting convention in 1966.

Theses of Agreement relevant to the office of the ministry

Theses of Agreement (TA) 6 defines the teaching of the LCA on the office of the ministry. TA 6.1 to 6.10 refer to God’s institution of the office and the responsibilities and authority of those called to the office as recorded in Scripture and in the Lutheran Symbols of the Book of Concord of 1580. TA 6.11 refers specifically to prohibiting women from being called into the office of the public ministry.

None of the five proposals before the General Synod seeking the ordination of women and men disputes TA 6.1 to 6.10. Three of the proposals seek the removal of TA 6.11. One calls for the LCANZ to allow two practices of ministry in the church. Another calls for the LCANZ to work through the theological, constitutional and governance requirements to operate as one church with two different practices of ordination.

Use of Theses of Agreement 1 as the basis of proposals to allow the ordination of both women and men

Three of the proposals refer to TA 1, ‘Principles governing Church Fellowship’, specifically paragraph 4 (TA 1.4).

TA 1.4 can be summarised as follows: that where differences in exegesis (interpretation of Scripture) exist that affect doctrine (the church’s teaching) and if agreement cannot be reached following ‘combined, prayerful examination of the passage or passages in question’, divergent views arising from such differences are not church-divisive, providing that:

1. There be the readiness in principle to submit to the authority of the Word of God;
2. Thereby no clear Word of Scripture is denied, contradicted or ignored;
3. Such divergent views in no wise impair, infringe upon, or violate the central doctrine of Holy Scripture, justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ;
4. Nothing is taught contrary to the publica doctrina of the Lutheran Church as laid out in its Confessions;
5. Such divergent views are not propagated as the publica doctrina of the Church and in no wise impair the doctrine of Holy Writ.

The full text of TA 1.4 can be found on the Commission on Theology and Inter-Church Relations page on the LCA website at www.lca.org.au/cticr