Why Are Lutherans for Life?

There was a time where we had a different title to the organization , bob . Can you tell us what the name used to be and maybe the history behind it ?

At that time it was , you know , wells , lcms , lca , alc and whatever other alphabetical letters that include the letter L . That pretty much was what it was . So they were starting this group kind of more as an informational educational group and so when it started in Palatine Illinois it was called Lutherans for Life .

In 1983 , in May of 83 , when we officially formed our organization , there was some debate over what we should call ourselves and the people who wrote up the Constitution just stuffed wells in front of Lutherans for Life . So it was W-E-L-S Lutherans for Life and that's what we were called starting in 1983 .

And that was there in 88 when I came on board full-time as the national director and it stayed that way until about 1998 , 1997 , 98 . 1998 , 1997-98 , we had had a number of things occur that prompted the name change to Christian Life Resources .

First of all , we were deeply disturbed that a number of people thought that we only serve Wells people , and so we were constantly getting requests can we also come ? Can we also use you ? Can we also get an article ? Can we also have you as a speaker ? And so that was of concern . We had another funny thing happen .

It just kind of like accentuated the point , and that is we were doing a presentation and at the presentation an old timer came up and he said and this is how it went he goes . I had you guys all wrong . He said I thought this was an organization for lifelong Lutherans you know Wells Lutherans and so— .

I wanted to use it as an outreach tool and I wanted to have people come to us who felt you know , I'm not Christian , but let's see what you got you know . But I couldn't win the argument . I didn't win the argument on the board . They settled for Christian Life Resources , just to announce to everyone we're approaching it from a Christian perspective .

And so what we did is we then had various divisions and our program division held the name Wells Lutherans for Life . Now , by this time , when we formed , a number of our affiliates were going by Wells Lutherans for Life and we formed a number of our affiliates were going by Wells Lutherans for Life .

Maybe another thing to keep in mind is that I came on board July 1st 1988 . Before the end of the month , we had already been asked to tackle issues outside of abortion . At that time it was birth control . We pretty soon got into the whole euthanasia , assisted suicide thing in 1990 .

And so by the time we got to 1998 , abortion was just one of many issues that we were handling . So our Milwaukee affiliate said well , we really want to stay focused on the abortion issue , we really want to do pregnancy counseling , we want to get into ultrasound , we want to do all those really wonderful things .

So they decided to break off and because they were incorporated as Wells Lutherans for Life , they just kept the name . We had already been called Christian Life Resources for a few years when that happened . But like most things in our circles , word travels slowly and never clearly . But Wells Lutherans for Life operates in Milwaukee . They do an excellent job .

They have pregnancy care centers . I think everybody in the Milwaukee area should be supporting them . But meanwhile , christian Life Resources , we continue to run 11 centers around the country and are very much into a wider spectrum of issues , and we have the home for mothers .

I guess maybe the abortion is what it started with . But I mean , why is there that passion for Lutherans to be about life ?

I'll start with the sola scriptura , which means , by scripture alone , basically stating that the sole authority for belief and teachings is the scriptures , god's word , the Bible .

That means that no human ideas , teachings , traditions rank higher or even equal to the Bible , no matter how long held or sincerely held they are , no matter how popular or scientific they might be . So anytime there is a conflict or confusion of ideas , scripture wins .

And this means that we have definite , firm and unchanging foundation on life and family issues , because God in his word spells out all the relevant truths and principles . Not to say that there aren't non-scriptural things to support these positions there always are .

But we know , as Lutherans , as Christians , things like God alone has the power and the authority to initiate and terminate life . Scripture is clear on that . We learn from the Bible that life is a gift to be valued , that life begins at fertilization and ends only when God says it's time , family issues and such .

We learn that marriage is God's thing , his creation , it's not man's . So God gets to define and regulate it , not us . But it's a wonderful gift to be treasured , protected and promoted . We've learned that marriage and sex go together as a single thing , as a unit . They're not to be separated out .

And we learned that children are a blessing from the Lord from the Lord , and married couples , as a general rule , should rejoice to have them and view them as blessings and not reject them for selfish reasons .

The Lutheran Church of America which was at the time the largest I think it was LCA and then the American Lutheran Church , alc , and then LCMS , then Wells , then ELS , alc and then LCMS , then Wells , then ELS . Those were the hierarchy or the largeness of the Lutheran church bodies . The LCA joined an organization called the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights .

They had divisions and when I say joined it wasn't like a church action , it was a division of .

The LCA , had themselves listed on the roster for Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights and ALC also had a small group wanted to have their name listed , and so that created a problem and already in the late 70s , early 80s , there was a lot of turmoil going on about Lutheranism .

Even in the early 70s LCMS had a split with Semenex and so forth , on the three solas really , and the prominence placed on them . So as things began to shake out in the late 1980s , primarily the LCA and the ALC formed a new church body that was called ELCA , or Evangelical Lutheran Church of America , and they are the largest church body now .

Then there's the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod , then Wells , then ELS , and then there is a number of other churches that have formed smaller bodies , and a lot of this has to do , really , with the three solas , the stances taken on them and also the internal conflicts going on In our office . We're always getting people grumbling on all sides of the issue .

Why can't we all get together ? Why can't we all get along ? You know , okay , so we're not Baptists . Okay , we're not Catholics . Can't we at least get along with Lutherans ? Well , you know , okay , so we're not Baptists . Okay , we're not Catholics . Can't we at least get along with Lutherans ?

Well , you know , truth be told , if you know much about theology and much about church practice , you know that some of the churches , the Lutheran churches that are out there , really aren't Lutheran . They bear the name , but they do not reflect Martin Luther's adherence to the three solas . They like some of the things about Lutheranism .

They'll talk about our rich worship heritage or things like that . And so ELCA , a thumbnail . And the one thing , by the way , one thing to remember , is LCMS , for the most part Wells and ELS , definitely we pretty much . If you're in the sandbox , we all play by the same rules . Elca does not play that way .

That's why you might go to one ELCA church and not even have the remotest notion that you're in a conservative Lutheran church . You may go to another ELCA church and it might feel just like your home church . And that's because they allow a lot of autonomy among the churches which makes it difficult for the laity to navigate what's going on .

But right now , as official church body dogma , the ELCA comes out in favor of abortion rights . I believe they do not like assisted suicide . So we do have some common ground there . And then of course , on the area of marriage and sexuality they're very away from Scripture on that .

So those are distinctions as far as LCMS , lcms is undergoing a long process of kind of filtering out some of the problems they had back in the Semenex days and there's making progress . There's been ongoing talks on a synodical level between Wells , lcms and ELS and I don't know if things will happen within my lifetime or not . On that I always remain hopeful .

The LCMS people I deal with , the ones I deal with , are indistinguishable from Wells Very conservative , very biblical , very much wanting an orthodox , biblical adhering to the three solas approach to life , including life and family issues .

it . The confession that we are saved by grace alone starts with the understanding that , yeah , we're all awful sinners who desperately need salvation . And the point of grace is that , precisely because we cannot achieve it , god has to give it to us . So there's nothing we can do to gain God's favor , to find ourselves a place in heaven or whatever .

In grace , god sent his son Jesus to win for us the victory over sin and death and the devil , and he did it all with his suffering , death and resurrection . So there's nothing left for us or for anyone else for our salvation .

But the wrong approach to grace is to say , oh yay , all my sins are forgiven , I can do whatever I want and it'll still be okay , which unfortunately , is a more theologically liberal way . That is often followed with that by grace alone .

It means that , for instance , when we approach life and family issues , we don't ever want to do anything that's going to obscure or corrupt the message of the gospel . We don't want anyone to ever say , oh well , you know those people over there . They said and did this , so it can't possibly be that we are saved by grace alone .

It means that we approach the issues and the people who are involved with the issues from a position of grateful humility , not self-righteous pride , because we know that the fact that we have the truth about life and family issues is not because we're so great or so smart or whatever . It's because we have such a great and loving and merciful God .

This also means that we are so incredibly grateful to God for what he has done that the thought of disrespecting Christ , god's gift of life , his perfect will and all these things , by adopting or let alone promoting false and godless human ideas like abortion or euthanasia or assisted suicide or anything off God's design on sexuality and gender is just unthinkable to

us . If we appreciate the gift that we have been given with the grace of God , it's just not something that someone saved by grace would do .

No , it is entirely and only faith in Jesus that gets us access to our salvation in Christ . So it's just a matter of simply putting our trust in Jesus and what he did for us , and that means that we are not going to approach our works and defend and promote life and the family as things that we are doing to gain God's favor .

We are doing them because we are people who know they already have God's favor because of Christ , and that , then , is our motivation .

This also means that we're going to trust that God's will will be done , because we trust him , and we still pray , we still go to work and do what we can , what he's given us to do , but we trust him for the outcome of whatever it might be .

And just as we won't put trust in our own efforts for salvation , neither are we going to put all our trust in other people to do what only God can do , which can be a problem in pro-life movement , for instance .

A problem in pro-life movement , for instance , we rely on God to work the changes that are necessary in people , in society , in government and so on . Again , it's not that we don't work for them and do what we can do , but when it comes to our trust , we put that entirely in God , not in men or women or policies or programs or anything like that .

But the problem that we have , particularly with other Lutheran church bodies that come out in favor of abortion and peculiar sexuality practices and so forth , is that they kind of have adopted an easy-out approach on Scripture alone , for example , and this is part of why a lot of times the average pew sitter probably doesn't always catch this , but it's very common

for someone who does not truly buy into sola scriptura to say , well , of course the Bible contains the Word of God . And no , no , no , no , that's not what sola scriptura is . The Bible is the Word of God . To say that it contains the Word of God gives them an out . The Bible is the Word of God .

To say that it contains the Word of God gives them an out .

I got into a debate with a lady who started off , her religious background was Roman Catholic and then she was part of an LCA church , then came over into the ELCA and we got talking about abortion and things like that and her approach was well , psalm 51.5 , sinful from birth , sinful from the time my mother conceived me .

She would say , well , that's just the way those people thought about it back then and see , and that becomes a way out because you start redefining Now . Granted , there is always a difficulty People like to talk about . We've made progress , and even we conservatives , we don't do things exactly the way they are in the Bible .

People dress differently , there is makeup , we sit and stand and we do things with worship and all those kinds of things that are not in the Bible . Aren't we also being progressive ? There's a distinction between . Scripture gives you a wide breadth of freedom on how to live your faith , but it never entitles you to a freedom to challenge God .

And so the solution is if I really really , really , really want to do that thing , that is wrong . I guess the only way I can really do it is to come up with my own justification to say , well , that must not be part of the Bible and that's how it's done .

And it's difficult because , first of all , when you're arguing a point and they want to dismiss parts of it for that reason , it's almost like you lose a leg to stand on because you don't have common ground . And maybe and I don't know , chris , if we're going to get into that here but how do you drift so far away ?

How do Lutherans in the Wells and ELS and primarily , I guess , or to some degree , in the LCMS , stand so strongly and yet drift . And I think the reason is part of it is and I never understood this in my younger years , I definitely understand it now and that is creeds . I think creeds have a way . So we say sola scriptura . What do we mean by that ?

And Jeff gave a brilliant explanation . But we also adopt creeds Augsburg Confession , formula of Concord . Those creeds describe what we mean when we say sola scriptura . Now , the fact that some people today want to say well , we mean that it contains the Word of God , that's fine , but it's not in the confessions .

I mean , like I think , instead of realizing , wow , I have not lived up to the standard that God has given , and daily repenting of that , instead we just want to feel like , oh , what we're doing is right , like why repent when we don't do anything wrong ?

And or if we can justify our actions with scripture , then that's good , or it makes us a good person , or that type of thing . But repentance is so key in what you know , our life as Christians , and I think I mean even too .

I just noticed that even nowadays , like as people are shifting to wanting to live together and , you know , do different things where it's like , oh , does the Bible really say we can't ? You know . It's like , well , you know what you're doing is wrong , like repent , but we don't want to do repentance . I don't know .

That's just an observation that I've kind of noticed or thought of lately .

Talking about there , yeah , it's not just . Oh yeah , my sins are forgiven , now I can live . However , no , it's , my sins are forgiven , and boy , there are a lot of them . And boy it's another day and there are a whole lot more . How am I going to live in light of that ?

Well , that means I'm going to leave those behind and work to produce the fruits that follow from repentance .

She must try every day to apologize and I said well , if you did this on purpose , we got a lot more to talk about . But she didn't . She's got terminal brain cancer . And it's interesting because I fix the meals . Now you have to understand that I haven't really been involved with meal fixing since I was in high school and I worked as a short order cook .

So it's been a long time , and so you know things have been going pretty well . Pretty well , but not everything . Once in a while an experiment doesn't come out and , for example , last night was especially exciting because I finally was able to make eggs over easy . I couldn't have done that before , but I've been working on it .

I changed the pan , I changed the technique and now it's working . But the point is is that my goal in meal prep is to somehow demonstrate to her my deep and high admiration for her , and so it occurred to me one night as I , the many sleepless hours I lie in bed and think through things how come I'm not like that with God ?

And that's oftentimes the problem that I think we encounter is we think so worldly , and so even decisions like do we move in together outside of marriage ? Well , she agrees , I agree , we're all very happy , no one's being harmed , nobody really objects , none of the parents are saying anything , even in church . They let us still come to church , and so forth .

So we begin to start looking for trying to please just the immediate surroundings rather than the one who made the immediate surroundings in the first place . And that is the chasm that I think people have to cross .

I am fully aware of what it's like dealing with the crisis at the moment We've had a few of them here in the last year and a half and you lose all focus , and sometimes people allow that to linger .

All of a sudden , their focus is their career , their focus is their family , their focus is their spouse , and there is still one love beyond that , and when you have that kind of love , that's when you decide well , what would God have me to do . This was an unplanned pregnancy lapse in judgment on my part . A lot of my friends are saying abort the child .

But what would God have me to do ? And when you are an Orthodox Lutheran and you live by Scripture alone ? And when you are an Orthodox Lutheran and you live by Scripture alone , you're looking into the Word of God and you see His value for life and then His value becomes your value . Do you always like it ?

I will tell you I am deeply in love with Diane , but I do not always like everything I have to do . But that doesn't mean that it's wrong . I think people have to understand that in their relationship with God .

In other countries there are other Lutheran church bodies , if there are Lutheran church bodies in those countries , if it helps at all . The ELCA in the United States is a part of the LWF , the Lutheran World Federation , and that's a pretty good indication If the church body in whatever country you're looking at is also a member of the LWF .

Not everything that applies to the ELCA is going to apply to that church body , but they're okay with it , at least in terms of being part of the same church body .

The Missouri Synod is also part of an international body I can't remember exactly , it's the International Lutheran something and the ELS and the United States are part of an international body called the CELC the Conference of . Evangelical Lutheran Churches .

You go to the websites that's kind of how people work nowadays and you go to the ELS website and you go to the Wells website , you can go to the LCMS and you can go to the ELCA websites here in the United States and you get kind of a flavor of what they do . But I think what you've got to do too is try to look at the churches .

Look at the churches that are members of those respective church bodies . Try to find congregations on the Internet . Look at what they are also saying .

I have found that when I have searched for those churches , some beautiful , very practical and biblically rooted statements that are wonderful , which sometimes , like for example , I'm most offended when I go onto websites where they say and God in his love allows this and permits that , and we welcome everybody because God is a God of love and everything .

And of course , just using slogans out of the Bible doesn't mean squat . I mean that's that bumper sticker theology , and part of it is that it reinforces this idea that I have , that everybody else thinks that we're idiots Because even commercials on television , you know , they give you a simple line .

You know my candidate stands for this or my candidate stands for that , as if all of life is simple and it's not .

We don't trust in ourselves , by faith alone . How do we know that we can trust all this ? Well , look at what God did for us . He sent his one and only son to be our Savior , sent him to the cross . And if we need guidance with our life challenge , well , what has our loving , gracious God given us ?

He's given us his word , a perfect testimony of his truth , all the things that we need to know in order to live our lives . What a wonderful gift we have that we are able to do that .

One of the things that has just always puzzled me is that people will say that they believe , people who want a I'll just say , a looser Christianity which allows them then , as some of the things Bob was talking about , allows them to do what feels good to them or feels right to them , instead of listening to what God has to say , and they will fall back on

this I just believe in a God of love . I always say would a God who really loved us leave us an incomplete , inaccurate or unreliable testimony ? I don't think so . My wife and I are going on a vacation and leaving our teenage kids in the house .

Would I leave them only half of the instructions for setting the alarm system or for taking care of the heat and the cooling , or whatever it is ? No , I'd give them the entire thing , because I love them and we rejoice that we have a God of love who left us a Bible that could be counted on , and that's something you know . It's not unique to Lutherans .

There are others Christians praise God who feel the same way about the scriptures that we do , but it is something that is uniquely Lutheran in a proper sense , that we have all these things and we count on them , whether we're facing a challenge in life or not .

You know , it's never a straight line and I'm always reminded of the Apostle Paul when he said you know the good that I would do , that I do not , the evil I would not do , that I keep on doing . You know , even people who should know better don't always act better .

I mean , it's part of the falling and that's why we embrace the sola gratia part of Orthodox Lutheranism , and that is , we rely on grace , you know , because even though those do-gooder Lutherans still have troubles and they still need to have a very merciful and forgiving God .

And going back , Krista , to something you had mentioned about repentance , a repentant spirit reveals a lot about your relationship with God . Where you actually second-guess yourself a lot Are my words , are my actions reflecting God's will ? Is it from God's perspective when I'm done doing what I'm going to do ?

Will God see this as me giving glory to him or as me replacing him with something else I want in life A repentant spirit is an attitude and it's a lifestyle .

Like you said in the first thesis , it's basically a lifestyle , a full life of constantly looking to God and saying and if sin is that bad that Moses couldn't even look at the face of God on Mount Sinai and live , if sin is that bad that it has no standing in the presence of a perfect God , there really is only one solution , and God provided it .

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