Time To Be A Scrooge

I hate to be "that guy" and I really don't want to come off sounding arrogant or angry or rebellious. I feel that I should preface with a brief statement: I most closely align myself with the Lutheran doctrine of the Christian faith. I have been brought up in a Lutheran church, mentored in both life and ministry and missions by Lutherans, and subsequently discipled and trained by Bible Church-attending Navigators. I am intellectual by nature and voluntarily minored in philosophy because I love dealing in the intellectual and the esoteric. What's more, I am considering entering seminary in the spring, and I am currently studying Lutheran doctrinal materials in order to become a Deacon.

Now, with all that off my chest, I have to become "that guy." I only made it 1 page into the introduction of That I May Be His Own by Charles P. Arand before I was ready to poke my eye out at what I was reading. If I may be so allowed, I humbly submit my commentary on the following quotes from the first couple pages of this book.


"Wherever Lutherans undertook the training of the young in the faith, they used this text [the Small Catechism]. Whenever they shipped the message overseas, they equipped missionaries and catechists with this text. Already by the end of the sixteenth century Lutherans had translated it into nearly every language on the continent."

• JFS: Clearly, the Scriptures alone are not adequate for the instruction of our children or the teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness of overseas mission work. I'm so glad that we carry the banner of "Sola Scriptura" and really act as if we believe it. And I'm also glad that while millions live with no Scriptures in their native language, we are hard at work translating Luther's Small Catechism.

"Over the next 200 years, the Small Catechism provided a common text for linking Lutherans together..."

• JFS: As if the Holy Spirit weren't enough to link Christians together. Around the Catechism, let us unite, and if you don't hold to the Catechism, you have no fellowship with us.

"Throughout these years, the catechism was the one theological text of the church, besides the Bible, that was read, learned, and prayed by rank-and-file church members."

• JFS: Make no mistake: Luther's Catechism, has no place beside the Bible. It is below the Bible. It is simply a theological text based on the Bible. The works of John Calvin, some guy named Ryrie, and Donald Miller all fall below the Bible. And should I ever become a "rank-and-file" church member, please beat some sense into me. Being a Christian has nothing to do with "rank-and-file," it has to do with being in the world yet not of the world. If it had to do with being a Club with "rank-and-file" membership, we would welcome everyone into nice comfortable buildings, wear shiny nametags, use our own special buzzwords, focus on ourselves, everyone would have to pay their dues, and we would make sure that non-club members would feel very uncomfortable. Hey, wait a second....

"I can testify that the little book [the Small Catechism] was a constant companion, its every page subjected to memory..."

• JFS: If only the speaker of these words would have dedicated such time and effort to studying and memorizing the words of God instead of the words of Martin Luther.....

Again, I'm sorry to be such a loser, but I am so disgusted by all of this stuff. I am a thorough believer in asking the hard questions, particularly about yourself. Constant self-examination and knowing yourself is the key to avoiding deep problems. So then I submit the following questions for the analysis:

• Are we more in love with our theology than our relationship with God?
• Do we know about God or do we know God?
• Which do we love more: our liturgy or the lost?
• Are we more committed to maintaining our club status or bringing the Kingdom of God?
• Do we experience God as if the veil separating us was torn when Christ died, or is our experience more like the Old Testament: reaching for Him through a priest, an action, rules, and doctrine?
• Are we living as if Christ is alive and on the throne, or as if He's still dead and powerless?
• Do we truly believe that it was better that Christ leave and send us the Spirit, or are we secretly wishing that Christ were still walking along next to us telling us what to do?