The Fruits of Pietism

Newsletter article for November 2004

© 2004 by Rev. Paul A. Wolff

Pietism is an anti-Christian ideology which completely turns upside down the role of piety in Christian life. Proper Christian piety is what we do to practice and live out our faith. Pietism makes piety primary and faith secondary (actually pietism tries to turn faith itself into a good work, contrary to Eph. 2:8-9). Pietism makes works its goal rather than faith. Those who understand Lutheran doctrine, or the Biblical teachings on faith and good works, will understand that pietism emphasizes the Law over the Gospel.

Although pietists claim to be fervent Christians, and claim to do everything in the name of Christ, pietism is truly anti-Christian because it steals away the true comfort Christians have in the all-sufficient work of Christ and replaces it with an emphasis on personal acts or feelings to provide a false sense of satisfaction. There may be some temporary sense of comfort in pietistic acts, but that only works as long as we can keep it going. The problem with basing our faith on feelings is the same problem with illicit drugs. A first time drug user will feel an incredible “high” with a relatively small amount of the drug, but each subsequent experience requires more of the drug to feel good, and the user will find himself or herself dismayed that the original good feelings cannot be reproduced. When true healing comes it feels a lot like suffering and pain and death rather than anything approaching peace and comfort. So it is that pietists become “addicted” to good works which aren’t really good works in the Biblical sense because pietists intend to serve their own feelings rather than serving their neighbor in a truly God–pleasing way.

Pietists do not see Holy Scripture as the sole source and authority of doctrine and the Christian life. Personal experiences or feelings are valued more. Pietists are more likely to believe the false teaching that God speaks to them personally apart from the Holy Scriptures. This all too easily plays into the hands of the devil, who is eager to substitute his lies for the truth of God’s word. Remember that the devil got Eve to doubt God’s word by saying, “Did God really say…?” Pietists may encourage Bible study, but since personal feelings are valued more than the truth – individual interpretations easily lead to false teachings, false belief, and heresy. Even Bible studies led by a trained pastor will be seen as an exercise in finding consensus rather than an exercise in learning the truth of God’s word.

Because pietism is based upon subjective feelings, pietists will rationalize sin as long as they feel they are doing something which is pleasing to God. It won’t matter to a pietist that a particular sin is condemned by God in Holy Scripture because as long as it feels right the feelings matter more to them than an objective command, even if it comes from God. So the pietist will be very bold in his or her sins.

In the Bible there is perhaps no greater example of a pietist rationalizing his sin than King David. There have been few people (if any) who have had so much trust in God to put their lives on the line as much as David, and fewer people who have received so much earthly blessings as a result of such faith. But when David committed adultery with Uriah’s wife and then when the cover-up failed had Uriah murdered, it must have seemed to David that despite the unbelievable wickedness of those sins they were the right things to do because they felt like the right things to do at the time. It made David feel good to spend intimate time with Bathsheba, and then it felt good to have her husband killed because at least that was better (in David’s eyes) than publicly admitting the betrayal and being stoned to death for committing this crime. However, even the faithful David’s feelings betrayed him. He forgot for a few brief, but tragic, moments that he was a sinner and that his feelings were corrupted by sin. He realized this later when he repented and he confessed in Psalm 51 that he was “sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”

There is no lasting comfort in pietism. If we trust in our feelings we will sooner or later be betrayed by them also. Our feelings are inherently selfish, and if we place ourselves above all things then there will be no room in our lives for God and His word. There is true comfort in God’s word. Even if we find ourselves suffering like for doing good, like the addict who has forsaken the feel-good drugs, we can be assured of God’s forgiveness and salvation.

God’s word is a sure thing because it shows us what Jesus has done for us, and not what we need to do. Jesus told the Pharisees, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” (John 5:39-40) The Scriptures do deliver eternal life because they show us Jesus. “Whoever believes in [Jesus] will have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Christ’s life and death and resurrection is the source of all our comfort, and the motivation for all our good works, because He did this all for our sakes so that we can be comforted by our salvation no matter whether we feel good about ourselves or not.

Chaos in Christendom

Newsletter article for December 2003

© 2003 by Rev. Paul A. Wolff

It has been said that chaos begets chaos. Forgive me for not knowing the source of that saying, but it is often true. When all the structures that keep our lives in order have vanished then our sinful nature sees an opportunity to exert itself and unless one possesses a good amount of self control then we only add to the chaos. Lutheran doctrine teaches that the first use of the Law is that our sinful nature is kept in check by the threat of punishment. We don’t wish to be punished, so we don’t do what is wrong. This is obviously not the same as doing right, but it keeps things relatively safe and orderly in a world where few people even care to obey God. An example of this self-perpetuating chaos is when those who enforce the law are rendered incapable, such as during times of war or other great disaster. The ongoing quagmire in Iraq is an example of this. Chaos can also erupt during power outages, and I think we can all be thankful to God that during this summer’s massive blackout that there were relatively few instances of looting and thievery. There were some reported examples of these, but compared to the scale of the blackout it could have been much worse.

I bring this up only as a general example of how lawlessness brings about more lawlessness and chaos. There seems to be a growing chaos in the church. Now when I say the “church” I mean what used to be called “Christendom” or the visible church on earth. Among the True Church, that is all the believers in Christ throughout the world, things are as good as they always have been because the believers in Christ live by faith, and not by sight, and we know that Christ is Lord of all and has everything in control, even when everything seems to be spinning out of control.

Yet, it is still disturbing to read reports of apostasy and growing division within Christian denominations. The hearts of Christians throughout the world must hurt for our brothers and sisters who are affected by public denials of the clear teaching of Holy Scripture. We have been hearing a lot lately about a growing rift in the Episcopal Church over Sixth Commandment (marriage and sexuality) issues. These reports hit close to home for Lutherans for at least two reasons. First, the news reports say that if there is a denominational split then it would be the biggest since the LCMS lost about 100,000 members in the early 1970s. And second, regardless of what happens among the Episcopal Churches, it would seem that the LCMS is threatening to soon follow.

It is true that the issues are quite different on the surface, but underneath the root causes are the same. Actually all division and false teachings and chaos in the church has a similar cause, and that is the sinfulness and unbelief of some who call themselves “Christians,” but we can go further than that to note that underlying a lot of controversy in Christian churches worldwide is a lack of trust in, and obedience to, God’s Word. Among the Episcopal leaders who approved the appointment of a bishop who is an avowed practicing homosexual, they could only have done this if they denied the clear teaching of God that such things are “detestable.” Now this wouldn’t concern us too much unless chaos begets chaos. When unbelievers and heretics see others getting away with such sins then they are emboldened and then try to do something similar where they can.

“God tempts no one to sin, but we pray in the Lord’s Prayer that God would guard and keep us so that the devil, the world, and our sinful nature may not deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice. Although we are attacked by these things, we pray that we may finally overcome them and win the victory.” In this way, Martin Luther explains the sixth petition of the Lord’s Prayer in his Small Catechism. The thing about temptation is that it is most effective when you don’t realize it is happening to you. Temptation to sin is always dangerous, and we all have our weaknesses where we sometimes fall into sin even when we know we shouldn’t, but we are most vulnerable when we don’t realize that what we are doing is a sin.

The devil can be sneaky. St. Peter compares him to a lion prowling around seeking for someone to devour. If you don’t know the lion is there then you are easy prey. That is why in my catechism and membership classes I devote quite a bit of time to teaching the ten commandments. In tempting us, Satan tries to get us to believe that sin is somehow desirable. If he can get us to think that committing a sin is somehow a “good” thing to our eyes then he has won, and we have lost. If we want to sin then the devil doesn’t have to do anything to get us to sin, which he can’t do anyway because God has mercifully limited his powers, but because of our sinful nature we are only too ready to cooperate to our own downfall. The phrase, “the devil made me do it” is just a cop-out and is completely untrue. All the devil can do is lie to you. If you believe him it is your own fault. Our trouble with temptation is that we all too often believe the lies of Satan and fall into temptation and sin.

We are not without defense against temptation, however. God has given us a powerful weapon against sin and temptation and the devil. That weapon is the Holy Scriptures. The power of the Holy Bible to work against Satan is the power of God because the Bible is God’s Word. Since the Bible is God’s Word the more we know the Bible the more we know God, and the more we know and love God the better we can recognize and resist the work of the devil because Satan is always opposed to God even when he pretends not to be.

The trouble nowadays is that most people don’t know or don’t believe in the Scriptures and because of this they have no chance against the temptations of Satan. This is even a problem in the church. This is no more clearly illustrated than in the recent controversy in the Episcopal Church where they have ignored the clear teachings of Holy Scripture and have elevated an openly homosexual priest to a position of leadership as bishop in the church. In this controversy there is no shortage of faithful Christian Episcopals (and others) who have given a true Christian witness to the sinfulness of this action, and yet the Episcopal church has proceeded. Their justification of this disgrace is in the interest of diversity and a kind of “love” which is foreign to God and His holy Word, but which is right at home with the devil.

One local Episcopal priest wrote a column for the Detroit Free Press recently in which he wrote that this situation was an “embarrassment.” But it was very strange that what embarrassed him was not the fact that his Church had abandoned even the pretense of obedience to God and His good will for us, but instead, he was embarrassed by the faithful Christians who objected to the appointing of this bishop. In the column which was a little shorter than this essay this man denied the authority of God’s Word because it was several thousands of years old; implied that the Old Testament laws were not God’s Word, but the ancient bias of “a priestly cult”; and called St. Paul a “homophobic … mid-First Century AD Pharisaic Jew-turned-militant-Christian” who presumed to “dictate the very will and law of an unseen God.” He also called the Bible a “bin for discarded concepts and notions” and finally he denied that God created the universe in seven days as He said He did.

This is of course an extreme example, but this shows where temptation can lead when it is unchecked by God’s Word and the repentance that comes from the proper preaching of God’s Word. The only way that such an obvious sin can be so vigorously defended by otherwise good people who call themselves “Christian” is if they deny the authority of God in the Bible. If the Bible is not God’s Word then it is probably outdated and unreliable and can be replaced by something else. In the case of the Episcopal Church the Word of God is apparently replaced by something of Satan’s devising. That is the only way that good “Christian” people could defend something that God calls “detestable” and which goes against all Biblical teaching on marriage and sexuality.

Of course my purpose is not to bash the Episcopals. There are plenty of faithful Christian Episcopals. Many of them seem to be in Africa, but wherever they may be (God bless them and give them strength) they are not afraid to speak the truth even though they are condemned by the American liberals as backward and foolish. Such is the lot in life for faithful Christians in an age where sin is seen as a good thing and what is truly good is despised. No, my purpose here is to illustrate the dangers of temptation.

The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod is not yet in danger of following in the footsteps of the Episcopal Church, but with the events of the past couple years we have started to head in that direction. Remember that it begins with a denial of God’s Word as a living and valid authority. When God’s Word doesn’t have authority then God doesn’t have authority in our lives, and we replace His rule with something else. Usually we place ourselves in that place first, doing what is right in our own eyes, but in doing so we open the door to Satan to do what he wants in our lives. Satan doesn’t come to good Christian people and tell them to commit all kinds of disgusting sins such as homosexuality. No one would fall for that. Instead he starts off small and works his way to greater and greater sins until we are far off of the path of God’s righteousness that we can’t remember any longer what it is like to truly be obedient to God. That is the real tragedy of the Episcopal situation. Many of their new bishop’s defenders truly believe that they are doing something that is pleasing to God even though God calls it “detestable.” In our own Church we are alarmed by this year’s resolution of the charges against the Atlantic District President in which the Dispute Resolution Panel ignored the clear teachings of the Scriptures which determined that President Benke was guilty. Instead, they somehow exonerated him by a faulty interpretation of some lesser man-made rules which really should have had no authority in the case. If this is allowed to stand then our own Denomination will fall down the slippery slope toward an end which only God can see. God’s Word gives us our only hope for salvation and rescue from sin and its consequences. Pray that God will keep us faithful and standing firm against the temptations which seek to destroy us.

Was Jesus Unloving?

Newsletter arrticle for July 2003

© 2003 by Rev. Paul A. Wolff

Once when Jesus was teaching about himself as the bread of life his followers found it hard to understand and accept this teaching. In fact, they said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” Now you might expect that Jesus then sat down and explained to them the meaning of His Words, perhaps He could have taught them about the real presence in the Lord’s Supper (although at this point He had yet to institute this Sacrament.) This is not what Jesus did. Instead Jesus gave them more things that they could not accept. He said, “Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe….This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.” Upon hearing this many of His “disciples” turned away and no longer followed Him. Was this the loving thing to do? (See John 6:60-66)

Another time a man came up to Jesus as He was walking along the road, and the man said to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Now you might think that this is just the kind of highly motivated person that Jesus wanted to be a disciple. You might expect Jesus to say to him, “Come on along, I have plenty of work for you. The harvest is plentiful and the workers are few.” But that is not what Jesus said to him. Jesus said, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” So instead of telling of all the great work that needs to be done, and telling of all the glory that comes with being a follower of Jesus, He discourages the man and tells of the hardships of being a disciple.

In the same passage of Scripture (Luke 9:57-62) Jesus Himself gives an invitation to someone else saying, “Follow me.” The man responded, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Obviously this man was distraught and in mourning for his father who recently passed away. Since even then it had long been the custom in Israel to bury the dead the same day they died this task should not have taken long. But Jesus replied, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Does this seem a little insensitive and callous to you? Didn’t Jesus understand what this man was going through?

Again in that same passage of Scripture another man said to Jesus, I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family.” This seems like a reasonable request, doesn’t it. He wants to serve Jesus, and he doesn’t want his family to worry about where he is and what he is doing. But once again Jesus rebukes him saying, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” Doesn’t this seem harsh? Even if this man was unfit for service in the kingdom of God, couldn’t Jesus have trained him or otherwise made him fit?

What about the Pharisees? These were the leaders of the Israelites, and they were all fine, upstanding people who were well respected. They did hate Jesus and conspire to kill him, but didn’t Jesus teach us to “Love your enemies?” Then why does Jesus berate them in an extended vitriolic tirade (Matthew 23), calling them such names as hypocrites (at least six times by my account), blind guides (twice), blind fools, blind men, blind Pharisees, whitewashed tombs, snakes, vipers, and He implies that they are murderers of God’s prophets. Doesn’t Jesus practice what He preached? When Jesus spoke to Satan (Matt. 4) He used more respectful words that weren’t so harsh.

Another time the Pharisees simply asked Jesus to give them a miraculous sign, presumably so that they could believe in Him and know that He truly is from God. Instead of giving them the proof they required, Jesus condemned them saying, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it ; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here.” As Jesus was teaching this (Matt. 12) Jesus’ mother and brothers were outside the house, and they wanted to speak to Jesus. When He was told about this He said, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Then Jesus pointed to His disciples and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Did Jesus renounce his relationship with His family? Was He that uncaring and unloving that He preferred His friends over His family?

Obviously Jesus was neither unloving, nor unnecessarily discouraging, nor insensitive, nor callous, nor harsh, nor hateful, nor uncaring, nor a bad son and brother. The reason why Jesus acted the way He did in each of these situations is that He knew how to properly apply God’s Law and God’s Gospel in every situation. In all the situations above, Jesus was dealing with unbelievers or the self-righteous, or with people who otherwise were unwilling to die to sin and live for Christ (see Romans 6:11-14).

The reason why Jesus spoke more kindly to Satan was that there is and was no hope for him to be saved. The devil is already suffering the punishment for his sins, but when Jesus spoke in Matt. 23 there was still hope for the Pharisees if only they would have recognized their sin and repented, so Jesus got to the point where strong words of rebuke were called for, and He did not hold back because He loved them and wanted them to be saved.

In the other situations the people who wanted to follow Jesus also wanted to hold on to some worldly things, and Jesus saw the need to teach them the First Commandment, that to be a disciple of God is to love Him with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your strength. If you love God you cannot also love the world. Remember the words of 1 John 2:15-16, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world–the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does–comes not from the Father but from the world.”

In all these situations Jesus DID show love, but remember that Jesus is not a Gospel reductionist (see this article). Jesus knows that the best thing for all people is that they repent and turn to Him for forgiveness. If someone refuses to repent then they need to be condemned by the Law until they come to Jesus. For Jesus and His disciples there is no shame in bringing rebuke or punishment on the unrepentant. Christ’s salvation is forever, but for the repentant sinner pain and shame last only a little while, and if a little pain leads people to Jesus, then it is worth it. Only the enemies of Jesus would hesitate to bring harsh words of condemnation to those who follow Jesus half-heartedly. Only the devil and his followers would call someone unloving who did and said what Jesus did in the situations described above. Let us not be turned aside from the path of our salvation, but let us follow Jesus in truth and purity.