Starting The Year On A Lutheran Foot, And Other Matters

I recently discovered another Lutheran church near where I live. It's part of the “Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod.” I wonder how they differ from the Missouri Synod. I think I'll check them out this Sunday. My experiences with Lutheran churches have been pleasant and normal, for the most part.

I haven't been attending the Russian church very much lately, simply because I've been too busy. Consequently, what little Russian I've picked up is starting to evaporate. I would like to visit them again, however. When I compare their culture to that typically found in the United States, I see how much American culture has been hijacked to satisfy someone's profit motive. All our “art” (entertainment, actually) and most of our interactions have been bent toward this end. Compared to cultures radically different from ours, American culture is quite tacky.

One thing about this Russian church is that they are pretty serious about literally keeping the Sabbath (Saturday for them). Their strictness extends to such things as teaching members that they should not drive on the Sabbath. This is very good for fighting global warming and reducing American dependence on fossil fuels, and I could almost wish that every day was the Sabbath ;) . Yet the form of their Sabbath-keeping strikes me as a bit legalistic. I guess I'm being challenged to look more closely at what the New Testament says about the Sabbath.

My busy-ness has had an unfortunate side-effect: I have slowed down considerably in my Bible reading. I am sort of stuck in Judges in the Old Testament and Matthew in the New Testament, although I'm almost done with Matthew.

I recently discovered a blog by someone who is traveling a journey quite similar to the one I've been on for the last few years. His blog is called The Autonomy of the Believer, and it describes how he and his wife were seduced into an abusive and aberrant church, the things they saw while they were involved, and their thoughts upon leaving – especially their thoughts on “the strange state of Evangelical Christianity in America.” I wholeheartedly agree with him that American Evangelicalism is truly strange nowadays, and I look forward to reading more posts from his blog as he sorts things out. I have added his blog to my list of “Blogs I Follow.” I am encouraged to see more Christians waking up to the abusers who have crept into positions of prominence in the Church. It's high time for a little housecleaning.