I was amused to find a little bundle of booklets in my mail today at work. It was about half a dozen copies of a 39-page “novel” called …And God Created Love, by “Aytekin Kurtaran.” (A 143-page version is available on request.)

I resisted the temptation to read it through but, flipping through the pages, I found it to be the story of a “handsome youth” named Aytekin Kurtaran, and how he (with his beautiful lover), inspired by the true God, overcome all the evil powers that are making war, and establish a worldwide government and a worldwide religion, based on love. The author’s native language seems to be German. I can’t testify to the quality of the German prose, but the English translation is pretty rusty.

Apparently Mr. Kurtaran is confident that if he sends out copies to people all over the world, the simple logic of his program will convince everyone to visit his website (not much going on there) and join his campaign for world government and religious reform.

I’m a little embarrassed to speak so slightingly of the fellow. I’m guessing he’s extremely sincere. Perhaps he thinks his idea (one world government, one world religion) has never occurred to anyone before. Perhaps he imagines that, once we read his story, we’ll all slap our foreheads, say “D’oh!” and sign on.

What Mr. Kurtaran doesn’t understand is that his idea is not new. Far from being fresh and novel, it’s been done to death—lots of people’s deaths. Again and again, highminded and noble efforts to unify mankind in love (or something like love) end up in acres of bloody corpses.

There are few things so fearsome as a lover of mankind who just can’t persuade everyone to get with the program.

What Mr. Kurtaran doesn’t understand is that there’s something wrong with people. People are not good (but deluded), merely awaiting someone to tell them, “Love your neighbor and unite!” People are bad (and deluded). They need radical change.

If Mr. Kurtaran could take all human evil upon himself, be put to death, and rise from the dead, he might have a shot.

But even then, it wouldn’t happen as quickly as he hopes.

I had an e-mail at work from Dr. John Eidsmoe yesterday. He was looking for the documentary source of a quotation from Luther that most of us have read more than once (I first saw it in Francis Schaeffer’s work):

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the Word of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Him. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle front besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”

John couldn’t find it, and he thought maybe I could help (not as hopeful a thought as he imagined). Still, I attacked our complete edition of Luther and its index, and found precisely nothing.

So I went online, and finally found this interesting discussion.

There’s a lot of back-and-forth in comments, but the upshot seems to be that the quotation doesn’t actually come from Luther (though he said something different on the same lines), but from a 19th Century novel called Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family, by Elizabeth Rundle Charles. Continue reading Friday blather →

An essay I wrote recently, called “Never an Unfree Man,” about Viking Norway and the (possible) roots of Free Lutheranism (the brand to which I adhere), has been posted online by my publisher, here.

In other news, Nordskog reports that they’ve ordered a second printing of West Oversea.

(I’ve made a running joke in this blog of referring to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) as The Very Large Lutheran Church Body That Shall Remain Nameless (TVLLCBTSRN). In view of recent events, I’m going to name names in this post. In the future, who knows?)

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s decision, this past week, to bless same-sex sexual relationships, and to allow open homosexuals (if monogamous) to serve as clergy, will, I’m sure, lead to a perceptible (possibly dramatic) exodus of conservative churches and individuals from the denomination. I approve of this, and encourage it.

Still, I can already hear the accusations of the ELCA liberals and homosexual activists—“This isn’t about truth! It’s about hate! You people just can’t get past your homophobia!”

And in a sense, I understand the criticism. One might reasonably ask, “Why now? Has this problem come up all of a sudden (like the unpredicted tornado that knocked the cross off the steeple of Central Lutheran Church, a convention venue, during deliberations)? Why strain out this particular camel, when you’ve swallowed so many camels already?” Continue reading I left the ELCA before leaving the ELCA was cool →

Another good day writing, thank you for asking. It was more “one step at a time” composition, finding myself often in the situation where I had no idea what the characters would be doing next. So I asked myself, “Well, what’s the emotional reaction? How does the other person respond? Do they stand up or sit down, or just scratch themselves?” And one thing led to another, and I ended up putting down 1,500 words, and ended with a line that (it seemed to me) not only capped the last scene perfectly, but opened up possibilities for later plot points.



Ori asked about my statements on Pietism and legalism on Monday. I’ve actually written about this before, but I’m pretty sure it was back on the old blog site, so I’ll try to re-cap the thing again here.

One element of social change that strongly affected the tumultuous 18th and 19th Centuries was the rise of Pietism. It’s difficult for us, with the preconceptions we’ve absorbed all our lives, to understand what profound changes Pietism wrought. Continue reading Let’s have another cup of coffee, and let’s have another piece of Pietism →