To Be Cautious with the World’s Moral Imperatives

WHEREAS, We live in a post-Christian world in which our Christian faith does not drive the shaping of culture; and

WHEREAS, The world has its own vocabulary of moral imperatives, often skewing those our Lord has given, sometimes even contradicting them directly, there by making evil seem good and good seem evil (Isaiah 5:20); and

WHEREAS, The world’s moral imperatives migrate according to who has the most power to shape them; and

WHEREAS, “The world will seek to domesticate [us] to its ways,” (Norman Nagel, Selected Sermons of Norman Nagel [St. Louis: CPH, 2004], 151); and

WHEREAS, St.Peter has called us to be sober and vigilant because the adversary is always looking for an opportunity to pounce (1 Peter 5:8); and

WHEREAS, This often occurs by means of language and ideology that is untruthful according to Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions; and

WHEREAS, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jer. 17:9); and

WHEREAS, The human sciences, such as sociology, anthropology, and psychology, are doubly vulnerable to the deceitfulness and sickness of the heart since practitioners bring the above heart sickness and deceitfulness to bear, and the subjects contributing data to research share the same above mentioned heart sickness and deceitfulness, giving both experimenter and subject a false sense of objectivity and moral neutrality; and

WHEREAS, Ideas and conclusions drawn from the above- mentioned human sciences find their way into other disciplines such as arts and humanities, economics, political science, and most especially, journalism, how be it, even the practitioners of the hard sciences are not immune; therefore be it

Resolved, That pastors, church workers, and lay people be encouraged to use the language of the world’s moral imperatives sparingly, to wit, on occasions when the users of those terms overtly explain what they mean by their usage; and be it further

Resolved, That pastors, church workers, and lay people be encouraged to refrain from using the world’s moral imperatives when a) the speaker does not have occasion to explain his or her usage, or b) the hearer does not have the opportunity to seek an explanation of the usage; and be it further

Resolved, That pastors, church workers, and lay people, in the interest of vigilance, be encouraged to investigate the world’s moral imperatives, holding them up to the light of the Holy Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions; and be it further

Resolved, That pastors, church workers, and lay people be encouraged to intensify their own biblical and confessional literacy so that they may be able to rightly divide whatever they are hearing, affirming what is honorable, just, pure, lovely, and commendable while shining the painful light of truth upon what is false and evil;

and be it further

Resolved, That we cultivate a robust use of the Holy Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions to direct conversations away from the world’s moral imperatives and into truth, life, and health; and be it finally

Resolved, That pastors, church workers, and lay people be encouraged to a vigorous exercise of the Eighth Commandment among ourselves as we speak of the world’s moral imperatives, always presuming best intentions on the part of the other person while at the same time aiming to speak and live in truth together, truth whose boundaries are given by the Holy Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions; and that this resolution be forwarded to the