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St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church Search Web Site Latest News: Rally Sunday is September 12th, come join us to welcome all the kids back to Sunday School! Service is 8:00 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. starting Sept. 12th. |
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Pastor's Thoughts... Cynicism is defined as distrust of the integrity of professed motives of other people and it seems to be the hallmark of this era. It is the result of frustration and disillusionment with institutions, organizations and authorities, especially where there have been expectations. And I have a theory about why. The era after WWII was on of optimism, growth and opportunity. It seemed our country was unstoppable. From the time of the Enlightenment, western people believed that with the right tools, information and hard work poverty, injustice, illness, everything negative could be "cured". Certainly it was the underlying force behind the movements of the sixties and seventies. Churches either got into the act or retreated into absolutes. We humans thought we could solve all the world's problems. We were wrong. The failure of dreams grew roots of cynicism. And now we destroy rather than build. We unmake rather than make. We have become uncompassionate and disconnected. In the Enlightenment, the church lost a foundational truth: the human condition is to live in Sin. That is why God came into the world as Jesus the Christ to show us God's gracious forgiveness so that we would not be immobilized by our sins, so that we could love the world even in its brokenness. Rather than cynics, we Christians need to be believers, trusters not in the world's ability to fix its problems but in God's ability to love us in spite of them. Let the cynicism end...begin again to make God your foundation. Blessings, Pastor Penni |