The Pain of Parents, Man the Beast, and Christians as Soldiers of Hope

all with a prayer of Thanksgiving.

Sep 02, 2022

I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers, because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the Lord Jesus and for all the saints, and I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ.

2/ The Future in the Growing Little Hand

I like to listen to The World and Everything in It for news without drama. On August 31 they played a nice little commentary essay from Janie B. Cheaney. She was reacting to the pro-abortion meme that if men could get pregnant abortion would be a sacrament.

She paints a beautiful picture of life in the image of a little hand growing.

Fortunately for everyone alive, there’s another perspective. It’s something like this: Every intimate encounter between a man and a woman presents the possibility of life to take hold and flourish. The possibility of a future. Before you are even aware of it, tiny fingers could be forming, which might soon mutely grasp your own. Before long, those hands could be reaching out for a hug, helping you roll cookie dough or hang ornaments on a Christmas tree, gripping a steering wheel
for the first time, firmly shaking the hands of well-wishers at college graduation.
Someday, a strong hand could be holding your frail one as your eyes close on this life. To most humans throughout history, those embryonic possibilities didn’t just
represent the future—they were the future.

Do we believe in the future anymore? Abortion, as despair of the future, is a fruit of cultural hopelessness.

Maybe we’ll come to our senses and believe in the future again, especially if we can’t sustain the present.

You can read a transcript here (scroll down 9/10ths of the page), or listen here (commentary begins around the 30:40 mark).

3/ What a Chimera is Man!

I’m listening to William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith on audiobook. He’s reviewing the apologetic and existential argument that human life without God is absurd. He points to Blaise Pascal as the beginning of this argument and pieced together quotations from his Pensees to show what it looks like.

(It’s difficult to catch this all in audio, I can’t look at the footnotes, so I thought it was an extended quotation, but searching for it, it seems like he’s cobbled quotations together.)

On the one hand, man is nothing compared to the universe.

Returning to himself, let man consider what he is in comparison with all existence; let him regard himself as lost in this remote corner of nature; and from the little cell in which he finds himself lodged, I mean the universe, let him estimate at their true value the earth, kingdoms, cities, and himself. What is a man in the Infinite? (Pensees, 72)

Instead of considering ourselves, where we come from, where we are going, what we are for, we pursue diversions.

How does it happen that this man, so distressed at the death of his wife and his only son, or who has some great lawsuit which annoys him, is not at this moment sad, and that he seems so free from all painful and disquieting thoughts? We need not wonder; for a ball has been served him, and he must return it to his companion. He is occupied in catching it in its fall from the roof, to win a game. How can he think of his own affairs, pray, when he has this other matter in hand? Here is a care worthy of occupying this great soul, and taking away from him every other thought of the mind. This man, born to know the universe, to judge all causes, to govern a whole state, is altogether occupied and taken up with the business of catching a hare. And if he does not lower himself to this, and wants always to be on the strain, he will be more foolish still, because he would raise himself above humanity; and after all he is only a man, that is to say capable of little and of much, of all and of nothing; he is neither angel nor brute, but man. (Pensees, 140)

On the other hand, man, if we stop to consider reality, recognizes our own frailty. And this is our ironic glory: we see our feebleness. We recognize our mortality.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.
All our dignity consists then in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavour then to think well; this is the principle of morality.
A thinking reed. - It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from the government of my thought. I shall have no more if I possess worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world. (Pensees, 347, 348)

Man is on the horns: between nothing and everything. Destroyed by the universe in a moment, but comprehending our mortality which the universe can never do.

What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the universe!
Who will unravel this tangle? Nature confutes the sceptics, and reason confutes the dogmatists. What then will you become, O men! who try to find out by your natural reason what is your true condition? You cannot avoid one of these sects, nor adhere to one of them.
Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Humble yourself, weak reason; be silent, foolish nature; learn that man infinitely transcends man, and learn from your Master your true condition, of which you are ignorant. Hear God. (Pensees, 434)

That’s some stunning stuff.

Share Wednesday What-Not

4/ Music Conference, Sept 8-10

Hosted at St Paul Lutheran Church, Austin, TX.

Using the LORD’S gifts of word and music to proclaim what really matters!

PRESENTERS:

Rev. Sean Daenzer
Rev. Bryan Wolfmueller
Dr. Robert Achterberg
Dr. Elizabeth Grimpo
Dr. Scott Hyslop
Benjamin Kolodziej
Dr. Timothy Shewmaker

Ya’ll come.

Here are the details.

5/ A Latter-Day Regift

Oh Hans. On the similarities of Isalm and Mormonism.

6/ A Few Videos of My Own

Media experimentation continues this week.

I’m adding more audio to the What-Not: The Podcast feed, including audio from the Worldwide Bible Study and from Sunday School. Let me know what you think about these longer-form audio podcasts.

7/ Luther on the pain of parents

Of what will we not have to be afraid? But the grief of parents V 5, p 164 is far more piercing and far bitterer than that of children, than that of brothers or relatives. For there are very great and intense emotions that God has created in the whole nature of things and has implanted in parents toward their offspring. And if at any time their hearts are wounded by grief or sorrow on account of a misfortune suffered by their children, this is a very real plague and a poison for their lives. Therefore parents are easily killed, if not by the sword, then by sorrow and grief.
…
Therefore let the youth beware and learn to honor and respect their parents and to regard these words “father and mother” as most sacred objects of veneration. (LW 5:163-164)

We discussed this in the Worldwide Bible Study Wednesday. (You can listen to that here, or watch here.)

8/ On the Gottesdienst Crowd, On Mark 7:31-37.

My friend Jason Braaten had me on the Gottesdienst Crowd to talk about the upcoming Gospel reading. It was great fun. Listen to that conversation here.

Remember to go to your pastor's Bible Class this week and, read old theology books. (If you don't have a pastor or congregation, click here. If you don't have old theology books, click here.)

If you find this helpful, forward it to a friend. If this was forwarded to you, click here to sign-up for yourself.

Thank you, again, for your time and attention, and for your prayers. Please keep in touch.

Lord's Blessings, Pastor Wolfmueller

2 Corinthians 1:3-4

www.wolfmueller.co

Abbey Wolters

Sep 18, 2022

Thank you for adding more audio to your podcast! I haven't listened to the World Wide Bible Study before because the live timing never worked for me. But now I have listened to it since you put it on Spotify, and I have already gained something from it! I really appreciate your solid Lutheran presence on the internet and hope you continue to add more. Thank you!

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