Come, Lord Jesus

Last updated on: November 25, 2022 at 4:41 pm By Gene Veith

We’ve been worrying about politics and sorting through political theories. But Advent is a good time to remember that ultimately none of that matters. The true King has come and is coming again.

The word “advent” is Latin for “come to.” Jesus has not only come, He has “come to” us. He is not only coming again, He is “coming to” us. On that little preposition hangs the Gospel. Yes, He comes to be our judge, as the Te Deum praises, but His coming above all is to us and for us, so as to save us.

In Advent, we meditate on Christ’s coming as celebrated in Christmas, reflecting on the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah. We also meditate on Christ’s second coming, which we await in hope, just as the Old Testament saints awaited His first coming.

So we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus!” That prayer is the next to the last verse of the Bible (Revelation 22:20), going from the apocalyptic account of what that will be like and what it will mean to the prayer of the church until that happens. It was indeed the prayer of the earliest church as evidenced in St. Paul’s interjection into his Greek epistle of a word in Aramaic, the language of Jesus: Maranatha, which can mean either “O Lord, come!” or “the Lord has come”–both of the senses of Advent.

“Come, Lord Jesus” is echoed in the Common Table Prayer beloved by Lutherans (“Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest/And let these gifts to us be blessed”) which seems like a simple children’s prayer, but is much more, asking for Christ’s presence–a pervasive theme of Lutheran theology–with the family at mealtime, alluding to the teaching that Christ is present in vocation as we love and serve and provide for each other.

At any rate, “Come, Lord Jesus” is the ultimate Advent prayer. Notice how often we pray that phrase in our Advent hymns; for example, “”Savior of the Nations, Come” and “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”

Philip Jenkins reminds us of an ancient variation, found in the Didache (c.100AD): “Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus. And let the present world pass away!”

Yes, let it! That is an important aspect of Christ’s return! With His second coming, “the former things”–the kingdoms of this world, the first heaven, the first earth, death, mourning, pain–“have passed away” (Revelation 21:1-4).

Living in anticipation of that passing away means that we do not have to be preoccupied with such things, since we know that they will not last and that something better awaits us, either when Christ comes again or when we leave them behind when we die.

But isn’t our life on earth important? Isn’t focusing on the other world a form of spiritual escapism? Aren’t we responsible to obey God by fighting evils and making this world a better place?

Of course, but I think that the perspective that comes from knowing that this world and its kingdoms will pass away and that Christ will “make all things new” (Revelations 21:5) can make us more effective in this world. As C. S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity, “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.”

This is because their hope never fails, despite the setbacks they may encounter, and because they can be confident of the ultimate victory of righteousness in Christ’s judgment. They can act freely, without feeling the burden that everything rests on themselves. And they can act without succumbing to the temptations of power and the disappointments of failed utopias, since they realize their own limitations and the limitations of human ideologies. Such a mindset can help us as we fulfill all of our vocational duties, including our duties of citizenship.

Illustration: “The Last Judgment” by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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Religious Affiliation RISES with Education

Last updated on: November 21, 2022 at 5:06 pm By Gene Veith

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The conventional wisdom assumes that education is a secularizing factor, so that the more education a person has, the less likely the person will be affiliated with a religion. But researchers have found the opposite. Sort of.

Social scientist Ryan Burge, who has written a book about the Nones, has written a report for the Religious News Service entitled Does education ‘cure’ people of faith? The data says no.

The largest demographic of the Nones–that is, those who have no religious affiliation–is people who did not graduate from high school, 32% of whom say they have no religion. Among high school graduates, the percentage is 28%. Among those with four years of college, the percentage is 24%. Among those with a Masters Degree, the percentage drops to 20%. The number goes up slightly for those who get a doctorate, reverting to the undergraduate level of 24%.

This is more evidence of what I have long been saying, that most of the unchurched are to be found not in the young professionals targeted by most church growth programs but in the working class and among the poor. Have you ever seen books or evangelism material targeted to these folks? And yet, ironically, they are easier to reach than the higher-status demographics that congregations seem the most concerned about.

This is confirmed by another facet of the research. Of those whose education ended with high school or less, 56% believe in God “with no doubts,” with another 16% saying that they believe though doubt sometimes and 4% saying they believe
“sometimes.” That comes to 76% of lower educated folks believing in God, with only 7% saying they are atheists. (The other choices were “belief in a higher power” [11%], and “no way to tell” [6%].)

For college graduates, 42% are certain that there is a God, 16% believe with doubts, and 5% believe sometimes, for a total of 73%, with 8% atheists.

For those who have been to graduate school, 38% believe in God, with 17% believing with doubts, and 6% believing sometimes, for a total of 61%, with 10% atheists.

Thus, the demographic segment that is most likely to be unchurched is also the most likely to believe in God, indeed, to have a strong belief in God! Whereas the college-educated demographic, while being more likely to be members of a church, have the weakest belief in God!

So it appears that religious belief does go down with education. In this, the conventional wisdom is right. But religious affiliation–that is, membership in a church or its equivalent–goes up with education.

Can it be that the secularization of society is not so much due to outside forces, but rather is due to the secularization of churches?

Illustration by JacobCardel, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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The Sacrifice of Thanksgiving

Last updated on: November 19, 2022 at 4:41 pm By Gene Veith

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Happy Thanksgiving! The Bible says quite a bit about giving thanks. And it connects thanksgiving with sacrifice.

When ancient Israelites would feel thankful to God, according to the Levitical law, they would offer an unblemished animal “from the herd,” as with the Peace Offering. The animal is slaughtered, the blood is thrown on the altar, and the fat and some of the entrails are burned on the altar. To turn the Peace Offering into a Thank Offering, they would then add loaves of both unleavened and leavened bread. After sharing with the priest, the grateful Israelites would eat the meat and the bread (Leviticus 7:11-15). Once again, as in the Lord’s Supper, the sacrifice culminates in a feast.

I suppose this could be seen as a Biblical warrant for expressing our gratitude to God by eating a big meal. Except leftovers were not allowed: “And the flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offerings for thanksgiving shall be eaten on the day of his offering. He shall not leave any of it until the morning” (Leviticus 7:15).

Throughout the Old Testament, the prophets and the Psalmists exhort the people to be thankful to God and to offer up a sacrifice of thanksgiving. In Psalm 50, though, there is a turn from the ritual to its meaning. The psalmist rebukes his hearers for offering sacrifices while neglecting the truth of God:

“Hear, O my people, and I will speak;
    O Israel, I will testify against you.
    I am God, your God.
⁸Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you;
    your burnt offerings are continually before me.
⁹I will not accept a bull from your house
    or goats from your folds.
¹⁰For every beast of the forest is mine,
    the cattle on a thousand hills.
¹¹I know all the birds of the hills,
    and all that moves in the field is mine.

¹²“If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
    for the world and its fullness are mine.
¹³Do I eat the flesh of bulls
    or drink the blood of goats?
¹⁴Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,^[b]
    and perform your vows to the Most High,
¹⁵and call upon me in the day of trouble;
    I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

The people are told to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving, but then, later in the Psalm, the terms are reversed.

^“The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me;
to one who orders his way rightly
I will show the salvation of God!” (Psalm 50:23)

The sacrifice is the thanksgiving! God desires not just thank offerings but a thankful heart, which is what the offering should testify to. And the thankful heart should manifest itself in a rightly ordered life.

We see this pattern also in the New Testament. The author of the Book of Hebrews goes to great lengths in showing that the old sacrificial system is fulfilled and superseded in Christ. Whereupon he brings up a different kind of sacrifice:

Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. (Hebrews 13:15-16).

Sharing with others and doing good are sacrifices. They entail a denial of self for the good of our neighbors. Praising God–which is what we do when we thank Him–is a sacrifice, because we stop crediting ourselves to recognize the abundant gifts of God.

In that frame of mind, we can give “thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5). And in doing so, we “present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is [our] spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1).

Illustration: Burnt offering. The Phillip Medhurst Picture Torah 521. By Philip De Vere, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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The Dream of Frederick the Wise

Last updated on: November 19, 2022 at 2:53 pm By Gene Veith

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I illustrated my recent post The Political Influence of the Reformation with a 17th century painting entitled “The Dream of Frederic the Wise of Saxony” by Jan Barentsz. It depicted a dream that the Elector supposedly had the night before Luther posted his theses, in which a monk writes something on the door of the Castle Church with a quill that reaches all the way to Rome, where it threatened to knock off the pope’s tiara.

I had never heard of that before, so I dug deeper. The story sounds like a legend, if not Reformation propaganda, but I was curious where it came from.

I found the account of the dream discussed and translated at The Red Brick Parsonage, a wonderful site in which Rev. Nathaniel J. Biebert offers “translations for confessional Lutherans.”

He says that the dream, which became a popular subject for woodcuts in the 17th century, indeed sounds apocryphal. But it can be traced, though indirectly and at third hand, to the Elector’s court.

And, if the account of the dream is in any way accurate, it would help solve one of the biggest mysteries of the Reformation: Duke Frederick was known as an exceptionally devout adherent of the Church of Rome, who owned one of the biggest collections of relics in Christendom, the veneration of which could earn pilgrims (who also paid a fee) thousands of years of indulgences. So why did this loyal son of the Church support and protect Luther?

Rev. Biebert traces the provenance of the earliest account of the dream, a manuscript in Dresden, which is a 1591 copy of a manuscript by Anton Musa (c. 1485–1547), who testifies that he heard the story from George Spalatin (1484–1545), the Elector’s advisor who became a close friend of Luther, who, in turn, heard it directly from Frederick.

I urge you to read Rev. Biebert’s translation of the manuscript in its entirety. Frederick is telling about his dream to his brother (who would succeed him, the fervently Lutheran John the Steadfast), asking him what it could possibly mean, if anything. He describes going to sleep, waking up with thoughts of All Saints’ Day and praying for the “dear souls” in purgatory, then falling to sleep again.

“Then I dreamed that the almighty God was sending a monk to me with a nice, honest face, who was the natural son of St. Paul, the dear apostle. He was accompanied, at God’s command, by all the dear saints, who were supposed to vouch for the monk before me that there was no deceit in him, but that he was truly an ambassador of God. God told them to instruct me to allow the monk to write something for me on my Castle Church in Wittenberg; I would not regret it. So I sent him word through the chancellor, saying that since God was telling me to do this, and since he was so powerfully vouched for, he could write what had been entrusted to him. Then the monk started to write, and his writing was so large that I could make it out here in Schweinitz. He was also using such a long quill pen that the back part of it reached all the way to Rome, and its shaft stabbed a lion who was lying in Rome in one of his ears, so that the shaft came back out through his other ear. The quill extended further all the way to the Papal Holiness’s tiara, and it knocked against it so hard that it began to wobble and was about to fall from His Holiness’s head. So as it was falling—I think I and Your Dearness were not standing too far away—I reached out my hand and tried to help steady it. Right when I was quickly grabbing hold of it, I woke up, and I was still holding my arm in the air.

Says Frederick, “I was completely terrified and at the same time angry at the monk for not exercising more restraint with his pen when writing.” He goes to sleep again, and the dream recurs, with additions. This time the quill “caused the lion to roar so dreadfully that the entire city of Rome and all the estates of the Holy Roman Empire came running to see what was going on. And then the Papal Holiness demanded of the estates that the monk be restrained, and especially that I be informed of this outrage.”

Frederick woke up and “prayed that God would guard the Papal Holiness from all evil.” Then the dream recurred for a third time. He described trying to break the quill. “But the more we tried to get at the quill, the more rigid it became.” Then the dreaming Duke tries to find out what is going on. “Nevertheless I had someone ask the monk (for at one moment I was in Rome, in Wittenberg the next) how he had come into the possession of such a feather, and how it happened to be so tough and firm? He relayed to me that it was from an old, hundred-year-old Bohemian goose.” That is a clear reference to the proto-Reformer John Hus, whose last name means “goose” in Czech!

Then more quills started appearing. “Many countless other quills had grown out of the monk’s long quill here in Wittenberg, and it was entertaining to watch as many scholars were scrambling to get them, with some of them thinking that these fresh, new quills would in time become just as large and long as this monk’s quill, and that something special would certainly happen as a result of this monk and his long quill.”

OK, the reference to Hus and the other quills might seem a little fishy. But the account is certainly dreamlike, as in the odd shifts and Frederick saying he was in Rome one moment and Wittenberg the next. That sort of thing happens in dreams, but not so much in literary allegories presented as dreams.

And it falls short as propaganda. Frederick is not presented as a hero of the Reformation, but as someone who prays for the souls in Purgatory and who seeks to defend the Pope against this monk and his quill. John the Steadfast says that the dream probably doesn’t mean anything. And there is no mention of the dream coming true the next day, when an actual monk writes an actual text on the door of Castle Church, which sets off a chain of events that does reach to Rome and unsettles the Pope’s authority.

So did Frederick the Wise really dream this and recognize that it was coming true with Luther? And did he consider the dream a sign from God, causing him to side with this monk with the formidable pen? Luther would surely have pointed the Elector to the Word of God, not to dreams, as the means of discerning God’s will. But attending to a dream would not have been that unusual for a medieval Catholic, a loyal son of Rome. Maybe God made an exception in reaching the Elector in this way.

As Rev. Biebert says, “Some act of special, divine intervention is almost required in order to understand why this otherwise loyal Catholic prince went out of his way to protect a subject who caused him so many headaches.”

Illustrations: Anonymous, Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony’s Dream in Schweinitz on October 31, 1517, 1717, woodcut, via Red Brick Parsonage, Public Domain.

Portrait of Frederick the Wise by Lucas Cranach the Elder – https://www.artsy.net/artwork/lucas-cranach-the-elder-portrait-of-frederick-the-wise, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74870924

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Will Human Beings Become Unable to Reproduce?

Last updated on: November 22, 2022 at 8:55 am By Gene Veith

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The birth rate in the United States is in decline. That shouldn’t be too surprising. Fewer couples are choosing to get married, and of those who do, an increasing number are deciding not to have children. More women are prioritizing their careers over motherhood. Contraceptives are everywhere, and, despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade, abortion has become socially acceptable. We might lament the decline in the number of children being born and worry about what that might mean for America’s future, but we shouldn’t be surprised.

But digging into the data turns up quite a few surprises. Indeed, mysteries.

Demographers Melissa Kearney, Phillip Levine and Luke Pardue have conducted research and published a report entitled The Mystery of the Declining U.S. Birth Rate. They note that the U.S. birth rate had been relatively stable for the last three decades, with between 65 and 70 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age, going down a little during economic bad times and recovering when the economy improved. Ever since 2007, though, the year of the “Great Recession,” the birth rate has been going down without recovering. In 2020, the birth rate was 55.8, which comes to a fertility rate of 1.779 children per woman, below the population replacement rate.

But here is what they found: “The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007.” Furthermore, “This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes.”

The obvious factors were already in place by 2007. The drop is across all demographics. Economic improvement made no difference. The mystery is, what changed in 2007? The researchers couldn’t find anything tangible. They do speculate that a broad based shift in values must have taken place. As they say in the abstract of their scholarly publication, “We conjecture that the ‘shifting priorities’ of more recent cohorts, reflecting changes in preferences for having children, aspirations for life, and parenting norms, may be responsible.”

But much of the world, across cultures, is also seeing a “baby shortfall.” Now research has uncovered an exceedingly weird phenomenon.

The sperm count of men around the world has been plummeting! The Guardian (UK) reports on a series of studies that found that the average sperm count of men in Europe, Australia, and the United States was 101.2 million per milliliter in 1973, but has fallen to 49.0 in 2018. This is a drop of more than half (51.6%)! When sperm concentration falls below 40, says the article, “fertility is compromised.”

Follow-up studies found similar declines in Asia, Africa, Central America, and South America. Not only that, the decline is accelerating. In the original study with 2018 numbers, the decline was 1.16% per year. But since 2000, the decline has been 2.64% per year.

What can account for this? We might think of chemicals in the environment or other effects of modern technology. But we are also seeing these declines in non-industrialized nations. I suppose divine judgment wouldn’t count as a scientific explanation.

To be sure, these are averages, which means that many are above but also that there are many below. It only takes one sperm to conceive a child, so the human race is not in imminent danger of extinction. But if we extrapolate these numbers with a computer model–as in the study of climate change–we will indeed be doomed.

Yesterday we blogged about the official advocacy of suicide. Putting these topics together calls to mind P. D. James’ novel The Children of Men. James, known best for her extremely well-written mystery novels, was a Christian. In this novel, she writes a science fiction dystopia, about a time when the human race has lost its ability to reproduce, and, in the consequent mood of hopelessness and despair, is busy euthanizing itself. And then, mysteriously, a baby is born! You may have seen the movie, which was turned into a rather mediocre thriller, but the book is a true pro-life novel of ideas, showing what it would be like and what it would mean once we fully reject having children.

Illustration: From the bookstore Waterstone’s Twitter account.

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Voting Your Moral Convictions is NOT Christian Nationalism

Last updated on: November 11, 2022 at 4:14 pm By Gene Veith

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In our current political tumult, Christians who express their moral beliefs about abortion, transgenderism, same-sex marriage, or the like by voting and political activism, are often branded “Christian nationalists.” This is generally intended as a slur, but some Christians accept the description and try to turn it into an ideology. Others try to avoid the label by refusing to let their faith influence their politics.

Allie Beth Stuckey has written one of the best treatments of the subject that I have read. In an article for World, she points out how the term “Christian nationalism” is being used to associate Christians voting in accord with their moral beliefs with political violence. The purpose is to intimidate Christians and manipulate them into silence, lest they be considered a threat to democracy.

I would call this tactic an example of voter suppression. Americans are supposed to vote their convictions. That is, in fact, how democracy works.

Here is what she says about Christian nationalism. From Allie Beth Stuckey, Christians: Bring your faith to the voting booth:

Yes, if Christian Nationalism is the idea that America is a chosen nation—a sort of modern-day Israel—and a special beneficiary of God’s promises and favor, then it’s unbiblical. If Christian Nationalism is the notion that America is to be a theocracy in which its citizens are forced to worship Christ, then it’s unconstitutional. But if Christian Nationalism is interpreted by some detractors as a Christian voting in accordance with Biblical values, if it’s Christians seeking to infuse God’s truth and goodness into every sphere they occupy, if it’s living by the belief that “the earth is the Lord’s,” then to be pejoratively dubbed a “Christian Nationalist” is meaningless (Psalm 24:1). This is simply what it means to be a Christian and an active citizen.

She points out that the notion that religiously-informed convictions should not be allowed to influence our voting and our interactions with the public square is applied only to conservative Christians who hold conservative political positions. Kamala Harris has cited her more liberal faith in support of abortion. Left-leaning pastors invite Democratic politicians into their pulpits. And the transgenderist belief that a person can be “born in the wrong body” is surely more religious than scientific. But no one accuses the religious left of endangering democracy or trying to impose their religion on everyone by law, even when this is what they are trying to do. They are entitled to vote their convictions, as are all Americans, including Christians of all persuasions.

An important insight I gleaned from Stuckey’s article is that Christians can vote their convictions without committing to a particular political-theological ideology or theory. There are self-identified Christian nationalists, as we’ve blogged about, who have worked out their philosophy of church and state and who issue manifestos. There are also trans-national integralists. And a whole menu of conservative philosophies. Those are fine to think about and perhaps even to commit to, though, as Stuckey says, they might also lead you astray into unbiblical theologies and unconstitutional politics. But you don’t need to come to definitive conclusions about your political theory or your theology of politics. Just vote your convictions.

Illustration by Anna Black via PublicDomainPictures.net, CC0.

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