Leaving family reflection

A letter from a faithful family in reaction to the ELCIC Sexuality Study........

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Faithful family leaves ELCIC

October 19, 2009

Hi, My name is James R. Fiebelkorn.

I along with my wife and two daughters (ages 7 and 4) recently left the St. Paul Lutheran Church in Steinbach, Manitoba (ELCIC) which I attended since birth and has been the church of both my mother and fathers family for over 100 years. This move was difficult but the uncertainty of the ELCIC and a responsibility for the Christian education of my children required this change. We are still Lutheran but we have changed our membership to the LCC. We believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God and can not entertain any other view or understanding. Your website in a large part assisted us in our decision to make a change as it provided resources and information that was not otherwise available or known. For this I am thankful.

Although we have left the ELCIC it does not change our concern for the church and so I am writing to you with my interpretation of what I read in the ELCIC Study of Human Sexuality. The closing analogy that I used was one I heard in a presentation given by your past president. "The particular analogy is the comparison of the present questioning of divine authority to that of the serpent doing so with Eve in the garden of Eden."

My first impressions of this study is that it is not a balanced discussion and that it seeks to outline a case for the affirmative in terms of the acceptance of "same sin blessing" rather than to have a balanced discussion. I found some of text in session 6 to be all telling.

This is a direct quote from the session 6 documentation from the ELCIC website. we do not live in a world of ideals; we live in a world of realities. And one of the realities of our world is that people with other-than heterosexual orientation exist. Biblical writers were probably unaware of this fact, or at least did not have the understanding that we do today about the complexity of human sexuality. Thus we need to make room for a different appraisal of same-sex sexual activity in the church today. We ought to accept that ethical deliberation in the realm of sexuality can be ambiguous. Indeed, our call to love and accept each other as sinners forgiven by God, combined with our sense of mission to extend God's love towards all people, compels us to take steps toward affirming and supporting people in same-sex relationships. If the above quote is held to be true, and if as a church the Bible is accepted as the inerrant word of God Then it follows that according to the writer of the study, God was apparently un-aware of the existence of other than hetero-sexual orientation. Therefore, if the writers view is that our creator was unaware of this, the only logical conclusion, is that this activity could only have been conceived by the some power other than God whom we know to be that old serpent the devil himself. If that is the case, rest assured God was aware of what his enemy was up to.

These issues that the ELCIC feels compelled to discuss really comes down to the answering the question. "Do I accept the Holy Bible as the inerrant word of God? I got to hand it to the old Adam on this one, it is like a return to the Garden of Eden when the serpent uttered those words to Eve. "Did God really say that? This is the real issue at hand. Once this fundamental belief has been shattered, every other taboo since the beginning of time is now open to re-evaluation. Where will this road end? Or is it to the end of the road that this quest will lead?

My understanding is that God forgives the sinner who recognizes that they have sinned. God rejoices when a sinner repents of their sins. The key here is that repentance is part of the equation. We all sin and to God all sin is the same. How can there be forgiveness if a sin is no longer recognized or defined as a sin? How can there be forgiveness when the church elects to bless a sin?

May God's Grace and strength be with you as you continue to fight for his word.