Let Us Not Be Beastly

Dear Readers,

With a modestly successful string of slubberish and solecistic posts, scrawling for BJS since its start in 2008, it’s time for me to stow my inkwell. I told my wife a while back that I was going to cut back on my volunteer activities – oddly, she seemed somewhat-less-than-swayed. So it really is true Cheryl! I’ve got other vocations that need tending, especially those of husband, dad, grandpa, and son. Plus, there’s that other challenge of a full-time job that I haven’t managed to shake just yet.

BJS Brothers
Scott with former BJS writer Jim Pierce on the left and BJS founder Pastor Tim Rossow on the right in Seattle in 2008.

I’m grateful I’ve had the opportunity to pen for BJS. And I’m thankful for all of the fellow confessional Lutherans I’ve met along the way, including you! I’ll always be digging deeper, and there’ll still be apologetic projects in my future, but mostly I’d like to spend more time with my family and rest a bit more, especially resting in Christ.

I’ve been involved in one crazy form of apologetics or another for over twenty years, all of which have been rewarding, but also time-consuming and at times, mentally consuming. Perhaps you’re a little like me and occasionally become discouraged at what’s going on around us. Don’t lose heart! Two days after the presentation of the Augsburg Confession Luther wrote the following to his worrisome friend, Philip Melanchthon:

With all my heart I hate those cares by which you state that you are consumed.
They rule your heart, not on account of the greatness of the cause but by reason of the greatness of your unbelief. The same cause existed in the time of John Hus and many others, and they had a harder time of it than we do. Great though our cause is, its Author and Champion is also great, for the cause is not ours. Why, then, are you constantly tormenting yourself? If our cause is false, let us recant. But if it is true, why should we make Him a liar who has given us such great promises and who commands us to be confident and undismayed? “Cast thy burden upon the Lord,” he says. “The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him!” Does he speak like this for nothing, or to beasts?

Let us not be beastly, but rather trust in Christ. “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).

Stay confessional my friends. God’s grace be with you, as hitherto, and increasingly. Amen.

 

Your eternal debtor in Christ,

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Scott Diekmann

 

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