Merry Christmas

Posted on December 25, 2020 by Matt

In him was life, and the life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

The Light still shines in the darkness. No matter what shadows you and yours may stand under as 2020 draws to a close, Jesus is king. The child born to Mary 2000 years ago still lives and reigns. May He continue to bless us with grace upon grace, that we might all find our lives in Him.

Posted in Gospel | Leave a comment

Which Conspiracy Is True?

Posted on December 16, 2020 by Matt

Conspiracy theories have always been with us, but I suspect they proliferate far more in the information age. Whenever we start accumulating too many facts that contradict some commonly accepted narrative or another, people will begin coming up with alternative explanations. Sometimes those alternatives are reasonable; often they’re not. But the worse the official narratives are, the more available information is, and the easier it is to find a platform to advertise an alternative theory, the more conspiracy theories a society is going to have. Naturally, contemporary America is a perfect storm.

As I’ve written before, the honest response to 99% of conspiracy theories is really “I don’t know.” After all, most people have never genuinely considered theories outside of their familiar paradigm. The time and inclination simply aren’t there. Those who have considered will usually find that no matter how faulty the official narrative is, they don’t have enough evidence to prove any specific alternative. Nevertheless, on any given theory, you’ll always have a small handful of people who are absolutely certain they’ve pierced the veil of secrecy to discover the real truth, and a large mob of people who vehemently dismiss the whole thing as ridiculous despite their ignorance.

And so, dishonest though it might be, vehement dismissal is the usual response to conspiracy theories. It’s easy; it’s comfortable; and no one will hold you accountable for doing so. That’s why, when someone challenges a narrative you’re attached to, labeling the challenge a “conspiracy theory” has proven an effective tactic in shoving the whole matter under the rug.

That’s certainly been the case with the allegations of massive voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election. When they report on it at all, the establishment media has falsely assured us that there is no evidence or falsely claimed that it has been debunked.  Leftist officials, of course, parrot those same claims. Most of President Trump’s legal actions have been dismissed rather than lost–as in courts have refused to hear the case rather than weighed the evidence and explicitly judged against it. And countless private citizens have glossed over the whole matter as unthinkable.

The President’s account of election night might be a “conspiracy theory” in that it challenges a widely accepted narrative held by many established institutions without official proof and alleges large-scale coordinated wrongdoing.  But it’s becoming increasingly apparent that “the elections were fairly and safely conducted” meets exactly the same criteria.

Love him or hate him, the most important person making these allegations is the sitting President of the United States. This allegation isn’t coming from some nobody on the internet, but from the highest office in the land. In addition, seventeen different states were part of Texas’ dismissed lawsuit to force the battleground states to follow proper legal procedures. One hundred and twenty six U.S. Representatives signed a document in support of that suit. Five states have created slates of alternative electors in order to provide further opportunity for legal challenges. Skepticism of the election’s legitimacy is both mainstream and official.

The evidence is likewise continuing to mount and reach higher levels of credibility. Hearsay about ejected observers and under-the-table counting has become hundreds of signed affidavits. Those affidavits have become supported by videos that anyone can watch. Statistical analysis of electronic fraud has become a forensic examination of voting machines ordered and released by a Michigan court that anyone can (and should) read. And that forensic evidence is absolutely damning. Every last Dominion voting machine in the country needs to be immediately seized and examined in the same way.

You can complain that carrying out fraud on this scale would have required far too many people to be plausible. But producing evidence of fraud on this scale has also now involved countless people, both high and low–officials, functionaries, and bystanders alike. If the election was fraudulent, there was a massive conspiracy to steal it. If the election was fair, there is a massive conspiracy to undermine it. This is no longer a choice about whether or not you’re one of those crazy conspiracy theorists. This is a choice about which conspiracy you believe in.

If you have any opinion on the election other than “I don’t know”, you have become a conspiracy theorist without even trying. And if your opinion really is “I don’t know”, then you need to consider the implication: You don’t know whether your upcoming federal government is legitimate.

Wouldn’t you like to find out? Wouldn’t you like to see evidence publicly submitted and transparently examined? Wouldn’t you like to see our courts and legislatures do their jobs and actually hear the cases rather than dismiss them on issues of standing?  Wouldn’t you like to see the ballots fully audited rather than just recounted? Wouldn’t you like to see all the voting machines examined rather than wiped so that no one will ever know what really happened? Wouldn’t you like to see all the evidence come to light rather than be hidden away?

Well that’s not what journalists are doing. That’s not what Democrats are doing. That’s not what our courts are doing. That’s not what governors and election officials in disputed states are doing. That’s not what Big Tech is doing. That’s what President Trump is doing. The President and his team are trying to promulgate and submit evidence. They’re the ones serving the people who don’t know. The others are very obviously trying to bury it.

I wasn’t at a disputed precinct on election night. I wasn’t observing any vote counts. I didn’t examine any voting machines. Like most Americans, I have to rely on what others report, and so it comes down to the question of which reports are trustworthy and believable. In a situation like that, I will always trust the side that’s dragging the matter out into the open rather than the one actively trying to keep us all in the dark.

Accordingly, I believe the conspiracy theory about the election being stolen rather than the conspiracy theory about it being carried out in a fair and lawful manner. I’m open to counter-evidence and persuasion based on investigation, but I’m not open to empty labels and dismissals.

That leaves me with this conclusion: If all these smoking guns aren’t properly accounted for rather than merely dismissed, then American democracy is truly dead.  Elections that cannot be double-checked cannot be trusted. Elections that cannot be trusted are not truly free. And if, as some believe, President Trump does end up crossing the Rubicon in order to punish democracy’s murderers, then so be it. It would not be him who ended the Republic. It would be the officials at every level who failed to do their jobs.

Posted in Politics | 8 Comments

Why You Shouldn’t Implicitly Trust Experts

Posted on December 14, 2020 by Matt

Awhile back, I used to work as a “software application architect” at an aerospace company. And while this company wasn’t the biggest name in the business, neither were we some unknown. If I listed some of the projects going on while I was there, you’d probably recognize some of them even if you aren’t a big fan of space exploration. It was a good company with a lot of highly competent workers that has some genuinely impressive accomplishments of which we were rightly proud.

The team I was a part of provided software tools to the engineers there. In other words, you could legitimately call many of my internal customers “rocket scientists.” We were part of an effort to move away from an outdated, paper-based system for managing spacecraft parts, design changes, and so forth. I also helped support the software we configured and wrote, which required a modest amount of customer interaction.

But the thing about doing tech support for intelligent and talented aerospace engineers is that it’s really not much different than doing tech support for your grandma. There’s the same resistance to change when learning new technology. There’s the same failure to try to read and understand the directions. There’s the same general attitude that computers are a kind of voodoo. You come away with the same kind of stupid human stories that every other tech support worker has.

At one point, we had to implement a timeout in our software in an effort to reduce some concurrent licensing costs. The problem was the possibility that somebody could be logged out without saving their work. So we wanted to be absolutely sure that every user understood that after 30 minutes of inactivity, the software would be forcibly log them out to end their session.

We knew most of them didn’t read our email announcements and would just click away any popup without reading it, so we decided to implement an extremely simple reading comprehension test at login. We added a single sentence of giant bright red text to the login window telling them that they would be logged out after 30 minutes of inactivity. Then we asked them for the number of minutes in the message. They could not log in until they entered “30.” It was so simple my 6-year-old could do it.

We had to eliminate the quiz after only a couple hours because our help desk was completely overwhelmed with rocket scientists who couldn’t figure it out.

Every single call I took–every last one–all I had to do was ask “Is there any kind of error message or notification on the screen?” Then they would say “oh yeah,” read it out loud to me and immediately ask, “Oh, so I just have to enter ’30?'” And that was it. Encouraging them to read THE GIANT RED TEXT was literally the only action needed.

So it was a learning experience for everyone. And in the end, the whole snafu did make sure that everyone know about the timeout.  But the most important takeaway is this:  Our culture tries very hard to create a glamour around our experts and elevate them above the rest. But the more time one spends around experts, the more that glamour fades.  Even the fanciest sports car is eventually going to break down and rust away the same way any other car will.

As I said, these weren’t stupid people. Far from it. The problem, if you want to call it that, was just that they were people. The mistake they made was a very human one–you expect things to work the same as they did the day before and so you unconsciously tune out the “clutter” that interferes with that. Rocket scientists aren’t immune to this or any other common human failing. Being intelligent, well-trained, and working competently in a high-level discipline doesn’t change human nature in the slightest. Pick any cliché you want: missing the forest for the trees, thinking the grass is always greener on the other side, crying wolf, power corrupting, fear being contagious, or anything else. Expert humans fail at Aesop’s fables just as readily as non-expert humans.

This is as true at a group level as it is on an individual level. A mob of experts will exhibit the same typical behavior as any other kind of mob. There will be peer pressure. There will be loss of personal responsibility. There will be echo chambers, increasing emotional resonance, and punishment for those who deviate. No matter how smart or credentialed, humans remain irrevocably fallen and make completely mundane mistakes on a regular basis.

Americans must write this reality onto our hearts because we are currently under siege by various groups of experts who think their training and discipline puts them above the criticism of normies. They are above nothing. Our medical experts are panicking over a bad flu. Our expert journalists are liars. Our political experts are fools and tyrants. This isn’t because they’re especially bad. It’s because there’s nothing special about them at all. There are the usual bad actors. There are their usual sycophants. There are the usual people just going along to get along. And through it all, there are the same stupid mistakes we all make.

Expertise and intelligence do nothing to inoculate us against human foibles. All they do is facilitate more creative and harmful expressions of our failings.

So don’t be afraid to skeptically question experts. If they truly know their material they should also be able to explain it to someone who does not. At worst, you’ll be wrong and end up coming away knowing more than when you started. But in the course of that conversation, it usually becomes apparent whether they’re making the kinds of human mistakes that anyone can recognize.

And if there’s one thing we don’t lack today, it’s constant chatter from experts which we can read and judge. The masks are off for anyone willing to be skeptical.

Posted in Culture, Musings, Politics, Science | 1 Comment

Joseph, Did You Know?

Posted on December 7, 2020 by Matt

Well, Joseph didn’t know–at least, not until an angel told him. And his first reaction to the situation tells us something different than what I’ve been hearing from a lot of people using him as an example lately.

Most of what I’ve seen was in response to this hot take on marrying single moms from last week:

And as if with a single voice, everybody seemed to respond, “Well, it’s a good thing Joseph didn’t think like you!”

With Christmas just around the corner, I suppose it’s only natural that St. Joseph would come to mind. I just wish people would’ve actually paused for a moment and pondered the facts before using him as an example. It’s a story we all know, but these folks all overlooked one really important detail: Joseph’s initial reaction was to quietly sever his relationship with Mary precisely because he naturally took her pregnancy as proof of her fornication and concluded that this made her unfit to be his bride.

Matthew’s Gospel even notes how righteous Joseph was for taking this course of action. To be sure, that was in large part was because he sought to avoid ending Mary’s life over the matter–whether figuratively or literally. He did not exercise his rights to have her punished, nor did he seek to turn it into a public scandal. Nevertheless, generously sparing Mary some consequences of what he thought were her actions couldn’t have been the whole of the matter for him. After all, he could have accomplished even greater protection by just going ahead and marrying her anyway. But he didn’t–at least not until a literal angel of the Lord came to explain the truth of the matter.

So despite all the attempts to use Joseph as a counter-example, his reaction to marrying a single mom was probably a lot closer to the original tweet than to its critics.

The key reality that the critics don’t want to acknowledge is that Aubrey Huff’s feelings on the matter are perfectly natural for a man to have. We are, after all, far more inclined than women to care about our spouse’s chastity–and those instincts serve us well. Not to mention the fact that marrying a single mom may very well be deliberately coming between another man and his children. Despite the modern prejudice, many absent fathers aren’t absent by choice.  Concerns like these are not vanity–just common sense which participants in an age of rampant fornication would like to abolish.

Do these feelings have to be the end of the matter for a man? Not at all. As I’ve written before, some single moms may be a good choice for some men to marry. To be sure, sometimes there are mitigating circumstances (rape, abandonment, etc), even if they’re not as extraordinary as what Joseph discovered. But far more commonly and importantly, there can be repentance and forgiveness. There can be grace and gratitude. But none of these things can be coerced–neither grace nor forgiveness can be owed. Accordingly, we cannot tell men that they have some kind of moral obligation to marry single moms.

And for those blessings to come about naturally in a relationship, there are two prerequisites. First, of course, the woman needs to have repented and built character in the meantime. Men ought to care enough about their future children that they choose a virtuous mother for them.

But more to the point here, the man needs to actually deal with his natural feelings regarding the unchastity. He cannot do so by pretending he never felt them. He cannot do so by means of people condemning him for feeling that way or by condemning himself for it. That’s merely repression of those feelings, and it will do no good for either the man or the woman in the long run. The only healthy way a mature man can deal with feelings like that is to first acknowledge the truth behind them and then find ways to move past it and work around it.

He cannot do that by pretending that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a prospective wife’s unchastity. He cannot do that by pretending she had no agency in the matter. He cannot do that by pretending fornication, divorce, adultery, and so forth are of no concern–for he instinctively knows better.

Neither can he move on by engaging in the big sexual rationalization of our age, which has also come up in the current conversation. We are told that a woman’s sexual history does not matter–only what she does while she’s in a relationship with you. But this is not a meaningful moral distinction rooted in Biblical sexual morality or in natural law. No, this idea is born from the modern custom of serial monogamy.

For the sake of fornication, we in the modern West treated our temporary but “long-term” relationships as though they were mini-marriages. This has proven to be a disastrous point of view. Not only do we demand undue exclusivity & emotional investment from our dates–and even friendships–but we also endure undue heartache at breakups, all so that we can participate in undue physical intimacy.

As a result, serial monogamy has drawn it’s own set of ad hoc sexual ethics into orbit around these dubious relationships. Excuses like “We hadn’t met yet,” “what we did wasn’t technically intercourse,” “we were on a break,” and so forth are supposed to make a person morally upright. But these are all pale imitations of real chastity just as so-called long-term relationships are pale imitations of marriage.

And everyone knows that serial monogamy makes no sense, which is precisely why it’s being rapidly abandoned in favor of hookup culture. That’s not exactly an improvement, but so long as repentance isn’t on the table, it at least makes more sense to people.

But a man considering marriage has to think more deeply than the rationalizations of modern America. He has to think about chastity. Chastity is a virtue. It’s not so arbitrary that it’s somehow reset every time you transfer to a different relationship. Our persons and our character persist through our sordid histories without a statute of limitations. And so, all fornication is unfaithfulness to our spouses–whether or not it falls within the boundaries of some kind of arbitrary dating relationship.

Now, unfaithfulness can certainly be forgiven and relationships restored. But this does not happen when the unfaithful person refuses to repent or the victim pretends there was nothing unfaithful about it. And even in the best of circumstances, there is a measure of graciousness, sacrifice, and risk when marrying a single mom–one that goes beyond the measure of the same required by marrying even a chaste bride.

I’m not saying never marry a single mom. I’m not saying no single mom is worth marrying. I am saying that Christians need to stop virtue-signalling by pretending unchastity makes no difference.

And stop using St. Joseph as a means to such vainglorious ends. Because until God explained the situation, his righteous actions reveal a belief that premarital unfaithfulness is indeed a legitimate reason to politely walk away.

Posted in Chastity, Culture, Ethics, Family, Law, Natural Law | 8 Comments

Still Too White? Demographics as Measure of Mission

Posted on December 1, 2020 by Matt

Should church bodies be measuring the effectiveness of our evangelism based on our racial makeup? One pastor made this charge in reaction to my recent post on the subject:

I consider this a confession of sin: “And that’s really where most new Christians come from in established American church bodies like the LCMS–through their relationships with believers in one way or another. Sure, a few people dropped by after attending your bake sale or hearing your radio ad, but not many. God bless those who plant local missionary churches and simply invite the neighborhood, but they are the blessed exception rather than the blessed norm. As a result, there is a demographic gravity to our congregations that is powerful but also benign.”

Our lack of being missional, specifically an “all the nations” missional, truly needs to be addressed and solved if we’re to carry out the Great Commission.

Yes, our church is too white, because we are not effectively missional.

Saying we are so negligent at evangelism that it qualifies as sinful is a hefty charge, and I think it’s worth addressing. I focused more on the charge of racism than I did on evangelism the first time around. And while I responded in the comments, I think a fuller explanation is worth it’s own post.

But before we dive in I want to clarify how I’m using a couple terms here, since the commenter did not.

First, we could argue about exactly what “missional” means and what constitutes being effective at it. After all, it’s a buzz-word in LCMS circles that’s usually attached to a focus on nebulous evangelism programs. But let’s just take it in very broad terms as “deliberate evangelism.”

Second, I’m restricting in the scope of “sin” here to coram mundo. In this context, judging evangelism coram deo is senseless because until the Great Commission is truly over at Christ’s return, there is always more work to be done, and absolutely none of us have made perfectly efficient use of our time. It’s like fathers and mothers wondering whether they could have done more for their children. The answer is always “yes,” and so coram deo we must all lean on the righteousness of Christ. But that doesn’t mean that we should all be calling each other bad parents, for imperfect parents have no business condemning mere imperfection in others. Gross negligence is still a meaningful accusation, but mere imperfection is not. The same is true of imperfect evangelists. As Christ taught, we need to be careful in how we judge one-another.

Third, I’m leaving all consideration of racism out of it. I’m content with how I addressed that aspect of it last time.

So with that cleared up, let’s tackle the main question here: Can we measure a church body’s skill at participating in the Great Commission by looking at the slightly off-white color of its collective skins? Is it reasonable to conclude that any non-negligent evangelism would result in racial diversity?

Absolutely not.

Let’s start with some examples of effective mission–apart from the meaningless question of whether we have “enough” examples like these. The LCMS has planted churches in various places around the globe–and sent missionaries to countless more. Church bodies in places like Ghana, Korea, and Japan are the direct result of our missionaries bringing the Gospel to the very nonwhite peoples there. And those are just a few examples of our international mission work. So we’re ultimately talking about a multitude to whom the Word was sown and alongside whom we shall stand before the Lamb clothed in white.

I think we can all agree that such things are good deliberate evangelism. But there’s a perfectly natural circumstance to all these missions: None of them have made the LCMS any less white because these brothers and sisters are typically not LCMS members.

Most of them belong to different church bodies with whom we are in partnership–in other words, they’re fellow Christians and Lutherans who confess what we confess. That’s a wonderful reality that would in no way be improved by trying to finagle them into the LCMS bureaucracy. Making LCMS members of all nations was never the point of the Great Commission. Effective mission is declaring God’s Word to people and giving them the Sacraments, not giving them membership in an organization so that we can virtue-signal about our racial demographics.

Ah, but you might say that that’s all a matter of international mission. Surely, when it comes to domestic matters, any effective evangelism would be resulting in a larger and broader LCMS membership.

Why should it?

I’ll use myself as an example here. I’m not particularly adept at evangelism. Nevertheless, even I have had opportunities to share the pure Gospel with those who needed it. Sometimes I’ve even been blessed to actually see it received with joy. I’ve also had opportunities to invite people to my congregation to connect them with Word and Sacrament ministry. I’ve invited a few people that I know. I’ve canvassed a few neighborhoods to invite strangers. Yeah; It’s not much. But considering how difficult personal evangelism is for those of us on the spectrum, I’m not ashamed coram mundo. Certainly, I’ve repented coram deo for opportunities I know I’ve missed, but we’re all in that boat.

But I don’t remember ever specifically encouraging someone to join my denomination, and I have no idea if I’ve had any impact on our membership numbers apart from my own children. And you know what? I don’t consider myself guilty of sin for that lack, so I’m certainly not going to judge someone else for it.

Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod; I’m grateful for what it’s offered to me; and I’m happy to remain within her. It’s simply that membership is a matter of administration rather than evangelism. It’s not a great metric when it comes to simply sowing the Word.

Then what about connecting people with congregations? Yes; we should do that too. But we’re either going to connect them with established congregations or with new church plants. Those are two very different organs of the same Church, and judging both by demographics is ridiculous.

Established congregations do not, can not, and should not operate like brand new missionary churches. Church plants have the advantages of adaptability, novelty, and enthusiasm. They are very well-suited to bringing the Gospel to unbelievers in a locale and building a new Christian community. Established churches have the advantages of heritage, mature organizational skills & structures, and capital. They are very well-suited to feeding a community of existing Christians and their posterity with Word and Sacrament.

Both of these are wonderful gifts of God that bring people into His kingdom. Accordingly, neither should become the eye telling the ear we have no need of you. Quite frankly, I think a lot of our frustration with ineffective mission is a result of people who are unwilling to embrace the uncertainty of a church plant instead trying to co-opt established congregations and change them into something they’re not.

And we should remember: Every church plant that lasts is going to become an established congregation eventually. After all, we don’t gather people in just so that we can abandon them. That is not failure of mission; that is success.

The LCMS is an established church body. We should be judging it by those standards rather than expecting every Sunday at every congregation to be a local Pentecost that gathers in everyone within a 10-mile radius around the church regardless of demographics. We have our own way of doing things. Some people love that way. Some people are ambivalent about that way. Some people hate that way. The thing is, all of those opinions are totally fine for fellow Christians to hold. We cannot be an organization that all tribes and nations are going to flock to in response to our evangelism, and we should not expect ourselves to be.

What happens when we do judge ourselves by the standard of established church bodies? According to studies commissioned by the Synod a few years back, the LCMS is actually reasonably good at evangelism. It takes us 44 adult members to gain a single convert. That puts us right between the adult-evangelism-focused Southern Baptists at 47 and the  Mormons at 40 who, despite their heresy, are nevertheless famous for their rigorous missionary efforts. For an established church body, I’d consider that “effectively missional.”

But that brings us right back to what I wrote last time. Established churches tend to bring in their own children and the people they naturally encounter in their day-to-day lives. These are not random samples of the community. Rather than 44 adults for one convert, it only takes two fertile Lutherans to catechize their kids and create 1-6 new members. (At least it would if we still had families. If we’re going to accuse the LCMS of sin based on its demographics, we should start with our adoption of the world’s hatred of having children. That is absolutely the biggest coram mundo standard that we fail.)

My point is this: whether by new or established congregations, the wedding feast of the lamb is filled either way–it’s just that the congregations look different. And God never gave us diversity quotas that should make us ashamed of our looks. Accusing our churches of being too white is merely burdening them with meaningless traditions of men.

Again, I’m not saying we can’t be better at evangelism. I would be happy if we started sending missionaries domestically the way we’ve done internationally. Plant a church in a neighborhood that needs the Gospel and adapt its administration to the qualities of that community. But make it a partner church that holds to the Lutheran confessions and with whom we share fellowship instead of trying to shoehorn it into LCMS bureaucracies and customs. Unlike the Gospel, those are not a good fit for every demographic.

Obviously we should evangelize more. That’s a simple truism that anyone can repeat to score piety points. But I’m surely not going to accuse anyone of sin for not doing that because not everyone is called to be a missionary. Neither is everyone obligated to share my opinions on what constitutes good evangelism strategies.

And bringing it back to our original question, neither is any such missionary effort obligated to ethnic diversity. At best, even missionary church plants are only going to look like their communities in the beginning. In the end, they will become established churches that don’t necessarily undergo the same demographic changes as its surrounding neighborhood. That evolution isn’t even failure, let alone sin. It’s different provision for different circumstances.

Criticizing mission is easy because there’s literally always something more you can do. But complaining about the racial makeup of our membership is still just meaningless virtue-signaling. It comes from the Spirit of the Age, not the Holy Spirit. The Church catholic will make disciples of all tribes and nations. As one small part of her, the LCMS will make disciples of some tribes and nations. We should praise God for that instead of joining the world’s condemnation of it.

Posted in Gospel, The Modern Church, Theology, Tradition | 3 Comments

Happy Thanksgiving

Posted on November 25, 2020 by Matt

I’m sorry for the lack of blog/Twitter activity these last couple of weeks. My wife, kids, and I finally got Covid earlier this month, and I’ve been too busy dealing with the fallout to spend much time online.  Not so much from the illness, which was pretty mild for all of us–basically a bad cold plus a loss of smell and/or taste for the adults and barely a mild cold for the children. No, most of the fallout had to do with the many and varying bureaucracies which all deal with isolation and quarantine in different ways. Some are sensible. Some are not. All of them were more burdensome than the disease was.

To be sure, Covid can be very serious for some individuals–the old, the infirm, the unhealthy, etc.  I know some of these people.  But it’s not as though we can’t make really good guesses as to which individuals need to take extra precautions beforehand. Trying to lock down everything and everyone rather than letting the majority get it and start building herd immunity has been truly foolish.

But Covid and the terrified crowds are only two of the hurdles we’ve faced in 2020.  There’s the election chaos and the constant threat of Cancel Culture looming over us.  There have been shortages of food, water, and other necessities. We’ve been through an absolutely devastating storm. We’ve suffered the unexpected death of a beloved family member.

And amidst all these major trials, there has been an unusually constant barrage of minor irritations–basically Murphy’s Law on steroids throughout the year. Have a fever and feel like staying in bed?  That’s the perfect time for your toilet tank to randomly crack right down the middle.

That’s why it’s all the more important to celebrate Thanksgiving in 2020.

We’ve suffered more this year than any year to date–this is true.  More than ever before, I’ve felt the weight of spiritual warfare and genuinely believed Satan has been out to get us. But also more than ever before, I’ve witnessed his utter failure. Our shortages were met with amazing generosity. Our devastation was met with an unwavering determination to rebuild. Our fallen loved one is now with his Savior in Paradise. My family has matured in ways I never expected. We are truly blessed.

Gratitude for those blessings is truly another blessing. Focusing on the suffering in life leads only to despair and the illusion that evil is stronger. But pausing to be grateful for the good shows us that reality is the precise opposite. The Evil One has been defeated in Christ, and by the power of God, all things–even the evil ones–cannot help but work together for the good of those who love Him. It is inevitable. And as momentarily daunting as it can be when you see the devil at work, it is eternally awe-inspiring to see the gracious hand of God in the middle of your life.

So take the time to be thankful this Thursday. No matter what your celebration may look like this year, make it a true celebration.  Spend it with as much of your family as you can, for they are your greatest blessing in this life.  If your old traditions have failed for a time, then make new ones with Christ at the center that you may all the more loudly praise God from whom all blessings flow.

May God richly bless you all in 2020 and in every year to come.

Posted in Family, Musings | 2 Comments

Only Investigation Will Restore America’s Trust in Voting

Posted on November 8, 2020 by Matt

There may not yet be proof of widespread voter fraud, but there are mountains of evidence for it.  And that evidence demands an open investigation, not the thoughtless dismissal that the Left and it’s media and Silicon Valley allies would prefer.

From my latest at The Federalist:

If proof is a body of evidence that meets a certain standard, exactly which standard do we apply? This question has different answers in different contexts. In a court of law, the standard for proving a case is “preponderance of evidence” in civil cases and “beyond a reasonable doubt” in criminal cases. Scientific journals will have another standard while philosophers have still another. But exactly what standard of proof should American voters demand?

The left wants big media and big tech to be our de facto standard of proof. That’s certainly what The New York Times was proclaiming them to be on election day before they deleted their tweet.

The problem is that everyone already knows his own standards of proof operate on a sliding scale. Big media wasn’t terribly particular about their standards on Russian collusion, Brett Kavanaugh’s past, or even smirking teenagers. Neither was big tech very interested in regulating the spread of such dubious narratives.

Even now, the only thing about the election they want to investigate is whether they can blame Qanon for their faulty polls. Their business has become their politics, plain and simple. They’ve been carrying water for the left for far too long for any freethinker to consider them objective, fair, or even professional.

America doesn’t play that game anymore. The Boomers’ world in which nothing was true until you heard it on the six o’clock news is now nostalgia. Today, we get our news from a wide assortment of selected individuals and organizations that we’ve individually come to trust based on our own experience.

But since experience is so subjective, everyone’s selections vary significantly. Accordingly, there’s no real unity to be found there either. As a result, while new media has proven fantastic at accumulating and promulgating evidence, they’re ill-suited to offering broad proof because they do not have any kind of common standard.

The upshot is this: Twitter, CNN, Google, and the like can project and declare whatever winner they want, but they don’t get to choose the president. That’s never going to serve as proof to most Americans today. Big media and bit tech have been too exposed to get away with doing that anymore.

That is why this issue needs to go to the courts to be decided. They are some of the last remaining institutions to which all Americans can—in principle, at least—be held accountable.

Read the whole thing here.

Posted in Ethics, Politics | 3 Comments

Is Your Church Too White?

Posted on November 2, 2020 by Matt

I’ve seen a number of individuals complain about the racial makeup of the LCMS over the past few months.  Some assert that at 98% Caucasian,  my denomination is simply too white to be an effective church body in America.  Others have gone further, flat out calling it racist. But if a congregation’s or a denomination’s racial demographics don’t match the demographics of the wider community in which it resides, is this really indicative of sin? Is it a failure of mission? Is it racism?

Unfortunately, this line of thinking is all-too-common in contemporary churches. Diversity is a big concern of the world at the moment. It will, therefore, inevitably become a big concern among worldly Christians.

To be sure, the Church catholic is for all nations, tribes, and languages. Nevertheless, no denomination or congregation is identical with the universal Church. It is not God’s Word, but rather the fashions of this age that say every particular institution must be racist if it doesn’t sufficiently resemble American diversity. If we mistakenly presume that our congregations bear such an obligation to be a random representative sample, there is a price to pay: By insisting on the random over the particular, we end up severing ourselves from both our church’s history and its posterity.

After all, if you pause to critically assess it, the expectation that either an LCMS congregation or the LCMS as a whole should be a statistically random  sample is patently absurd. LCMS congregations were not founded by random assortments of people. They were founded by people who both possessed and highly valued a specifically Lutheran heritage. Not only that, pretty much any LCMS congregation that’s 50 years old or more was founded by people with a specifically German heritage as well–just as the Synod as a whole was. It wasn’t that long ago that we were still doing services in German.

But while our sampling bias may begin at our origins, it does not end there. The new members our congregations have received over the years were no more random than their founders.

The most important group of people that a congregation receives into membership are its own children. These are the very people most Christians throughout history have personally evangelized. Far more of us have been called to be parents than, say, missionaries and church planters. And quite obviously, children are not demographically random. Sure, some spouses will be brought into the church from the community by marriage and end up diversifying our children somewhat. I, for example, may trace my ancestry back to 12th century Scotland, but I did receive both my Lutheran Heritage and some German ancestry from my mother’s side. Nevertheless, that dynamic does not cause a sudden and massive shift of the congregation’s demographics–especially if you’re only considering extremely broad racial strokes like black and white.

The next largest group brought into church membership are those evangelized or invited in the context of personal relationships. This includes the aforementioned spouses, but also friends, neighbors, relatives, coworkers, and so forth. Will this diversify the congregation to some extent? Absolutely. But our personal and professional relationships are only modestly more random than our children are. The human tendency–across cultures, ironically–is to have these kinds of relationships with people who are demographically similar to ourselves. Ever since Babel, we self-segregate to a large extent. Despite the man-made traditions of today’s woke Pharisees, most of our individual vocations don’t actually demand that we defy this human trait (though there are some exceptions). Once again, the potential for a demographic shift isn’t so profound that it utterly overwrites the old patterns with sheer randomness.

And that’s really where most new Christians come from in established American church bodies like the LCMS–through their relationships with believers in one way or another. Sure, a few people dropped by after attending your bake sale or hearing your radio ad, but not many. God bless those who plant local missionary churches and simply invite the neighborhood, but they are the blessed exception rather than the blessed norm. As a result, there is a demographic gravity to our congregations that is powerful but also benign.

So church bodies large and small end up in a peculiar position: We offer gifts which transcend any and every demographic category we could invent, but still tend to reside within a limited selection of those categories. Both of those poles are reflected in our culture.

To be sure, the most important service the local congregation provides–Word and Sacrament ministry–transcends culture. The Gospel is for every tribe and nation. The Sacraments are means of grace for everyone. Even the liturgy should transcend the styles of local culture to a profound extent. Many of its historical elements date back well over a thousand years and have been used across countless languages and cultures. So do many of our hymns. It’s pretty hard to take Savior of the Nations, Come (written 1600 years ago by St. Ambrose of Milan) and call it an old German song. Contemporary worship is really the only style we dabble in that’s truly culturally narrow.

At the same time, the organized community that carries out the Divine Service, supports the congregation’s education, provides the venue, facilitates fellowship, and so forth is absolutely going to reflect the congregation’s cultural norms. Outsiders will not always feel comfortable within those structures, and the more different their own heritage, the less comfortable they will feel. But is that really a bad thing in and of itself? There are many different ways these tasks could be carried out, but they’re always going to be carried out in some way. And any given way is going to make more sense to some cultures than to others.

So here, the particular prevents the random. And there’s nothing nefarious about that. By-and-large, the ways that we choose should make the most sense to the people who are actually carrying out those tasks on a day-to-day basis.  In other words, they need to make sense to the non-random current membership. This will be true no matter what demographic boxes they check.

That doesn’t mean things should never change–that the LCMS should always do things the way we’ve always done them. Even the simple passage of time should change these things to some extant. The same 10 boards you had in the 1940’s may not be the best way to cover the congregation’s needs today. Robert’s Rules of Order might not be the best way run your meetings. Your phone tree may be obsolete. Your current building might be either too small or a too-big financial anchor around your neck. You may even be failing to educate your children because you mistake your cultural norms for God’s Word.

So it’s good to change and adapt to the present challenges so long as we continue to treasure the riches of God’s Word that we have received. Congregations that fail to do both of these things will die–and many are doing precisely that. Even our simple failure to adapt to the sexual revolution in a fertile way has proven the death knell of many (we are in decline primarily because we didn’t reproduce.)  So there’s plenty of room for criticism when it comes to how we preach, how we disciple, and how we live. Nevertheless, we don’t judge ourselves against worldly concerns like diversity quotas.

And one does have to ask: If you’re so cut off from your church body (both your immediate ancestors in the faith and the immediate descendants that the congregation will be welcoming) that you’re actually offended that its heritage isn’t random… is it truly a heritage that you share? After all, to claim a heritage as your own is a matter of particularity rather than randomness. If you’re expecting a random sample, then you have cut ties with your past and are no longer talking about change, but replacement.

Whether inside or outside the Church, if you wish to institute Year Zero in this way, you should actually do the hard work of building something new rather than trying to consume the work of prior generations. And if you’re doing it at the behest of the Spirit of the Age rather than God’s Word, then whatever you create won’t be a church.

Posted in Culture, The Modern Church, Tradition | 12 Comments

Life After Election Night

Posted on October 29, 2020 by Matt

There’s no question in my mind that the upcoming election is important. I’m usually pretty dismissive of the “most-importantest-election-evar” rhetoric that Republicans have typically used to elect neo-cons and cowards over the past few decades. But there really is something different this time. There is outright evil at work in our politics this elections. The sheer scope of the corruption across most of our institutions, the fanatical desperation from the swamp, the open collusion between journalists, big tech, and the globalist political institutions all being brought to bear against President Trump is nothing I ever expected to see.

I reluctantly voted for President Trump 4 years ago. I’m confidently voting for him this year. I may find fault with respect to both person and policy, but contrary to what I believed then, the man is fighting for America, and he has what America needs most right now:  courage. There’s no way to stare down the barrel of challenges like violent riots, lockdowns over an exaggerated flu, terminal levels of immigration, and cancel culture without it. And the president’s courage has proven contagious among patriots.

All that said… while I anticipate President Trump’s electoral victory next week, it’s not going to resolve our problems. As I’ve written before, I believe a break-up of the United States is inevitable–and closer than most people think. As we learned over the past four years, the American left has already given up on elections as a way of resolving our differences. They never really accepted the results of the last one.  I would say that the only reason they haven’t started burning the whole thing down already is because they thought they might win this year… except that they’re already literally burning it down.

Too many progressives hate us to the extent that they are unwilling to live peacefully with us. That’s what cancel culture is all about–exiling, reeducating, or even murdering all dissenters. That hatred is so virulent that they cannot tolerate even family members holding contrary political positions–including positions that were held by virtually everyone in the world until about 5 minutes ago. We’ve all seen the repulsive video of the young woman bragging about emotionally bullying her dying father into voting her way. And as much as I’d like to call that an outlier, personal experience has taught me otherwise. The hatred of the SJW left cannot be overstated.

The election will not resolve that hatred because SJW’s only respect elections insofar as they give them what they want. They only accept appointments insofar as they get to make the selections. They’re already preparing for violence post election. The phrase “culture war” is not an exaggeration, and unfortunately, war only requires one side to fight. It is upon us whether we would risk it or not.

So where does America go from here? Broadly speaking, I see three outcomes in which American Christians and our families get to continue existing.

The first outcome is to rhetorically and culturally break the left’s morale to the point that they are no longer willing to fight the way they have been. This, I believe, is the option we should hope for. The extent to which angry leftists are prone to flipping out and nuking their own closest relationships over political setbacks suggests that it is more attainable than we might think at first blush.

But the election alone isn’t going to do it. I don’t think another Trump victory will break them anymore than it would break us if he were to lose. The extent to which SJW’s entrenched themselves in our institutions makes this an effort that will need to persist well beyond his term in office. It has to persist beyond Trump himself as well, for his status as their orange bogeyman won’t do us much good in 2024. The work of either retaking those institutions or letting them die and building SJW-resistant replacements will still need to be taken up. The only thing Trump’s victory will mean is that we’ll have a somewhat easier few years with a task of at least a generation.

The second outcome is an amicable divorce. This is the option we will probably have to settle for. If we cannot find a way to live together–as is increasingly the case–then we must live separately. It would be better to make that happen peacefully rather than violently.

These separations are already beginning naturally. Ideologically speaking, people are already fleeing enclaves of the left like California en masse. But the deeper divsions are demographic in nature. Humans have always sought to live among their own, however they happen to define “their own.” Now that multiculturalism and the largest mass migration in human history has resulted in an American Babel, the consequent division is also inevitable. So while the white progressive left prefers to tribalize along ideological grounds, many of their constituent minorities would prefer to do so along racial or religious grounds. But whichever their preference, it remains a matter of tribalization.

Given the disparate social gravities drawing America apart, division may very well be inevitable. But the work required for a peaceful division remains very much the same as the first, for the roadblock is the same: the extent to which we have allowed our institutions to be co-opted. American Christians need to develop institutions that can be trusted with the authority we delegate to them. If we fail at that, then peaceful division will be impossible simply because we will have nowhere to go.

That leaves us with our final option: Cancelling the left harder than they can cancel us. This is the option we should pray to avoid, because it will inevitably be violent. It is, unfortunately going to be very difficult to avoid because it’s become violent already. Antifa is already rioting and even straight-up murdering several Trump supporters in the streets. Bernie bros have already attempted several assassinations of conservative politicians. But anyone familiar with Mao’s Cultural Revolution will understand that this is only the tip of cancel culture’s iceberg. It will get far worse if left unopposed.

The only option worse than this last one is defeat in this war. The mask is off. We know what the social-justice left want to do with us and our families. Calling everyone who fundamentally disagrees with them a Nazi is just their way of justifying their means.

Accordingly, if it comes down to it, we may have a responsibility to fight no matter how much we may hate the idea (and I certainly do hate the idea.) But we are at a disadvantage because the social justice left is already well-organized for this kind of thing (I suspect they don’t hate the idea so much.) As long as the first two options remain attainable, we should do everything we can to avoid turning it into open warfare.

So however and whenever the election ends up being decided–whether by votes on election night, courts in December, force-of-arms in 2021, or some other terrible option–it’s not the end of the war. A victory in November only means a better position to continue the struggle. By all means, celebrate when such achievements are made. But it’s not the end of the conflict. It’s just another beginning.

Posted in Christian Nationalism, Musings, Politics | 1 Comment

To Whom Are Christians Accountable for Our Votes?

Posted on October 20, 2020 by Matt

To whom are we Christians, as American citizens, accountable regarding our votes this and every November?

I raise the question because I’ve seen all sorts of contentions on the subject as November approaches. The legacy media is still desperately scrambling to hang onto their past influence–demanding that no one be elected whom they do not approve. The usual would-be prophets are still demanding our attendance on the “right” side of history. And I’ve see some pretty bonkers stuff, like claiming that whites need to justify themselves if they vote differently than blacks.

But who exactly do we need to justify ourselves to when we cast our votes? In other words, under whose authority do American citizens vote?  There are answers, but they aren’t the ones we usually hear about.

God

This one is, of course, a no-brainer, but the things we take for granted are the things we’re most likely to forget, so here it is. We have been given a certain measure of authority when we vote. But all authority comes from God, and all who wield it are accountable for whether they fulfill the responsibilities that come with it.

To be sure, God does not give us a particular party or candidate to vote for each election. Rather, he calls us to excercise good judgment in a fallen world in which there are no perfect governments. Our goals is to do our best to establish a just peace in our nation. Like any parent, God knows that honest mistakes in such an endeavor are part of the cost of granting agency.

All the same, we are still accountable to him for that judgment, for he has given us wisdom and reason. If you vote in facilitation of the murder of millions of unborn children, genital mutilation for gender-confused children, riots, anti-Christian prejudice, theft, and such… well, then you need to account for why it was worth it to your Heavenly Father. Likewise, if you vote for someone who is kind of mean, relatively boorish, and might possibly be “racist” in the way that national borders are “racist”, then you will need to account for that as well. One of those is going to be harder than the other.

And don’t think any of the usual worldly slogans or virtue-signaling will avail you before the Almighty. We have been called to make sound judgments, not to parrot what the world tells us.

Our Household Authority

Beneath God Himself, He has established another authority to which Christians may need to answer for their votes: the father of their household. This question came up a few times after my article on submission. Does submission mean that wives should vote the same way as their husbands? In general, the answer to that should be yes.

The entire reason we have government in the first place is to create an environment in which households thrive. We need someplace with relative peace, trust, and responsibility in which we aren’t constantly being robbed, murdered, raped, and swindled by one-another. The authority our governmental institutions wield is effectively household authority that has been delegated en masse.

Now, in America, voting is the method by which that delegation is carried out. So in the end, voting is an exercise of household authority and therefore is a household decision rather than a personal one. Accordingly, wives should vote alongside their husbands rather than in contradiction to them–at least as long as it’s in line with God’s explicit commands, for we all must obey God rather than man. But politics is usually not a matter of gross ungodliness, but rather a matter of judgement calls (though there can be issues of open and gross evil like abortion that are different.)

And no, this isn’t supposed to look like the husband issuing a proclamation from on high which his wife silently and thoughtlessly awaits. As with all submission, the ideal is for all parties to find a way for everyone to actually be on the same page and genuinely agree on how to vote. That is what we strive for–not by endless political arguments in which we attempt to badger one-another, but by seeking to understand one-another’s concerns for the family and working together to find the best way to meet all of those concerns.

Even so, ideals are what they are, and this may or may not be possible every election. When it is not, then we must submit to the one whom God has placed in authority over the household–and he will have to account to God for the way that he directs it.

And by the way, this applies to grown children who still live with their parents as well. If your parents are still responsible for feeding, clothing, and sheltering you, then you are still under their authority in that household even if you are of voting age. And really, it just makes sense: If your lifestyle depends on their wisdom, skill, and labor in fruitfully directing their household, how can you blithely undermine them as they carry out that responsibility? When you establish a household of your own, then you too will need to exercise the responsibility and authority that they have. Until you accept responsibility, you cannot claim authority.

Previous Generations of Americans

We usually get this backwards today. When people insist that we put ourselves on the right side of history, they’re speaking of an unknown future–a speculative fiction born from their own imaginations. There’s little point in accepting such a dubious authority.

Instead, when we consider history’s judgments, we should be looking to the past. After all, our vocations as citizens did not spring up out of the ground when we were born. We did not create them ex nihilo. They were passed down to us by those who came before. There is no authority we possess which was not granted to us by our forefathers.

Accordingly, we have a responsibility to care for what they’ve left to us. While we need not do everything exactly the way they would have, we do need to respect their values and purposes so that we are guided by them. So are you voting in a way that will “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”? Do you even define those words in much the same way as our founding fathers did? If we want to kludge some kind of re-purposing of the government they left to us, then we must beware.

Nations and their governments are organic rather than mechanical, so they will naturally change over time. This is all well and good. Nevertheless, pruning branches to make room for new growth or even removing diseased limbs is one thing.  Uprooting the entire tree to cast it into the fire is another. There may be times when such drastic steps become necessary for there are times when nations and government die. But when they die at our own hands, we are accountable for that choice.

If we deny and reject our past, then we also deny and reject the very authority we inherited. Take that away by trying to institute Year Zero and we cease to be citizens voting–instead becoming nothing more than beggars squabbling with each other over crusts of bread.

So Christians, as you prepare to go to the polls in two weeks, consider yourselves as ones under authority. Use your God-given wisdom to care for this nation and her people. Search for the best way to establish a just peace in America. Respect and care for our heritage, Submit yourselves to God and anyone He may have placed in authority over you.

But don’t give into the those who try to shame you into submitting to false authorities by throwing about meaningless labels and worldly indictments. There is no perfection in politics, but sometimes there is true evil. Don’t accept false equivalencies between the two. Remember the One you serve; and forsake the prince of this world from whom you have been freed. Pray to God that you would govern your families and this nation well.

Posted in Christian Nationalism, Ethics, Family, Politics | Leave a comment