The Ramblings of Weesatch Joe

I Don’t Want Forgiveness! That might sound like a strange sentence coming from a pastor. After all, my very vocation is grounded in forgiveness. I preach it, teach it, and deliver it in word and sacrament. It’s actually my favorite part of my job, telling a soul, struggling with guilt and shame, that they are forgiven of all of their sins by Jesus. I love to deliver the goods, because I receive that promise and assurance myself. If I had to pick a favorite Bible verse – just one! – I would chose Romans 8:1, “There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.” While that doesn’t use the word forgiveness, forgiveness is exactly what it speaks of: God not holding my sins against me because of Christ. Today, I’m not talking about the world of sins, the Pauline Epistles, or the cross of Jesus. Today, I’m talking about student debt. Hello. My name is Jon. [“Hi, Jon!”] And I am a student debt holder.  I completed my undergrad in the summer of 1996 debt free, graduating with a BA ...

In her August 16, 2022 article in The Atlantic, titled “The Soft Closing of the Pandemic,” [1] author Katherine J. Wu suggests that, for all intents and purposes, the “pandemic” part of Covid-19 has come to its conclusion . Thanks to the newly revised and down-sized CDC guidelines, we can mostly do away with the pandemic-centric behaviors we have had to wrestle with (to a greater or lesser degree) for the last two-plus years. The article suggests that words like mask, mandate, and mitigation, will be joined by a fourth M-word: memory. The guidelines “might give the impression that this fall could feel a lot like the ones we had in the Before Times,” she writes. In other words, things are, for better or worse, mostly back to “normal.” I understand what she is saying. In many parts of the country, the pandemic has already had a soft closing. I’m in Texas, and outside the major cities like Austin, masks, like man-buns, are scarcely seen. In my community, the pandemic has been slowly diss...

My community is wrestling with the issue of LGBTQ+ books (and, I presume, other literature) in the public library. Simply: are books that promote, support, and celebrate such “alternative” lifestyle, sexual “freedom” and “choice” acceptable to the community and library patrons?  By vocation, I am a Christian pastor in a theologically and doctrinally conservative church body and parish. I also hold the vocation of community citizen, generally conservative and generally libertarian in my opinion and approach. This is my personal reflection, not from my Office on behalf of either the parish or denomination.  Those who support the inclusion of LGBTQ+ books argue that they are protected by the 1st Amendment, this is a Freedom of Speech issue, the Supreme Court determined that homosexual marriage is legal and thus normalizing it across society, and that as a community’s public library, it should not restrict a free exchange of ideas – even those ideas that one might disagree wit...