LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1965, Page 38

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

38 DOCTRINAL-DEVOTIONAL ESSAYS

ent institution, a different agency, a different tool that
will do a better job.

We ask God to help us strengthen the ever increas-
ing number of Lutheran high schools that are coming
into existence. The church needs an instrument by
which it can help its teen-agers stay close to Christ.
Why do we want these high schools? Because we want
to fill not only the head but the heart of the teen-ager.
We ask God to open the hands and the pocketbooks of
our people that they may be willing to share the heavy
financial burden of supporting the extension of our
system of high schools. These schools have become the
boot camp for many workers in the church. These
4 years of training under Lutheran teachers have been
the briefing session for many soldiers of Christ. Here
they receive the weapons with which they are going
into the battle with the world. They are not going to
fight the world with higher math nor with deeper
science. We want them to have all that. We want them
to have the knowledge of the latest discoveries of the
mind of man, but we want it all placed under the
cross, used in the service of the cross, and only for the
glory of the Crucified Love.

When a soldier is finished with his boot-camp train-
ing, the United States government does not tell him,
“Go out now and see where you can find a gun.” The
government supplies the gun. Can the church do less?
When my teen-agers approach adulthood, I want to
make sure that they have the weapons in their hands
to fight the kingdom of Satan. The Lutheran high
school has helped me put those weapons into their
hands. The Lutheran high school is the evidence that
the church has caught the spirit of the words of our
Lord: “Teach them to observe all things.”

Questions in a Scientific Age

Our teen-agers are deeply devoted to Christ, but as
they get out into the world, they often have their faith
shaken. The scientist whom they have met along life’s
road looks at the world from an altogether different
angle than they have been taught. In that moment
I want them to have the courage to ask questions.

In a scientific age this is the luxury we enjoy. In
an unscientific age nobody asks questions. Everybody
just gives answers. In our age we have the privilege
and the luxury of asking questions. We place into the
hand of our teen-ager five questions which he should
lay before the scientist who does not believe in God.

First question. “Since you do not believe in God,
tell me, who designed the universe?” AI] about us in
this convention hall we see the evidences of the work
of Thomas Edison. All this electrical equipment —
based on Thomas Edison’s inventions and discoveries.
How did he do it? God gave him the talent, and yet
Thomas Edison was an agnostic. An agnostic is simply
one who says, “I do not know.” Edison said, “I don’t
know whether there is a God. I will never know
whether there is a God. And above all, I don’t care
whether there is a God.” The light bulb was designed
by Edison, and the universe should have no designer?

If a man stepped in front of this pulpit and told
you that this microphone, this light bulb, these buttons
for the PA system were designed or invented by no
man, they just popped into existence, I know what you
would do. You would run to that telephone in a big
hurry, call a certain department at City Hall here in
Detroit and you would say, “There’s a dangerous man
standing in front of this pulpit. He is telling us that
the equipment in this hall was designed by nobody.
Everything just popped into existence by itself.” That’s
what you would do. And this certain department of
the Detroit administration would come and carefully
take care of that man through its men in white coats
and would put him in a place where he could harm
no one. But we have men like that running around
loose all over our nation, in colleges and universities,
in schools and high schools, who point to the heavens
and say, “Nobody made the universe. It just popped.”
We want our teen-agers to pin them down with the
question, “Since design is predicated on the concept of
a designer, who designed the universe?”

Second question. “Who created the energy by which
matter is activated?” Laws presuppose a lawgiver, and
so the laws of nature presuppose a giver of those laws.
Who is he? Who decided that spacemen 150 miles away
from the earth should still be able to orbit the earth and
not fly off into limitless space? Who decided that when
a baby is born its eyes should be in the front of its
head and not on top or on the back of its head? Who
decided that I should have only two legs when the
centipede has one hundred? I certainly could use them
at the rate people are asking me to run. You say,
“Laws without a lawgiver”? Well, I’ve heard about
Goldilocks, too.

Third question. “Whence came the first life cell?”
It is a scientific axiom that inorganic matter cannot
produce organic matter. A rock cannot reproduce itself,
neither can it produce a life cell. All I need is that
first nucleus, surrounded by protoplasm, and I have a
life cell. Tell me, whence came it after the aeons in
which this blob of earth cooled off? For the creation of
life we need God. Let’s say, since you are a theistic
evolutionist, that at this point God entered the picture
and created the first life cell, then I can let ’er roll
again. But I need God for that first life cell.

Fourth question. “Whence came the soul of man?”
By the time the millions of aeons have passed, I find
a creature who knows he can think. He says to him-
self, Cogito, ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. Here
finally in the whole process of evolution I have a crea-
ture with intelligence, a man with a soul. I ask the
scientist —and I have a right to ask this question,
since he says that he is a scientist, a man who knows —
Whence came this hope in the heart of man, that he
will live on beyond the portals of death? Whence
came the soul of man? You want me to believe that
the only thing that separates me from the trilobite, the
earliest form found as fossils in the Paleozoic rocks, is
time? Is there no designer of the mind of man, no