WEBVTT

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It is the 30th of January, 2026.

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I am Cory J.

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Mahler, and this is at any cost.

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This is the 14th episode, a QA episode, and I will get

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right into the questions.

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I do not have any sort of housekeeping matters tonight.

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So the first question is one that comes up a number of

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times, but I don't mind having to address it again, so I'll

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go ahead and address it.

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I'm curious to hear your opinion on the topic and the best

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arguments for the perpetual virgin side of the debate, since clear reading

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of the gospel seems to indicate she was not perpetually virgin

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This is one of those where I don't know that I would

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necessarily

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advance an argument for the supposed perpetual virginity of Mary because I

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don't believe in it.

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Now Now, just because I don't believe something doesn't mean I can't

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formulate an argument for it, because often it is helpful to formulate

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the strongest version of your opponent's argument in order to refute that,

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because if you simply take advantage of the fact that your opponent

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has made a weak version of his argument, all you're doing is

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leaving it open for him to then come back with the strong

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version later, and then you know, you're mortal, maybe you're gone.

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Someone else will have to deal with the problem that you could

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have addressed at the time if you had steel manned his argument

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instead of straw manning his argument.

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And then And so the argument from

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the mostly Roman Catholic side, just to be blunt, but the argument

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from the side of those who argue for Semper Virgo, the perpetual

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virginity of Mary, whatever you want to call the doctrine.

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The fundamental problem that I have trying to make their argument is

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that I don't find any of the things they argue compelling.

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Because for instance, you have the passages about the entryway

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through which a particular figure in the Old Testament, the figure is

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Christ, of course, but through which this king enters is then closed,

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and then they try to argue that that is Mary's womb we'll

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go ahead and not be unduly explicit, but they try to argue

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that it's Mary's womb, and that's but it doesn't make any sense

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because if you read it in context, then it also says that

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he will sit in the entryway and eat bread, and it says

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other things like that.

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It just it doesn't follow because they pull out this one verse

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and try to build an entire doctrine on it, whereas even the

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immediate context of that verse or parallel ones in other parts of

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scripture refute the very argument they're trying to make.

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I think I think the best argument that they can formulate, and

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I personally don't find it convincing at all, but the best sort

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of version of their argument would be when they try to say

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that she is the second ark of the covenant, right?

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And then because she's the second ark of the covenant, well, what

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happened if you touched the original arc?

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Well, God struck you dead.

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So

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the problem with that is that people undoubtedly didn't give Mary a

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ten foot wide berth and never come nearer because well if you

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touch her, you die.

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I think if that had been the case, it would have probably

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been recorded.

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And so the parallel there with the Ark of the Covenant also

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doesn't hold up because obviously I'm going to go ahead and say

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that she had other children, right?

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So her other children touched her, right?

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You know, she held them, they grabbed her face, they did all

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the things that children do, God didn't strike them dead.

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She's not in that way a second arc of the covenant.

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That's not what she is.

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And

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then you'll get them trying to argue for passages in Revelation and

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trying to say that Mary is the woman the woman is the

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church. The woman's not Mary, and so you can't directly apply those.

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I think that the issue fundamentally, is that it doesn't come from

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scripture. It comes from various Gnostic sources that add in perpetual virginity

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and other supposed doctrines that simply are not true.

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And then you wind up with things like the assumption of Mary,

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which is nowhere in Scripture.

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You have assumption in Scripture, that's a thing.

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God does sometimes take people, and they don't die.

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It doesn't happen very often.

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And I think if that were something that had been That had

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been done in Mary's case, it would have been recorded because that

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seems kind of important.

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And so and we also don't have early church sources saying that

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that happened.

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Because bear in mind, the apostles all knew Mary, and many of

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those trained by the apostles knew Mary, they would have noted if

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Mary had just ascended into heaven at some point and ceased to

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be found, because they would have drawn the parallel to things that

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happened in the Old Testament.

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It wouldn't have been unusual for them in that sense.

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It would have been unusual in the sense if it did not

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happen very often, but it would have been recorded.

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So I just don't find any of the arguments for it compelling

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because again it ties back to Gnosticism this idea that the flesh

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is evil and the spirit is good.

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That's ultimately what the Semper Virgo doctrine is.

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It is the formalization of that into a dogma of the Roman

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Church and then spread to others as well.

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Because of course some Lutherans did hold to it.

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They were wrong.

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I believe they were an error.

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I don't think it's an error that damns you, but I do

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think it is an error, because I think it is very clear

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in scripture it speaks of his brothers and sisters.

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And I know that you'll have Roman Catholics well, well, Mary was,

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you know, fourteen and Joseph was forty and it was a not

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a real Mar

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No. Look at what Scripture says.

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Scripture says Joseph is a righteous man, God commanded him to take

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Mary as his wife.

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He did that because he obeyed God.

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And Mary's age isn't given in scripture.

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So if you're pulling out her age and trying to say she's

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eleven, twelve, thirteen, whatever it is, first off, you're being a little

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weird, please stop.

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And second, you're pulling from a Gnostic text that isn't part of

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scripture. It's not binding.

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You shouldn't use it as a source.

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So

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the flesh is not wicked.

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The flesh is corrupted and fallen because of the fall, but the

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flesh is not per se wicked.

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There's nothing wrong with the natural use of marriage, which is what

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scripture of course calls it.

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God did not set Mary apart in some way that makes her

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not a woman.

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What is one of the greatest blessings God can give to a

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woman? A loving husband and children that naturally result from that.

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I don't believe God denied that to Mary.

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So I just do not see any compelling argument for it.

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And I think it is a dangerous doctrine because of the fact

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that ultimately it is founded on Gnosticism, not on Christianity, not on

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something that is in the actual words of Scripture.

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It is found in the various Gnostic texts.

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I won't go ahead and name them because you shouldn't read them.

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They don't actually have value.

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They're not like the inner Testamental texts which are historical and have

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some value because they place some parts of scripture into an historical

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context, that's a different thing, from the Gnostic texts, which are themselves

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a separate religious text.

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It would be the equivalent of reading

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Buddhism or the Quran or any of those various documents that are

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explicitly other religions, the danger for the Gnostic texts is that they

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try to pretend they are Christian, and they simply are not, and

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they're not written by the men whose names are sometimes attached to

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them, and so you know, it's not written by Thomas.

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You don't have these various other gospels from apostles who did not

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write these things.

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So

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again, I don't think it's an error that dams, but I do

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believe firmly that it is an error, and it's one that we

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should try to remove from the churches over time.

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It's going to take some time because there are those who are

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very attached to it.

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Rome is going to have the biggest problem because they built up

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a cult of Mary that is part of their we'll call it

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expression of Christianity, we'll go ahead and say that.

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But they built up a cult.

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And that's very difficult to undo.

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And I know that many Roman Catholics don't want to hear that,

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but when you are praying to Mary and praising things about her

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that are not present in the pages of scripture, that should probably

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worry you.

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So insofar as building up a steel man argument of Semper Virgo,

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I don't think that I really can, because it would be pure

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sophistry. I do not find in the pages of scripture

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actual sufficient warrant, and I don't find, according to plain reason either,

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actual sufficient warrant to build up that argument without resorting to those

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Gnostic texts, which is impermissible.

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The next question is also about sort of the church, but this

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time about praxis instead.

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Let me pull up the actual wording here.

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Hey Cory, we are recent converts, family of four just baptized last

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month, all together.

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Congratulations. Thanks to Stone Choir for bringing us into the fold, and

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we're pretty new to this tradition from a non denominational background.

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Wondering what you recommend we should do or practice for the season

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of Lent?

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Is it just as simple as fasting, giving something up for the

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season? So I know that there are those who are going to

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object to Lenten praxis, and I'm just going to go ahead and

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say that it's been part of the church and part of the

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church calendar for a very long time.

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And

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there's nothing wrong with it.

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There's no serious objection to Lenten practice.

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The issue would be when it becomes a matter of conscience, if

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people tell you you are compelled to do certain things during Lent,

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that's making a law where God has not made a law.

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Now I think it is good to practice certain things during Lent,

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and I'll get into some specifics.

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But you're not compelled to do it.

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It is not a sin to omit it, it is not a

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matter of conscience.

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You are not being a bad Christian if you don't give up

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chocolate during Lent or whatever it happens to be.

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But Lent is what is called a penitential season, and there are

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various different seasons in the church year commemorating different things in different

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ways. Some of them are a celebration, some of them are introspection,

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and they are a little more somber.

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Lent is one of the more somber ones.

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It is in part commemorating Christ's forty days in the wilderness, and

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it is of course also in part just preparing your heart for

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Easter, for the Easter celebration, recognizing the reality of sin, the reality

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of why Christ's work was necessary.

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And so it's building up to passion tied to Passion Week, the

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Easter week, right?

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Good Friday, Good Saturday, and Easter Sunday.

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Of course Monday, Thursday as well.

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And the

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Lenten season begins with Ash Wednesday, which is the eighteenth of February

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this year, I believe.

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I would have to check the calendar to be absolutely certain on

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that, but I believe it's the eighteenth this year, and so that

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is the beginning of the forty days of Lent.

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Sundays are special because Sundays are feast days, they're treated treated differently.

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However, traditionally the one of the salient things, and this is worth

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bringing up, not again because it's a matter of conscience, you're not

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bound by it, but I do think this one is good practice

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for some practical reasons that I will explain.

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Traditionally, the Lenten season is a season during which you did not,

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for instance, conduct the marriage ceremony.

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The reason for that is because you didn't want to mix the

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celebration, obviously, of marriage, your anniversary, things like that, with the somber

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nature of the Lenten fast, and have that sort of

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tension there, not necessarily a true conflict, but a sort of tension.

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Because if you are following the Lenten fast, then obviously you're going

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to take a break from that, right, on the day of your

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anniversary to celebrate your anniversary.

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And so traditionally you didn't schedule marriages during that period.

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I don't think you necessarily have to do that, but if you

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are going to make your Lenten practice, your observation of the Lenten

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season something that would be in conflict with that in the future,

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it's something to consider.

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Again, not a matter of conscience, you're not bound to do it,

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but it is something you should think about when you're making these

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decisions. But insofar as the actual practice of Lent goes, again, it

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is a penitential season.

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It is a 40-day period.

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Building up to Easter.

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And so part of how you observe that is some kind of

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fast. Again, it doesn't have to be I gave up chocolate for

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Lent or I gave up caffeine, which I'm probably not going to

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do as I have both coffee and tea sitting on my desk

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right now.

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But if that is something that is good for you, if that

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is something that turns your mind toward God during the season, then

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by all means do it.

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That's sort of the key here.

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What you're doing is removing something from your life and exchanging the

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time you would have spent on that to spend on the things

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of God, to focus on God.

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Whether it is contemplating the passion of Christ, whether it is contemplating

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the depth and nature of sin, the great gifts that God has

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given to you in your baptism and the Lord's Supper and the

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baptism of your wife and children as well in this specific case.

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Whatever it happens to be, you are taking some time out of

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your calendar, out of your year, and rededicating that to God in

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order to think about the things of God.

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Again, not as a matter of conscience, not as a matter of

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being bound to do this thing and then running into sin if

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you don't, because it's not a sin to leave it out.

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But

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as something that we should want to do as Christians, because we

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should want to remember the things that God has done for us.

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We should want to think about the things that God has done

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for us, and we should set aside time to do that.

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And there's also just the practical aspect of it.

00:14:59.280 --> 00:15:02.960
This is something that has definitely fallen away in the non denominational

00:15:02.960 --> 00:15:05.280
space and many other churches as well.

00:15:05.280 --> 00:15:11.360
Less so high churches, so called, but even there sometimes.

00:15:11.360 --> 00:15:16.320
The observation of different holy days, holidays, whatever you want to call

00:15:16.320 --> 00:15:19.680
them, same word, the observation of these things and the times and

00:15:19.680 --> 00:15:20.080
the seasons

00:15:21.360 --> 00:15:23.520
is an important part of just being human.

00:15:23.520 --> 00:15:26.480
We recognize this because we see it outside, depending where you are

00:15:26.480 --> 00:15:26.960
in the world.

00:15:26.960 --> 00:15:29.760
I used to live in Southern California and so less of the

00:15:29.760 --> 00:15:31.280
seasons there.

00:15:31.280 --> 00:15:31.600
But

00:15:32.480 --> 00:15:33.200
there's

00:15:35.040 --> 00:15:37.040
there's a rhythm to things.

00:15:37.040 --> 00:15:41.200
You have the seasons that pass in the natural year, and you

00:15:41.200 --> 00:15:45.200
have the seasons of the church year, and so we are going

00:15:45.200 --> 00:15:49.600
through these things repeatedly over the course of our life, and it's

00:15:49.600 --> 00:15:53.040
important to have that sort of rhythm, to have those reminders, to

00:15:53.040 --> 00:15:58.720
have sort of waypoints along the way in our Christian walk, in

00:15:58.720 --> 00:16:00.560
our walk with Christ.

00:16:00.560 --> 00:16:05.360
And if there are no seasons in your practice, if there's no

00:16:05.360 --> 00:16:09.360
change of any kind, it's just one tone all the time, which

00:16:09.360 --> 00:16:13.840
is what many of the non-denominational churches are, except for they sometimes

00:16:13.840 --> 00:16:16.160
go all out for Christmas and Easter, which I'm not saying is

00:16:16.160 --> 00:16:17.600
bad. It's good they do that.

00:16:17.600 --> 00:16:21.920
At least they're observing two of the great feasts of the year,

00:16:21.920 --> 00:16:23.520
right? But

00:16:24.400 --> 00:16:29.520
it's important to have this rhythm to your life, not just to

00:16:29.520 --> 00:16:32.800
your personal life out in the world, but to your Christian life

00:16:32.800 --> 00:16:33.600
as well.

00:16:33.600 --> 00:16:36.720
And Lent is a big part of that because you have the

00:16:36.720 --> 00:16:39.760
beginning with Ash Wednesday, and I'm sure I will get questions about

00:16:39.760 --> 00:16:43.440
Ash Wednesday probably for next week or the week after I'll answer

00:16:43.440 --> 00:16:44.240
those then.

00:16:44.240 --> 00:16:45.520
I'll leave them aside now.

00:16:45.520 --> 00:16:48.080
But the verse of which some of you are thinking right now,

00:16:48.080 --> 00:16:51.840
it's actually part of our readings for Ash Wednesday, so save that

00:16:51.840 --> 00:16:55.120
for later, but I'll go into that probably next week.

00:16:55.120 --> 00:16:59.440
You have the beginning with Ash Wednesday, which is a somber remember

00:16:59.760 --> 00:17:04.640
a remembrance, a remembering of the day The depth and depravity of

00:17:04.640 --> 00:17:08.240
sin and the corruption, the separation from God.

00:17:08.240 --> 00:17:11.760
And the ashes are an important part of that, right?

00:17:11.760 --> 00:17:14.720
For dost thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.

00:17:14.720 --> 00:17:16.720
It's important to remember that.

00:17:16.720 --> 00:17:21.520
But then leading up to, through the period of Lent, to Easter,

00:17:21.520 --> 00:17:25.760
and the recognition that because of Christ we have new life.

00:17:25.760 --> 00:17:31.360
We were buried with him, we will be resurrected as he was.

00:17:31.360 --> 00:17:34.560
We have already avoided the second death.

00:17:34.560 --> 00:17:38.320
That is what baptism of course does, is because you have already

00:17:38.320 --> 00:17:40.800
gone into death and come out, so you will not taste the

00:17:40.800 --> 00:17:44.080
second death, which of course is hell.

00:17:44.080 --> 00:17:47.840
The first death is the mortal death, the second death is hell.

00:17:47.840 --> 00:17:50.880
Unless you want to use the theological one, then of course the

00:17:50.880 --> 00:17:54.480
first death is the fall, but that's a separate teaching tool.

00:17:54.960 --> 00:17:59.120
But as far as the Lenten practice goes, just dedicate a little

00:17:59.120 --> 00:18:00.720
more time to your

00:18:01.920 --> 00:18:04.160
Christian praxis, whatever it happens to be.

00:18:04.160 --> 00:18:06.960
Maybe you set aside ten more minutes of reading in the morning

00:18:06.960 --> 00:18:08.080
or in the evening.

00:18:08.080 --> 00:18:10.960
Preferably do that with your family, that is something you should be

00:18:10.960 --> 00:18:12.640
doing as the head of the household.

00:18:12.640 --> 00:18:15.520
So maybe set aside fifteen, twenty minutes in the evening if you

00:18:15.520 --> 00:18:17.680
can. Go through the catechism.

00:18:17.680 --> 00:18:21.120
Go through part of the large catechism, go through you can go

00:18:21.120 --> 00:18:23.600
through a lot of the small catechism in twenty minutes, so you

00:18:23.600 --> 00:18:26.880
can go through that many times over the course of Lent, which

00:18:26.880 --> 00:18:30.560
is important because it's good to know the parts of the catechism,

00:18:30.560 --> 00:18:32.720
particularly the small catechism, by heart.

00:18:32.720 --> 00:18:36.080
Because as I've said before, and this is something where even the

00:18:36.080 --> 00:18:38.960
Roman Catholics agree, so the they won't disagree with me on this

00:18:38.960 --> 00:18:40.560
one. There are

00:18:41.520 --> 00:18:46.320
Roman Catholic missionaries who have handed out the small catechism various parts

00:18:46.320 --> 00:18:47.520
of the world.

00:18:47.520 --> 00:18:52.000
Because there is no better short summary of the Christian faith than

00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:53.280
the small catechism.

00:18:53.280 --> 00:18:55.520
It's not saying no one could make a better one, it's just

00:18:55.520 --> 00:18:58.720
Luther made the best one and it stood the test of time.

00:18:58.720 --> 00:19:00.960
Five centuries and counting.

00:19:00.960 --> 00:19:05.280
So all Christians, I would say, should read the small catechism.

00:19:05.280 --> 00:19:09.520
Obviously, you're going to have disagreements if you are over in Baptist

00:19:09.520 --> 00:19:15.440
territory, non-denominational territory, because of the teaching on the sacraments, but

00:19:16.400 --> 00:19:20.080
I don't want you to skip those, but if you disagree with

00:19:20.080 --> 00:19:23.040
what Lutherans teach on them, then just go through the first few

00:19:23.040 --> 00:19:26.720
parts of the catechism instead because you can't disagree with the Ten

00:19:26.880 --> 00:19:30.480
Commandments, you can't disagree with the Lord's Prayer, you can't disagree with

00:19:30.480 --> 00:19:31.600
the Apostles' Creed, right?

00:19:31.600 --> 00:19:33.840
These are things that you have to accept as a Christian because

00:19:33.840 --> 00:19:35.520
they're simply universally true.

00:19:35.520 --> 00:19:39.040
So if you don't want to agree on the sacraments, fine, I

00:19:39.040 --> 00:19:42.240
wish you would, but you can leave those out when you're teaching

00:19:42.240 --> 00:19:43.200
your children.

00:19:43.200 --> 00:19:46.960
You'll answer to God for whether you taught correctly or not, but

00:19:46.960 --> 00:19:49.520
that is between you and God ultimately.

00:19:49.520 --> 00:19:52.560
But spend some time going through these things, spend some time focusing

00:19:52.560 --> 00:19:54.160
on the things of God.

00:19:54.160 --> 00:19:57.440
And if you give up something as part of that, again use

00:19:57.440 --> 00:20:01.120
that time that you would have spent on that thing to dedicate

00:20:01.120 --> 00:20:02.800
it to God as well.

00:20:02.880 --> 00:20:04.960
That's what the the real practice is.

00:20:04.960 --> 00:20:11.120
The practice is focusing on what God has done for us and

00:20:11.440 --> 00:20:13.120
being thankful for that.

00:20:13.120 --> 00:20:16.960
It's not focusing on oh I have to fast because it's Lent.

00:20:16.960 --> 00:20:18.880
That's not the point.

00:20:18.880 --> 00:20:21.120
The purpose of the fast is what matters, right?

00:20:21.120 --> 00:20:24.560
You can think of places in scripture where God has spoken of

00:20:24.560 --> 00:20:27.840
the nature of the fast is what matters, right?

00:20:27.840 --> 00:20:30.640
It's not just that you fasted and you were gloomy and you

00:20:30.640 --> 00:20:34.640
looked sad and you were wandering around in in a fugue state,

00:20:34.640 --> 00:20:36.480
right? That's not what God wants.

00:20:36.480 --> 00:20:38.960
When you fast it's not for me, it's for you.

00:20:38.960 --> 00:20:43.600
That's God condemning the Israelites for their hypocrisy That's not the sort

00:20:43.600 --> 00:20:45.680
of fast we should be doing as Christians.

00:20:45.680 --> 00:20:48.320
So that's the basics of the

00:20:49.680 --> 00:20:52.880
observation of Lent and why you should do it and how you

00:20:52.880 --> 00:20:53.600
should do it.

00:20:53.600 --> 00:20:55.120
And I do think that you should.

00:20:55.120 --> 00:20:58.880
Again, not a matter of conscience, you're not bound to do it,

00:20:58.880 --> 00:21:01.920
but scripture does say when you fast, not if.

00:21:01.920 --> 00:21:03.680
So Lance a good time

00:21:17.680 --> 00:21:20.960
Got a question here from the chat I'll just address quickly since

00:21:20.960 --> 00:21:21.840
I noticed.

00:21:21.840 --> 00:21:25.760
What do you make of the thousands like myself born Roman Catholic,

00:21:25.760 --> 00:21:28.560
who destroyed their lives with alcohol and were saved by the Holy

00:21:28.560 --> 00:21:32.560
Spirit no less miraculous than Christ himself laying hands and having a

00:21:32.560 --> 00:21:34.080
limb grow back?

00:21:34.080 --> 00:21:38.560
AA worked when the church was clueless.

00:21:38.560 --> 00:21:43.680
I have mixed feelings about AA because of some of the things

00:21:43.680 --> 00:21:48.160
they teach, but at the same time, I 100% recognize that they

00:21:48.160 --> 00:21:52.000
have done very good work for many men and women, and for

00:21:52.000 --> 00:21:53.760
that they should be praised.

00:21:53.760 --> 00:21:57.360
And yes, I do think the church has done a particularly poor

00:21:57.360 --> 00:22:00.560
job of addressing those issues, and I think the church needs to

00:22:00.560 --> 00:22:01.920
do better.

00:22:01.920 --> 00:22:05.680
Because I think that the church can take a lot of cues

00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:11.600
from AA, from Alcoholics Anonymous, and from the various other groups, right?

00:22:11.600 --> 00:22:13.840
There's NA as well and other things like that.

00:22:14.320 --> 00:22:18.880
And the church can use the tools that have stood the test

00:22:18.880 --> 00:22:23.280
of time and have stood up under actual scrutiny and use, and

00:22:23.280 --> 00:22:25.200
also pull things in from psychology.

00:22:25.200 --> 00:22:28.160
I've gone over psychology in previous episodes.

00:22:28.160 --> 00:22:33.760
And And the church has the great advantage of the truth of

00:22:33.760 --> 00:22:38.640
Christ and the truth of sin and why we fall into these

00:22:38.640 --> 00:22:39.760
things, right?

00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:45.680
Because alcoholism and drug abuse and things like that are not a

00:22:45.680 --> 00:22:48.000
problem in a world that is not fallen.

00:22:48.000 --> 00:22:52.960
And so Christians have the ability to say not just how these

00:22:52.960 --> 00:22:56.160
things happen, but why these things happen.

00:22:56.160 --> 00:22:59.600
Why is the alcohol attractive to some men?

00:22:59.600 --> 00:23:02.080
Why are the drugs attractive to some men?

00:23:02.080 --> 00:23:05.280
Why do people fall into these things and then destroy their lives

00:23:05.280 --> 00:23:07.040
and the lives of those around them?

00:23:08.000 --> 00:23:12.160
Now, AA and other groups like that can of course give you

00:23:12.160 --> 00:23:16.880
tools to help you get out of the pit, but even they

00:23:16.960 --> 00:23:21.200
of course recognize right the higher power, Christianity can give you a

00:23:21.200 --> 00:23:23.120
name for that higher power.

00:23:23.120 --> 00:23:27.680
Christianity can give you the reason why this sort of desire, this

00:23:27.680 --> 00:23:32.000
impulse, this concupiscence, this desire to sin exists in you.

00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:34.800
And that is something that the church should be doing.

00:23:34.800 --> 00:23:37.520
The churches absolutely should be involved in those things.

00:23:37.680 --> 00:23:40.720
And I'm not saying just wrench your space out to AA.

00:23:40.720 --> 00:23:44.640
I'm saying the church needs to be actively involved in the problems

00:23:44.640 --> 00:23:46.480
that are live in society.

00:23:46.480 --> 00:23:51.520
Now the church isn't the only source of solving all of society's

00:23:51.520 --> 00:23:52.640
problems, right?

00:23:52.640 --> 00:23:52.960
But

00:23:53.840 --> 00:23:58.880
when it comes to something that is very clearly the result of

00:23:58.880 --> 00:24:02.560
sin, the result of concupiscence, the result of the corruption that is

00:24:02.560 --> 00:24:06.320
subsequent to the fall, the church has something to say to that.

00:24:06.320 --> 00:24:11.200
And Christians should be the ones working within that framework to help

00:24:11.200 --> 00:24:12.640
these men and women.

00:24:12.640 --> 00:24:16.000
It's not to say that the pastor has to lead the equivalent

00:24:16.000 --> 00:24:19.200
of an AA group, but this is something the elders can do

00:24:19.360 --> 00:24:23.520
if alcoholism is a problem in your community, and in many places,

00:24:23.520 --> 00:24:26.880
many parts of the world it is going to be, because it's

00:24:26.880 --> 00:24:28.000
still a serious problem.

00:24:28.000 --> 00:24:31.120
It's been a problem for humanity for thousands of years.

00:24:31.120 --> 00:24:32.480
It's probably not going away.

00:24:32.480 --> 00:24:35.920
It's not to say we should ban alcohol, I don't obviously believe

00:24:35.920 --> 00:24:39.440
that. But it is to say that there are problems for some

00:24:39.440 --> 00:24:42.160
men, and we have to address those.

00:24:42.160 --> 00:24:47.040
And the church can address them in a particularly useful way.

00:24:47.040 --> 00:24:50.240
And again, it should be something that is addressed, not just with

00:24:50.240 --> 00:24:54.480
the individual, with the individual as part of that social network.

00:24:54.480 --> 00:24:58.240
Because when a husband is an alcoholic, it doesn't just affect him.

00:24:58.240 --> 00:25:01.520
It affects his wife, it affects his children, affects his parents, his

00:25:01.520 --> 00:25:04.160
job, everyone around him.

00:25:04.160 --> 00:25:06.720
And every alcoholic knows that.

00:25:06.720 --> 00:25:11.360
Now I disagree with this is one particular point where I disagree

00:25:11.360 --> 00:25:12.480
with AA.

00:25:12.480 --> 00:25:15.120
I don't think that there is such a thing as a man

00:25:15.120 --> 00:25:18.960
who is per se an alcoholic and cannot ever change.

00:25:18.960 --> 00:25:22.000
He is always an alcoholic, even if he doesn't drink, right?

00:25:22.000 --> 00:25:24.320
I just simply don't believe that.

00:25:24.320 --> 00:25:28.560
And personally, I think that those who get their lives back under

00:25:28.560 --> 00:25:31.680
control could probably have a beer every now and then and be

00:25:31.680 --> 00:25:34.480
fine. I think that AA goes overboard on that.

00:25:34.480 --> 00:25:38.720
However, that also comes with the caveat, if you are someone who

00:25:38.720 --> 00:25:42.000
recognizes that there is a danger for you of falling back into

00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:44.720
that hole, by all means simply avoid it.

00:25:44.720 --> 00:25:46.640
Just go ahead and avoid it.

00:25:46.640 --> 00:25:50.480
Now, insofar as the sacrament is concerned, that's a different thing, because

00:25:50.480 --> 00:25:52.720
you should still want to go to the sacrament, and the sacrament

00:25:52.720 --> 00:25:54.000
involves wine.

00:25:54.000 --> 00:25:57.840
But But I firmly do not believe that anyone is going to

00:25:57.840 --> 00:26:01.200
fall off the wagon, as it were, or have trouble because of

00:26:01.200 --> 00:26:03.440
a literal thimble full of wine.

00:26:03.440 --> 00:26:06.640
You get more alcohol when you use mouthwash.

00:26:06.640 --> 00:26:10.080
As most alcoholics are going to know, quite frankly.

00:26:10.080 --> 00:26:10.400
So

00:26:11.360 --> 00:26:14.320
I don't think that AA is bad.

00:26:14.320 --> 00:26:16.640
I do think it has some problems, but I think it does

00:26:16.640 --> 00:26:19.360
very good work, and I think it is a serious problem that

00:26:19.360 --> 00:26:22.480
the church has been negligent in this In this area has simply

00:26:22.480 --> 00:26:24.800
not done what it needs to do.

00:26:24.800 --> 00:26:28.880
And part of that is because we have teachers and pastors who

00:26:28.880 --> 00:26:30.960
don't want to rebuke the sins they see in front of them

00:26:31.040 --> 00:26:32.720
because that makes them uncomfortable.

00:26:32.720 --> 00:26:36.400
It's a lot easier to attack the sin that isn't a live

00:26:36.400 --> 00:26:38.080
issue in your congregation.

00:26:38.080 --> 00:26:40.320
Because then you don't have to look anyone in the eyes and

00:26:40.320 --> 00:26:45.120
say, You are doing X, Y, and Z, and those are sin.

00:26:45.120 --> 00:26:48.880
That's a lot harder than just saying, well, you shouldn't do this

00:26:48.880 --> 00:26:51.760
list of things that no one in your congregation has ever done

00:26:51.760 --> 00:26:53.520
or is doing.

00:26:53.520 --> 00:26:57.360
So it's a problem for the churches, it's a problem for teachers

00:26:57.360 --> 00:27:00.000
and pastors, but not exclusively, because again, I don't think the pastor

00:27:00.560 --> 00:27:02.960
should necessarily be the one running this sort of thing.

00:27:02.960 --> 00:27:06.240
This is sort of the natural place for the elders to take

00:27:06.240 --> 00:27:08.160
initiative and do something on their own.

00:27:08.160 --> 00:27:11.520
So I think that our churches should be working on that.

00:27:11.520 --> 00:27:14.880
And yes, I do think that if you have that sort of

00:27:14.880 --> 00:27:19.680
addiction, that sort of problem, there's definitely a miraculous aspect involved in

00:27:19.680 --> 00:27:21.360
that getting out of that pit.

00:27:21.360 --> 00:27:23.600
Christ needs to be part of the equation.

00:27:30.800 --> 00:27:34.480
Someone commented as a follow-up that there are genetic differences, and yes,

00:27:34.480 --> 00:27:35.520
that's absolutely true.

00:27:35.520 --> 00:27:40.320
There are very clear genetic components to whether or not you become

00:27:40.320 --> 00:27:43.040
addicted to certain substances.

00:27:43.040 --> 00:27:48.800
And for instance, that's why Amerindians in the US context had such

00:27:48.800 --> 00:27:50.720
a problem with alcoholism.

00:27:50.720 --> 00:27:56.800
They have because of their Asian ancestry a lack of it's an

00:27:56.800 --> 00:27:57.840
alcohol enzyme.

00:27:57.840 --> 00:28:00.160
It's an enzyme that breaks down alcohol.

00:28:00.160 --> 00:28:02.480
Europeans have much more of it.

00:28:02.480 --> 00:28:04.960
Asians, many of them, not all of them, but many of them

00:28:04.960 --> 00:28:06.720
have much less of it.

00:28:06.720 --> 00:28:08.960
And so that is a very real problem.

00:28:08.960 --> 00:28:13.440
When you can't break down ethanol, it affects you more strongly.

00:28:13.440 --> 00:28:16.880
And so if someone who has a lot of that enzyme goes

00:28:16.880 --> 00:28:20.640
shot for shot with someone who basically has none, well I think

00:28:20.640 --> 00:28:23.440
it's pretty predictable what's going to be the outcome there.

00:28:23.440 --> 00:28:27.120
So yes, there are absolutely genetic components to that, just like many

00:28:27.120 --> 00:28:29.280
other things that are sin.

00:28:30.160 --> 00:28:32.000
we're right back to Gnosticism, right?

00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:34.400
There are many who want to try to say that there is

00:28:34.400 --> 00:28:39.360
this fundamental distinction between this divide between the body and the soul,

00:28:39.360 --> 00:28:42.400
and there just isn't, because you are a gestalt.

00:28:42.400 --> 00:28:46.960
You are a sum that is greater than the individual parts.

00:28:46.960 --> 00:28:50.400
You are not just your body, but you are not not your

00:28:50.400 --> 00:28:52.960
body, the same is true of your soul.

00:28:52.960 --> 00:28:56.960
And there are going to be things where there is a biological

00:28:56.960 --> 00:28:59.440
component to something that is sin.

00:28:59.440 --> 00:29:03.280
You are biologically predisposed to certain sins.

00:29:03.280 --> 00:29:05.760
That's not to say you can't avoid them, it's not to say

00:29:05.760 --> 00:29:08.320
that you don't have free will still, but it is to say

00:29:08.320 --> 00:29:10.720
that there are going to be things that are going to be

00:29:10.720 --> 00:29:14.960
more difficult for you than for other people.

00:29:14.960 --> 00:29:18.160
And we all recognize this, certainly all the men here know that,

00:29:18.160 --> 00:29:21.440
right? There are certain sins that are going to be more enticing

00:29:21.440 --> 00:29:24.960
for men because of the reality of biochemistry.

00:29:24.960 --> 00:29:26.720
That is simply how it goes.

00:29:26.720 --> 00:29:28.960
And part of that, of course, is going to be age as

00:29:28.960 --> 00:29:30.320
well as genetics.

00:29:32.720 --> 00:29:34.240
Someone asked about Anglicanism.

00:29:34.240 --> 00:29:37.840
I'm going to leave that one for next time since I just

00:29:37.840 --> 00:29:41.760
want to go over that question a little bit more.

00:29:42.160 --> 00:29:45.760
But I will note it down for next time.

00:30:00.640 --> 00:30:02.560
So Someone asked about parables.

00:30:02.560 --> 00:30:05.040
I scrolled up and found that at the top of the chat.

00:30:05.040 --> 00:30:08.800
Have you ever employed parables to teach, aside from citing existing ones?

00:30:08.800 --> 00:30:11.520
Which of course I'm going to do, I'm going to use the

00:30:11.520 --> 00:30:14.000
parables of Christ to teach.

00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:18.960
Personally, I haven't used anything I would necessarily call a parable, which

00:30:18.960 --> 00:30:22.560
I guess is just an sort of extended metaphor or analogy, right?

00:30:22.560 --> 00:30:24.480
It's essentially what a parable is.

00:30:24.480 --> 00:30:28.320
I use metaphor and analogy and things like that all the time,

00:30:28.320 --> 00:30:31.680
not just for teaching, but obviously rhetoric as well, the rhetoric and

00:30:31.680 --> 00:30:33.520
teaching are related.

00:30:33.520 --> 00:30:37.280
I haven't personally created a parable to teach.

00:30:37.280 --> 00:30:39.280
That's just not something I've done.

00:30:39.280 --> 00:30:40.480
I don't object to it.

00:30:40.480 --> 00:30:45.600
It's just not my personal preference.

00:30:46.480 --> 00:30:51.200
A pending question from a few weeks ago about the National Party

00:30:51.200 --> 00:30:54.800
of South Africa and particularly their 1 eighteen forty seven platform and

00:30:54.800 --> 00:31:01.200
essentially whether or not it was a translation of Christian nationalism into

00:31:01.440 --> 00:31:03.040
actual politics.

00:31:03.040 --> 00:31:06.640
I'll probably come back to this one in a couple weeks, just

00:31:06.640 --> 00:31:11.120
go over it a little more deeply, but in that party platform,

00:31:11.120 --> 00:31:13.840
and it's really more of a pamphlet than a platform, but in

00:31:13.840 --> 00:31:19.760
the the pamphlet slash platform, they're essentially doubling down on the apartheid

00:31:19.760 --> 00:31:24.320
regime and do actually have a focus on the Christianization of the

00:31:24.320 --> 00:31:26.080
various peoples around them as well.

00:31:26.080 --> 00:31:29.280
So explicitly a Christian thing, and yes, I would say it was

00:31:29.280 --> 00:31:34.640
a translation of Christian nationalism as an ideology, as a set of

00:31:34.640 --> 00:31:38.240
ideals, into an actual political practice.

00:31:38.240 --> 00:31:41.680
And I think that what they were doing was largely correct.

00:31:41.680 --> 00:31:44.080
I obviously don't object to the apartheid regime.

00:31:44.080 --> 00:31:44.800
I think it was fine.

00:31:44.800 --> 00:31:51.200
I think that is a reasonable way to handle those circumstances where

00:31:51.200 --> 00:31:55.280
you have different races, where you have different groups of men living

00:31:55.280 --> 00:31:58.640
in essentially one territory One territory, and so you had the aspects

00:31:58.640 --> 00:32:04.800
of geographical or physical separation, the aspects of cultural and economic separation,

00:32:04.800 --> 00:32:05.920
all of those things.

00:32:05.920 --> 00:32:08.560
Those are all perfectly permissible for Christians.

00:32:08.560 --> 00:32:12.480
That is something that you are allowed to do in organizing and

00:32:12.480 --> 00:32:14.080
maintaining your society.

00:32:14.080 --> 00:32:16.320
And I think it's a good thing as well, because they were

00:32:16.320 --> 00:32:20.400
designed in order to preserve the things that God gave us, not

00:32:20.400 --> 00:32:22.880
least of all to be our race, because our race is a

00:32:22.880 --> 00:32:24.560
gift from God.

00:32:24.560 --> 00:32:28.800
You're not whatever you happen to be by chance.

00:32:28.800 --> 00:32:31.680
And that will lead into a question that I have here from

00:32:31.680 --> 00:32:37.280
someone else in the reply to the thread on X here, but

00:32:37.520 --> 00:32:41.680
you are not what you are by chance in any way, shape,

00:32:41.680 --> 00:32:43.920
or form, with regard to any part of you.

00:32:43.920 --> 00:32:46.880
And so I think that is true not only of your body,

00:32:46.880 --> 00:32:50.400
but also of your soul And I think that their system was

00:32:50.400 --> 00:32:51.360
trying to preserve that.

00:32:51.360 --> 00:32:52.720
They were doing what was right.

00:32:52.720 --> 00:32:56.000
They should have fought for it with a little more vigor than

00:32:56.000 --> 00:32:56.960
they did.

00:32:56.960 --> 00:32:59.440
But I'll get into that a little more deeply, I think, in

00:32:59.440 --> 00:33:01.200
a couple weeks here.

00:33:01.520 --> 00:33:07.440
Leading into the question that I referenced there, someone asked about Traducianism.

00:33:07.440 --> 00:33:13.280
And for those who are not familiar, there are two main schools,

00:33:13.280 --> 00:33:18.480
as it were, two main ideas with regard to how the soul

00:33:18.480 --> 00:33:22.720
for a particular person is created, how it comes into being.

00:33:22.720 --> 00:33:26.640
There's creationism and traducianism.

00:33:26.640 --> 00:33:30.480
And I mean, realistically, they're both creationism of a sort, but that's

00:33:30.480 --> 00:33:34.480
the distinction used to just tell the two apart.

00:33:34.480 --> 00:33:41.040
Creationism is that God specifically creates that given soul

00:33:41.920 --> 00:33:48.480
when that person, that zygote, that unique genetic expression comes into being,

00:33:48.480 --> 00:33:52.160
right? The other is Traducianism.

00:33:52.160 --> 00:33:58.160
Traducianism basically says that the soul is transmitted naturally, in quotes, and

00:33:58.160 --> 00:34:01.920
I'll get into that, in the same way as everything else you

00:34:01.920 --> 00:34:05.360
have. So as your body, your soul is created essentially from your

00:34:05.360 --> 00:34:06.160
parents' souls.

00:34:06.160 --> 00:34:09.200
It's a natural generation process.

00:34:09.200 --> 00:34:11.680
I hold to Traducianism.

00:34:11.680 --> 00:34:14.960
Luther was very inclined toward it toward the end of his life.

00:34:14.960 --> 00:34:18.400
It's always been sort of the majority I would say overwhelming majority

00:34:18.400 --> 00:34:22.880
position in Lutheranism, particularly among Lutheran theologians.

00:34:22.880 --> 00:34:27.520
And I think it's one of those where it's just patently obvious,

00:34:27.520 --> 00:34:29.920
right? Because if you had

00:34:30.880 --> 00:34:34.480
sort of souls that were just

00:34:35.360 --> 00:34:38.480
they just came into being, God just created them with no reference

00:34:38.480 --> 00:34:44.480
to line or anything like that, then you wouldn't have distinct races.

00:34:44.480 --> 00:34:45.280
You couldn't.

00:34:45.520 --> 00:34:47.840
You wouldn't have racial characteristics.

00:34:47.840 --> 00:34:51.600
You wouldn't have groups of people who have certain predispositions to certain

00:34:51.600 --> 00:34:55.280
things because I think that there's an intimate relationship there between the

00:34:55.280 --> 00:34:56.080
soul and the mind.

00:34:56.080 --> 00:34:58.640
I don't think you can really disentangle them even.

00:34:58.640 --> 00:34:59.040
And And

00:35:00.240 --> 00:35:03.520
I do hold a tripartism, of course, but that's a a separate

00:35:03.520 --> 00:35:07.440
discussion. Related, but separate discussion.

00:35:07.440 --> 00:35:11.200
I don't think that any of the things that we see in

00:35:11.200 --> 00:35:17.840
the world make any sense unless the soul is also generated naturally.

00:35:17.840 --> 00:35:20.240
And I said I would get to that, but God creates the

00:35:20.240 --> 00:35:21.280
rules, right?

00:35:21.280 --> 00:35:26.480
So there is ultimately there's a difference, but at the same time

00:35:26.640 --> 00:35:29.600
God is creating the soul in either case, it's just is he

00:35:29.600 --> 00:35:32.560
creating it through a set of rules that he put in place

00:35:32.800 --> 00:35:38.000
and through these rules then creating souls down into To the distant

00:35:38.560 --> 00:35:41.040
ages of the world at whenever the world ends, right?

00:35:41.040 --> 00:35:42.480
The last person is created.

00:35:42.480 --> 00:35:44.000
Did he do it that way?

00:35:44.000 --> 00:35:48.240
Or is he stepping into time as it were in every single

00:35:48.240 --> 00:35:52.000
instance of conception and putting a soul into that Zygote.

00:35:52.000 --> 00:35:53.120
I don't think that one.

00:35:53.120 --> 00:35:56.800
I think the Traducianism, because again, I think it's very clear there's

00:35:56.800 --> 00:36:00.080
such a thing as a German soul, or a Chinese soul, or

00:36:00.080 --> 00:36:01.360
a Japanese soul.

00:36:01.360 --> 00:36:05.440
I think that different peoples have not in the sense of, you

00:36:05.440 --> 00:36:08.800
know, a higher soul or a lesser soul or anything like that,

00:36:08.800 --> 00:36:12.400
and certainly any of the the problems that have resulted from the

00:36:12.400 --> 00:36:17.760
fall and interaction between the soul and the body will disappear in

00:36:17.760 --> 00:36:18.800
the next life, right?

00:36:18.800 --> 00:36:21.840
Because the effects of the fall, the effects of sin are removed.

00:36:21.840 --> 00:36:24.720
But I think that the differences remain because

00:36:26.000 --> 00:36:31.200
a German is a particular thing, an American is a particular thing.

00:36:31.200 --> 00:36:34.800
And I don't think it's just biologically, I think it's spiritual as

00:36:34.800 --> 00:36:38.720
well. And so, yes, I definitely hold to Traducianism, but there was

00:36:38.720 --> 00:36:43.040
a another question within this that he asked, is his reasoning correct

00:36:43.120 --> 00:36:47.520
that rejecting traducianism is a serious error, because that allows man to

00:36:47.520 --> 00:36:49.680
compel God to act.

00:36:49.840 --> 00:36:53.360
Insofar as that's concerned, I'm not sure there's much of a difference

00:36:53.440 --> 00:36:57.040
because of what I said about The fact that in either case,

00:36:57.040 --> 00:36:59.760
God is the one creating the soul, right?

00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.800
So I don't think there's a fundamental difference there in terms of

00:37:05.440 --> 00:37:09.600
you know, we're not compelling God to act because God either set

00:37:09.600 --> 00:37:13.680
the conditions where the thing will inevitably and naturally happen because he

00:37:13.680 --> 00:37:17.680
set the rules, or he is personally doing it in that particular

00:37:17.680 --> 00:37:21.200
instance. I don't think there's a big enough difference there to say

00:37:21.200 --> 00:37:27.520
that it's incorrect or wrong or even morally wrongful to argue for

00:37:27.520 --> 00:37:29.760
one versus the other on those grounds.

00:37:29.760 --> 00:37:33.040
I don't think that is necessarily compelling, but

00:37:34.240 --> 00:37:38.160
I do think that again, it just very clearly from what we

00:37:38.160 --> 00:37:41.920
see in the world, I think it's very obvious that traducianism is

00:37:41.920 --> 00:37:46.960
correct and creationism is it's sort of blank slateism, really, for the

00:37:46.960 --> 00:37:50.720
soul, and I just don't think it makes any sense or has

00:37:50.720 --> 00:37:56.800
any real proof.

00:37:56.800 --> 00:37:58.480
Got another question here.

00:37:58.480 --> 00:38:03.600
Let me pull up the actual wording.

00:38:03.600 --> 00:38:09.200
Bob from Speaker's Corner recently did a podcast arguing against ethnonationalism.

00:38:09.200 --> 00:38:11.360
As I pointed out before, I don't like the term because it's

00:38:11.360 --> 00:38:12.880
redundant, right?

00:38:12.880 --> 00:38:16.960
We're just we're mixing Greek and Latin for no reason.

00:38:16.960 --> 00:38:19.040
Being incompatible with Christianity.

00:38:19.040 --> 00:38:21.440
They did happen to name drop you as well.

00:38:21.440 --> 00:38:25.040
But their argument is that ideas are what's most important for a

00:38:25.040 --> 00:38:28.000
prospering society not homogeneity

00:38:30.160 --> 00:38:30.480
So

00:38:35.280 --> 00:38:38.400
Would you be interested in debating Bob on this topic?

00:38:38.400 --> 00:38:42.800
He does seem to be increasing his vocalizations lately that ethno nationalism

00:38:42.960 --> 00:38:46.560
is incompatible with Christianity.

00:38:46.560 --> 00:38:51.760
I am not familiar with that I assume podcast.

00:38:51.760 --> 00:38:52.080
So

00:38:53.040 --> 00:38:56.320
I don't necessarily have a firm answer to that.

00:38:56.320 --> 00:38:59.840
I'm generally willing to discuss these issues, as I think is obvious

00:38:59.840 --> 00:39:01.520
at this point.

00:39:01.520 --> 00:39:07.520
I don't really think that there's much in the way of the

00:39:08.160 --> 00:39:10.880
theological argument that needs to be

00:39:12.320 --> 00:39:16.640
developed at this point, that needs to be expanded from what we

00:39:16.640 --> 00:39:19.600
did with Stone Choir, I think that we really laid out the

00:39:19.600 --> 00:39:24.720
argument for not just the compatibility of Christianity and nationalism.

00:39:24.720 --> 00:39:29.760
I'll go ahead and drop the redundant prefix there.

00:39:29.760 --> 00:39:32.160
I think that Think that we laid out the case that it

00:39:32.160 --> 00:39:35.120
is a requirement of being a Christian and that there is no

00:39:35.120 --> 00:39:37.920
way that you can possibly avoid it.

00:39:37.920 --> 00:39:44.640
And the homogeneity of a society is obviously of particular importance, or

00:39:44.640 --> 00:39:47.360
God wouldn't have created things that way.

00:39:47.360 --> 00:39:52.480
If God had wanted us to have some sort of wild diversity,

00:39:52.480 --> 00:39:56.640
really to abuse the term, but if he wanted basically everyone to

00:39:56.640 --> 00:39:59.040
be completely unique.

00:39:59.040 --> 00:40:00.400
He could have done that.

00:40:00.400 --> 00:40:03.280
He could have had it be the equivalent of, you know, roll

00:40:03.280 --> 00:40:06.400
a bunch of dice when someone is born and it's completely unrelated

00:40:06.400 --> 00:40:07.440
to their parents.

00:40:07.440 --> 00:40:10.240
He could have had you hatch from an egg that just appeared

00:40:10.240 --> 00:40:11.280
in the wilderness if he wants.

00:40:11.280 --> 00:40:12.160
You could have grown on a tree.

00:40:13.360 --> 00:40:16.000
God could have done basically anything.

00:40:16.000 --> 00:40:17.600
He didn't do that.

00:40:17.600 --> 00:40:22.960
And so we can draw out things from what God did versus

00:40:22.960 --> 00:40:25.200
what God did not do.

00:40:25.200 --> 00:40:28.560
God made it so that you are born to parents who were

00:40:28.560 --> 00:40:32.000
born to parents who were born to parents all the way back

00:40:32.400 --> 00:40:37.920
and over time do Due primarily to loss of genetic information, you

00:40:37.920 --> 00:40:42.560
have an entrenching of certain characteristics, an enhancement of those characteristics, the

00:40:42.560 --> 00:40:47.520
expression of them in certain populations, in certain proportions.

00:40:47.520 --> 00:40:50.640
And so you wind up with what we call races.

00:40:50.640 --> 00:40:53.680
And that's very clearly God's plan.

00:40:53.680 --> 00:40:54.000
So

00:40:54.960 --> 00:41:01.520
the idea that human ideas or ideologies are more important to a

00:41:01.520 --> 00:41:02.160
nation than

00:41:03.280 --> 00:41:08.160
the very substance of the nation and the fact that God created

00:41:08.160 --> 00:41:12.560
that nation and the fact that God created nations as a thing,

00:41:12.560 --> 00:41:17.360
as an idea, I think it's completely ludicrous and anti-Christian.

00:41:17.360 --> 00:41:19.840
I think you have to conclude this was important to God and

00:41:19.840 --> 00:41:22.000
it should be important to us.

00:41:22.000 --> 00:41:25.680
And on top of that.

00:41:26.000 --> 00:41:29.120
I mean, other than obviously the libertarianism of the thing, which I

00:41:29.120 --> 00:41:30.800
find detestable, but

00:41:33.920 --> 00:41:37.440
there's there's this argument underlying this

00:41:38.320 --> 00:41:43.760
that if we just have the right ideas, right, everything will be

00:41:43.760 --> 00:41:47.200
fine. It's a denial of the flesh.

00:41:47.200 --> 00:41:48.320
It's a denial of reality.

00:41:48.320 --> 00:41:50.960
We're right back to Gnosticism, which we always wind up back at

00:41:50.960 --> 00:41:54.240
Gnosticism because it's sort of the over Overarching heresy.

00:41:54.240 --> 00:41:57.280
It is the arch heresy that spawns all of these little children

00:41:57.280 --> 00:42:00.480
that run about and causes problems in the world.

00:42:00.480 --> 00:42:00.800
The

00:42:01.680 --> 00:42:04.080
argument that I would use against that is I would just say

00:42:04.320 --> 00:42:07.280
Liberia exists, right?

00:42:07.440 --> 00:42:09.520
We gave them our constitution

00:42:10.400 --> 00:42:13.120
We set them up We

00:42:14.720 --> 00:42:19.280
did all these things gave them the exact same society we have

00:42:19.280 --> 00:42:24.640
based on the ideas, and it turned into Liberia because of the

00:42:24.640 --> 00:42:26.480
difference in race.

00:42:26.480 --> 00:42:30.640
So would you want to live in Liberia?

00:42:30.640 --> 00:42:34.080
It has the same ideas as the US.

00:42:34.080 --> 00:42:36.000
I think I'd rather live here.

00:42:36.000 --> 00:42:39.520
We r we ran the experiment, it didn't work.

00:42:39.520 --> 00:42:42.640
Because ultimately culture is downstream from race.

00:42:42.640 --> 00:42:45.360
There's a feedback loop to some degree, of course, but

00:42:46.240 --> 00:42:51.280
you are not going to produce the culture of Norway with Somalians.

00:42:51.280 --> 00:42:52.960
That's not how it works.

00:42:52.960 --> 00:42:54.400
God didn't create it that way.

00:42:54.400 --> 00:42:55.680
We all know it doesn't work that way.

00:42:55.680 --> 00:42:59.280
It's completely ludicrous and the only reason that men argue it is

00:42:59.280 --> 00:43:04.160
because they don't like the necessary conclusions you have to draw from

00:43:04.160 --> 00:43:05.040
the truth.

00:43:05.040 --> 00:43:11.120
The truth makes them uncomfortable and so they fight against it.

00:43:11.760 --> 00:43:17.920
Someone said the video is black on Twitch.

00:43:17.920 --> 00:43:19.520
I have no idea why.

00:43:19.520 --> 00:43:22.080
Because everything shows fine on my end.

00:43:22.080 --> 00:43:22.400
So

00:43:24.000 --> 00:43:27.920
I would say probably just switch over to YouTube if there's no

00:43:27.920 --> 00:43:32.480
video on Twitch, because it's showing as being fine.

00:43:32.480 --> 00:43:35.600
So that might be an error on their end.

00:43:37.760 --> 00:43:40.240
Someone asked about the rosary.

00:43:40.240 --> 00:43:42.880
I am not Roman Catholic, as

00:43:43.920 --> 00:43:46.720
I think everyone probably knows by now.

00:43:46.720 --> 00:43:49.920
And so, no, I'm not going to pray to Mary or the

00:43:49.920 --> 00:43:52.240
Saints, and so I'm not going to pray the Rosary.

00:43:52.800 --> 00:43:57.360
I don't think having a set number of prayers that you pray

00:43:57.360 --> 00:43:58.640
in a certain sequence is wrong.

00:43:58.640 --> 00:44:00.400
I think that's completely fine.

00:44:00.400 --> 00:44:04.400
So, for instance, I'll pray the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed

00:44:04.400 --> 00:44:07.680
in pretty much the same order every day.

00:44:07.680 --> 00:44:11.840
I don't think that's a problem, but I think that at some

00:44:11.840 --> 00:44:15.200
point you cross that line into the mindless repetition

00:44:16.240 --> 00:44:21.920
that Christ condemns, the heaping up of words instead of prayer.

00:44:21.920 --> 00:44:24.480
Praying the Lord's Prayer is good.

00:44:24.480 --> 00:44:28.560
Praying the Lord's Prayer five hundred times in a row Is no

00:44:28.560 --> 00:44:29.840
longer prayer.

00:44:29.840 --> 00:44:31.680
It's mindless repetition.

00:44:31.680 --> 00:44:33.760
It is what God condemns.

00:44:33.760 --> 00:44:36.240
It's what Christ explicitly condemns.

00:44:36.240 --> 00:44:38.560
You can do that with any prayer.

00:44:38.560 --> 00:44:40.720
Don't use them in that way.

00:44:40.720 --> 00:44:43.600
Christian meditation is on something.

00:44:43.600 --> 00:44:45.440
It is not clearing the mind.

00:44:45.440 --> 00:44:46.800
That's Eastern meditation.

00:44:46.800 --> 00:44:49.280
It is something we condemn as Christians.

00:44:49.280 --> 00:44:53.120
So if you want to meditate on something as a Christian, read

00:44:53.120 --> 00:44:54.800
a book of the Bible.

00:44:54.800 --> 00:45:01.920
Read something that is Christian material and meditate on that it's instead

00:45:01.920 --> 00:45:04.320
of the clear your mind meditation.

00:45:04.320 --> 00:45:07.120
Because again, the clear your mind stuff, which is what repetition is

00:45:07.120 --> 00:45:07.600
designed to do

00:45:08.640 --> 00:45:13.680
it's designed to quiet the mind, the analytical faculties, the critical faculties.

00:45:13.680 --> 00:45:16.480
That's Eastern, not Christian.

00:45:16.480 --> 00:45:19.920
So no, I am not a fan of the rosary.

00:45:19.920 --> 00:45:24.480
But I don't object to set prayers, I object to their abuse,

00:45:24.480 --> 00:45:26.080
which is a different thing.

00:45:39.440 --> 00:45:43.360
I think that's the most of the questions from the chat, so

00:45:44.880 --> 00:45:47.200
I know I had more questions here.

00:45:47.200 --> 00:45:51.440
Let me pull them up.

00:45:51.440 --> 00:45:53.840
A light hearted one, do hippies have souls?

00:45:53.840 --> 00:45:56.960
And if they do, are we obligated to treat them like humans?

00:45:57.040 --> 00:46:00.960
Hippies, yes, they can be salvaged and they actually sometimes do some

00:46:00.960 --> 00:46:03.840
very good things like open nice restaurants, right?

00:46:03.840 --> 00:46:08.960
So I'm not going to necessarily disparage all hippies and hipsters and

00:46:08.960 --> 00:46:13.600
sort of that subset of people because they've done some good things.

00:46:13.600 --> 00:46:15.360
They're they have their problems.

00:46:15.360 --> 00:46:17.200
They can be obnoxious.

00:46:17.200 --> 00:46:19.920
Particularly when they smell like patchouli oil, right?

00:46:19.920 --> 00:46:20.240
But

00:46:22.080 --> 00:46:24.080
they've done some good in the world.

00:46:24.080 --> 00:46:26.960
They can be brought to our side if you can start to

00:46:26.960 --> 00:46:28.960
point out one of the most important things you can point out

00:46:28.960 --> 00:46:32.880
to them, technically the right wing is the environmentalist wing, not the

00:46:32.880 --> 00:46:35.680
left. The left stole that issue from us and they're terrible at

00:46:35.680 --> 00:46:38.800
it because they make the environment worse every time they try to

00:46:38.800 --> 00:46:40.240
improve it.

00:46:40.240 --> 00:46:42.960
So So if you can get them to believe that some of

00:46:42.960 --> 00:46:45.840
these issues are actually right-wing issues, like we care about the health

00:46:45.840 --> 00:46:48.560
of our people, we care about the health of the environment, we

00:46:48.560 --> 00:46:52.160
care about the natural world, we care about the disappearing species and

00:46:52.160 --> 00:46:54.240
invasive species and all these other problems.

00:46:54.640 --> 00:46:57.920
Those are concerns for the right wing.

00:46:57.920 --> 00:47:00.560
Just convince them they're on the wrong side.

00:47:00.560 --> 00:47:04.000
Because they have this caricature of the right as being some sort

00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:07.440
of arch capitalist who wants to just burn the earth to ash

00:47:07.520 --> 00:47:08.560
if it'll increase GDP.

00:47:08.560 --> 00:47:11.920
And quite frankly, it kind of sounds like the the GOP, the

00:47:11.920 --> 00:47:13.520
Republican Party.

00:47:13.520 --> 00:47:18.240
But actual right-wing Christian politics is a fundamentally different thing.

00:47:18.240 --> 00:47:20.160
And I think many of those people will come over to our

00:47:20.160 --> 00:47:23.440
side. They'll still be a little weird, because they're a little weird,

00:47:23.440 --> 00:47:26.160
but I think many of them are actually good people that are

00:47:26.160 --> 00:47:28.560
just very misled on some issues.

00:47:28.560 --> 00:47:31.120
Now communists aren't people and they don't matter.

00:47:31.120 --> 00:47:33.280
You've no consideration there.

00:47:37.200 --> 00:47:38.400
Let's see.

00:47:38.560 --> 00:47:42.480
No, there was another question I had here.

00:47:47.840 --> 00:47:48.560
There's one.

00:47:48.560 --> 00:47:52.240
I wanted to get this question about art, but I think I'm

00:47:52.160 --> 00:47:59.200
gonna get myself some tea.

00:47:59.200 --> 00:48:01.440
There's no point in having the tea in the background if I

00:48:01.440 --> 00:48:02.800
never drink any of it.

00:48:06.080 --> 00:48:10.560
So how valuable do you think the production of new edifying artwork,

00:48:10.560 --> 00:48:15.280
music, visual otherwise, is in the current cultural landscape?

00:48:15.280 --> 00:48:20.160
I obviously don't mean lucrative, that's a fair point, but refer to

00:48:20.160 --> 00:48:20.400
moral

00:48:21.680 --> 00:48:28.000
value. I think art is a fundamental part of the human experience.

00:48:28.000 --> 00:48:32.160
I think it is extremely important, and it is something that

00:48:33.120 --> 00:48:35.920
the right wing is starting to take more seriously.

00:48:35.920 --> 00:48:38.160
It was a little bit lacking there for a while, but I

00:48:38.160 --> 00:48:40.720
think the right is starting to take it more seriously.

00:48:40.720 --> 00:48:42.720
I guess perhaps I'm personally inclined.

00:48:42.720 --> 00:48:44.720
My last name's literally painter.

00:48:44.720 --> 00:48:49.360
I didn't personally get those particular skills painter of stained glass.

00:48:49.360 --> 00:48:51.040
I could maybe pull that part off.

00:48:51.040 --> 00:48:51.360
But

00:48:52.560 --> 00:48:56.400
I think that art is extremely important and it's not just, you

00:48:56.400 --> 00:49:00.960
know, the cultural landscape, because art in part dictates the cultural landscape.

00:49:01.840 --> 00:49:05.920
You can't have a culture wi I suppose you could have a

00:49:05.920 --> 00:49:10.160
culture without art, but it wouldn't worthy of being called a culture.

00:49:10.160 --> 00:49:14.560
One of the things that we are fundamentally fighting to defend is

00:49:14.880 --> 00:49:22.160
European culture and the expression of Christian artwork and Christendom that is

00:49:23.120 --> 00:49:24.160
our patrimony.

00:49:24.160 --> 00:49:27.360
It's something that we should be jealous of something we want to

00:49:27.360 --> 00:49:30.000
preserve and transmit to future generations.

00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:34.480
And so our great cathedrals, our museums, our great works of art,

00:49:34.480 --> 00:49:39.120
the stained glass, choral music, organ music, all these things that are

00:49:39.120 --> 00:49:42.640
expressions of beauty, and I'm not going to get into the beauty

00:49:42.640 --> 00:49:45.600
issue. I know that that was asked and I will get into

00:49:45.600 --> 00:49:50.880
that later, not this episode, but beauty is a transcendental, it is

00:49:50.880 --> 00:49:54.880
a fundamental part of part of creation itself.

00:49:54.880 --> 00:49:57.280
It's part of the fabric of reality.

00:49:57.280 --> 00:49:57.600
And

00:49:59.200 --> 00:50:00.960
we simply cannot ignore that.

00:50:00.960 --> 00:50:03.840
Particularly as Christians, we cannot ignore that, but as human beings we

00:50:03.840 --> 00:50:04.960
can't ignore that.

00:50:04.960 --> 00:50:10.480
So I think the production of new artworks is extremely important and

00:50:10.480 --> 00:50:15.040
yes, unfortunately these days it's probably not going to be particularly lucrative

00:50:15.280 --> 00:50:18.240
unless you find some niche and you find people who are willing

00:50:18.240 --> 00:50:19.120
to support you.

00:50:19.120 --> 00:50:22.960
That's a difficult thing because that is something, incidentally one of the

00:50:22.960 --> 00:50:29.840
reasons I object to our current societal organization and our political system.

00:50:29.840 --> 00:50:33.520
Really, you need a system of patrons, or you don't have the

00:50:33.520 --> 00:50:36.480
arts. That's even the case today because

00:50:37.760 --> 00:50:42.400
most of the arts are not supported, for instance, by ticket sales.

00:50:42.400 --> 00:50:47.600
So if you look at ticket sales and what they support for,

00:50:47.600 --> 00:50:52.640
say, an opera company or a theater company or an orchestra or

00:50:52.640 --> 00:50:57.440
anything like that, there's a reason they're constantly running events for for

00:50:57.440 --> 00:51:00.480
donors. That's what supports them.

00:51:00.480 --> 00:51:04.320
Yes, there's some government funding and things like that sometimes, but the

00:51:04.320 --> 00:51:09.120
issue is that you have to have a patron class, which is

00:51:09.120 --> 00:51:13.120
to say nobility, is how it should be, who support the arts,

00:51:13.120 --> 00:51:15.920
and without that you can't have the arts because there's no money

00:51:15.920 --> 00:51:19.360
for it, and artists, despite what people think, do actually have to

00:51:19.360 --> 00:51:21.520
eat. That's something they need.

00:51:21.520 --> 00:51:24.880
And they have to heat their apartments and things like that.

00:51:24.880 --> 00:51:25.200
And

00:51:26.960 --> 00:51:32.560
the issue with how our current economic system allocates resources is that

00:51:32.560 --> 00:51:35.920
it gives money to the worst sort of men in many cases.

00:51:36.160 --> 00:51:38.560
Now I'm not saying everyone who has money today is a bad

00:51:38.560 --> 00:51:43.120
man, but I'm saying that particularly horrible men do tend to make

00:51:43.120 --> 00:51:46.560
a lot of money under the sort of capitalism that we have.

00:51:46.560 --> 00:51:50.880
I'll say the sort of capitalism to make those happy who think

00:51:50.880 --> 00:51:53.600
that capitalism is just the free exchange of goods, which it's not.

00:51:53.600 --> 00:51:56.160
We went over that in the episode Capitalist Idolatry.

00:51:56.160 --> 00:51:59.200
I encourage men to go back and listen to it again.

00:51:59.200 --> 00:52:03.280
But the sort of men who make great sums of money under

00:52:03.280 --> 00:52:06.240
this system are not the sort of men who are going to

00:52:06.240 --> 00:52:11.600
build grand cathedrals and great public works and great public buildings and

00:52:11.920 --> 00:52:17.120
fund the artists who make symphonies and operas and all those things,

00:52:17.120 --> 00:52:21.520
all the things that we enjoy that were passed down to us

00:52:21.520 --> 00:52:27.440
from previous centuries were funded by aristocrats, were funded by noblemen, were

00:52:27.520 --> 00:52:32.480
funded by kings and emperors and counts, and all of these men

00:52:32.880 --> 00:52:37.920
who had great wealth at their command and great power.

00:52:37.920 --> 00:52:43.200
And if we like those things, then we need that sort of

00:52:43.200 --> 00:52:44.480
system again.

00:52:44.480 --> 00:52:49.200
So I'm glad to see artists producing great artwork, and I wish

00:52:49.200 --> 00:52:51.840
there were more of it, and I wish they were better funded.

00:52:51.840 --> 00:52:55.760
Because I think that just as scripture says, the workman is worth

00:52:55.760 --> 00:52:57.840
his wages, artists should be paid as well.

00:52:57.840 --> 00:53:00.720
They serve a very important function in society.

00:53:00.720 --> 00:53:04.400
Yes, to some degree it's a luxury function, but we should not

00:53:04.400 --> 00:53:08.720
want to have a society that exists at the subsistence level.

00:53:08.720 --> 00:53:12.160
We don't want everyone scrabbling in the dirt trying to produce enough

00:53:12.160 --> 00:53:15.120
food not to starve, trying to survive the winter.

00:53:15.120 --> 00:53:20.960
That's not a civilization that's worth calling a civilization.

00:53:23.440 --> 00:53:27.120
Is Glock the second best thing to come out of Austria?

00:53:27.120 --> 00:53:30.080
I don't know that I would necessarily say that Glock is the

00:53:30.080 --> 00:53:32.720
second best thing because I just went over art and opera and

00:53:32.720 --> 00:53:34.880
symphony music, and it's very hard to say

00:53:36.000 --> 00:53:40.000
that Glock is necessarily better than all of those, but I I

00:53:40.000 --> 00:53:41.200
don't hate Glock.

00:53:41.200 --> 00:53:44.800
I'll certainly go that far.

00:53:44.800 --> 00:53:47.200
When are you running for office?

00:53:47.200 --> 00:53:48.160
I do intend to do that.

00:53:48.160 --> 00:53:52.000
I'm I've said that openly, and I will be posting an article

00:53:52.000 --> 00:53:56.800
to that effect hopefully Monday, maybe tomorrow if I actually get around

00:53:56.800 --> 00:53:57.200
to it.

00:53:57.200 --> 00:53:58.720
I have a backlog of articles to post.

00:53:59.040 --> 00:54:03.120
One of them related to one of the questions asked earlier actually

00:54:03.520 --> 00:54:08.000
about actually the one I just answered about artwork, although related more

00:54:08.000 --> 00:54:10.800
to the narrative arts, but very much on that point.

00:54:10.800 --> 00:54:13.120
Hopefully I'll get that one done as well.

00:54:13.760 --> 00:54:16.800
But I'll post an article on that soon and we'll see how

00:54:16.800 --> 00:54:17.200
that goes.

00:54:17.200 --> 00:54:20.800
I'm sure that I will be targeted by the media and it

00:54:20.800 --> 00:54:23.840
will probably become a little bit of a circus, but I'm fine

00:54:23.840 --> 00:54:24.240
with that.

00:54:24.320 --> 00:54:25.440
Doesn't bother me

00:54:28.000 --> 00:54:32.720
How are we to respond to migrant or immigrant minorities in our

00:54:32.720 --> 00:54:36.320
local church congregations?

00:54:36.320 --> 00:54:39.040
The issue is that they shouldn't be here.

00:54:39.040 --> 00:54:40.800
That's the fundamental issue.

00:54:41.280 --> 00:54:41.600
And

00:54:43.760 --> 00:54:49.360
the Christian response is to treat them well because you're not going

00:54:49.360 --> 00:54:50.960
to, you know, you're not going to be mean to them and

00:54:50.960 --> 00:54:53.680
give them the cold shoulder and say, Oh no, you can't sit

00:54:53.680 --> 00:54:56.560
here and But at the same time it is perfectly permissible to

00:54:56.560 --> 00:54:58.880
call the immigration authorities to handle it.

00:54:58.880 --> 00:55:00.640
Because they shouldn't be here.

00:55:00.640 --> 00:55:00.960
So

00:55:01.840 --> 00:55:06.400
you're sort They're sort of straddling that line as it were, but

00:55:06.400 --> 00:55:08.720
there's nothing wrong with doing that.

00:55:08.720 --> 00:55:12.560
It's good that they want to be Christians, hopefully they're sincere, but

00:55:12.560 --> 00:55:15.520
they need to be Christian in their own home, in their own

00:55:15.520 --> 00:55:19.120
land. And by home I clearly mean physical territory, not their own

00:55:19.120 --> 00:55:20.080
house, right?

00:55:20.080 --> 00:55:22.560
Because they shouldn't own property here either.

00:55:22.560 --> 00:55:26.240
So perfectly fine to report them to the authorities.

00:55:26.240 --> 00:55:29.120
Because they, again, just simply should not be here

00:55:30.960 --> 00:55:33.760
And as I pointed out before, there's another point's worth making here.

00:55:33.760 --> 00:55:37.440
I pointed out before that if you are a Christian, you recognize

00:55:37.440 --> 00:55:43.840
that immigrant, migrant, economic migrant, whatever it happens to be, this isn't

00:55:43.760 --> 00:55:44.800
a Christian category.

00:55:45.040 --> 00:55:46.240
It's not a scriptural category.

00:55:46.240 --> 00:55:49.520
I'm not saying scripture always has to have an exact verse on

00:55:49.520 --> 00:55:55.120
the subject, but Sojourner is, so you can visit for a time,

00:55:55.120 --> 00:55:57.840
but sojourners go home.

00:55:57.840 --> 00:56:02.240
If these people were Christian, they would want to eventually go home.

00:56:02.240 --> 00:56:04.240
They don't intend to go home.

00:56:04.240 --> 00:56:07.040
That is at odds with them saying they are Christian.

00:56:07.040 --> 00:56:09.760
And so that's another part of the calculus there that's part of

00:56:09.760 --> 00:56:13.280
the calculation.

00:56:13.280 --> 00:56:17.600
Someone asked about the district president who was arrested for those who

00:56:17.600 --> 00:56:23.360
don't know, one of the members of the leadership of the LCMS

00:56:23.360 --> 00:56:28.080
was a child was arrested on charges related to I don't want

00:56:28.080 --> 00:56:32.560
to get this video banned or flagged or whatever, but on

00:56:33.440 --> 00:56:36.640
things Think of the worst charges on which you can be arrested

00:56:36.640 --> 00:56:39.360
that occur subsequent a hard drive search.

00:56:39.360 --> 00:56:41.040
I think you all know what I mean.

00:56:41.040 --> 00:56:43.360
He was arrested on those charges.

00:56:43.360 --> 00:56:46.560
And I think that he is only part of the problem in

00:56:46.560 --> 00:56:47.600
the LCMS.

00:56:47.600 --> 00:56:52.960
I won't go further than that because well various reasons, some of

00:56:52.960 --> 00:56:56.000
which are obvious, some of which aren't, but I think you're going

00:56:56.000 --> 00:56:57.920
to see more of it in the coming years.

00:56:57.920 --> 00:56:59.120
We said it.

00:56:59.120 --> 00:57:00.960
We called that years ago.

00:57:00.960 --> 00:57:04.480
Woe was fairly explicit with some of his posts about what was

00:57:04.480 --> 00:57:08.240
going to happen, and it is now coming to light in some

00:57:08.240 --> 00:57:11.600
cases. There are evil men in the churches.

00:57:11.600 --> 00:57:16.960
Evil men are attracted to power particularly when it is power that

00:57:16.960 --> 00:57:22.240
does not require much in terms of oversight or much in terms

00:57:22.240 --> 00:57:24.640
of effort to obtain.

00:57:24.640 --> 00:57:29.760
And so oftentimes they find themselves find themselves in the churches.

00:57:29.760 --> 00:57:33.920
It is a call for the men in the churches to be

00:57:33.920 --> 00:57:37.440
vigilant, even with regard to those who are in positions of authority

00:57:37.440 --> 00:57:40.560
in the churches, in order to not let them prey on children

00:57:40.560 --> 00:57:43.520
and cause these problems.

00:57:43.520 --> 00:57:46.800
It's something that has been there s for centuries.

00:57:46.800 --> 00:57:48.880
This is nothing new.

00:57:48.880 --> 00:57:52.240
But it has been ignored for many years, and it is a

00:57:52.240 --> 00:57:56.960
serious problem, not just in any one church, but in many churches,

00:57:56.960 --> 00:58:03.920
unfortunately.

00:58:06.160 --> 00:58:09.280
Someone asked if I would have a dialogue with Nick Fuentes.

00:58:09.280 --> 00:58:13.280
I actually answered that one, not in an episode of this really.

00:58:13.280 --> 00:58:17.360
I did touch on it with an answer to a previous question,

00:58:17.360 --> 00:58:21.120
but I did reply to someone on X about that.

00:58:21.120 --> 00:58:22.880
I think it was two weeks ago.

00:58:22.880 --> 00:58:25.120
Not that I'm saying you have to know all of my X

00:58:25.280 --> 00:58:28.640
posts, it's not, you know, forming a catalogue or a database there.

00:58:28.640 --> 00:58:32.080
The issue would be I don't think there's anything productive to be

00:58:32.080 --> 00:58:33.680
discussed there.

00:58:33.680 --> 00:58:37.360
My comment to the other man who asked about it was that

00:58:37.760 --> 00:58:41.840
I know what he is, he knows what he is, he knows

00:58:41.840 --> 00:58:44.560
that I know what he is.

00:58:44.560 --> 00:58:48.160
And he's blocked me, of course, but I don't think that there's

00:58:48.080 --> 00:58:50.480
anything productive to be done there.

00:58:50.480 --> 00:58:55.520
I think that the nature of that group will become even more

00:58:55.520 --> 00:58:57.120
apparent as we continue to go on.

00:58:57.120 --> 00:59:00.480
I think it already is relatively apparent, but it will become more

00:59:00.480 --> 00:59:06.000
apparent in time, and the good men will leave for better things.

00:59:06.000 --> 00:59:09.040
I think that's probably sufficient answer to that

00:59:20.080 --> 00:59:23.840
I think that was all of the questions in that thread for

00:59:23.840 --> 00:59:31.040
X. Is there a political party in the United States or America,

00:59:31.040 --> 00:59:32.400
whichever way you want to say that?

00:59:32.400 --> 00:59:34.640
They're distinct, but that's not the point here.

00:59:34.640 --> 00:59:40.000
Were worth belonging to anymore.

00:59:40.000 --> 00:59:44.880
This is one of those that has a number of different answers.

00:59:44.880 --> 00:59:46.160
And it's really

00:59:47.600 --> 00:59:49.920
one answer, sort of the lawyer answer, right?

00:59:49.920 --> 00:59:50.880
It depends.

00:59:50.880 --> 00:59:51.200
But

00:59:52.160 --> 00:59:57.920
is it necessarily the case that there is no utility left in

00:59:57.920 --> 00:59:59.200
the Republican Party?

00:59:59.200 --> 01:00:01.600
I don't think the Democrat Party is ever going to be useful

01:00:01.520 --> 01:00:05.920
be useful for the right, for those of us who are Christian,

01:00:05.920 --> 01:00:11.280
particularly Christian nationalists, except insofar as they continue to get crazier and

01:00:11.280 --> 01:00:15.840
make everyone else look better by comparison.

01:00:15.840 --> 01:00:16.080
But

01:00:17.200 --> 01:00:22.480
I think that you can involve yourself in Republican politics, which is

01:00:22.480 --> 01:00:25.600
the right wing politics in the US just by virtue of the

01:00:25.600 --> 01:00:29.680
system. I've discussed it before Duverger's Law, the fact that First past

01:00:29.760 --> 01:00:32.400
the post winner take all system will always wind up with two

01:00:32.400 --> 01:00:38.880
political parties that are relatively close together, ultimately, all things considered, but

01:00:38.880 --> 01:00:43.200
with minimal party discipline and a broad spectrum under their own respective

01:00:43.200 --> 01:00:47.760
umbrellas. Sort of the the brief version of it.

01:00:47.760 --> 01:00:52.800
But the reality and sort of the practical consideration is that you

01:00:52.800 --> 01:00:53.120
can

01:00:54.080 --> 01:01:00.000
become involved in local Republican politics and actually achieve things because of

01:01:00.000 --> 01:01:03.280
the fact that we don't have that party discipline.

01:01:03.280 --> 01:01:07.040
And so in some systems, to go over it again, I've gone

01:01:07.040 --> 01:01:11.360
over it in previous episodes, but in some systems, you have ways

01:01:11.680 --> 01:01:17.520
for the leaders of the party to enforce adherence to the party

01:01:17.520 --> 01:01:21.520
line. We don't have much of that in the US system.

01:01:21.520 --> 01:01:25.520
Really the only thing they can do is not give you money.

01:01:25.520 --> 01:01:30.480
Well, if you're at least an open Christian nationalist, they already weren't

01:01:30.480 --> 01:01:32.720
going to give you money, and so what threat do they have

01:01:32.720 --> 01:01:33.120
for you?

01:01:34.880 --> 01:01:36.560
We won't run ads for you.

01:01:36.560 --> 01:01:40.480
We're we won't say anything nice about they can't do anything because

01:01:40.480 --> 01:01:42.720
there's no mechanism for them.

01:01:42.720 --> 01:01:45.920
Now, maybe in some cases they can say you can't call yourself

01:01:45.920 --> 01:01:47.840
a Republican, right?

01:01:47.840 --> 01:01:49.760
Unless of course you already are, right?

01:01:49.760 --> 01:01:51.600
I'm registered as a Republican.

01:01:51.600 --> 01:01:52.880
I can say I'm a Republican.

01:01:52.960 --> 01:01:56.880
They can't do anything about it because it's technically true.

01:01:56.880 --> 01:02:01.040
Now, they're not going to endorse you, perhaps, but there are plenty

01:02:01.040 --> 01:02:06.960
of offices where you can be involved with Republican politicians, and maybe

01:02:06.960 --> 01:02:12.640
the office that you go for isn't itself technically political, all offices

01:02:12.640 --> 01:02:18.560
are ultimately political, but you can involve yourself in these things productively

01:02:18.720 --> 01:02:22.960
on the local level, maybe even on the you know city level,

01:02:22.960 --> 01:02:28.160
the regional level There's a very big difference between national level politics

01:02:28.160 --> 01:02:30.560
and local politics in the US system.

01:02:30.560 --> 01:02:31.200
And so

01:02:32.160 --> 01:02:36.080
the national parties are both terrible, right?

01:02:36.080 --> 01:02:38.240
The GOP is awful.

01:02:38.240 --> 01:02:42.720
There are basically no good men left in Washington, but that doesn't

01:02:42.640 --> 01:02:47.040
mean that the Republican Party in all places at all levels is

01:02:47.040 --> 01:02:51.200
bad. It doesn't mean that there are no productive things to do

01:02:51.200 --> 01:02:53.120
at the local level.

01:02:53.120 --> 01:02:57.600
So the answer is that yes, the national parties are terrible, there's

01:02:57.600 --> 01:03:02.080
no good national party, but with the enormous caveat that at the

01:03:02.080 --> 01:03:06.800
local level, or even the regional level, you can achieve some pretty

01:03:06.800 --> 01:03:09.760
good things inside the Republican Party.

01:03:09.760 --> 01:03:13.360
I'm not saying that's necessarily the only way forward, or that's the

01:03:13.360 --> 01:03:14.480
ultimate solution.

01:03:14.480 --> 01:03:18.080
I'm just saying it's part of the equation at this time.

01:03:29.520 --> 01:03:33.040
I have someone asking me why I don't believe that Jesus is

01:03:33.040 --> 01:03:34.240
the Son of God.

01:03:34.240 --> 01:03:36.080
I'm honestly not sure what he's asking.

01:03:36.080 --> 01:03:40.240
I obviously affirm that Jesus is indeed the Son of God and

01:03:40.240 --> 01:03:41.280
is God.

01:03:41.280 --> 01:03:47.040
Scripture's pretty clear about that one, to say nothing of the creeds.

01:03:57.440 --> 01:04:00.400
I think I will go into maybe a couple more questions here

01:04:00.400 --> 01:04:02.560
for this particular episode.

01:04:03.200 --> 01:04:05.040
Maybe three since I just noticed another.

01:04:05.280 --> 01:04:09.360
Are Roman Catholics's right to ban contraception in all circumstances?

01:04:09.360 --> 01:04:16.320
French Canadians in their prime had more kids than their Anglo neighbors.

01:04:16.320 --> 01:04:19.520
This is one of those that I've answered before, but I think

01:04:19.520 --> 01:04:21.040
it does bear repeating.

01:04:21.040 --> 01:04:27.360
I don't think that all contraception in the broadest sense is morally

01:04:27.360 --> 01:04:32.480
impermissible. And so for instance, I think the one that is probably

01:04:33.280 --> 01:04:36.720
where you where you should draw the line because I think everything

01:04:36.720 --> 01:04:44.560
else has negatives that are either too great or simply morally impermissible.

01:04:44.560 --> 01:04:47.520
So the pill, morally impermissible.

01:04:47.760 --> 01:04:52.080
I think that you can't pursue those ones because of those negatives,

01:04:52.080 --> 01:04:55.920
but I think that the natural family planning method, which is basically

01:04:55.920 --> 01:05:00.720
just tracking your wife's cycle, totally permissible, that's fine.

01:05:00.720 --> 01:05:02.960
You are permitted to do that.

01:05:02.960 --> 01:05:06.800
Because you're permitted to use wisdom in timing when you have your

01:05:06.800 --> 01:05:10.080
children. Now, should you avoid children altogether?

01:05:10.080 --> 01:05:12.320
No, of course not, because children are a blessing from the Lord

01:05:12.400 --> 01:05:14.960
and Lord, and particularly the children of one's youth.

01:05:14.960 --> 01:05:17.440
Scripture praises that even more highly.

01:05:17.440 --> 01:05:18.000
And so

01:05:20.000 --> 01:05:23.200
No, I don't think that you should everyone should have twelve children,

01:05:23.200 --> 01:05:26.320
right? That's probably too many for most people.

01:05:26.320 --> 01:05:29.840
That is quite the task, and not everyone is up to that

01:05:29.840 --> 01:05:33.840
task, and so there is an aspect of wisdom in this.

01:05:33.840 --> 01:05:38.400
But should we be using barrier methods and things like that?

01:05:38.400 --> 01:05:39.200
I don't think so.

01:05:39.200 --> 01:05:44.960
I think they have biological and other downsides, including downsides with regard

01:05:44.960 --> 01:05:48.720
to psychology and the overall health of the woman.

01:05:48.720 --> 01:05:51.040
There are a lot of negatives for those, so I don't think

01:05:51.040 --> 01:05:51.840
those are good.

01:05:51.840 --> 01:05:56.240
But just tracking your wife's cycle is morally permissible, and that's fine

01:05:56.240 --> 01:05:57.440
if you want to do that.

01:05:57.440 --> 01:06:01.200
I don't think you should use it again to avoid having any

01:06:01.200 --> 01:06:04.880
children. But if you want to you know space them a little

01:06:04.880 --> 01:06:08.400
bit, I think that's perfectly morally permissible.

01:06:08.400 --> 01:06:12.240
And it's also one of those cases where the punishment, if you

01:06:12.240 --> 01:06:15.600
go too far, is built into the thing itself.

01:06:15.600 --> 01:06:18.880
Because what is the natural consequence of using contraceptions?

01:06:18.880 --> 01:06:22.400
Well, God won't bless you with children.

01:06:22.400 --> 01:06:22.720
So

01:06:23.680 --> 01:06:27.600
if you don't want God's blessings, that's sort of between you and

01:06:27.600 --> 01:06:29.600
God. I think that would be foolish.

01:06:29.600 --> 01:06:33.200
And I think that it is detrimental to society.

01:06:33.200 --> 01:06:36.560
And so yes, I think we should absolutely be trying to increase

01:06:36.560 --> 01:06:40.800
the fertility rate right now and we should be encouraging that in

01:06:40.800 --> 01:06:41.760
many different ways.

01:06:41.760 --> 01:06:44.960
I have the German mother's cross in the box here behind me.

01:06:44.960 --> 01:06:47.920
I'm tempted to get it out, but everyone's seen it before, so

01:06:48.400 --> 01:06:50.240
that's something we should be doing.

01:06:50.240 --> 01:06:52.000
So short answer, no.

01:06:52.000 --> 01:06:55.040
Not all contraception is morally wrongful.

01:06:55.040 --> 01:06:58.640
But many methods are, and don't go overboard.

01:07:04.640 --> 01:07:07.200
Someone asking about the seventh day adventists.

01:07:07.200 --> 01:07:10.480
I've commented on that before, so I don't know that I'll go

01:07:10.480 --> 01:07:15.120
into it in depth here, but I'll point out sort of a

01:07:15.120 --> 01:07:16.720
salient point about it.

01:07:16.720 --> 01:07:21.040
I've made the point before, but it is worth repeating.

01:07:21.040 --> 01:07:27.200
No one knows what the seventh day was.

01:07:27.200 --> 01:07:33.520
Now that sounds almost insane, and then it maybe also sounds irrelevant

01:07:33.520 --> 01:07:35.520
initially, but it's not.

01:07:35.520 --> 01:07:38.800
And the reason for that is that if you want to say

01:07:38.800 --> 01:07:40.960
the seventh day is Saturday, right?

01:07:40.960 --> 01:07:45.280
That's just what you've called it, you've assigned the name Saturday to

01:07:45.280 --> 01:07:47.520
the seventh day in creation week.

01:07:47.520 --> 01:07:50.000
And so Sunday obviously is the first.

01:07:50.000 --> 01:07:57.680
Okay. Now you have to say that you can count seven, seven,

01:07:57.920 --> 01:08:04.480
seven, so a week, all the way from creation up to today.

01:08:04.800 --> 01:08:06.720
You can't do that.

01:08:06.720 --> 01:08:09.520
No one except God can do that.

01:08:09.520 --> 01:08:15.520
So you don't actually know when the original seventh day was And

01:08:15.520 --> 01:08:19.600
so you can't say which day of our modern week corresponds to

01:08:19.600 --> 01:08:25.040
it. And so if you pick Saturday or you pick Sunday, ultimately

01:08:25.120 --> 01:08:28.560
you are just picking a day out of the week.

01:08:28.560 --> 01:08:31.840
And that's the case even if you go back not all the

01:08:31.840 --> 01:08:35.520
way back to creation, but even just back a couple thousand years,

01:08:35.520 --> 01:08:37.760
because the calendar has changed several times.

01:08:37.760 --> 01:08:41.760
In fact, you've had cases where people showed up for international events

01:08:41.760 --> 01:08:44.240
the wrong week because they were using a different calendar.

01:08:44.240 --> 01:08:46.080
The Russians did that at one point.

01:08:46.080 --> 01:08:51.600
And so you have no way of knowing what day the seventh

01:08:51.600 --> 01:08:53.520
day of creation week was.

01:08:53.520 --> 01:08:57.520
And so those who latch on to that are just latching onto

01:08:57.520 --> 01:09:01.280
some nonsense to be different, to be off in the corner saying,

01:09:01.280 --> 01:09:03.120
No, the rest of you are wrong.

01:09:03.120 --> 01:09:04.800
There's no warrant for it.

01:09:04.800 --> 01:09:08.720
It doesn't make any sense, and you can't prove it.

01:09:08.720 --> 01:09:12.080
And so ultimately Christians are picking a day of the week.

01:09:12.080 --> 01:09:14.800
Everyone picks Sunday.

01:09:14.800 --> 01:09:20.160
And unless you have an extremely compelling reason, you should not be

01:09:20.160 --> 01:09:23.280
the one saying everyone else needs to change.

01:09:23.280 --> 01:09:26.800
Which is to say, unless God says you have to do something,

01:09:26.800 --> 01:09:29.040
you don't get to just change Christian practice.

01:09:29.040 --> 01:09:32.480
And Christian practice from the very early years of the New Testament

01:09:32.480 --> 01:09:38.160
church has been to observe Sunday as the Lord's day.

01:09:38.160 --> 01:09:41.280
And, you know, you obviously also have the words of Christ, right?

01:09:41.280 --> 01:09:43.120
The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.

01:09:43.120 --> 01:09:46.000
Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, and then

01:09:46.000 --> 01:09:48.880
you have the words of Paul where one man esteems one day

01:09:48.880 --> 01:09:52.480
as more important and one man steems all days the same matter

01:09:52.560 --> 01:09:53.600
of conscience.

01:09:53.600 --> 01:09:57.360
I think it's very clear in Scripture that go with what is

01:09:57.360 --> 01:10:00.080
good for order and what is good for order is that we

01:10:00.080 --> 01:10:01.920
all observe Sunday.

01:10:01.920 --> 01:10:03.760
I think you can have Saturday services.

01:10:03.760 --> 01:10:05.920
Saturday night service is totally fine.

01:10:05.920 --> 01:10:09.600
You know, there are necessary workers who work on Sunday.

01:10:09.600 --> 01:10:12.640
So if you have a service some other time during the week

01:10:12.640 --> 01:10:17.040
for doctors and firefighters and policemen and all the others who have

01:10:17.040 --> 01:10:20.880
these necessary functions that require them to work on Sunday, I think

01:10:20.880 --> 01:10:22.320
that's totally fine.

01:10:22.320 --> 01:10:26.960
But I think as a matter of overall praxis, we should all

01:10:26.960 --> 01:10:32.320
be observing the Lord's Day, which is Sunday.

01:10:32.960 --> 01:10:37.600
A question about the internet contributing to global awareness of the JQ.

01:10:37.600 --> 01:10:39.760
I think I will leave that one for next time because it

01:10:39.760 --> 01:10:43.680
will probably run a little long, so I will note that for

01:10:43.680 --> 01:10:44.720
next time.

01:10:52.960 --> 01:10:55.120
Do people ever recognize you in person?

01:10:55.120 --> 01:10:57.120
Infrequently, but yes.

01:10:57.440 --> 01:11:01.120
I think that the large beard and the fact that I'm bald

01:11:01.360 --> 01:11:05.600
probably makes me stand out a little bit and so anyone who

01:11:05.600 --> 01:11:10.960
has seen me from an interview or something is probably going to

01:11:10.960 --> 01:11:12.960
recognize me because of that fact.

01:11:12.960 --> 01:11:15.200
And so I I've been recognized a few times, but not that

01:11:15.200 --> 01:11:21.120
many. Which Which I guess is probably good because then people harass

01:11:21.120 --> 01:11:27.920
you, but that's how it goes.

01:11:28.080 --> 01:11:32.560
I have not had anyone come come up to me and harass

01:11:32.800 --> 01:11:35.520
me in public yet.

01:11:35.520 --> 01:11:38.400
So there is that.

01:11:38.400 --> 01:11:41.760
Which I guess is beneficial.

01:11:41.760 --> 01:11:44.560
And my chat window.

01:11:44.560 --> 01:11:50.320
window just froze, so I can't scroll.

01:11:50.320 --> 01:11:55.120
I will have to pull that up.

01:11:55.120 --> 01:11:58.400
I think that I will probably go ahead and take the chat

01:11:58.400 --> 01:12:02.560
window freezing as my sign to call the stream for tonight.

01:12:02.560 --> 01:12:05.360
Which okay, now it unfroze, of course, as soon as I say

01:12:05.360 --> 01:12:09.600
that. But anyway, I think that's about an hour at this point,

01:12:09.600 --> 01:12:13.520
a little over, so I think that's good for this week.

01:12:13.520 --> 01:12:18.640
And if anyone wants to contribute more questions, you can of course

01:12:18.640 --> 01:12:22.720
do so on the forum, omniforta.com com you can just follow the

01:12:22.880 --> 01:12:25.120
the banner and the other notifications there.

01:12:25.120 --> 01:12:28.960
There's a particular part of the forum for submitting questions.

01:12:28.960 --> 01:12:31.760
If you post it somewhere else I'll move it, that's fine.

01:12:31.760 --> 01:12:33.040
Some people have done that.

01:12:33.040 --> 01:12:36.000
That's I understand that not everyone knows exactly how that software works

01:12:36.080 --> 01:12:38.640
and that's that's perfectly reasonable.

01:12:38.640 --> 01:12:42.160
If I did not get to your question and you have asked

01:12:42.160 --> 01:12:45.520
it on X or somewhere else and it's been a few weeks,

01:12:45.520 --> 01:12:47.680
then by all means please resubmit it.

01:12:48.000 --> 01:12:49.360
Maybe I missed it.

01:12:49.360 --> 01:12:53.440
Sometimes X hides things from me, so that's part of the problem.

01:12:53.440 --> 01:12:56.320
But if you put it on the forum, then that's my site.

01:12:56.320 --> 01:12:57.600
I control that.

01:12:57.600 --> 01:13:00.480
I will actually see it there because I get a notification and

01:13:00.480 --> 01:13:03.680
it's not going to disappear because you know someone on X in

01:13:03.680 --> 01:13:07.440
the moderation team decides I don't get to see your post.

01:13:07.440 --> 01:13:11.680
So that's mostly just for my convenience and for future reference so

01:13:11.680 --> 01:13:15.440
people can find these things more easily, I try to put up

01:13:15.440 --> 01:13:21.520
a post with the audio from these QA sessions, usually a couple

01:13:21.520 --> 01:13:24.480
days after the stream to be honest, not the day after, but

01:13:24.720 --> 01:13:27.600
I do that and then have a transcript as well so things

01:13:27.600 --> 01:13:29.360
are searchable, should make it very easy.

01:13:29.360 --> 01:13:31.680
People find these in the future, recommend them to others.

01:13:31.680 --> 01:13:35.520
If someone has a question about something I've said, perhaps I've expanded

01:13:35.520 --> 01:13:37.600
on it in one of these episodes.

01:13:37.600 --> 01:13:40.640
And like I said, I do intend to address the issue of

01:13:40.640 --> 01:13:43.680
beauty, which caused a bit of a controversy on X that wasn't

01:13:43.600 --> 01:13:47.360
actually necessarily my goal, because I was saying something that was simply

01:13:47.360 --> 01:13:51.040
in line with what Christian theologians have always taught.

01:13:51.040 --> 01:13:53.920
But I'll go ahead and expand on that maybe not next week,

01:13:53.920 --> 01:13:58.800
but perhaps the week after, or in a standalone episode, perhaps, because

01:13:58.800 --> 01:14:01.440
that one may run long, so I may just release an hour

01:14:01.440 --> 01:14:03.040
of audio by itself.

01:14:03.040 --> 01:14:06.160
But thank you to those who submitted questions and thank you for

01:14:06.160 --> 01:14:08.080
your time listening to my answers.

01:14:08.080 --> 01:14:11.680
Hopefully you found this useful, and I'm glad that you were able

01:14:11.680 --> 01:14:13.120
to spend this time.

01:14:13.120 --> 01:14:16.320
And I hope that you all have a great weekend.

01:14:16.320 --> 01:14:17.520
It is of course Friday.

01:14:17.440 --> 01:14:20.080
I tried to do these on Thursday, but it keeps slipping to

01:14:20.080 --> 01:14:24.000
Friday, so Friday evening for this one.

01:14:24.000 --> 01:14:26.880
Again, if you have questions, submit those on the forum or elsewhere.

01:14:26.880 --> 01:14:29.600
I try to find them and collate them, and thank you for

01:14:29.600 --> 01:14:30.080
your time.

01:14:30.080 --> 01:14:31.840
I will see you all next week.

01:14:31.840 --> 01:14:34.240
Until then, God bless.