Schism

I grew up attending Bethlehem Lutheran Church, in western Michigan. Although I didn’t know it at the time, it was affiliated with the American Lutheran Church (ALC). All I knew was that it felt like home, and that its messages were about forgiveness, duty to others, humility, and mutual support.

I only came to recognize the uniqueness of my home culture when I entered another. For 7th and 8th grades, my folks sent me across town to Our Redeemer Lutheran School, which was affiliated with the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. The core messages there were pretty different, all focused on our need to accept Christ as our personal savior or face the eternal lake of fire. Forgiveness was focused on ourselves rather than others; our duty was to share the Good Word; our humility was rooted in Original Sin; and our mutual support was near to nonexistent.

Both of these communities relied not merely upon the same Bible, but upon the same man’s 16th Century commentary on the Bible. And they ended up in wildly different places: one gentle and hopeful, one self-centered and angry.

(When I then went to Catholic high school, with its extra books in the Bible and its extra sacraments and the elevation of Mary and the other saints… well, my conversion to anthropology was inevitable.)

I’m put in mind of all of that today as I sit quietly with my grief. We have started out with the same guiding documents, the same body of laws, and we have come to different places.

I will try to choose forgiveness, duty, humility, and mutual support. And because I’m fallible, I will fail, repeatedly. But for today, those principles sustain me. There’s work to be done, and only us fallible to do it.