Why Be a
Lutheran? By Rev. George F. Borghardt
The day I became Lutheran, my sponsor looked at me and said, “Now that you are Lutheran, why would you be anything else?” I had been raised Roman Catholic. I had a first communion in the Roman Catholic Church. I went to the Roman Mass every week. My parents would even drag me to confession when I really sinned. H I G H E R T H I N G S __ 4
In high school, I walked away from the faith. It wasn’t that I stopped believing in God. I just didn’t care anymore. After all, didn’t we come from monkeys? And who wants to serve a God who makes you feel guilty all the time and fills you with shame? I considered myself “undecided.” If there was a God, I thought I should get credit for not outright denying Him. If there wasn’t, I’d be just fine. Some good evangelical Christians
loved me enough to invite me to a Bible study. I was so lost in their study that when they were reading from 1 John I was looking at the Gospel of John. Whoops! They told me about Jesus. His forgiveness was free. It was undeserved. It was unmerited. It was earned by Jesus’ holy life and bitter sufferings and death. It was given as a gift to those who believed. They told me to say a prayer and said I was a Christian again.
