Women of the ELCA (WELCA) Claims Jesus Made Errors in Judgement

9/7/2015

Women of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (WELCA) went on Twitter and Facebook this week claiming the Son of God made errors.

God's Word says, “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth" (1 Peter 2:22), but these ELCA leaders foolishly think they know better.

If this isn't proof enough that the ELCA has a false view of Scripture and God Himself, I don't know what it will take to convince you.

10-second sermon for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost. pic.twitter.com/E2T9IQui0p
— Women of the ELCA (@WomenoftheELCA) September 7, 2015

(Update: It looks like WELCA deleted the tweet I originally posted. It was the same as above except it included this comment "Today is the 15th Sunday after Pentecost. Jesus corrected his errors; how will you do the same?" They have not remove this comment from Pinterest yet, you can see it here or I have taken a screenshot of it and posted at the end of this article).

This teaching is widely taught in the ELCA and widely accepted by ELCA leadership.

Just a few days ago ELCA Pastor Cindy Muse of Calvary Lutheran Church, West Chester, PA begins this video asking, "Was Jesus a racist?" Please view this video. Later, after claiming she is "Shocked" by Jesus' words she says "Jesus just uttered a racial slur."

Here is a blog from a couple months ago with two more ELCA leaders (a seminary professor and a pastor) making similar claims.

http://www.exposingtheelca.com/exposed-blog/bigoted-biased-and-racist-jesus

ELCA.org published a post by ELCA pastor Bob Chell, Sioux Falls, SD, on this same topic and he writes “Jesus is being rude and dismissive to the woman he encounters. That is the simplest and, I believe, best explanation.” (see here)

--

WELCA's Pinterest post -

5 Comments

Jim

9/9/2015 10:49:35 am

Such shoddy scholarship. It ignores the rest of what Jesus said and did...parables about the Good Samaritan, for instance, holding up non-Genitles to Jewish prejudices and attitudes of superiority.

In Mark 7, Jesus is speaking to the Gentile woman in the company of Jews. He gives her the answer expected by Jews holding Gentiles in lower regard (chins wagged, no doubt. See, the Rabbi has it right). But when the Gentile woman insists on her daughter's entitlement to grace and Christ's blessings, he says she has it right. He says her "answer" is to be rewarded. He has just delivered an important lesson to Jew and Gentile alike.

The other fallacy in the argument of those like Cindy Muse is it entirely forgets (or denies) who Jesus is. God in the form of Jesus saying something meant to be racist? Why, then, God must condone racism (of course, he doesn't). But Jesus not being God, but a mere human teacher like Cindy Muse herself, why, certainly, we all make mistakes, don't we? That is the essence of her position: denying who Jesus really is.

9/10/2015 02:04:36 pm

I meant "holding up Gentiles," not "non-Gentiles." Excuse the error, please.

Didaskalos link

9/9/2015 11:46:59 am

ELCA's motto: "When our false teaching blatantly contradicts the Bible, no big deal. When our false teaching gets us bad PR, we'll delete it from Twitter and Facebook and our denominational website . . but still preach it to our members in the pews."

How sadly far removed from Martin Luther is the apostate ELCA. While the ELCA keeps proudly kicking the Bible to the curb, Martin Luther unsurprisingly sheds Biblical light on the Syrophoenician woman's meeting with Jesus.

". . . All this, however, is written for our comfort and instruction, that we may know how deeply God conceals his grace before our face, and that we may not estimate him according to our feelings and thinking, but strictly according to his Word. For here you see, though Christ appears to be even hardhearted, yet he gives no final decision by saying "No." All his answers indeed sound like no, but they are not no, they remain undecided and pending. For he does not say: I will not hear thee; but is silent and passive, and says neither yes nor no. In like manner he does not say she is not of the house of Israel; but he is sent only to the house of Israel; he leaves it undecided and pending between yes and no. So he does not say, Thou art a dog, one should not give thee of the children's bread; but it is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs; leaving it undecided whether she is a dog or not. Yet all those trials of her faith sounded more like no than yes; but there was more yea in them than nay; aye, there is only yes in them, but it is very deep and very concealed, while there appears to be nothing but no.

"By this is set forth the condition of our heart in times of temptation; Christ here represents how it feels. It thinks there is nothing but no and yet that is not true. Therefore it must turn from this feeling and lay hold of and retain the deep spiritual yes under and above the no with a firm faith in God's Word, as this poor woman does, and say God is right in his judgment which he visits upon us; then we have triumphed and caught Christ in his own words. As for example when we feel in our conscience that God rebukes us as sinners and judges us unworthy of the kingdom of heaven, then we experience hell, and we think we are lost forever. Now whoever understands here the actions of this poor woman and catches God in his own judgment, and says: Lord, it is true, I am a sinner and not worthy of thy grace; but still thou hast promised sinners forgiveness, and thou art come not to call the righteous, but, as St. Paul says in I Tim 1, 15, "to save sinners." Behold, then must God according to his own judgment have mercy upon us.

"King Manasseh did likewise in his penitence as his prayer proves; he conceded that God was right in his judgment and accused himself as a great sinner and yet he laid hold of the promised forgiveness of sins. David also does likewise in Ps 51, 4 and says: "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in thy sight; that thou mayest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest." For God's disfavor in every way visits us when we cannot agree with his judgment nor say yea and amen, when he considers and judges us to be sinners. If the condemned could do this, they would that very moment be saved. We say indeed with our mouth that we are sinners; but when God himself says it in our hearts, then we are not sinners, and eagerly wish to be considered pious and free from that judgment. But it must be so; if God is to be righteous, in his words that teach you are a sinner, then you may claim the rights of all sinners that God has given them, namely, the forgiveness of sins. Then you eat not only the crumbs under the table as the little dogs do; but you are also a child and have God as your portion according to the pleasure of your will.

"This is the spiritual meaning of our Gospel and the scriptural explanation of it. For what this poor woman experienced in the bodily affliction of her daughter, whom she miraculously caused to be restored to health again by her faith, that we also experience when we wish to be healed of our sins and of our spiritual diseases, which is truly a wicked devil possessing us; here she must become a dog and we become sinners and brands of hell, and then we have already recovered from our sickness and are saved."

http://www.orlutheran.com/html/mlsemt15.html -- Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent; Matthew 15:21-28 "The Faith of the Syrophoenician Woman"

David

9/9/2015 02:08:01 pm

"I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of Salvation, first for the Jew, and then for the Gentile." In Mark chapter 7 Jesus breaks the manmade ritualistic handwashing and then declares all foods clean. This Syro-Phoenician woman is an extension of that. Jesus spreading his ministry to others who the culture would have seen as unclean, showing and proving that faith is what matters,not what we do or where we come from, that the Gospel spills over through all places and all times for people, not just for the Jews, not just for those who were living or had lived at that time.

Ryan Seymour

9/10/2015 04:10:45 pm

Pastor Cindy Muse tells us that the word "dog" is a racial slur against the Gentiles. But, in the first place, there is nothing in the New Testament to support that. Apart from the story of the Syrophoenician woman, the word "dog" occurs only five times in the New Testament. In Lk 16:21 and 2 Pet. 2:22 it refers to literal dogs. In Mt. 7:6 it means those who cannot appreciate sacred or valuable things; in Rev. 22:15 the "dogs outside the city" means those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, murderers, idolaters, everyone who loves and practices falsehood. In Phil. 3:2 Paul applies the term TO THE JEWS (not the Gentiles) who insisted on circumcision for all Christian converts.

In the second place, Judaism is a religion, not a race. Even back in the first century, the Jewish nation was not a race, for they had intermarried with other people since Old Testament times (Deut. 23:7-8; Ezra 9:1-2). And belief (which everybody has) in the superiority of one's own RELIGION is not racism. Jesus himself attached no great significance to being a physical descendant of Abraham. He told the unbelieving Jews, "I know you are Abraham's descendants. Yet you are ready to kill me, because you have no room for my words.... You belong to your father, the devil...." (John 8:37, 44).

Pastor Cindy Muse would have us believe that Jesus was so uncouth that he had to glean enlightenment and correction by talking to strangers in the street, even though the Bible says that at the age of twelve his understanding astonished the teachers in the temple courts (Lk 2:43-47). She tells us that before his encounter with the Canaanite woman, Jesus thought that God loved only the Jews (which was a "racist" assumption on his part), and this was the reason he initially declined to help the woman's daughter. It was the woman's response to Jesus that changed his racist views. But seven chapters earlier we read that Jesus had healed the servant of a Roman centurion and had said, "Many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven" (Mt. 8:11), and three chapters earlier still he said, "[The Father] causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Mt. 5:45).

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Women of the ELCA (WELCA) Claims Jesus Made Errors in Judgement

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