Native American smudging and gay bishop's lament at ELCA Lutheran convention

8/29/2022

(The following article was written by Rev. Tom Brock of pastorsstudy.org. You can follow Pastor Brock on Facebook - here and Twitter - here.)

The liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has just concluded its national assembly. At the assembly, smoke was dispersed to cleanse from evil spirits and negative energy according to the Native American ceremony called smudging. No, ELCA, evil spirits are not driven out by smoke but only by the name of Jesus Christ. If you tap on the second link below, you can watch pagan smudging going on during an ELCA worship service.

Also, the ELCA took up the issue of "bound conscience". Back in 2009 when the ELCA voted to ordain practicing homosexuals, conservatives were assured that their "bound conscience" against homosexual behavior would be allowed in the ELCA. But now, some want that reconsidered so that LGBT people will feel more welcomed in the ELCA. The ELCA already has two practicing homosexual bishops and a while ago elected the world's first transgender bishop. But that is not welcoming enough, some say, and they want the "bound conscience" language to be reconsidered.

Kevin Strickland, an ELCA homosexual bishop with a "husband", took to the microphone to share his angst that someone refused to receive holy communion from him because the person objected to the bishop's homosexual behavior. The bishop said that he is tired of having his "personhood" challenged. He wants the church to "reconsider the church's current concept of bound conscience" because the ELCA should be a place where all are welcomed and loved, not condemned.

I personally have struggled with homosexual temptation most of my life but for the sake or Christ and my soul, I abstain from this behavior (see "My struggle with same sex attraction" at pastorsstudy.org). I would say to the ELCA's homosexual bishops that no one is challenging their personhood. People are challenging homosexual behavior which the Bible condemns and in which the bishops engage. It is out of love that we tell people to turn from sin since sin dishonors God and hurts us. Indeed, it is very unloving to condone a sin which can eternally separate people from the Kingdom of God (I Corinthians 6:9-11).

So now the ELCA has reached the point where it will examine whether to even allow the traditional, biblical view of homosexuality in its ranks. Indeed, the ELCA's national magazine already bans the conservative viewpoint in its pages.

Given the ECLA's syncretism with pagan practices and its affirmation of homosexuality and transgenderism, it is long past time for Bible-believing Christians to leave this denomination.

Sincerely in Christ,
Pastor Tom Brock

(To see Bishop Strickland's convention remarks, tap on second link below).

Smudging at the 2022 ELCA Churchwide Assembly

https://www.facebook.com/100075432623373/videos/839357237232129/

2 Comments

Didaskalos link

8/30/2022 05:10:49 am

"...Kevin Strickland, an ELCA homosexual bishop with a 'husband', took to the microphone to share his angst that someone refused to receive holy communion from him because the person objected to the bishop's homosexual behavior. The bishop said that he is tired of having his 'personhood' challenged."

No, he's tired of having his willful, impenitent sin challenged, and he's plainly admonished by God's Word to repent while he still has time to do so.

'Just Christians' -- https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=26-04-003-e&readcode=&readtherest=true#therest

[...]In 1 Corinthians 6, St. Paul gives vital clarification on a subject where there is much foggy thinking among those who ask questions like, "What should the Church's approach to homosexual Christians be?" The apostolic answer is that there is no such thing as a homosexual Christian. There are brethren who struggle with various temptations, to be sure, and may on occasion fall to them before rising again. But believers who resist homosexual lust are not "homosexuals." They are just Christians, as are the rest of us with our own besetting sins.

"Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? [Then comes a list of sinners, including "sexual perverts."] And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God."

Such WERE some of you. The apostle is writing to the baptized saints in the church of Corinth who are no longer these things. He does not say they are no longer susceptible to their old sins, nor that these old sins mustn't be dealt with: addressing the problems old sins create is a large part of the epistle's burden. Given this apostolic definition, however, we cannot—we dare not—say there is any such thing as a "gay (or lesbian, etc.) Christian," for the Christian by definition has been cleansed of his homosexuality. He cannot regard himself as a homosexual—or idolater, or thief, or drunkard—nor can the Church affirm him, or the various acts associated with the old vice, as such.

There is no "homosexual voice within the Church," for the homosexual's conversion entails a choice—This, or That—the sin, or the Faith. He cannot have both, nor can the Church in any way accommodate the sin from which he has been cleansed. It is wholly and actively and vehemently against it as a destroyer of the souls it has been called to save. It labors among the saints only in the accomplishment of what has already been done in Christ: cleansing, sanctification, and justification in the Name of the Lord.

Its message to those who, in abandonment of hope, define themselves by some sin, and present themselves as though they, as so defined, should have a place in the Church, is and only can be that of complete rejection. With respect to loving the sinner and hating the sin, which it indeed is called to do, what can it say to those who, in contempt of the saints who have fled their sins, declare their persons to be inseparable from the sin, identifying themselves with it—and then blame the Church for hating them as persons? It can only say to them that all perversion of what it is to be human has been destroyed in and by Christ, who makes those who love him straight and whole after his own image. To some, this is the promise of life; to others, who have bound themselves to that which is to be destroyed, it is the intolerable threat of destruction.
[ . . .]
The Church never can and never will give satisfaction—and the homosexualist knows it, for he knows the words against him are ineradicable—to the declared and impenitent homosexual, the person who, through an act of the vermiculate will, has identified his person with a sin, whether he demands acceptance of his sin through "love," or vindication through identification of his perceived enemies as bigots. Whether he presents himself as an object of love or indignation, what he demands in either case is acceptance not of the person, but of the sin-bound and sin-defined person. He demands the declaration of spiritual authority that there is nothing objectively disordered about this binding of man to sin, and assurance that this monstrous amalgam can indeed enter the kingdom of heaven. This can never happen among Christians until they abandon Christianity, which is at war with every sin, and whose indelible constitution places all perversions of the perfect man at the muzzle of its canons. •

Rebecca

8/30/2022 12:10:10 pm

Evil is never satisfied. Evil never says "enough".
Proverbs 30:15,16

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Native American smudging and gay bishop's lament at ELCA Lutheran convention

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