The Lutheran Frog in the Water

There is an old metaphor called the “Frog in the Water”.  It states that people’s changing attitudes are like a frog and boiling water.  If you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will immediately jump out.  But, if you put a frog into lukewarm water and slowly raise the temperature, it will happily boil to death and not notice.  The lesson being, if you change standards slowly enough, people will not notice that they are on the road to Hell.

In reality, frogs are smarter than that, but apparently, according to page A4 of the August 23rd 2009 Decatur Daily, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America isn’t.  Sexual morals in this country that started out with “traditional” values like the idea that marriage is between one man and one woman, have slowly changed to the point where on Saturday, the Decatur Daily stated, “…in breaking down barriers restricting gays and lesbians from the pulpit, the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination has laid down a new marker in a debate over the direction of mainline Protestant Christianity, a tradition that once dominated American religious life.”

The article goes on further to state that on Friday, August 22nd 2009, the ELCA’s national assembly, “…struck down a policy that required any gay and lesbian clergy to remain celibate.  And, “…also signed off on finding ways for willing congregations to ‘recognize, support and hold publicly accountable lifelong, monogamous same gender relationships.’”

How is it possible that a “mainline Protestant” church like the ELCA could disregard 3,000 years of traditional Judeo-Christian values for today’s system of secular morals where anybody can marry and have sex with anybody they wish regardless of current marital status or gender?  The answer is incrementalism.

Over the last 50-100 years encouraged by our shortsighted belief in our own ability to set our own standards of conduct and our arrogant belief that we could know what is best for us, we have progressed, almost without even noticing to the current state of affairs.  Each small change in our standards, none of which were drastic in and of themselves, added another brick in the road we were building away from the straight and narrow.

One example of these small, incremental changes is the Decatur Daily article itself.  This article appears to uphold the decision by the ELCA’s national assembly with subtle language that encourages the reader to agree with the new standard.  By calling the previous rule which required that ministers not be gay or lesbian a “barrier” and stating that this rule was “restricting” gays and lesbians, they place the traditional standards in a negative light.

The Decatur Daily goes on to state that, “…the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination has laid down a new marker in the [debate].”  This statement implies two things.  First, that the “4.7 million member” ELCA is a large and influential religious body having the ability and authority to set standards of conduct for the rest of the Christian world, or at least the Protestant Christian world.  This implication, though manifestly false, isn’t refuted, so the reader assumes it to be true.

The ELCA may be the “largest Lutheran denomination”, but in fact, the ELCA is a very small group.  The article claims 4.7 million adherents to this particular sect of Lutheranism.  Wikipedia quotes the total population of Lutherans to be approximately 70 million. (See Wikipedia’s “List of Christian denominations by number of members”)  So, the ELCA is less than 7% of all Lutherans.  Furthermore, Lutherans only make up just under 12% of the 590 million strong Protestant division of Christianity, leaving the ELCA with a measly 7/10 of 1% of Protestants.  According to Wikipedia, Roman Catholics number 1.116 Billion strong.  Clearly, the ELCA does not have the overwhelming numerical weight to set trends or standards for anyone but themselves.

The second implication is that the ELCA has set a new, higher standard (that “new marker” the article mentioned) that all other denominations should be striving to achieve.  But, this not a higher standard at all.  Rather, this is a relaxing of standards to the point where immorality not only becomes acceptable, but the acceptance of this immorality is upheld as the preferred choice.

I would encourage the ELCA, and all other Christian denominations, to hold fast to traditional values and the Decatur Daily to strive less for sensationalism in their articles and more for a uncovering of the truth.  Homosexuality has been a sin from earliest biblical times and continues to be so.  God’s laws do not change with the social times.  They are clearly defined and immutable.  History demonstrates we are not wise enough to set our own moral standards.  Trust in God and the rules he has laid out for us to follow, because following them ultimately leads to our happiness, both in this life, and the one to come.