This week on the Word of the Lord endures forever, we continue our study of the Book of Beginnings,

Genesis, with Noah and Family Enter the Arc. The Great Flood Commences. The Great Flood prevails, God remembers, and the dove and olive branch.

Join me, Pastor Will Wheaton, for the word of the Lord Endures forever, your daily 15-minute verse-by-verse Bible

study on demand. Listen at the Word Endures.org or your favorite podcast provider. In the West, 21st century, religious pluralism is a fact. It simply is.

The multi-religious culture and society, but it's also for some a way of approaching religion, choosing

a little bit of this and a little bit of that, no matter how contradictory the ideas might be.

Welcome back to issues etc. I'm Todd Bolkin.

Joining us to talk about pick and choose religion,

Pastor Bill Swirla, he's a retired pastor in the Lutheran Church of Missouri Senate, an author of a recent column for

the Lutheran Witness magazine titled A Buffet of Beliefs. Bill welcome back.

It's good to be back.

You talk about an idea borrowed from Carl Truman a regular guest on this program,

the expressed individual. What is that?

Truman borrows that expression from Robert Bella.

And I'm just quoting from his book here

in terms of a definition. and the term is expressive individualism holds that each person

has a unique feeling and intuition that should unrest if individual individuality is to be realized.

And the whole idea is that we are each autonomous individuals who define our own selves. So it's it's you might say

Theologically this is original sin turned up to 11. This is this is thecurved inward, as Luther liked to say, but so this is the self-defined,

self-actualized, self-contained individual whose arbiter of truth or whose truth reference is his or her own feelings, intuitions,

self perceptions, that sort of

thing. So the whole idea is that we have become a culture of self-defined individuals.

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