Sunday, September 29, 1946

Sept 29, 1946

664 W 13th

San Pedro, Calif

Dear Father, Mother and the rest of the folks at home,

Today has really been a scorcher and no kidding. It started out warm and I decided not to wear a coat to church for which decision I was later very thankful as it was very warm in there. This afternoon my ex-room-mate from the Y in Long Beach came over and we went out to Pt. Fermin and clambered around on the rocks awhile, & also sat and talked. He is leaving Shell, & going to work for Chemical & Metallurgical magazine in San Francisco, and he wanted to come over before he left. It was quite warm out at the beach also; not only warm, but sultry also. A little sprinkle rolled up about 4 or thereabouts with a considerable accompaniment of cloud and even some thunder. I thought it was really going to rain but it sort of went by and tonite it is clear. I guess tomorrow will be another warm day.

This morning was Confirmation down at church. The examination was included in the service since there were only four confirmands. In many ways it rather depressed me. I can’t help thinking that the confirmation instruction as given in the Augustana Synod is entirely inadequate; certainly my own confirmation instruction was a sadly mis-managed course of instruction. The main trouble is that it is all so superficial — no cognizance is taken of the real problems confronting a person accepting Christianity. Reams of memorization of Luther’s Catechism; but not a word about Augustine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo ’s philosophy of life (mind you, not his confessions, but his philosophy). All about the Arian heresy, but nary a mention of its counterpart, the Sabellian heresy. You learn by heart the books in the Bible, but you don’t learn why the ones in it were included, why other were excluded, who wrote them, when they were written, why they were written. In my opinion, an individual at confirmation does not know at all what is going on, he has no conception of the decision he is making, he is utterly unprepared to take his place in the church. Does a statement on his part under these circumstances constitute a decision, a confirmation on his part, or is he doing just what was expected of him? Sometimes I just wish I could grab the Lutheran church and shake it out of its smug complacency.

I have often wondered what Christ thinks of the church of today; does he see reflected in it the qualities which he exemplified, or does he see them smothered beneath the accretions of centuries of traditions and prejudices? Jesus said, “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.” That is indeed a far cry from the concept of Sunday that the church sets forth. It really distresses me to see the one temporal organizations instituted to carry on the work started by Christ, bungling the task as it is doing. I don’t know what to do; no one else appears to either, or if they do they aren’t doing anything about it.

The weekend passed as usual uneventfully, Saturday being occupied by the usual errands and Sunday as indicated above. This is all for now.

With love

C.P.