HAPPY REFORMATION DAY?

Martin Luther, author of the text of Christ lag in Todes Banden, and who, with Johann Walter, also wrote the melody (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My parents raised me as a Catholic. They did not teach me to celebrate the Protestant Reformation. In the public schools I learned to idolize and worship the works of men, not God. So after I read the The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine as a teenager (see THOMAS PAINE’S PROFESSION OF FAITH), for decades I gave little thought to Christianity or religion in general. So it is I read Happy Reformation Day 2013! by James Atticus Bowden wistfully. During the Protestant Reformation people focused intensely on the life to come. Because they understood the inevitably of death, many feared God more than man. Now too many of us just childishly fear losing our government benefits. We give no thought to death. To us God is a myth. There is only the present, the time that is now, and our lifelong tantrum for instant gratification.

Centuries ago. What was it like? We know mostly from the surviving scribblings of men and from the traditions our forebears passed onto us. Yet what little we have we too eagerly discard. We bury the struggles of the past in history books. Instead of reading what the great writers of the past wrote — works so thoughtful and worthy they have survived hundreds and even thousands of years — we read a few excerpts in history books purchased by politicians and sanitized by political appointees. Then, satisfied with our supposedly rigorous labors in learning, we idly grow flab — whiling away hour after hour in front of a colorful, high resolution screen.

Ignorant we came into this world, and blissfully ignorant we would remain.

Until the Second Coming, men, women, and children will die. The life will fade from our flesh. No matter how great or small, how much we loved or hated them, the passage of time will erase all trace of each man, woman, and child. Unless there is a God who loves us and cares for us, we have no hope. We have only an instant of beginning and a permanent end.

What was the Protestant Reformation about? Some think it was about Christians killing Christians, but these have never studied what the men who then lived wrote, the traces of past lives God left for us to see and know. What Martin Luther started was a much needed reform of the Christian faith. Did a schism form between Christians? Yes. Was there violence? Yes. But within the turmoil there was also genuine reform. There was even a Catholic Reformation (see also Counter-Reformation and Catholic Reformation).

In Happy Reformation Day 2013!, James Atticus Bowden quotes “On Christian Liberty” by Martin Luther.

Happy Reformation Day 2013! Wrote this on the right date, yesterday, but lost the electrons to space.

Love celebrating the Reformation. It means so much to Western Civilization – and the World, to America and me – and my family.

The historical start date is October 31, 1517. Frankly, that is just the date when Martin Luther lit the fuse on explosive ideas. The Reformation’s ideas were so powerful that the Reformation was going to happen – sooner or later. Like anti-Colonialism, it was going to happen because it has ascending ideas. Liberating, empowering, right ideas.

Recently, I downloaded many of Martin Luther’s works. Read “On Christian Liberty” and was “wow-ed” by it.

Martin Luther’s words are still powerful. Sound doctrine is so sound that 500 years means nothing. Read the learned professor brother’s words from “On Christian Liberty” : (continued here)

What Martin Luther wrote I have never read. Until I was in my fifties, I thought I had studied history. I had only studied history books. Now I read what great men wrote, the thought leaders of their time. Now I study history.