The Lesser Known Catechism

Quite a few people who were raised Lutheran know a great deal about the Small Catechism.  It may bring back memories of doing memory work, reciting commandments and explanations.  If you're like most people, you probably did that cramming on your way to confirmation for that day, and it may have leaked out almost as soon as you finished speaking it.

However, in general, I have discovered that most people aren't familiar with the Large Catechism.  Earlier this year, I started taking the elders of the congregation through it, and one of them mentioned that he didn't even know there was a Large Catechism, and he has been Lutheran all his life.  I really do wonder how little the Large Catechism is know.

In some ways, it makes sense that it's not as well known as its little brother.  The Large Catechism was written primarily for parish priests, giving them a guide to help explain the Small Catechism in their congregations.  While it's not written at a much higher level than was most people today could understand, it does go into a little more depth than the Small Catechism. 

Also, the Large Catechism spends most of its pages talking about the proper understanding of the commandments.  Over half of the book deals with the Ten Commandments, leaving the Apostles' Creed, Lord's Prayer, Confession and Absolution, and the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper with relatively little press each.  For some, this may seem to give too much credence to the role of the Ten Commandments, though in future posts, I hope to supply some rather helpful ways of understanding why this is a good thing.

As a final thing, part of the reason that the Large Catechism may never have really caught on is because the Small Catechism is so brief and covers the basics.  Sure, there will always be points that theologians, pastors, and Christians can discuss and argue about ad nauseum, but the content of the Small Catechism is relatively straight forward, thus making it an easier resource to utilize in teaching.  But maybe, just maybe, the day will arise when the Large Catechism will begin to get its due credit as well.

Catechisms and Simplicity

In the mid to late 1520's, Martin Luther had already posted his controversial 95 theses.  There were already some sharp words being exchanged between those who followed Luther and those who held fast to the "Catholic" church of the day, led by the Pope.  And even though those events were fairly significant, there was also something going on in Germany which led to the formation of the Small and Large Catechisms that so many Lutherans continue to make use of today.

During the 1520's, the German reformers ventured throughout Germany to see what the state of the Church looked like throughout their nation.  To put it mildly, they were greatly disappointed in what they found.  (Now remember, this is a pre-literate society, and the printing press was just becoming a fashionable thing about this time.)  The people of the various parishes were rather ignorant about their Christian faith.  To make matters even worse, the priests at the local congregations didn't seem to know all that much more about the faith. 

This made the reformers rather uneasy.  So Martin Luther decided to do something about the sorry situation.  He undertook the task to create a small book of instruction, a catechism, that the head of each household could use to teach the people of his household.  Luther strove to keep the catechism simple, laying out simple explanations for the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, what Confession and Absolution (forgiveness) really is, and then describing the two Sacraments (sacraments as the German reformers had come to define) of Baptism and the Lord's Supper.  Using simple explanations that were pretty easy to memorize, Luther then made use of the printing press to distribute these throughout Germany.

For the priests, Luther decided to give a little bit more of an explanation, to aid them in the task of teaching the people.  For that purpose, he wrote the Large Catechism.  This catechism takes the same elements and describes them in a bit more detail.  By making use of such a resource, the local priests/pastors could then faithfully teach the message of God to the local congregation, who would then be reinforced by what they were (supposedly) learning at home.

Since there was such little knowledge of the Christian faith, Luther kept the catechisms brief, simple, and memorable.  Even on the smaller pages of the Small Catechism I have, Luther's contribution takes up less than 30 pages, and that's with well-spaced out words and sentences.  As an example, here is the first commandment and explanation.

You shall have no other gods.  What does this mean?  We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.

Short.  Simple.  Easy.  Memorable.  It's the kind of thing that a father could teach his children in relatively short time.  And tomorrow, I'll go into a bit more depth about why I see this as important in our current day and age.

Catechisms and Their Need

Over the past few years, I have become more and more convinced that teaching the elements of the Christian faith need to be kept simple, especially when it comes to teaching people that are not all that well acquainted with the faith.  I shouldn't be surprised to know that I am not the first to make this discovery, nor is it surprising to find that there are already those kind of resources available, especially to Christians who are of my common Lutheran thread.

Those resources?  Luther's Small Catechism and Large Catechism.  Over the years, I have typically led my instruction classes from the Small Catechism and the Bible, and not found it necessary to include much more.  This is even more especially profound when you realize that Luther's Small Catechism is barely 30 small pages long.  I'll go more into why he wrote these books and why they take the form that they do in future posts.

The thing I have really come to appreciate about the Catechisms, though, is their simplicity.  Life is way too complex at times, and if we can keep things simple, that makes it much easier to understand and take in.  In the Small Catechism, you get six major points of Christian teaching (doctrine) that are simply, yet deeply explained, and all in a way that can be easily memorized.

As a doctoral student, the Catechisms are going to figure prominently in my final paper.  I truly believe that churches can do far worse than simply teaching people the Catechism and what it means for their Christian lives.  So for a while, we'll be focusing on some of the things that we can learn, as well as looking at how we can go about teaching some of these things.  As always, I will welcome your feedback, and may even follow up if I find it more helpful.  Who knows, you could also be included in my major project!

Are you born morally/ethically neutral?

Yesterday I presented a few challenges to the prevailing thought that people are good by nature.  Today, I change slightly and take a look at the idea that we are born neutral, that we enter this world without either positive or negative influences prior to our birth and growth in this world.  As you can imagine, some of the challenges are still the same, though there are a few other thoughts that can be added.

Once again, the primary question becomes, where do the bad things in life come from?  If we are born morally or ethically neutral, that would mean that we have to learn "bad" from others.  But that's where it breaks down.  If we need those influences to "become" bad, then where did those people who are bad get their influence?  Eventually, we're left at a loss.  Somewhere bad had to enter the world, but we're at a loss to explain where it came from and why it started to have an effect on us.

There are some things that we can work with in this scenario, however.  Typically, someone who thinks that people are born morally neutral don't have the issues of dealing with "bad" or evil, either from others or from themselves.  After all, the possibility that we can become bad exists.  True, that leaning all depends on the influences we have in our lives, but, unlike the thought that we are born good, the possibility of bad exists.

And yet, there is a different problem that this scenario also presents.  Where did we learn "good" in this scenario?  If we have good influences in our lives that shape who we are, where did they come from?  After all, if we're neutral by birth, that means we don't take any shape until we encounter something either bad or good.  It's the other side of the coin from bad.  Where did the initial good influences come from that determine our goodness?

As a Christian, I can find myself understanding those who want to believe this particular tenet.  I think most of us are realistic enough to realize that the "born good" idea just doesn't carry a lot of weight.  It leaves no room for the suffering and pain that we see so much of in this world.  This idea of neutrality at least leaves the possibility of good and bad on the table.  It means that the possibility of either exists, and that gives an opening for conversations that we, as Christians, can work with as a starting place.

A Challenge: Are You Morally Good by Nature?

There seems to be a popular conception out there that humans are morally good.  Yes, I know, I wrote about this about a week ago or so, but since I failed to pick up the ball afterward and continue the thought, I want to revisit it for a few moments.

Let's start off by thinking about what may seem to be good about thinking of ourselves as good by nature.  That means that we can start off feeling good about ourselves, right?  After all, if we're all good by nature, then everything is good in our world.  We're going to do the right thing, treat each other nice, and everyone will simply get along.  After all, we're all good by nature, right?

What happens, then, when this isn't want happens?  As we go through life, we tend to experience the reality that people are not always good or nice.  People can be downright mean sometimes.  Who hasn't been the teenager that got mocked because you were different than your friends?  Who hasn't had something of value taken from you, and the other person didn't give it back?  Why did our parents have to teach us that it's not good to talk to strangers, since they might not be trustworthy people?  And in the back of our minds, we should have been shouting, "BUT WE'RE GOOD BY NATURE, RIGHT?"

That's the problem with this thought.  What happens to it when we see people that aren't good?  What happens to us when we do something that isn't good, such as when we spread that message that hurts our friend, or when we are tempted to do something that ends up bringing hurt?  The refrain "But we're good by nature" seems to be more of a cruel taunt than a reality.

That's when we start to suffer from the common malady of "low self esteem."  We're good by nature, but something isn't right, and I don't feel good about it.  The other thing this starts up within us is the desire to find out what is causing us to feel bad.  But here's the rub.  It can't be us.  We're good by nature, after all.  It simply cannot be our fault.  So we have to find fault in others who we profess to also be good by nature.  The only thing is, they're now the ones with the problem, not me.

There's another deadly side to this.  If we're good by nature, but we start doing things that aren't good, the other thing we can do is give up our hope.  We can't reconcile that we are good by nature and yet, we find it so easy to do bad things.  We start to internalize the problem.  We start to see ourselves as the problem, and this creates a huge dilemma within us.  If we're good, but we do bad things, then we feel so bad that we may even think about ending this existence.  The root of suicidal thoughts cannot be far behind if we find ourselves faced by this reality.  Either suicide, or we seek to find our escape through addictive, harmful ways.

If you can't tell by now, I don't hold to this belief.  It leaves way too many problems for what the real human situation is.  However, I see that this belief continues to be held by so many in our world.  In coming posts, I hope to present a better, more realistic approach.  Oh, and please don't be surprised to find that this approach is one that comes from what God says in the Bible.

Thinking Deep Thoughts

Some of you may know that I am pursuing a higher education degree, one called a Doctor of Ministry.  This degree is intended to be a practical application of Lutheran Christian teaching and practice, consisting of things which I learn, which I then put into practice in the life of the congregation.  I've been at this for a few years now, and each time I've been engaged in my two week classes, I've always had something to work with.

It hasn't been all that often that I've felt overwhelmed by the depth of the things that I have to read and learn for the classes.  Sure, there are many authors that are not easy to read, but the basics of what they say make a great deal of sense.  However, for this go-round, I have been encountered with a class that has challenged me to read authors that attempt to get at the background of the reasons that people today think the way they do, and then to discern what that means for the Christian Church as we approach them with the good news of God in Christ Jesus.  Needless to say, this has been very challenging.

Have you ever really tried to understand someone who really thinks differently than you do?  Have you ever tried to engage someone whose whole life and existence is based upon something very different from your own?  I know I've heard it said many times, "I just don't understand X (X could be the younger generation, the fascination with some form of entertainment or music, or pretty much anything else.)"  Shoot, maybe you've thought that on a number of occasions, too.  That kind of statement shows just how big of a challenge this is.

I'm really looking forward to the two papers that I have to write afterward for this particular class.  I have no doubt that I will struggle to get them written, since I'll have to think about things that will sometimes lie beyond my way of thinking.  However, I see the benefit of such a challenge as this, and since I love to take up challenges, I'm looking forward to it quite a bit.

Explaining it to others, well, now you're talking a different kind of ballgame.

I'm Back, and with New Thoughts!

Hi everyone!

Once again, please accept my apologies for my extended absence.  Every once in a while, life throws a bit more than we are really ready to handle, and that has been the case for me over the past month or so.

But I'm back today, and hope to be a lot more regular with my postings now.  And today, I want to start off with a challenge to a popular mindset that seems to be present in many people's minds today.  That mindset believes that people are by nature good.  While I think that would be an admirable thing to see and to believe, I believe God's Word enough to challenge that way of thinking a bit.

If people are by nature good, then where do the bad things that we do come from?  If we are naturally good, then doesn't it stand to reason that the next generation would have to learn bad or evil from someone?  If so, who did they learn it from?  And true, it may be popular to believe that there are some people who are born bad or evil, but wouldn't we typically warn our kids to stay away from those kids?  After all, we don't want that kind of influence in their lives.

So if people are by nature good, then they shouldn't be doing bad or evil things.  And it seems to me that we, society in general, always seem to be surprised to learn that our "good" neighbors sometimes are doing the very worst things.  How often have you watched the news and seen a criminal of some type or variety get caught, and there's always someone there saying how they thought that person was the nicest person in the world, and how could they ever do something like that?

Now, one of the points that gets talked about a lot today is the whole idea of self-esteem.  Supposedly, if we tell our kids that they are good for a long enough period of time, they should start to believe it, and that natural goodness should then sprout forth, and they should feel good about themselves.  And yet, I've seen it happen way too frequently, that the "good" kid ends up doing something that is wrong (and that they know is wrong), and suddenly they seem to be crushed.  How could I do such a thing?  I must be a horrible person.  I can't claim to be a good person since I did that.

Tomorrow I plan to write about a more realistic view that we should take of ourselves, and how, if we take that more realistic view, it actually helps us to see ourselves in a more positive light.  But I hope this short post gets your mind kicking along again, and gives you a little bit of a sense of anticipation to share some thoughts on the subject.