The temptation for many believers is either despair or outrage: despair that Christendom is fading, or outrage at the civilization replacing it.
Do not disregard Luther’s early disputations, but appreciate their specificity and recognize their pastoral and theological continuity with his later works.
The heavens are neither geocentric, nor even heliocentric, but Christocentric. It is the cross and the crucified and risen Jesus who has the whole world, and each of us, in his nail scarred hands.

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Music is an inherent part of our humanity as image-bearers of God. And like all gifts, it is meant for the good of the receiver.
We are continuing our summer series on a theology of worship through the lens of language. Before moving forward, let me highlight a few points by way of review.
Like any language, the liturgy has syntax—a structure that provides order and intelligibly communicates meaning through all that is said.
Over the next few months, I invite you to join me in looking at what the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions have to say about the subject of worship through the lens of language.
During my many journeys to Japan, I discovered that more than a quarter millennium after his death Bach is now playing a key role in evangelizing that country, one of the most secularized nations in the developed world.
People lamented that ancient paganism was dead, but the same people who profess that they would love an old pagan feast ignore Christmas, where the best of paganism has survived.
Ultimately, however, I fell in love with traditions—and specifically, traditional worship—for a single, overarching reason: its components, to varying degrees, are all in the service of the Gospel.
An understanding and appreciation of the goodness (and given-ness) of place and family, and the vocations attending each, can of course be taught and learned in a classroom or by means of a book.
Waits wants to pen the songs with beautiful melodies and lyrics dark as sin. Whatever his church background, he sings “the big print giveth, and the small print taketh away."
Why would God reject from Cain what he later accepted from and mandated of his people? So as far as the material itself, neither Cain’s nor Abel’s offering was superior.
In accordance with their views of what a church is, or what a church ought to be, they planned and executed each of these sanctuaries. In other words, theology designed architecture, and architecture signaled theology.