Why I Became a Lutheran

I thought this might interest a few people: my personal journey to the LCMS.

I was raised in an evangelical (Baptistic) church. However, as my intellect awakened during my college years, one aspect of evangelicalism began to make me uneasy: the nearly exclusive focus on the subjective and experiential. I knew that my Christianity must stand on firmer ground than that. I must know that Christianity is objectively true, no matter what I feel or seem to experience with my limited sense. Not until then does the subjective response find a place. Emotive response follows a deep understanding of doctrinal truth; certainly both are important, but it seems to me that the intellectual foundations are being ignored in favor of “fuzzy feelings for Jesus,” as a friend of mine puts it.

In my personal experience, I sat in church Sunday after Sunday wondering what was wrong with my emotions, especially when I heard a guilt-inducing tirade chastising us for not loving Jesus enough. Only when God opened my eyes to the fact that my intellect was the channel for informing my heart was I able to have such an emotional response as I desired. I knew I had found the “missing piece” in my Christianity. No longer do I seek for an emotional experience; I know this follows naturally when I hear God’s Word proclaimed in all its glory.

I once heard a sermon by (Presbyterian) Dr. Cairns in which he attacked the highly subjective “what does this verse mean to you?” way of handling Biblical text. “With all due respect,” he shouted, “I don’t care what the verse means to you!” We need to care about the context, the original intent, and objective meaning of the text. Only then can the verse present a proper application to the Christian. Always, a red flag goes up when I hear someone say, “God showed me this,” or “God gave me this song,” as if God whispered in his ear. Then I listen carefully to determine whether he will quote some verse wildly out of context.

Paul praised the Berean Christians who weighed everything they were taught against the objective, written Word of God “to see whether these things were true.” One must always be careful to make the distinction between the speaker's opinion and what actually comes from the Word (assuming Biblical literacy). A great deal of what passes for “devotional writing,” even in the 19th century classics, contains so much opinion, so many tear-jerking tales, and so little doctrine that I will not bother with them. I would rather read the “dry” books by Van Til and Luther and C. F. W. Walther. These books delight with their doctrinal truth, logic and scholarship. (See Kindred Spirits post dealing with Dionysian/Apollonian art.)

Ultimately, the movement known as “pietism” which crept through the Lutheran church in the 1700’s (and found its fullest expression in John Wesley and the consequent growth of Evangelicalism), with its great emphasis on the subjective and personal, subtly undermined the objective foundation of the Word in the minds of many believers. I say subtly, because most of these believers still overtly claim Sola Scriptura as their guiding light.

Yet, many believers are not trained to study the Bible carefully with regard to important literary considerations, such as historical background and context, but rather view the Bible as a horoscope-like, esoteric “guide” from which they take their “verse for the day.” Thus, a great many evangelicals are pathetically confused as to the true teachings of the Word. This happens easily when the words of the Bible are separated from the spirit in which they were intended. I found in conservative Lutheranism a high view of the Bible, which included great respect for good scholarship that handles the Word in a proper manner.

Historic Lutheranism maintains an attitude of proper disdain for poorly educated “clergy” whose sloppy scholarship treats God’s Word in a flippant manner. I believe this is as it should be. I fully appreciate the level of training the LCMS demands of its clergy, and I rejoice in the honest servants of God who have labored long and hard to understand the original languages and historical context of the Bible, who are “apt to teach” and pass their knowledge on to us laypeople.

I believe that God would have us love Him with “all our hearts, all our souls, all our strength, and all our minds,” and that any form of education in worship and art must of necessity reach the whole person. We must not merely manipulate the emotions, not merely feed the intellect, but rather keep all things in balance.