In the first Episode of HBO’s “White Lotus”, an uber rich family is vacationing at an uber-fancy Hawaiian hotel. The mom comes into where her daughter and friend are smoking pot. As they quickly put their gear away, the mom asks, “Is there something burning?” To this her teenage daughter replies, “We were just doing some witchcraft.” Her mom shrugs and shuts the door saying to herself, “At least it’s not pot.”
The Misery Synod’s (aka Lutheran Church Missouri Synod’s) president has a track record akin to this. He took a bold, public stands over against a decades long false teacher, Matthew Becker. But he pled for no charges to be filed against those engaging in Benkeism (Google ‘David Benke’). And did you see his sharp words against Concordia University Texas for daring to assert their independence from synodical oversight? How about his righteous indignation over white supremacist in the Lutheran Church Melanchthon Synod? Any minute now I expect him to appear with a hand-fashioned whip and start turning over tables not of Thrivent or the LCMS’s credit union, but of Girl Scout cookies being sold in LCMS churches. While Harrison fiddles with the symptoms of a decaying, failing church body, at least their only doing witchcraft. I mean it’s not like they’re smoking pot.
It may be in the book, which Harrison coedited, Closed Communion, which compares Closed Communion to the henhouse door. No, it’s not a big part of the house but it ensures the integrity of the whole house. Open Communion congregations, the majority of the LCMS now, commune all the errors Harrison fulminates against. I keep hearing from defensive layman that the problem is that the president of the Missouri’s Synod is powerless. I’m not sure that is true. Ecclesiastical Supervision does seem non-existent in the Lutheran Church Miserably Shrinking (LCMS), but that seems by choice not by constitution and bylaws.
Let’s say that the case is the president of the LCMS is only a figurehead, always a lame duck, a less articulate Uriah Heep frontman. He could at least aim his harsh rhetoric, his righteousness indignation, at the real, ongoing issue that is killing the synod that he is the president of. But as he is smart enough to know to only talk of mercy and ministry to families of homosexuals because that offends nobody. As he knows being wroth over racism, especially white supremacism, plays well with a woke media, he also knows concerns about doctrinal integrity do not.
So as the LCMS heads toward another synodical convention, they will tell themselves the lies that the office seeks the man, that they are about to turn this thing around, that our seminaries are strong. Meanwhile, the beast continues to slouch toward Bethlehem. And their raucous chats of “Three more years!” “Three more years!” will not undo the reality that “the centre cannot hold.”
Chillax it’s only witchcraft; it’s not pot.
