Alright, huddle up: June 1 is Begin Again Day.
I walked & jogged 2 miles this morning.
If my fat a** can do it, so can yours.
If you’ve fallen off the exercise wagon, give it a go once more.
Let’s freakin’ go!
You're right. Christianity brainwashed me.
I want to spend the rest of my life with one person, pray for those who hate me, forgive easily, raise a beautiful family, stay away from gossip, and find peace in Jesus.
@becomelutheran Well at least they’re not calling him Father Matt 😉 kidding, I love our church also. And Matt said he learned many good lessons in the humbling & huge job of being Synodical prez.
"You may have been sentenced to 35 years behind bars. You should feel lucky," she said. "I've been sentenced to a lifetime without my son." https://t.co/Hogb3qKq2H
@TartanLutheran@becomelutheran Right! It seems important to mention the command of Jesus to like love one another and stuff 😉💯 And the Preus bros wore neckties back then 😉
Although, a lot of experienced a time in which the highly liturgical were also Higher Critics. So there is a significant swath of Missourians (and you can tell I’m one of them) who will wear neck ties and use liturgy but also add in a few CCM songs. It’s not antithetical, it’s where we’re at with things
Correct in many ways, but modern statecraft can also be strong if it simply undergirds Western values; e.g., what @benshapiro IDs in his book, Lions and Scavengers. Virtue, industry, and rule of law (not Sharia!). Etc.
Understand this.
Europe is not losing its soul because Islam is strong.
Europe is losing its soul because Christians have become embarrassed by their own faith.
The real problem is that we have turned Christianity into a museum. Something you visit at Christmas and funerals. Something you “respect historically” without actually believing it. Something you are expected to apologize for - or be shamed for - if you take it seriously.
The result? A cultural vacuum. And nature - and history - hate a vacuum.
Islam is not primarily strong theologically. Islam is strong because it is a complete system - law, politics, social order and religion in one. There is no separation. Sharia does not just regulate the relationship with God. It regulates contracts, marriage, punishment, governance, war and peace. Islam is a civilization with its own rules for everything. It is not a private faith. It is a political project.
And Muslims own it. They do not apologize for it. They defend it. They live it publicly. They pass it on to their children without question.
We have forgotten how to do that.
Christianity is something fundamentally different. Jesus said “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s.” He separated them deliberately. Christianity is not a legal code - it is a relation. To a person. A living God who knows you by name, who died for you, who rose again. You cannot legislate your way into it. You cannot inherit it. You have to choose it yourself.
This is not “back to the Middle Ages.” It is something far more radical:
To believe in and surrender to Jesus Christ is essential. Not as a metaphor or cultural heritage. But as a historical reality with consequences for everything.
Because when you do that - believe it and mean it - it changes your spine. You know who you are. You know what you are defending. You do not need to fill the void with ideology, identity politics or submission.
The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is not a pious greeting. It is a declaration about the structure of reality. That the world has a creator, that history has a direction, that human beings have a dignity that cannot be voted away.
This is civilizational - not just personal.
Islam as a political system has a cosmology. A complete worldview. Sharia is not just rules - it is a civilization’s self-understanding. It demands total submission - that is literally what “islam” means. And we are meeting that demand with silence. With a faith we no longer dare to own publicly. This is not an equal contest. It is surrender in slow motion.
You do not meet that with multiculturalism and “we respect all religions equally.”
You meet it with something at least as total. At least as demanding. At least as willing to say: this is true, and we build our society on it and its values.
The only thing with that civilizational weight in the West is Christianity. Not as an institution - that has been corrupted or hollowed out in many places. But as faith. As a living relation to a living God.
My message is this:
Europe cannot be saved by political parties alone. Not by demographic statistics. Not by border management - even though all of that has its place.
Europe will be saved by men and women who stop apologizing for believing in Jesus Christ. Who take ownership. Who pass it on to the next generation as if it is true - because it is true.
This is not the comeback of religion.
This is the survival of civilization.
It is the only way to win a spiritual war we are already in the middle of.✝️🪽❤️🔥
I’d rather have the 'mess' of a thousand congregations wrestling with the Word of God than the 'unity' of a billion people following a man who has wandered away from it. One is the struggle of life; the other is the peace of the graveyard.