Let’s Stop Putting a Question Mark over Baptismal Regeneration

Posted on August 26, 2024 by Paul Harris

For centuries, the practice among Lutherans has been to ask the sponsors on behalf of the infant to be baptized to confess the faith and renounce the devil for him. Once ordained in 1983, I used the liturgy as then TLH had it and later Lutheran Worship. The Lutheran Service Book has it likewise, but like all their other tweaks, they made it longer. I used this order a few times in the Bible Belt surrounded by active and maybe even activist, Baptist. I could not answer how my asking infants if they renounced the devil and believed in the Triune God any different from their believer’s Baptism. I couldn’t explain how that practice meshed with the Lutheran acceptance of  Baptismal Regeneration. I still can’t. So for 35 or better years I have left those questions to the sponsors out of the rite. Continue reading →

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That Don’t Impress Me Much

Posted on August 19, 2024 by Paul Harris

Crosspoint Church, Georgetown, Texas is my third outing to a Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod church. At the following link you can view the one I attended on 23 April 2023: https://crosspointgtx.wpengine.com/liveworship/ . But if you want to know where the service and sermon originated. Go to this link: https://national.cc/about. Of if you want the original sermons go here https://national.cc/media/win-the-day . As with the other two, I came away from this ‘experience’ drained, depressed, defeated, and unimpressed. These folks are winning the day because it’s really a preaching of American Civil Religion. But with Shania Twain’s 1997 hit I say, “that don’t impress me much.” Continue reading →

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At Least it Isn’t Pot

Posted on August 12, 2024 by Paul Harris

In the first Episode of HBO’s “White Lotus”, an uber rich family is vacationing at an uber-fancy Hawaiian hotel. The mom comes into where her daughter and friend are smoking pot. As they quickly put their gear away, the mom asks, “Is there something burning?” To this her teenage daughter replies, “We were just doing some witchcraft.” Her mom shrugs and shuts the door saying to herself, “At least it’s not pot.” Continue reading →

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50 Years Later and We’re Still at War with the Unborn

Posted on August 5, 2024 by Paul Harris

Don’t you cringe when women, usually in their mid-20s, express such righteous indignation at the Supreme Court could taking away a right they have had for 50, count ‘em, 50 years. I suppose anything twice as old as you seems really old. But using their dates and logic, slave-holding was a right people in the United States had for hundreds and hundreds of years. An entire nation’s peace was shattered to overturn that right. Continue reading →

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How to Change Your Mind….And Lose Your Soul

Posted on July 29, 2024 by Paul Harris

STOP! Read no further if you’re an integrationists (someone who seeks to combine the Bible with secular psychological theories), an All-Truth-is-God’s-Truth person, or you think the Holy Spirit leads by current trends in society. Also to be warned are those under the care of a counselor of any stripe be that Biblical, psychological, or psychiatric.  If you’re any of these, you’ll be offended. Save yourself the heart or headache. I have no bona fides that testify to my authority on this subject. The one thing I know for sure is that I’m afraid of this new, new class of drugs and the new ones first proscribed in the 90s’. The SSRIs. The old-school antidepressant which basically tranquilled, not so much. It was well-understood how they worked and what they did. These new, new and new ones, they are approved by side effects. What became Prozac was first investigated as an antihistamine, and what became Viagra was first used to treat hypertension and angina. Continue reading →

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On Being Sane In Insane Places

Posted on July 22, 2024 by Paul Harris

All you need to know to be induced to read this lengthy 1973 article is this: “Eight sane people gained secret admission to 12 different hospitals.  Their diagnostic experiences constitute the data of the first part of this article; the remainder is devoted to a description of their experiences in psychiatric institutions” (p. 2 below). This experiment is 50 years old, and nothing, as far as I know, has changed. I publish it here so that it might be kept in collective memory that there have always been some challenging the weight, the legitimacy, the helpfulness of the ‘science’ of psychology and psychiatry. Continue reading →

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Me and My Arrows Second Addition

Posted on July 22, 2024 by Paul Harris

The second, more price friendly, edition will be available at Lulu any day now. My thanks to you if you brought the first edition at its steep price. That was because I didn’t know how to manage costs on Lulu. I still don’t, but I had the expertise of one who did.  Go to Lulu.com and search for Me and My Arrows.

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Nothing is Everything – Visit to Grace Covenant, Austin, Texas

Posted on July 15, 2024 by Paul Harris

“Nothing is everything” might ring a bell from the Skyrizi commercial. It’s a prescription drug to treat moderate to severe plaque psoriasis.[1] Drug-naming, really branding is more accurate, is a multimillion-dollar industry especially since the advent of “ask your doctor if ___ is right for you” took over the airways which is only legal in the U.S. and New Zealand. Ask your doctor why. Nondenominational churches share the branding problem with drug companies. Continue reading →

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500th Post

Posted on July 8, 2024 by Paul Harris

I ended up preaching about 2,800 sermons, and they are longer than your average blog post. This is the 500th blog post. I was goaded to start this blog in 2007. A member came back from the Lutheran Church Misery Synod’s national convention saying that my voice has got to be heard. Another member, about that same time, said that he wanted to know what I thought about synodical issues more than any other pastor. So it being hard to kick against goads, I started posting. Continue reading →

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Bible Translations “Visually” Compared

Posted on July 1, 2024 by Paul Harris

Continue reading →

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