Leave My Birthday Alone!
The other day in pursuing one of the many inconsequential errands that mark my peregrination through life, I found myself in the entrails of a large downtown office building.
I passed an open door. Voices were coming from inside, and I looked in and saw a small office with a single desk surrounded by bookcases. A dignified-looking woman behind the desk was explaining a legal-looking paper to a woman in front of the desk.
I glanced at the door to discover the nature of this apparently small business and was immediately stopped. The curious legend on the door read: SHARE-YOUR-BIRTHDAY FOUNDATION.
Share my birthday? I thought. Not on your life!
If I can’t have the exclusive use of my own birthday, what’s left? I’m already sharing most holidays and anniversaries with someone. Independence Day and Thanksgiving I share with the rest of America. I share Christmas with a large part of the Western world.
Father’s Day I share with heaven only knows how many thousands of fathers.
Our wedding anniversary I share with my wife—or, to put it more precisely, her wedding anniversary my wife shares with me.
And increasingly, I’m having to share National Tree Frog Day (April 21, in case it has escaped your attention).
So it seems a little unreasonable to ask that I share my birthday.
Picture, if you will, a modest birthday cake inscribed “Happy Birthday Eutychus V,” surrounded by a throng of strangers.
Who knows—the occasion might grow into a national holiday. I can see it now. Bunting decorates each lamp post on the street, and a two-hundred-foot banner proclaims “Eutychus V’s Birthday.” Down the street moves a parade led by sixty shapely baton-twirlers in tights. Following them are bands in blue and maroon and gold with instruments glittering in the sun. Interspersed with the bands are floats commemorating some of the exciting events of my life. Here comes a float picturing my humble beginnings in the maternity ward of St. Mary’s Hospital. And here’s one commemorating my two years in the third grade.
And there I am, sitting alone at home, watching it all on television while my wife shops the special Eutychus Birthday Sales.
Share my birthday indeed!
Jesus once said, “You must be born again.” Now that’s a birthday worth sharing. As a matter of fact, it’s a birthday that improves with sharing.
EUTYCHUS V
MORE ON MISSOURI
Thanks for the news coverage of doctrinal controversy at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis (“Charges Lodged: Seminary on the Spot,” Sept. 29). And a special vote of thanks for the editorial sympathetic to Dr. J. A. O. Preus’s efforts to halt the withering of biblical authority within that institution (“Missouri: Peace in Our Time?,” Sept. 29).
After 125 years of denominational solidarity and common confession of faith, Missouri Synod Lutherans can only be saddened by the recent inroads of liberalism and resulting disunity. But God works in mysterious ways. While being blessed with a faithfulness to the Scriptures, the denomination has tended to be isolationist and unsympathetic to the needs of evangelical Christians in other denominations. Hopefully as Missouri discovers enemies from within it may also discover new friends without. Missouri has long described its theology in terms of the formal and material principles, namely, that the Scriptures are the Word of God and the only norm for Christian doctrine, and that the central core and essence of that Christian doctrine is justification by faith alone, the article by which the church stands or falls, or in other words, the gospel message of salvation through the atonement of Jesus Christ. As Missouri struggles with its own problems it may come to find a new appreciation for other Christians who are also sincerely committed to these basic principles. I am personally grateful that your magazine has encouraged and supported the true Christian faith which is Christ-centered and biblically revealed. Only when Christians meet on this common ground will they be able to discover and grow in true church fellowship and unity.
Faith Lutheran Church
G. RENTZ
Courtenay, British Columbia
Regarding the news item “A ‘Garbage’ Problem?” (Oct. 13), may I complain about the words of Dr. Tietjen—“garbage in, garbage out”? We have known for a long time that a good housecleaning needed to be done, but until Dr. Preus was elected president of Missouri Synod, we lacked the leadership that was necessary for such action.
HELEN I. SCHMELING
Fort Wayne, Ind.
Please permit me to add a few words of explanation to [Miss Forbes’s] story that resulted from our recent enjoyable chat (News, “Interview With Preus,” Oct. 27). I certainly do not want to imply that “the suggestion of Oswald Hoffmann for president is ridiculous.” The method—not the individual—is ridiculous in the way in which a group of kingmakers had gotten together, without following the procedures outlined in the bylaws of Synod, while Dr. Hoffmann was out of the country. I’m sure Dr. Hoffmann did not give his approval to this method. We have a proper method for election of officers that both I and Dr. Hoffmann respect.
One other comment concerning my response to [her] question on grass-roots support. Somehow the numbers became reversed—about 99 per cent of the laity and 70 per cent of the clergy favor remaining faithful to the doctrines cherished by our Synod for 125 years.
J. A. O. PREUS
President
The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod
St. Louis, Mo.
SILENT DISSENSION
Your news article on the convention of the American Lutheran Church gave the impression that there was “No Reason to Kick” (Oct. 27). I find a growing number of ALC people are becoming disturbed at the direction the ALC is taking. As one lady remarked, “It sounded more like a political convention than a church convention.” From the news releases it sounded like spiritual matters were suppressed at the convention. Maybe little complaint was heard at the convention, but it is different among some ALC people.
RICHARD GERSKVAL
Redeemer Lutheran Church
Menahga, Minn.
A LARGER STRUCTURE
A news item (Religion in Transit, Sept. 29) indicates that Bob Jones University is constructing a 7,000-seat auditorium, “believed to be the largest structure in the United States used for non-arena purposes.” You may be interested to learn that the Tabernacle erected in 1867 in Salt Lake City by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and used exclusively for “non-arena purposes,” has a seating capacity of over 8,000. This building has been in constant use since its erection over a century ago.
I enjoy reading CHRISTIANITY TODAY, and look forward to each issue.
ROBERT J. MATTHEWS
Brigham Young University
Provo, Utah
INADEQUATE SEX APPEAL?
That 40 per cent of the respondents to Eutychus V’s question “What would I do if I were editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY” were women may be surprising. That you would attribute this result to your “sex appeal” is shocking (“2,000 Years Behind Times,” Aug. 25). Sex appeal does not adequately account for the magnitude of the women’s response to your question. A much more likely explanation may be the composition of your magazine’s readership.
Your question was, I assume, asked in all seriousness. To dismiss 40 per cent of the responses as being motivated by “sex appeal” is an insult to the women who wrote them. These women responded to a thought-provoking question with their intellects, not their alleged susceptibility to your “sex appeal.” Perhaps even “a magazine that’s trying to be 2,000 years behind the times” should acknowledge that women possess intellects as well as sexual feelings.
DAVID GRAHAM WATT
Barrigada, Guam
EDITORIAL INFLUENCE?
I wish to take exception to what appears to me the editor’s using CHRISTIANITY TODAY for the purpose of influencing its readers to vote for Mr. Nixon (Editor’s Note, Oct. 27). To be sure, he urged all of us readers to vote, but by his asserting “I will cast a vote for Mr. Nixon” he has stepped beyond the bounds of propriety dictated by the nature of this magazine. It seems to me that discretion would have led Dr. Lindsell to have omitted making public via CHRISTIANITY TODAY his choice. On the other hand, I would hope that he has contributed time and money to reelecting his candidate as a private citizen. Have not evangelicals long criticized the NCC for its obvious political efforts in the past?
ROBERT H. COUNTESS
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Tennessee State University
Nashville, Tenn.
INFIELD PLAY
I write in connection with the report of the recent meeting of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches in Utrecht (“WCC Central Committee: Fellowship Adrift,” Sept. 15). Specifically, I refer to the unfortunate statement which reads as follows: “The Dutch Council of Churches and other member groups have left the fold.” If this particular passage is meant to imply that the Dutch Council of Churches has left the WCC, then this statement is quite incorrect.…
As far as the admittedly controversial WCC program to combat racism is concerned, this has been widely and sometimes vehemently discussed here in the Netherlands. But no church has withdrawn either from the Dutch Council of Churches or from the WCC on that or any other account; the same goes also for the Dutch Council of Churches itself.
Though it is quite true that the Synod of the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland declined as a body to participate officially in the controversial anti-racism program of the WCC, it is also true that a strong action group within these churches has indeed already made a substantial contribution towards it. It is also widely known in the Netherlands—though not so widely outside it—that Her Majesty Queen Juliana, Queen of the Netherlands, has made a personal contribution to the WCC anti-racism program.
Utrecht, Holland
PETER STAPLES
FROM SIX TO THIRTY-SIX
If I do not always read your magazine with enthusiasm, I seldom read it with the disgust occasioned by your editorial “On Leaving It to Hanoi” (Oct. 13). You conjure up a string of half-truths and downright untruths that serve only to confuse the clear moral choice between the two presidential candidates on the issue of Viet Nam, ignoring completely the immorality of our present position.
You say, “There is no reason why an agreement in Viet Nam could not have been reached long ago were it not for Hanoi’s intransigence,” ignoring the fact that it was the United States that blocked free elections in Viet Nam in 1954 because President Eisenhower believed that Ho Chi Minh would win at least 80 per cent of the popular vote.… You say, “There is no evidence to support the contention that unilateral withdrawal would bring home the POWs,” ignoring the fact that the French POWs were returned within ninety days of France’s unilateral withdrawal and that Hanoi has offered a pro rata release based on the percentage of troops withdrawn. You say that President Nixon “advocates complete withdrawal as soon as Saigon can defend itself,” ignoring that Nixon has never pledged complete withdrawal from Southeast Asia, and that we are not presently defending “Saigon” but a corrupt military dictatorship that deals in heroin, prison for the opposition-party candidates, and the closing of newspapers that do not echo the government line. You say, “Neither position is free from moral ambiguity,” ignoring the fact that there is absolutely no ambiguity about the hundreds of lives our bombs blot out each week.… You claim to want to bring theology into subjection to the Word. Do you not see the hypocrisy of claiming to follow the Jesus of the Word on page six and rationalizing our bombings on page thirty-six?
Tallahassee, Fla.
DAVID L. BARR
