Luther once described people who wanted to rebaptise Christians during the time of the Refomation with this little story.
In fact they remind us of what one brother in the forest of Thuringia did to the other. They were going through the woods with each other when they were set upon by a bear who threw one of them beneath him. The other brother sought to help and struck
at the bear, but missed him and grievously wounded the brother under the bear.
I have been reading a lot of stuff lately in the Lutheran blogosphere about a lot of stuff. I am starting to get these papers that come out usually before our conventions and there are a lot of them as well. There is a lot of name calling and some pretty sad commentary on what passes for “conversation” these days. Interestingly in a world that is getting more and more anti-Christian the target of so much of the vituperation are Christians – baptized Christians. So the brother gets attacked by the bear, whatever the bear may be; false doctrine, some aberrent teaching, maybe a style that we don’t like in the worship realm, but we beat up the brother. Oh well, I’m sure it can be justified as protecting the purity of something or other and of course God’s word for ever shall abide (unless we don’t get it quite the way certain folks want us to get it and then it is in danger of not abiding) but the brother needs to be injured. We can always get another crack at the bear but that weak brother that got attacked can’t be allowed to get away unscathed.
