While claiming to not be a religion, worship rites and generic, non-trinitarian names for God, say otherwise. While civil works are not bad, they still condemn before the holy God and offer no salvation, just like all man-made religions.
The issue of membership in religious lodges was a clear division between Lutheran churches in the early-to-mid 20th century. Most LCMS congregations still have constitution provisions forbidding the outward false confession of membership in such secretive lodges, because their worship of a genric god is incompatible with a biblical confession of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This formerly large problem is now quite small. Organized religion, across the board, has fallen out of favor. The desire to belong to any organization has lagged in more recently decades.
The lodge has no real substance to offer, but even it recognizes that virtual gatherings are not sufficient for its limited purposes as a mostly social and political organization. Christianity has a divine message, but when acceptance and feelings are made to be more important than God’s true revelation and its proclamation, the result will be that many churches go the way of other organized religions in the world. “If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned” (Jn. 15:6). —ed.
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