Not OK, for You, Man

Yesterday produced various reports of a domestic incident in Darien, CT.  According to police, a family fight ensued between CBS news personalities Robert and Ashley Morrison.  Ashley’s mother called the police to report the incident.  The police found red marks on Ashley’s neck and arrested her husband for felony strangulation.

Here is Robert’s mug shot:



While the various reports all mention that upon arrival the police found Robert’s face bloodied, not a single word is mentioned in any of the news reports concerning how this occurred.

How did Robert receive these injuries?

In the elevated family fracas, who first acted with violence against the other?

How can it be that with two people suffering injuries that only one is charged with violence?

In the film, Joe Somebody, Joe and his girlfriend, Meg, have an argument where she gives him an ultimatum regarding his plan to do something very stupid and wrong.  He has planned and prepared for a fight with a bully who previously assaulted him and humiliated him.  She presents the ultimatum of a choice between keeping the appointment for the fight or keeping her.  He sadly says that he cannot make that choice and walks away.

After facing the bully and declining to fight him, Joe comes to Meg to share the news of his choice.  She does not listen, but reacts angrily and violently.  She first gives a two-fisted and forceful thrust to Joe’s chest.  Then she punches toward his face, which he blocks.  He explains how important she is to him and she calms down and all is wonderful.



How many times is this sort of scene portrayed in the movies?  How many times is this encountered in real life?

How many people will be inclined to call the police upon seeing a woman striking a man?  If a man calls the police saying that his wife is pushing him around and hitting him, will they even respond to the call?  If they do, will they arrest the woman or will they bring a straightjacket for the man and take him for a psych evaluation?

How many wives hit their husbands and when confronted act as though they did nothing wrong?

Admittedly, in many cases it is like a flea attacking a dog.  Yet even the tiniest flea can drive a dog crazy.

I have witnessed women acting violently toward men on many occasions, even as they walked down the street or in a shopping mall or parking lot.  I have never seen the police called unless the man responded in similar manner.  In fact, I’ve never seen people intervene in any way unless the man became forceful.  This is especially true in less affluent areas.

How is it that a woman can be abusive to a man without a strong likelihood of being held accountable, but if a person acts abusively to a horse the person is very likely to be charged with a crime?

What actually transpired in the Morrison household is not known publicly.  Yet the reporting certainly reflects this inequitable perception in society.  Moreover, the reported assumptions of the police also seem to reflect this injustice.  The police responded to a reported incident.  Upon their arrival at the home they find two people with injuries.  The man is arrested and charged with multiple crimes.  The woman is presumed to be an innocent victim.

Maybe the police were correct.

Certainly Robert’s love for his wife should have restrained him from acting as he did, whether or not he was provoked by his wife or even if she bloodied his face.  Certainly he should have found a non-violent way to address whatever issues existed between them, even if this meant leaving the issue alone until they both could confront one another calmly and rationally.

And from a Christian perspective, the responsibility does fall upon the husband to act as the head of his family. This means that he will be the one to bear the injustice and unfairness of the situation.  He will be the one to step back and wait patiently for his wife and family to become calm again.  The Lord has placed this upon the man.  He is to be the stronger one who bears all things in love, dealing with the issues from the strength that the Lord gives.

It is amazing how often extremely heated arguments if viewed in retrospect are perceived as arising from very insignificant issues.  Pride and an unwillingness to bear what is perceived to be unfair are usually the main problems.

     And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.
(1 Peter 4:8)

Agape kalupsei plethos hamartion. (1 Peter 4:8)

Agape
veils
fullness
of lacking of share in/missed marks

Husband and wife, sharing together in Agape, see not the missed marks of the other, perceive not the short comings of the other, count not any lacking of sharing in the union with the other, for all that they perceive is the Agape.  It is as though the bridal veil is again covering the bride’s face so that she sees her husband through the veil and he sees her through the veil.  Both are viewed with the perfection of the love that binds them together.

When this veil is removed and cast aside or stored away someplace, then they see each other very differently.  Then every fault, every failure, ever shortcoming is viewed and accounted.

In Joe Somebody, when Joe stops Meg from hitting him and pressed beyond her anger to express his love for her, he tells her: “You're what I want.  I don't think there's anything about you that I don't like.”  She responds: “My ears aren't perfectly even.”  Joe responds: “I like that.”

Joe seems not even to have noticed that she tried to hurt him.  He counts no insult from her ridiculous minimization of her faults with the vain remark about her ears.  He sees only the beautiful perfection of his love for her.

This is the way with Agape.  It is a one-sided love.  Agape is of God.  Thus it covers all to whom He gives it so that they begin to see through God’s love for us, which covers all imperfection with God’s perfect love.  This is more than an emotional attachment or infatuation. For those to whom God’s love is poured out in their baptism, God’s love covers them and fills them completely so that their view of the world is changed.  This is because they themselves are changed.

The beginnings of this are experienced even now for those who are baptized into Christ.  In the resurrection they shall experience this in its fullness everlastingly.

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Terrible Grief

Grief can be truly terrible, even terrifying.

The Newtown tragedy continues to be prevalent in the news and in the minds of all who hear it.

Yesterday as I was taking care of things that needed to be done, I realized that I am affected even more powerfully than I realized by this event, or rather, by the reminder of how vulnerable I am.

My own death is not very frightening to me contrasted to the devastation that I would face upon the loss of my wife.  If someone broke into the government school where she works and ripped her out of my life through a murderous and senseless act, I would have nothing left in this world.  I would be bereft of the only worldly possession of real value to me, save one.

There is one worldly possession that is even greater for me than my wife.  It is the one possession that would preserve my sanity and hope.  It is my knowledge of God’s love to me that is poured out freely through His means of grace.

My wife and I have talked many times about this.  We both share the great concern that if anything happened to the other, we would be left with no one locally with whom we could gather to receive the unadulterated Sacrament of forgiveness and life.  Whichever of us survived the other would have to move, or settle for periodic travel to our friends who likewise gather to the pure Word and Sacrament.

This very likely sounds foreign to most who read this.  We live in a city with nine LC-MS and one WELS congregations, and yet we have no place where we can safely worship.  This is because we believe that to join with congregations who pledge themselves to compromised worship and practice and definition of communion/fellowship is to have our souls raped and molested.  We believe that we need to receive only the absolutely pure means of grace.  Otherwise we will be filled with the world’s pollution that corrupts and kills.

Thus our marriage and union is absolutely vital to us.  We truly need each other and we do not know how to live without each other.

Again, I read yet another account of the Newtown tragedy: Investigators visit Conn. gun shops and ranges as townspeople seek comfort in faith.  This account made clear a fact that I suspected to be the case. Adam Lanza was the child of a broken marriage.  He was a young man bearing the scars of his parents’ divorce.

We have degenerated into a society where this is counted as the norm.  Great efforts have been exerted to reeducate and retrain the people to consider divorce as an acceptable and even a normal occurrence.  Today one is more likely to encounter children who have experienced the divorce of their parents, than children whose parents remained steadfastly together for as long as they both should live.

Both I and my wife have been blessed to know marriage as a lifetime contract.  Our parents remained together until our fathers died.  Both of us knew that our parents would be home for us.  They were our refuge in the Lord.  We knew that when Daddy left the house that he would gladly and lovingly return home again.  We knew that Mommy would be there for us, too.  No matter how badly an argument raged, we knew that forgiveness and reconciliation would prevail in the end.  This we knew.  This we believed.  This was factual.  The foundation stone of our security, the marriage of our parents that the Lord had instituted and blessed, would stand for us.  We knew the meaning of home.  This is an extension of knowing the everlasting home that God has for us.

But we both have friends who were not so blessed.  We even have family members who have abandoned this so that they divorced.  They broke their contract with each other.  They broke the confidence of their children. And we have seen the effects and affects upon all who have suffered this.

Our society tries to minimize this.  But we continue to see the effects.  We see the confusion of identity.  We see the increase of instability.  We hear the cries of loneliness.  We observe the suicides.  We mourn the many aborted children.  We tremble at the random acts of violence.

Is there any advantage to closing our eyes to what we see and our ears to what we hear?  Is there any real benefit to giving our blessing to the destruction caused by divorce?

How many churches and pastors today really count divorce for what it is?  How many actually still preach divorce as sin from which people need to be saved?  How many still count this as a cause for repentance?  How many still urge forgiveness as the only answer?

How many children of divorces are told that they need to accept this horrible molestation and rape as OK and to get over it?  How can such children be confident of anything when this is what they are told?  How can they know what to trust as true and reliable?  How are they to know love as more than a fickle emotion, as a fact that does not fail?

This is why we dare not allow the means of grace also to be compromised.  This is why we dare not call anything but the gathering to the pure means of grace as God’s Church on earth, His holy family.  For if we allow the worship, the communion, the means of our certainty to be compromised, we have nothing in which to trust.

For those whose parents turn to divorce for their answer to their failures and problems, God’s Church remains true.  Where those called together by the Holy Spirit continue in the purity of the Word and Sacraments, there they may rest securely without doubt or fear.  There God is truly present for them.  There the marriage of God with His bride is manifest for all to observe.  His children rejoice in their security.  This is the way when the Gospel is preached purely and the Sacraments are administered as they have been ordained.  This is the way when the worship reflects this in its entirety.

Is this not comforting news?  God does not believe in divorce, except with regard to our sin.  He says that He divorces us from our sin so that we may be united with Him in His Church.  He has given us Baptism as the means by which we are regenerated or reborn into His family.  He has given His Holy Supper to nourish us and keep us alive in His family through the one true faith. All of this is His gift, His gracious doing for us, as our loving Father.  Through this He causes us to know ourselves as He knows us, as His beloved children.  He never forsakes His children.  He never leaves them to find their own way.  For this reason He demands that His pastors never compromise the Word and the life of the holy family, which life we know as worship and communion.

All other families can be broken.  But God’s family is forever.  People do fall away and forget God’s everlasting promises and love, but God does not forget.  People do look elsewhere and become lost, but God continues to call each one through the continuing existence and life of His Church on earth.  Each and every living person is free to return, even more than free, but continually called by our Heavenly Father.  His bride, His family, stands ready to receive each one eagerly.  The Lord declares that the heavenly hosts rejoice when even one sinner is caused to repent and to return home.

This blessed Advent season beckons to us all to hear this and to believe it.  The Christmas season teaches us how far the Lord is willing to go to call us back again to His loving care.  The Epiphany season teaches us how far the call of His Gospel reaches.  Each season of the Church year serves us in these ways.

We are not left alone.  We have not been abandoned.  We are not orphans without hope of reconciliation and reunion with our everlasting family.  Our God comes for us.  He calls to us.  He gives Himself for us.  Like with the shepherds out in the fields with their flocks that very special night, God sends His message through angels, the pastors and the saints who abide in Him and His communion, to call us to respond, saying like the shepherds, “Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.”

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12/12/12

     In our household this unique alignment of repeating numbers was especially significant. While the rarity of this occurrence is obvious to all, being the last calendar date with such repeating digits for this millennium, for us it also is our twentieth anniversary of our wedding. Thus it is not only significant as it draws special attention to the twelves of 12/12/12, but it also embodies the twenty for the fulfillment of our twentieth year together as one in the Lord, 12/12/2012.

      We both included this in our little cards to each other, but my wife designed a graphic that captures the essence of the symbolism beautifully.

     In our discussions throughout that evening, in addition to giving thanks to God for His gift of bringing us together to live as husband and wife, and especially His merciful and continual intervention to keep us from destroying this union so that we are brought together again and again in His love through His never-ending forgiveness, we also noted how this special choice of dates is one that we chose according to what He worked for us as we attempted to find a date when all of our family and friends could be with us on the day of our wedding. In this we acknowledged that we had no idea that He was giving to us also this special date on which our twentieth year of marriage would be marked perfectly by the numerical notation of 12-12-2012.

      This stands as a reminder of how the Lord always works on our behalf even without our awareness, acknowledgment, or even asking. It is a wonderful blessing that the Lord Jesus has given us a common prayer among us where by His command we do acknowledge all things and receive them with thanks, as we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

      Luther gives a wonderful explanation to this petition:

Give us this day our daily bread.   What does this mean?—Answer.      God gives daily bread, even without our prayer, to all wicked men; but we pray in this petition that He would lead us to know it, and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.

What is meant by daily bread?—Answer.      Everything that belongs to the support and wants of the body, such as meat, drink, clothing, shoes, house, homestead, field, cattle, money, goods, a pious spouse, pious children, pious servants, pious and faithful magistrates, good government, good weather, peace, health, discipline, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.

+ + +        If we are willing to see it, the Lord makes His goodness and mercy manifest in everything in our lives, even in something as seemingly tiny as a grouping of repeating numbers. Certainly He does so in our marriages that demonstrate to us His holy union to His bride the Church, and in the manifold blessings poured out to us, the children of that union, through the means of grace administered to us within His everlasting household and especially at His Table. Through this we observe in the clearest way possible how truly good our Father and God is.

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