Being Lutheran

As part of my confirmation program at church there are two retreats a year, both of which are only for 1 weekend. We kind of separate ourselves and have work sessions on various topics. We also have fellowship time with one another. This time the topic for the weekend was Lutheran Doctrine and it was challenging, but in a good way. I am so glad that we were able to go on an actual retreat again this year. Last weekend was very thought provoking and I hope that I can continue to be inspired and not forget about it in a week or so. It was a very educational weekend. I learned that I love being challenged and going deeper into topics (okay I have actually known this for a while, but I still do enjoy it a lot). I learned that sometimes it is fun to be in the minority grouping, and sometimes it isn’t. I learned what it means to be Lutheran and more importantly what it means to me. I learned that sometimes when you are at the top of the mountain your view is clouded and you have to wait until you are at the bottom to be able to see the path clearly.

More on what I learned to be Lutheran, though, since after all that is what the weekend was all about. I already knew that it is very Lutheran to believe that God’s love is unconditional to everybody just as you are and no act of kindness can strengthen it while no act of ‘bad’ can weaken it. Though, it doesn’t mean that we should be bad, it just means that we are only human. In return we should spread the love and goodness to everyone else, yes everyone, no matter who they are. Even though it was challenging thinking about what it all means, especially with the multitude of contradictions, in some weird way I found it really comforting. Not just at the end, when we had untied the knot a little bit, but as we were untying it, it was where I found the comfort. Something about it, it’s hard to put my finger on, but I like the challenge and found it the best part of the sessions. Especially with the last session that we did with the difference of the theology of the glory and the theology of the cross. It is really interesting and I do know some friends in both groups, even though some aren’t religious and I just found that I liked thinking about the people and how they act compare to what we were talking about. I personally do want to follow the cross, but I find that there are plenty of times when I am just in the glory. However, I do really wish that we had gotten more conversations going, and I do realize that I might not have helped much in that, but it is important to have the back and forth when talking about stuff like this. This is all just food for thought.