My Next Generation Lutherans (NGL) Journey – A Testimony (2)
Evan How (QLC)
My father was always firm in his Lutheran convictions. He loves telling this story of when I was just four years old, and Reverend Strauss [a now retired German missionary who served in our International Lutheran Seafarers Mission] asked me: “Are you a Lutheran?”
I answered: “No, I’m a boy.”
Perhaps to prevent me from embarrassing myself like that again, when I was a little older he lent me the book ‘Why I am a Lutheran’ by Daniel Preus. It was the first time I had interacted with Lutheran thought. Needless to say, I didn’t understand it. But I think it planted a seed in me.
Then life happened, and all too soon, I was an adult looking to get married and start my own family. It’s funny how when you start thinking about your children that suddenly, life’s questions need real answers.
I like to think it started out as a simple desire – to find a church close to home for my future child to grow up in – but that inevitably opened up a humongous can of worms.
The Northeast is a very Catholic area. My wife and I also happen to work in a Catholic preschool. So now that we were looking for a church for our child to grow up in from cradle to coffin, of course we wanted it to be the one true Church. I began to ponder questions about whether Lutherans had valid apostolic succession, because without that, we didn’t have valid sacraments. I wondered about where the canon of scripture came from, because how can we say we base doctrine on ‘scripture alone’, if we don’t know which books are in it? Not to mention, there exists a plurality of Protestant denominations, all reading the same Bible, none of which fully agree on their interpretations of it. I hoped that what would answer my questions was an infallible magisterium.
So to learn more, we attended the occasional mass at a parish near us, had
Conversat0ions with seminarians, and joined the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) where we were received by a warm and faithful community. But among all these resources, what struck me most was a sharing by a layperson, who, during a discussion, said that when she got to heaven’s gates, she hoped Jesus would remember her, and that the things she’d done for Him were enough. I didn’t want that for my son.
In the end, though I eventually found some of the answers I was looking for, the deciding factor wasn’t something conceptual that my intellect could grasp, but something existential that I experienced every day.
The first article of the Formula of Concord confesses that:
“original sin is not a slight…but so deep a corruption of human nature
that nothing healthy or uncorrupt has remained in man’s body or soul,
in his inner or outward powers”.
I know that to be undeniably true, because I live that reality every day. And so I knew, the same way my parents, and the parents before them, and all of our fallen human race has struggled with sin, my son struggles with sin. Not just in his actions, words and thoughts, but also in his concupiscence.
But I didn’t want my son to ever in his life think for one moment that God was still angry with him. I didn’t want my son to daily doubt whether he had lost his salvation and fall into despair. I wanted him to do good works, yes, but not out of fear of punishment, or as a servant expecting wages, but out of the overflowing love he’s received as a child of God through Christ.
And so while we still loved and enjoyed the fellowship of our Catholic brethren, we decided that our personal call was to remain in the Lutheran Church. Right about the time we had come to that conclusion, there was a month-long break from RCIA, and we attended one divine service at BLC, where we heard about the NGL course and knew that God was calling. And so here we are. My wife has shared about the still-growing clarity of what that call might look like.
I thank God for the pastors who committed their time preparing material and delivering sessions to us these last 5 weeks, and the participants who were always present to learn together with us. All of you have been integral in our journey of learning about the Lutheran tradition, which we’ll continue to grow in and soon pass to our son in all its richness. We see that around us in Singapore today the Lutheran Church looks small, at only 5 churches strong. But it’s such a great comfort to know that God has preserved this tradition in Singapore, so that through us, more may know the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ and experience the love, joy and peace He wills for all to experience in this life. Amen.
4-year-old Evan with his dad, Rev How Chin Yong