# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1898_S32
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

32 Proceedings of the seventeenth convention

is being left undone, as a sin of omission, may for the time being still remain included in the Lord's Prayer of the congregation and the daily Lord's Prayer of the individual congregation members, is another question; there one can well, as one has patience with an individual Christian, have patience with a whole congregation. One must do a sister congregation the honor of treating her, even there, as a real sister, with whom one, as the circumstances warrant, also has sisterly patience, practices love, and demonstrates this love by helping to make things better there: that, where the members of the congregations come into contact with one another, the members of the stronger congregation instruct the members of the weaker congregation, which is still further behind in this matter, and let there be no lack of teaching, admonition, encouragement and direction; that synods too, which after all consist of sister congregations, admonish one another in this matter and again and again discuss how things ought to stand regarding church discipline in all orthodox congregations; that perhaps one also takes up a sister congregation somewhat more firmly, say through the visitor of the synod or through a committee which the sisters send to their sister, to work in quite a special way and with quite special earnestness toward the end that things may become better with her in this matter. This is, again, grounded in the commonality of the church life to which God has destined his congregation on earth.

Among the matters in respect of which Christian church discipline is to be exercised, when sins are committed in these matters, belong now, for example, sinful occupations. An occupation is sinful if through its practice either love of God or love of neighbor or both are unavoidably violated. To this belong all occupations which of themselves and by their nature offend either against love of God or against love of neighbor. The trades of sorcerers, soothsayers and fortune-tellers are such sinful trades, in which a person, if he lives by this trade at all, is continually in a sinful condition, in a continued running against the divine commandment: "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain." An adulterer, a brothel-keeper, a counterfeiter, a smuggler, a professional gambler are people who live in trades which of themselves already offend against love of neighbor, against the commandment: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." A Christian cannot therefore pursue such a business without making himself, in doing so, the object first of brotherly admonition and in the further course the object of God-willed church discipline. Faith is in the long run incompatible with these sins. A Christian also cannot take part in such trades without thereby sinning. Someone of whom one knows that he in such a trade