The First British Lutheran Blog Ever

As most of you know, I've applied to CTS where I hope to enrol on the MDiv program, probably taking a year of studies at Westfield House back in Cambridge, so I get the best of both worlds, then going into pastoral ministry and working towards a PhD part-time, or perhaps doing the PhD full-time then into pastoral ministry for the rest of my life... perhaps teaching somewhere someday after plenty of time spent as a pastor if the need gets so dire that they'd actually ask me to teach.

But I haven't heard back from CTS since my application went before the admissions committee to be endorsed, so that a search for funding could begin, and I realize that I need a backup plan... just in case... one that's actually well thought out, just in case it isn't God's will for me to become a pastor.

Whatever I do, I think I need to be doing something which engages my brain and doesn't sit me behind a desk all day everyday and nothing else for the rest of my life.

Do I look for full-time employment? If so, what? Do I spend another 12-months and get an M.A.? (Though I REALLY would prefer to get in-depth confessional training because at times I've wondered if this university would turn me into an atheist. I would much prefer to get such training before undertaking a PhD also, since my previous education would influence how I went about researching and writing my PhD thesis... and I'm never going to teach theology in a secular university. Never. It's not the teaching part I'd mind -I'd love it- but it's just having to take seriously fundamentally flawed and presuppositionally-unstable liberal crap in everything I read and researched... and I'd prefer to be dealing with perople than stuck in my office as an essay-machine). Would an M.A. be worth doing? This makes depressing reading. It seems I already have a huge arsenal of pointless skills, such as reading skills in Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Latin, and Arabic, a good amount of fitness and nutrition knowledge since I've been working out for the past 7 years. Experience in 7 martial arts. Trained in the safe operation of climbing walls, obstacle courses, whitewater rafting (only up to level 3 though), etc.

Any ideas I could consider as a backup plan if I don't end up going to seminary?

LCMS World Mission have mobilized and have started requesting financial assistance in helping those affected by the tsunami

There's the golden sand upon which I played
As a boy where warm rays
From the sun now ascend the stench
Of undignified corpses and wrenched
Rusted metal and shattered wood litter
A landscape which once glistened
In morning and evening and seemed
An epicentre of peace. Simplicity
Is gone and child's laughter suddenly
Muted. In that place aloud now cry
The tormented mothers who know not why
Their womb's fruit should die like this.
The end of a small world's simple bliss.
What I knew and touched no longer is.
But as for me I can only speak with
Distant sympathy, I cannot understand
All that happened when the ocean raped the land.

I've been emailed by a few fellow bloggers regarding the tsunami which hit several south-east asian countries including Sri Lanka on Sunday. Just to let everyone know, none of my family were killed or injured by it, since most of them live inland, but the entire country has been affected. If this tsunami had happened while I was staying on the south coast as I did in my first week over there in September, I'd be dead. Right now, there are no emergency services in Sri Lanka, other than the army, which I assume have been mobilized to help out but still they have more work than they can handle. Over a million people in Sri Lanka alone have lost their homes, many being simple shacks lining the beaches. They have no insurance, and all that they had in those houses. Please pray for them, along with others in south-east Asia who are similarly affected.

I love the Socratic method of debate... it's a difficult habit to get into, but it works... and makes the job of illustrating your opponent has no idea what he/she is talking about far, far easier.

I had a conversation/argument/deathmatch with an otherwise reasonably orthodox (and genius -has a PhD in Mathematics and Psychology) Anglo-Catholic student who is in one of my classes over homosexuality and marriage. He argued that "marriage was made a sacrament very late in the history of the church" and so "a proper liturgical response [read: accomodation] was required to bring homosexuals into the church". He also argued for a genetic basis for homosexuality which I also disagreed with, but... my point is that this got me thinking. When is marriage to be regarded as a marriage? If a couple are married according to the rites of the state or a false religion, then later become Christians, their marriage is recognised as valid. Yes, Christians have marriage blessing services to acknowledge the creator of marriage, but the marriage is still considered a marriage, rather than fornication. So when does a marriage become a marriage? Genesis 1 seems to refer to intercourse as the seal and consummation of marriage. Adam and Eve had no ceremony. Adam simply knew his wife who then went onto bear children. (This would make homosexual marriage impossible since what they do, no matter how you frame it, isn't sex capable of producing children.) But at its basic level, my question is, is the difference between fornication and marriage the recognition of the community of the union, rather than something kept in secret? And how should we treat couples who have lived together for many years but never had a formal marriage ceremony?

I found this on an AIM profile today.

"For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the indivdual out of himself to complete his own personality in that of another and turns it back; sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides.

And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman. For the harem is: always accessible, always subserveint, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman can rival. Among those shadowy brides he is: always adored, always the perfect love, no demand is made on his unselfisheness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself."

- C.S. Lewis to a young man who asked for his thoughts on masturbation

Interesting post dealing with Chemnitz amongst others by the Pontificator. Go read.

My brother, Dylan, has now seen a heart specialist. His heart is pumping blood to his brain at about 50% efficiency, which explains a lot of his behaviour as a child and now. There's also a 6 to 8 month waiting list until he can have surgery to repair or replace the valve. After the operation he won't be able to work for 3 months and will be on anti-coagulants for life. Until the operation, he has to rest so his heart isn't further damaged.

Thanks to all who are praying.

The store I work at on Saturdays has a costume day at work thing.
Everyone dresses as Santas, elves, etc.
Chris dresses as a ninja
(Complete with balaklava and sword)
Chris gets reported as a terrorist by a customer with no sense of humour.

Conclusion: All terrorists dress as ninjas and work in Somerfield.

Maybe next time I should get a headband with "I am not a terrorist" on it.
In Arabic, of course.

Do/Did you tell your children about St Nicolas, Bishop of Myra in Lycia, defender of the faith (he personally slapped Arius across the face) whose life and doctrine are to be held as an example for our own? Or about the big fat guy in the red coat (courtesy of the Coca Cola corp.) who lives in the North Pole with a bunch of elves? Which did you choose and why?

This goes with John's recent post on the proclaimed and present Word...

'As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come.' These words, added to our oldest written report of an event in the life of Jesus (his Last Supper), and of words spoken by him (the Words of Institution), are the first commentary on the Sacrament of the Altar. Whether this commentary (1 Cor. 11:26 ) was framed by St Paul himself, or whether it belongs to the oral tradition he 'received' and faithfully 'delivered' to the church of Corinth (v. 23 ) when he founded it in AD50, makes no difference. In either case, the New Testament testifies to the close connection between the Lord's Supper and the Gospel. The Gospel is the glad tidings of the Incarnation of the Son of God, his atoning death for us, his resurrection from the dead, his ascension into heaven, his session at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from whence he shall come to judge the living and the dead. It was Christ's will that this Gospel should be preached to all nations until the end of the world. But the Gospel was to be not only a message of what had happened in the past and what was going to happen in the future; the proclamation of the message was to be accompanied by the celebration of that Sacrament, which in itself was a showing of the Lord's death till he come. Without this Sacrament the Gospel might be understood as one of the many religious messages in the world. Without the proclamation of the Gospel this Sacrament might be understood as one of the many religious rites in the world. But the Gospel is more than a religious message, and the Sacrament more than a religious ceremony. Both the Gospel and the Sacrament contain one and the same gift, forgiveness of sins - not only a message that there is forgiveness, and not only a ceremony which would illustrate that message, but rather the forgiveness itself, which no one can give except him who died as the Lamb of God for the sins of the world, who will come again in glory, and who is present in his Gospel and his Sacrament.

-Hermann Sasse, "This is my body: Luther's Contention for the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar"

Dag yo, that's a pretty darn schweet first page.