Re-dedication

What you may hear

An adult class, or a teacher’s aside to a teenager who has been away:

“It sounds like you’ve drifted. What you need to do is re-dedicate your life to Christ. Just get alone with God this week and give it all back to him — really mean it this time — and start fresh.”

Or from the front: “Some of you were on fire once. Maybe today’s the day you come back and recommit.”

Why it matters

Re-dedication sounds like repentance and is nearly its opposite. Repentance turns away from the self toward a promise outside the self. Re-dedication turns toward the self, inspects the sincerity found there, and tries again harder.

It also quietly teaches that the first dedication failed and must be redone, which locates the whole Christian life on a ladder of renewed commitments. The pastoral result is predictable: a person who has re-dedicated four times knows exactly one thing about himself, and it is that he cannot be trusted to stay dedicated. He is right. That is not a reason for a fifth attempt.

The Catechism has a better answer, and it is a daily one rather than an occasional one.

What to do instead

Return them to their baptism — not as a memory, as a present tense.

1. Name the drift honestly. Do not minimize it. Sin is sin, and pretending otherwise gives the gospel nothing to do.
2. Preach the daily shape. The old Adam is drowned daily and the new man rises daily. Not once at a camp altar. Daily, and mostly unfelt.
3. Send them to where forgiveness is actually delivered — the Word preached, the absolution, the Supper. Confession and absolution is the pastor’s office and the concrete answer to a conscience that wants to do something.
4. Refuse the fresh-start framing. There is no fresh start on offer. There is a promise that never lapsed.
5. If the drift involves anything the teacher is not equipped to carry, hand it to the pastor rather than prescribing a spiritual regimen. Note that this is one of the few escalations that goes to the pastor specifically: confession and absolution belong to the office, and the deacon board is not a substitute for it.

One line you can actually use

“You don’t need to give your life back to God. You need to hear again that he hasn’t given you back.”

If the student asks

“But I really did walk away. Doesn’t that have to be dealt with? It feels too easy.”

The instinct is not wrong, and flattening it is a mistake. Something does need dealing with — but it is dealt with by absolution, not by resolve.

“It does have to be dealt with, and that’s why you go to the pastor and say it out loud and hear him say Christ forgives you. That’s not easy — it’s the hardest thing in the Christian life. What’s easy is promising God you’ll do better, because nobody has to hear it and nothing has to be said back.”

The confessional citation

Binding:

• Small Catechism, Holy Baptism, Fourth Part — what such baptizing with water indicates: that the old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever. This is the entry’s decisive citation, and it is the whole answer in one sentence: daily, not again.
• Small Catechism, Confession — what confession is, and the instruction to receive the absolution as from God himself.
• Augsburg Confession XII — repentance consists properly of two parts: contrition, and faith which is born of the gospel and believes that sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake. Note what is not in the two parts: a promise of future performance.

Supplementary, not binding under the AFLC standard: Apology XII treats contrition and faith at length and is the best further reading here.

Scripture: Romans 6:3–4; 1 John 1:9.

What not to do

• Do not tell a drifting person that nothing has happened. Baptism does not make sin harmless, and a person who senses real damage should not be told he is imagining it.
• Do not turn baptism into the new work. “Remember your baptism harder” is re-dedication in a Lutheran accent, and a conscience can be crushed by it just as easily.
• Do not administer absolution yourself. The boundary is settled: a lay teacher may and should speak the gospel — Christ died for you, your sins are forgiven for his sake. He may not receive private confession or present himself as the office to which it is made. Say the gospel freely; when someone begins to confess, take them to the pastor.
• Do not prescribe a program. Devotional plans given to a guilty conscience become a ladder within a week.