WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.520 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:40.720 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:41.840 Mahler. And 00:00:41.840 --> 00:00:43.760 I'm still woe. 00:00:43.760 --> 00:00:48.960 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing honor and shame. 00:00:48.960 --> 00:00:52.400 At the beginning of the year, we did an episode on the 00:00:52.400 --> 00:00:56.560 nature of religion, true religion, and we made the point there at 00:00:56.560 --> 00:00:59.200 the beginning of that five part series, actually I think six part 00:00:59.200 --> 00:01:02.480 arc, that I'd recommend you go back and listen to after this 00:01:02.480 --> 00:01:07.840 episode. In the true religion episode we made the point that a 00:01:07.840 --> 00:01:10.960 man's true religion is the source of his morality. 00:01:10.960 --> 00:01:13.200 Where are you getting your right and wrong from? 00:01:13.200 --> 00:01:17.360 Today's episode is we're focusing on honor and shame It's kind of 00:01:17.360 --> 00:01:20.800 a rehash of that premise, but we're going to take a different 00:01:20.800 --> 00:01:22.480 lens to approach the subject. 00:01:22.480 --> 00:01:25.360 So we're going to be repeating ourselves of things we said about 00:01:25.360 --> 00:01:29.520 morality, but I want to connect the fact that the way a 00:01:29.520 --> 00:01:34.480 society honors certain things, the way a society shames certain things, is 00:01:34.480 --> 00:01:35.920 fundamentally the same thing. 00:01:35.920 --> 00:01:40.640 You know, morality is right and wrong, and then honor and shame 00:01:40.640 --> 00:01:43.600 are enforcement of what we believe are right and wrong. 00:01:43.840 --> 00:01:47.040 So where honor and shame are applied, it's not always exactly right 00:01:47.040 --> 00:01:52.800 and wrong, but underlying both of them is a fundamental premise. 00:01:52.800 --> 00:01:56.800 You have a group of people that have collectively decided as a 00:01:56.800 --> 00:01:58.880 culture, these are the rules. 00:01:58.880 --> 00:02:02.160 Here's the benchmark for outstanding performance. 00:02:02.160 --> 00:02:05.200 And then the further you get away from that benchmark, the more 00:02:05.200 --> 00:02:06.160 shameful you are. 00:02:06.160 --> 00:02:08.400 You know, you have people who are just kind of average. 00:02:08.400 --> 00:02:11.680 You have the heroes to whom we accord honor, and you have 00:02:11.680 --> 00:02:13.440 those who are shamed. 00:02:13.440 --> 00:02:16.880 So by the end of the episode, I hope that you'll have 00:02:16.880 --> 00:02:20.720 another way of kind of evaluating fights you see online, things you 00:02:20.720 --> 00:02:23.120 see in politics or anywhere in the world. 00:02:23.120 --> 00:02:29.040 If something is being upheld as an honorable task or activity or 00:02:29.040 --> 00:02:33.120 manner of speech or whatever, or if something is being specifically highlighted 00:02:33.120 --> 00:02:37.200 as this is the most shameful, despicable, wicked stuff in the world. 00:02:37.200 --> 00:02:40.480 If all the opprium, all the shame in the world is heaped 00:02:40.480 --> 00:02:46.160 on something for specific beliefs or behaviors, that is telling you their 00:02:46.400 --> 00:02:50.960 religion. Now, as Christians, we should be concerned that there's alignment. 00:02:50.960 --> 00:02:55.520 We don't want things to be objects of absolute shameful wrath if 00:02:55.520 --> 00:02:57.040 they're not actually even wrong. 00:02:57.040 --> 00:02:59.440 Maybe you can think of some example I can, you know, like 00:02:59.440 --> 00:03:03.120 fluorescent colors and clothing, maybe like bright green. 00:03:03.120 --> 00:03:04.480 It's subjective, right? 00:03:04.480 --> 00:03:06.880 You start to get silly when you're saying, well, that's really shameful, 00:03:06.880 --> 00:03:07.840 but is it wrong? 00:03:07.840 --> 00:03:09.840 No, it's I don't like it. 00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:13.280 The true religion that we express not only is in terms of 00:03:13.280 --> 00:03:16.080 what we think is right and wrong, but where do we go 00:03:16.080 --> 00:03:16.880 to war? 00:03:16.880 --> 00:03:19.920 Where do we say, I'm gonna draw a line here? 00:03:19.920 --> 00:03:22.880 And someone who does really well, I'm gonna give honor, someone who 00:03:23.040 --> 00:03:26.000 does very poorly, I'm going to shame them. 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:28.880 I think another way of looking at is something that emerged to 00:03:28.880 --> 00:03:31.760 me as I was looking through some of the scriptural uses of 00:03:31.760 --> 00:03:33.200 honor in particular. 00:03:33.360 --> 00:03:37.280 We'll link in the show notes to the Bible Hub Concordance to 00:03:37.280 --> 00:03:41.120 show you some of the Greek usages of the words that are 00:03:41.120 --> 00:03:44.640 translated in English as honor and what you'll find in those long 00:03:44.640 --> 00:03:48.240 lists of verses, you know, dozens and dozens of verses. 00:03:48.240 --> 00:03:51.760 Sometimes it shows up as honor, but exactly the same word is 00:03:51.760 --> 00:03:54.560 also used in some cases for a price. 00:03:54.560 --> 00:03:56.320 They're actually interchangeable. 00:03:56.320 --> 00:03:59.840 The idea of something being honorable and something having a price, it 00:03:59.840 --> 00:04:01.440 works the same way. 00:04:01.440 --> 00:04:03.760 And so it always sort of struck me as odd that we 00:04:03.760 --> 00:04:07.040 would have prizes for someone who's receiving some great honor like the 00:04:07.040 --> 00:04:07.920 Nobel Prize. 00:04:07.920 --> 00:04:09.280 And then you give them cash. 00:04:09.280 --> 00:04:10.880 It always seemed like it was tacked on. 00:04:10.880 --> 00:04:14.480 I didn't realize that at least in Greek etymologically it's the same 00:04:14.480 --> 00:04:17.040 thing. And it does kind of make sense. 00:04:17.040 --> 00:04:17.360 So 00:04:18.240 --> 00:04:20.880 the flip side of that would be something like fines. 00:04:20.880 --> 00:04:23.680 Someone does really poorly, they get penalized, right? 00:04:23.680 --> 00:04:25.840 You know, it happens in pro sports. 00:04:25.840 --> 00:04:29.040 If they use foul language in an interview or something, they're gonna 00:04:29.040 --> 00:04:30.640 get fined by the league. 00:04:30.640 --> 00:04:32.000 A lot of money to us. 00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:34.560 Not a lot of money to a pro sports guy, you know, 00:04:34.560 --> 00:04:37.760 with fifty thousand dollars for saying a word that they shouldn't have 00:04:37.760 --> 00:04:39.200 said is typical. 00:04:39.200 --> 00:04:42.640 That is shame being manifest with a price tag. 00:04:42.640 --> 00:04:45.920 And I think it was interesting to me because going back for 00:04:45.920 --> 00:04:49.120 many thousands of years, it's entirely normal to have a price tag 00:04:49.120 --> 00:04:51.360 put on everything, including human life. 00:04:51.360 --> 00:04:52.640 And we do that to this day. 00:04:52.640 --> 00:04:55.440 We put a price tag on things that says here's the value 00:04:55.440 --> 00:04:56.400 of this thing. 00:04:56.400 --> 00:04:58.240 And it's never going to be equal. 00:04:58.240 --> 00:05:02.480 The value of your life in court will be different than mine. 00:05:02.480 --> 00:05:05.040 You know, if you have kids, if you have family, if you're 00:05:05.040 --> 00:05:09.840 a certain age, all sorts of variables are calculated together to determine 00:05:09.840 --> 00:05:11.360 the value of a person's life. 00:05:11.520 --> 00:05:15.200 That's very offensive to us morally, 'cause it's like, oh well, everybody's 00:05:15.200 --> 00:05:17.600 equal and the same and you know, if I die, my family's 00:05:17.600 --> 00:05:21.040 sad. If you die, your family's sad, so it has the same 00:05:21.040 --> 00:05:21.760 value, right? 00:05:21.760 --> 00:05:23.440 Well, not before the law. 00:05:23.440 --> 00:05:25.200 And that's not injustice. 00:05:25.200 --> 00:05:28.640 It would be injustice for a man like me who has no 00:05:28.640 --> 00:05:31.760 dependence to have my life value greater as somebody who has a 00:05:31.760 --> 00:05:33.840 bunch of mouths to feet if he's gone. 00:05:33.840 --> 00:05:36.720 I my life should be worth less because of that one thing. 00:05:36.720 --> 00:05:40.640 So there are always variables that come into play for things that 00:05:40.640 --> 00:05:45.680 we think of as moral questions, but it's actually godly for prices 00:05:45.680 --> 00:05:46.880 to be put on things. 00:05:46.880 --> 00:05:49.440 We find that in the Old Testament, when God was the one 00:05:49.440 --> 00:05:52.800 actually writing the laws, he put prices on things. 00:05:52.800 --> 00:05:56.880 A price is tied to honor and sometimes it's used interchangeably. 00:05:56.880 --> 00:06:00.880 So just keep in mind that there's a value judgment being put 00:06:00.880 --> 00:06:03.600 on the subjects by entire cultures. 00:06:03.600 --> 00:06:06.880 And you know, when you hear honor shame, particularly if you've done 00:06:06.880 --> 00:06:09.440 some studying and Corey's going to get a lot more into some 00:06:09.440 --> 00:06:13.840 of the details of histories of other races, there are always different 00:06:13.840 --> 00:06:17.600 approaches to how these things are implemented, but they're fundamentally, I think, 00:06:17.600 --> 00:06:18.640 doing the same thing. 00:06:18.640 --> 00:06:20.960 Maybe we'll see if my thesis is borne out by some of 00:06:20.960 --> 00:06:21.760 his arguments. 00:06:21.760 --> 00:06:26.000 But I think regardless of society, regardless of culture, regardless of the 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:29.600 race that is implementing the honor or the shame, as two sides 00:06:29.600 --> 00:06:34.080 of the same coin, it's always going to be enforcing what the 00:06:34.080 --> 00:06:36.160 benchmark is for the culture. 00:06:36.160 --> 00:06:37.680 And the benchmark may vary. 00:06:37.680 --> 00:06:43.440 You know, Greek culture, Roman culture, American culture have very different benchmarks 00:06:43.440 --> 00:06:45.520 for what the ideal is. 00:06:45.520 --> 00:06:48.320 And we honor and we shame accordingly. 00:06:48.320 --> 00:06:52.240 But the principle, the underlying mechanism, is always going to be bounded 00:06:52.240 --> 00:06:53.040 by this. 00:06:53.040 --> 00:06:55.200 We want more of this, we want less of that. 00:06:55.200 --> 00:06:57.680 And these are enforcement mechanisms. 00:06:57.680 --> 00:07:01.600 And so once you realize that you, as someone who's honoring a 00:07:01.600 --> 00:07:04.960 certain type of behavior, a certain type of person, or who's heaping 00:07:04.960 --> 00:07:09.280 shame on a certain type of person or certain type of behavior, 00:07:09.280 --> 00:07:13.360 you are an active participant in shaping culture. 00:07:13.360 --> 00:07:17.280 The way that you shame certain things is saying, this is wrong, 00:07:17.280 --> 00:07:18.320 this is out of bounds. 00:07:18.320 --> 00:07:21.600 Yes, it's an entirely appropriate thing to do for Christians especially. 00:07:21.600 --> 00:07:24.240 Like these things are replete in scripture. 00:07:24.240 --> 00:07:27.600 We're called upon to honor some things and to shame others. 00:07:27.600 --> 00:07:30.880 And we'll get into some of the specifics from scripture, but it's 00:07:30.880 --> 00:07:31.600 not a bad thing. 00:07:31.600 --> 00:07:32.400 Like it's not fair. 00:07:32.400 --> 00:07:34.400 It's not that this is coercive. 00:07:34.400 --> 00:07:37.840 We use terms like that and and people get upset like it's 00:07:37.920 --> 00:07:39.360 somebody's being bullied. 00:07:39.360 --> 00:07:43.360 Like, well, call it bullying, call it coercion, call it enforcement. 00:07:43.360 --> 00:07:45.120 The bottom line is that there are rules. 00:07:45.120 --> 00:07:47.600 And when you step outside the rules, there are going to be 00:07:47.600 --> 00:07:50.400 penalties. The question is who's setting them? 00:07:50.400 --> 00:07:53.600 And the bottom line is that it's going to be religious one 00:07:53.600 --> 00:07:58.320 way or another, even if it's a completely amoral part of society 00:07:58.320 --> 00:08:02.960 that's shaping what's shameful or what's honorable, it's still enforcing here's what's 00:08:02.960 --> 00:08:04.320 permitted and here's what's 00:08:04.320 --> 00:08:04.960 not. 00:08:05.600 --> 00:08:10.960 So fairly obviously the topic of honor and shame is a broad 00:08:10.960 --> 00:08:13.840 one to say the very least Least. 00:08:13.840 --> 00:08:18.320 We are not going to cover the entire history of the concepts 00:08:18.320 --> 00:08:20.720 and all of the little nuances. 00:08:20.720 --> 00:08:25.120 Really, what we're doing in this episode is what Wo said, we're 00:08:25.120 --> 00:08:30.240 giving you a tool in your toolkit to understand some of these 00:08:30.240 --> 00:08:34.240 conflicts that are playing out in the public square, which today for 00:08:34.240 --> 00:08:38.160 better or worse tends to be various social media sites, particularly 00:08:39.280 --> 00:08:41.680 what used to be called Twitter. 00:08:41.680 --> 00:08:47.120 However, some of the history and some of the nuance is important 00:08:47.280 --> 00:08:53.840 in order to understand the terms as concepts more accurately than if 00:08:53.840 --> 00:08:56.800 you did not have that information. 00:08:56.800 --> 00:09:00.880 So when we speak of honor and shame, and we should have 00:09:00.880 --> 00:09:05.600 guilt in here as well, we're not going to use the exact 00:09:05.600 --> 00:09:10.080 sense in which those are used to describe certain cultures in the 00:09:10.080 --> 00:09:15.280 literature if you are familiar with that area of research. 00:09:15.280 --> 00:09:18.640 That's not to say that that area of research is irrelevant here, 00:09:18.640 --> 00:09:19.520 because it is relevant. 00:09:19.520 --> 00:09:25.280 There are different cultures that process these things differently, that group these 00:09:25.280 --> 00:09:32.080 sorts of concerns, these things that society either encourages or discourages, the 00:09:32.080 --> 00:09:36.800 way those are grouped and handled by society, differs from one society 00:09:36.800 --> 00:09:41.680 to another, and you can sort of put them under fairly broad 00:09:41.680 --> 00:09:46.160 and overlapping umbrellas, sort of a Venn diagram, really. 00:09:46.160 --> 00:09:53.520 But traditionally, you had the division into shame-based societies and guilt-based societies. 00:09:53.520 --> 00:09:59.360 The literature has expanded to include fear-based, which is necessary because some 00:09:59.360 --> 00:10:02.320 societies really did not fall under shame or guilt. 00:10:02.320 --> 00:10:06.800 It's really sort of the tribal primitive societies that are fear-based, which 00:10:06.800 --> 00:10:08.400 is one of the reasons they were ignored. 00:10:08.880 --> 00:10:14.800 Because traditionally the literature focused on the Western world and the developed 00:10:14.800 --> 00:10:16.960 parts of Asia. 00:10:16.960 --> 00:10:23.600 But in order to deal with things like the pre-colonial Americas or 00:10:23.760 --> 00:10:30.400 Africa even to this day, and certain other tribal societies, obviously the 00:10:30.400 --> 00:10:35.280 Aboriginals in Australia, you have to have that fear based society option 00:10:35.760 --> 00:10:37.200 as it were. 00:10:37.200 --> 00:10:41.680 A rough way to think about these, an accurate way, although rough, 00:10:41.680 --> 00:10:47.040 would be that shame based societies are largely external in terms of 00:10:47.040 --> 00:10:51.120 the ways in which they punish or sanction behavior. 00:10:51.120 --> 00:10:56.960 Guilt based societies are largely internal, and fear based societies are essentially 00:10:56.960 --> 00:11:01.600 supernatural in the way that they view these things. 00:11:01.600 --> 00:11:05.360 The way to look at this would be for a fear-based society: 00:11:05.360 --> 00:11:09.040 if you do something wrong, the gods are going to punish you. 00:11:09.040 --> 00:11:12.160 If you do something wrong, the spirits of the forest are going 00:11:12.160 --> 00:11:13.280 to chase you. 00:11:13.280 --> 00:11:17.840 You You see this in Amerindian myth and things like that. 00:11:17.840 --> 00:11:23.600 When it comes to shame-based societies, it's more society is going to 00:11:23.600 --> 00:11:25.920 shame your wrongful behavior. 00:11:25.920 --> 00:11:27.760 You are going to be subjected to 00:11:28.880 --> 00:11:32.320 certain treatment by society that you do not want. 00:11:32.320 --> 00:11:34.720 You are going to be shunned in the marketplace. 00:11:34.720 --> 00:11:39.520 You are going to be avoided by others in society. 00:11:39.520 --> 00:11:46.640 Guilt-based societies, on the other hand, deal largely with internal sanctions again. 00:11:46.640 --> 00:11:49.680 We see this in Christian societies, by and large. 00:11:49.680 --> 00:11:52.880 There's still shame in Christian societies, and this is why I say 00:11:52.880 --> 00:11:57.200 these are overlapping, it's a Venn diagram, it's not three neat totally 00:11:57.200 --> 00:11:58.960 separate circles. 00:11:58.960 --> 00:12:04.000 Because for instance, our society has both guilt and shame, although it 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:08.800 is far more guilt-based with regard to those who are Christian, there's 00:12:08.800 --> 00:12:13.280 very little guilt, modesty, shame, anything for those who are atheist in 00:12:13.280 --> 00:12:14.720 our society. 00:12:14.720 --> 00:12:18.800 But a guilt-based society, it's that internal sanction. 00:12:18.800 --> 00:12:22.480 It's the sense that you have violated the moral law, you have 00:12:22.480 --> 00:12:26.480 done something that is wrongful in itself, and so you have guilt 00:12:26.480 --> 00:12:28.560 with regard to that. 00:12:28.560 --> 00:12:31.920 This plays out in a number of ways in society, not least 00:12:31.920 --> 00:12:36.320 of all how you atone for, make up for, whatever term you 00:12:36.320 --> 00:12:39.280 want to use, your transgressions. 00:12:39.280 --> 00:12:45.280 In shame-based societies, usually it's some sort of sometimes elaborate public ritual. 00:12:45.280 --> 00:12:51.360 In guilt-based societies, it's usually confession of your sin, your wrong. 00:12:51.360 --> 00:12:55.200 These things all play out differently depending on the kind of society 00:12:55.200 --> 00:12:56.400 in question. 00:12:56.400 --> 00:12:58.800 But for this episode, that's sort of sufficient. 00:12:58.800 --> 00:13:01.840 It's not an episode on that area of research. 00:13:01.840 --> 00:13:04.480 That's just to give you a rough background in it so you 00:13:04.480 --> 00:13:08.240 have some idea of how these things work together. 00:13:08.240 --> 00:13:13.920 We are going to be dealing with Christian societies, which is by 00:13:13.920 --> 00:13:16.400 and large say Western societies. 00:13:16.400 --> 00:13:21.360 And so we're going to have both shame and guilt. 00:13:21.360 --> 00:13:25.440 These are both going to be relevant to what we are discussing 00:13:25.920 --> 00:13:29.200 here and how we are to live our lives, how these things 00:13:29.200 --> 00:13:34.000 play out in our societies, in our cultures, our civilization. 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:37.920 Because it's not just guilt and it's not just shame. 00:13:37.920 --> 00:13:44.480 By and large, our societies today are more guilt-based than shame-based. 00:13:44.480 --> 00:13:47.360 Part of that is because of the Christian tradition. 00:13:47.360 --> 00:13:53.520 Because obviously, according to Christianity, whether or not you have transgressed is 00:13:53.520 --> 00:13:54.960 a matter of the moral law. 00:13:54.960 --> 00:13:58.800 So it's a matter of your individual behavior, whether it rises to 00:13:58.800 --> 00:14:01.600 the level of the moral law or falls below it. 00:14:01.840 --> 00:14:05.520 If you fall short of the mark, you have guilt because of 00:14:05.520 --> 00:14:08.640 what you failed to do or what you did wrongfully. 00:14:08.640 --> 00:14:11.760 Now there can be some shame along with that, obviously. 00:14:11.760 --> 00:14:17.200 If you do certain things they are considered shameful by society. 00:14:17.200 --> 00:14:22.080 Not all of the things society considers shameful are intrinsically so, and 00:14:22.080 --> 00:14:25.760 not all of the things that society considers shameful are not so. 00:14:25.760 --> 00:14:28.320 Our society is a mix of good and bad when it comes 00:14:28.320 --> 00:14:29.760 to that issue. 00:14:31.680 --> 00:14:37.520 Another way to frame this topic that I think is useful here 00:14:37.520 --> 00:14:41.520 at the outset is one of the ways in which Kant dealt 00:14:41.520 --> 00:14:43.360 with it in his writings. 00:14:43.360 --> 00:14:49.840 You have essentially two different kinds or concepts of honor, not just 00:14:49.840 --> 00:14:56.640 one. There is your public or external honor, which essentially is your 00:14:56.640 --> 00:14:59.200 reputation. Those are essentially identical. 00:14:59.200 --> 00:15:05.040 And this is something that would be very familiar with historical shame-based 00:15:04.960 --> 00:15:07.920 societies like classical Rome. 00:15:07.920 --> 00:15:12.400 And then you have what we could call internal honor. 00:15:12.400 --> 00:15:15.280 That is your adherence to the moral law. 00:15:15.280 --> 00:15:20.480 That is what you know personally, that is your conscience telling you 00:15:20.480 --> 00:15:24.320 that you fell short, or you lived up to your duty, and 00:15:24.320 --> 00:15:28.320 that's another concept that is related here, although distinct to some degree. 00:15:28.320 --> 00:15:31.360 But you have these two senses of honor, and it's important to 00:15:31.360 --> 00:15:31.920 recognize 00:15:33.200 --> 00:15:37.360 that they're both real senses of honor, but they are distinct to 00:15:37.360 --> 00:15:37.920 some degree. 00:15:37.920 --> 00:15:40.640 They overlap and they can feed into each other. 00:15:40.640 --> 00:15:46.080 For instance, if you behave immorally, you will eventually develop a reputation 00:15:46.080 --> 00:15:49.920 for that, and so you'll have both that internal and external honor 00:15:49.920 --> 00:15:52.560 affected by your immoral behavior. 00:15:52.560 --> 00:15:55.360 But these things are distinct. 00:15:55.360 --> 00:15:58.480 One way in which we see that as Christians, of course, is 00:15:59.040 --> 00:16:03.120 that all of the law, all of the moral law makes demands 00:16:03.120 --> 00:16:04.720 on you personally. 00:16:04.720 --> 00:16:07.440 Now it can make demands on society as well, it can make 00:16:07.440 --> 00:16:13.120 demands on families, groups, nations, but the demands of the moral law 00:16:13.280 --> 00:16:16.720 by and large are demands on individuals. 00:16:16.720 --> 00:16:21.200 Thou shalt not murder is a demand on you not to commit 00:16:21.200 --> 00:16:28.240 murder. However, if you transgress those, then you will wind 00:16:28.240 --> 00:16:33.040 up developing the reputation as someone who is dishonourable. 00:16:33.040 --> 00:16:38.800 And so that failure with regard to the moral law, that internal 00:16:38.800 --> 00:16:43.280 sense of honor becomes an external one. 00:16:43.280 --> 00:16:46.720 So again, those two are related concepts. 00:16:46.720 --> 00:16:48.640 Another way that you can sort of start to frame 00:16:50.080 --> 00:16:59.600 these various issues, these ideas, these concepts honor, shame, guilt, duty, 00:16:59.600 --> 00:17:05.040 but to expand on the concept of honor, because that's really the 00:17:05.040 --> 00:17:07.760 core of what we're discussing in this episode. 00:17:07.760 --> 00:17:11.920 I do want to turn to ancient Rome and some of the 00:17:11.920 --> 00:17:16.800 concepts that they had, the subconcepts underneath honor. 00:17:17.280 --> 00:17:20.080 And really what we're dealing with is the virtues. 00:17:20.080 --> 00:17:25.440 So, yes, as the term itself implies, we are dealing with men 00:17:25.760 --> 00:17:29.920 initially and foremost with regard to what we are discussing with regard 00:17:29.920 --> 00:17:30.320 to honor. 00:17:31.200 --> 00:17:33.920 That's not to say that women don't have honor, but there is 00:17:33.920 --> 00:17:37.440 a difference between male and female honor. 00:17:37.440 --> 00:17:42.640 And as again the term virtue very clearly implies, we are largely 00:17:42.640 --> 00:17:44.960 dealing with the male conception. 00:17:44.960 --> 00:17:48.640 But the virtues that are relevant for us here with regard to 00:17:48.640 --> 00:17:53.920 honor are dignitas, fides, pietas, gloria, and gravitas. 00:17:53.920 --> 00:17:55.840 I will of course go over what those mean. 00:17:55.840 --> 00:17:58.240 You don't really need to know the Latin, those are just the 00:17:58.240 --> 00:18:01.360 words for them in case you want to know the Latin. 00:18:01.360 --> 00:18:03.120 So taking those again in order. 00:18:03.120 --> 00:18:10.720 Dignitas is essentially public achievement or service, and also your ancestral inheritance 00:18:10.720 --> 00:18:15.280 or legacy, which is very worth noting here, you can to some 00:18:15.280 --> 00:18:18.080 degree inherit honor. 00:18:18.080 --> 00:18:21.840 I will return to that shortly because there's some nuance there, there's 00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:24.480 some important things to note. 00:18:24.480 --> 00:18:30.800 But your honor is not merely a personal matter, because honor is 00:18:30.800 --> 00:18:35.360 also a family matter or a group matter or a national matter, 00:18:35.360 --> 00:18:38.960 you can have honor or dishonor with regard to all of those 00:18:38.960 --> 00:18:42.000 levels as it were. 00:18:42.000 --> 00:18:47.120 Fides is your trustworthiness, whether or not you keep your word. 00:18:47.760 --> 00:18:52.480 This is one that is very familiar to those of us in 00:18:52.480 --> 00:18:53.520 our modern culture. 00:18:53.520 --> 00:18:56.960 This is still something that is very much considered a part of 00:18:57.440 --> 00:19:01.280 some would not necessarily immediately think of it as being honor, but 00:19:01.280 --> 00:19:04.720 it is part of your virtue as a human being, whether or 00:19:04.720 --> 00:19:08.000 not you are trustworthy, whether or not you keep your word, and 00:19:08.000 --> 00:19:09.520 so that's fides. 00:19:09.520 --> 00:19:11.200 Pietas is of course piety. 00:19:11.200 --> 00:19:13.520 We went over that in a previous episode. 00:19:13.520 --> 00:19:16.000 You are all undoubtedly familiar with at this point. 00:19:16.000 --> 00:19:18.560 That is your relationship to God. 00:19:18.560 --> 00:19:22.640 In the Roman conception obviously to the gods, but in the Christian 00:19:22.640 --> 00:19:24.800 conception of it your relationship to God To God. 00:19:24.800 --> 00:19:26.800 Do you obey the moral law? 00:19:26.800 --> 00:19:30.160 And so that would be sort of the internal honor in the 00:19:30.160 --> 00:19:32.880 conscience conception. 00:19:32.880 --> 00:19:36.960 Gloria is military or public fame or renown. 00:19:36.960 --> 00:19:40.640 The Romans considered this the highest form of honor, and in a 00:19:40.640 --> 00:19:42.640 sense it actually is. 00:19:42.640 --> 00:19:48.000 Now we don't conceive of military honors as necessarily being something to 00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:51.440 which all men must aspire in our society, and I'm not saying 00:19:51.440 --> 00:19:54.960 that's wrongful or necessarily that it's rightful. 00:19:54.960 --> 00:19:59.680 There should be a willingness to aspire to that, but it shouldn't 00:19:59.600 --> 00:20:03.280 be necessarily the goal of one's life. 00:20:03.280 --> 00:20:04.960 The goal is not to be a militaristic 00:20:05.840 --> 00:20:07.360 society, of course. 00:20:07.360 --> 00:20:11.120 We're not an expansionist empire, and that's not something that we are 00:20:11.120 --> 00:20:17.520 advocating. And then lastly, we have gravitas, which is seriousness in bearing 00:20:17.920 --> 00:20:22.560 and commitment to duty, which you can see how this is really 00:20:22.880 --> 00:20:27.920 dealing with the virtues, which again it seems repetitive or as a 00:20:27.920 --> 00:20:32.320 tautology a truism, but these are the virtues that pertain largely to 00:20:32.320 --> 00:20:36.720 men. That's why men are supposed to have a seriousness in their 00:20:36.720 --> 00:20:40.480 bearing. They are supposed to have a commitment to duty. 00:20:40.480 --> 00:20:43.120 It's not to say that women don't have duties and shouldn't be 00:20:43.120 --> 00:20:45.440 committed to them, but it is a distinction. 00:20:45.440 --> 00:20:48.800 There is a difference in the way this applies to men versus 00:20:48.800 --> 00:20:53.440 women. But I said I would return to the issue of inheriting 00:20:53.440 --> 00:20:57.120 honor. And And the reason that that 00:20:58.080 --> 00:21:02.720 plays into this, the reason that is important, is because, again, not 00:21:02.720 --> 00:21:06.160 only is honor a personal matter, but is a familial or a 00:21:06.160 --> 00:21:08.000 group or a national matter. 00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:12.320 And so you can't You can inherit honor from your ancestors. 00:21:12.320 --> 00:21:15.360 You can inherit honor due to your station. 00:21:15.360 --> 00:21:19.920 The distinction here would be between earned honor, which these are just 00:21:19.920 --> 00:21:21.840 terms that I'm going to use to distinguish these. 00:21:21.840 --> 00:21:23.440 I'm not saying these are the terms you have to use. 00:21:23.440 --> 00:21:26.240 I think they're good terms and useful, and so I'm going to 00:21:26.240 --> 00:21:27.680 use them. 00:21:27.680 --> 00:21:31.120 Earned honor is a matter of what you do personally. 00:21:31.120 --> 00:21:32.960 It's a matter of your actions. 00:21:32.960 --> 00:21:36.320 The things you do, the things you do not do. 00:21:36.320 --> 00:21:41.440 Due honor is honor that is due due to your rank or 00:21:41.440 --> 00:21:45.360 station. That is the sort of honor that you can inherit. 00:21:45.360 --> 00:21:49.920 This is something that has become Alien to many living in the 00:21:49.920 --> 00:21:53.600 modern world because we got rid of our aristocracy. 00:21:53.600 --> 00:21:55.840 We replaced it with something far worse. 00:21:55.840 --> 00:22:00.960 It's sort of a dystocracy at this point, but we got rid 00:22:00.960 --> 00:22:05.280 of this hierarchy in society, and so we no longer have this 00:22:05.600 --> 00:22:10.640 understanding that there is honor due to rank or station in society, 00:22:10.640 --> 00:22:14.800 with an exception which I have noted before, we still have a 00:22:14.800 --> 00:22:17.360 little bit of this with regard to our courts. 00:22:17.360 --> 00:22:21.760 You refer to the judge as your honor, or you probably wind 00:22:21.760 --> 00:22:26.000 up being sanctioned or possibly thrown in jail overnight. 00:22:26.000 --> 00:22:30.320 That is honor that is due to the station of that person, 00:22:30.320 --> 00:22:33.040 due to the office that he holds. 00:22:33.040 --> 00:22:34.400 That is rightful. 00:22:34.400 --> 00:22:36.560 There should be honor shown to that. 00:22:36.560 --> 00:22:38.320 And there are a number of reasons for that. 00:22:38.320 --> 00:22:39.760 We won't go into them here. 00:22:40.560 --> 00:22:43.120 But that is due honor. 00:22:43.120 --> 00:22:45.440 So it's important to recognize 00:22:46.320 --> 00:22:50.720 that you don't have just honor that you earned, as it were, 00:22:50.720 --> 00:22:53.760 from your actions, from how you have lived your life. 00:22:53.760 --> 00:22:56.880 It's not just a matter of whether or not what you've done 00:22:56.880 --> 00:23:00.880 is honorable or dishonorable, but it is also a matter of your 00:23:00.880 --> 00:23:03.840 family and your group and your nation. 00:23:03.840 --> 00:23:11.760 Because, as woe was saying, groups can have rules, can have standards, 00:23:11.760 --> 00:23:13.760 and you live up to them or you don't live up to 00:23:13.760 --> 00:23:17.840 them, and it's honorable or dishonorable, it's shameful or not shameful. 00:23:17.840 --> 00:23:23.520 It It instills guilt or not if you fail or succeed. 00:23:23.520 --> 00:23:28.320 These are all related things, but they are distinct and they play 00:23:28.320 --> 00:23:34.160 into how our society organizes itself and how it deals with maintaining 00:23:34.160 --> 00:23:36.880 really society itself. 00:23:36.880 --> 00:23:41.200 Because there are a lot of different functions for honor. 00:23:41.200 --> 00:23:45.680 Honor is not just a matter of your reputation, although, of course 00:23:46.080 --> 00:23:48.720 it is, because again that's that external sense of honor. 00:23:48.720 --> 00:23:50.720 It's how everyone views you. 00:23:50.720 --> 00:23:55.920 You could you should be thinking of the eighth commandment, for instance, 00:23:55.920 --> 00:23:59.600 possibly also the fourth commandment, although that's slightly different in this sense. 00:24:00.240 --> 00:24:05.760 But among the things that honor does, not just in maintaining society, 00:24:05.760 --> 00:24:12.160 having a conception of due honor maintains hierarchy and order in society. 00:24:12.160 --> 00:24:15.040 It maintains the backbone of society. 00:24:15.040 --> 00:24:20.400 It keeps things moving in the right direction, functioning as they should. 00:24:20.400 --> 00:24:25.040 It also serves to regulate behavior, to control behavior, and that is 00:24:25.040 --> 00:24:26.800 an important thing in society. 00:24:26.800 --> 00:24:30.400 You don't want everyone simply doing whatever he feels like doing. 00:24:30.400 --> 00:24:33.600 There are a number of times scripture basically says that's what was 00:24:33.600 --> 00:24:36.800 happening in ancient Israel, and it was very seldom good. 00:24:37.520 --> 00:24:44.480 It maintains group cohesion because when you have a standard to which 00:24:44.480 --> 00:24:47.840 your behavior will be held, and if you do not live up 00:24:47.840 --> 00:24:53.040 to that standard, you will incur external shame and internal guilt. 00:24:53.040 --> 00:24:57.520 Then you are more likely to hold yourself to that standard, to 00:24:57.520 --> 00:25:01.200 actually work toward achieving that standard, and so it works for for 00:25:01.440 --> 00:25:04.880 group cohesion, not just that regulation of behavior. 00:25:04.880 --> 00:25:10.160 It manages conflicts because if you have this standard to which everyone 00:25:10.160 --> 00:25:15.040 is held, you simply get rid of a large class of potential 00:25:15.040 --> 00:25:19.360 conflicts, because if every man is simply living up to his own 00:25:19.360 --> 00:25:24.320 standard, that's a recipe for chaos and for disaster. 00:25:24.320 --> 00:25:27.520 And you are going to have much more conflict in a society 00:25:28.320 --> 00:25:31.840 where there are many competing standards. 00:25:31.840 --> 00:25:35.520 One of the reasons that you saw to get back to ancient 00:25:35.520 --> 00:25:39.200 Rome just very briefly and potentially annoy some people who are very 00:25:39.200 --> 00:25:42.240 fond of the era, but one of the reasons that you see 00:25:42.240 --> 00:25:48.560 the increasing conflict, the degeneration in Rome, and the eventual downfall, is 00:25:48.560 --> 00:25:54.400 because you have all these competing standards of behavior, whereas earlier on 00:25:54.400 --> 00:25:58.880 in the Republic or the early empire, you had a more coherent, 00:25:58.880 --> 00:26:00.480 cohesive population. 00:26:00.480 --> 00:26:04.640 You had a standard of behavior to which everyone was held. 00:26:04.640 --> 00:26:07.120 You didn't have a bunch of competing standards. 00:26:07.120 --> 00:26:10.720 When you had those competing standards, you wind up with chaos. 00:26:10.720 --> 00:26:16.080 And so Rome is a great example of a multicultural empire collapsing 00:26:16.080 --> 00:26:18.960 in on itself. 00:26:19.280 --> 00:26:22.640 Which is sort of related to my next point for the functions 00:26:22.640 --> 00:26:26.080 of honor, is societal stability. 00:26:26.080 --> 00:26:29.360 Because you have this level of predictability. 00:26:29.360 --> 00:26:32.640 You have a standard to which you know others are going to 00:26:32.640 --> 00:26:33.360 be held. 00:26:33.360 --> 00:26:36.640 And that is going to help you hold yourself to the standard 00:26:36.640 --> 00:26:42.240 as well, because it is simply just a practical matter. 00:26:42.240 --> 00:26:46.160 It is easier to hold yourself to a standard if it is 00:26:46.160 --> 00:26:47.760 the standard. 00:26:47.760 --> 00:26:54.000 Trying to hold yourself to a much higher and exceptional standard when 00:26:54.000 --> 00:26:57.120 no one else is doing so is more difficult. 00:26:57.120 --> 00:27:01.040 Now as Christians, of course, that's simply part of the Christian life, 00:27:01.040 --> 00:27:04.960 you are holding yourself to a higher standard than society. 00:27:04.960 --> 00:27:06.880 But if society had 00:27:07.920 --> 00:27:12.800 higher, quite frankly, standards than we have today, it would be easier 00:27:12.800 --> 00:27:17.360 for everyone to live up to at least a better standard. 00:27:17.360 --> 00:27:20.880 As things stand today, we have very few standards, and so it 00:27:20.880 --> 00:27:24.160 is not hard to live up to a standard that is better 00:27:24.160 --> 00:27:27.600 than society generally, but it is difficult to live up to a 00:27:28.160 --> 00:27:32.240 high standard because of the fact that we have so many competing 00:27:32.400 --> 00:27:35.760 low standards in our society. 00:27:35.760 --> 00:27:39.840 And then finally on this point, you have the psychology of the 00:27:39.840 --> 00:27:46.880 thing. When you have these standards in society with regard 00:27:46.880 --> 00:27:52.720 to honor, and if you fall below them, shame and guilt. 00:27:52.720 --> 00:27:57.520 This helps you to form your identity as a member of society 00:27:57.760 --> 00:28:01.440 and simply as a man, as a human being. 00:28:01.440 --> 00:28:07.840 Because you have these standards of behavior that feed into that formation. 00:28:07.840 --> 00:28:12.160 If everything is open and everything is permissible, and there are no 00:28:12.160 --> 00:28:14.720 standards, there's no guidance. 00:28:16.160 --> 00:28:21.360 You wind up with this melee, this free-for-all, this chaos in which 00:28:21.600 --> 00:28:26.800 it is very difficult, particularly for young men, but really for everyone 00:28:26.800 --> 00:28:32.160 in society, to form this sort of core identity that is an 00:28:32.160 --> 00:28:34.800 important part of being a human being. 00:28:34.800 --> 00:28:39.280 Because you need something on which to found that formation. 00:28:39.280 --> 00:28:42.800 And part of that is having this sense of honor and having 00:28:43.520 --> 00:28:47.920 these consequences if you do not live up to it. 00:28:47.920 --> 00:28:53.120 And a part of that is self-regulation or self-control, which is a 00:28:53.120 --> 00:28:54.400 fundamental part 00:28:55.680 --> 00:29:01.040 of transitioning from a boy to a man is learning that self-regulation, 00:29:01.040 --> 00:29:03.520 is learning that self-control. 00:29:03.520 --> 00:29:06.400 That is part of what it means to be a man. 00:29:06.400 --> 00:29:11.200 It is to bring yourself under control and to have self-discipline. 00:29:11.200 --> 00:29:16.880 Society can help young men achieve that by having these guardrails, as 00:29:16.880 --> 00:29:20.400 it were, by having these standards to which the behavior of the 00:29:20.400 --> 00:29:22.880 young man can young man can be conformed. 00:29:22.880 --> 00:29:27.200 If there is no standard, then it is a lot more difficult. 00:29:27.200 --> 00:29:31.440 That's one of the reasons that we see so many young men 00:29:31.440 --> 00:29:35.040 in our society today just looking for anything, any sort of standard, 00:29:35.040 --> 00:29:37.920 any group to which they can belong, just someone give me some 00:29:37.920 --> 00:29:40.880 rules, someone give me a list of things to do and a 00:29:40.880 --> 00:29:43.040 list of things not to do. 00:29:43.040 --> 00:29:48.000 If your society has that as a pervasive framework, it is much 00:29:48.000 --> 00:29:54.320 easier much easier for young individuals in society to conform their behavior 00:29:54.320 --> 00:29:58.400 to those standards because they're well known and they're universal. 00:29:58.400 --> 00:30:02.000 We don't have that today, which is one of many problems with 00:30:02.480 --> 00:30:03.840 our society. 00:30:03.840 --> 00:30:09.520 And then finally, these can provide a source of motivation. 00:30:09.520 --> 00:30:14.720 If you have a strong sense of honor in your society and 00:30:14.720 --> 00:30:20.080 these virtues that constitute what it means to be honorable. 00:30:20.080 --> 00:30:24.640 You have these standards that also constitute what it means to behave 00:30:24.640 --> 00:30:29.520 yourself in a way that is honorable, then there's an inbuilt motivation 00:30:29.520 --> 00:30:29.840 there 00:30:30.800 --> 00:30:34.720 to do those things, to avoid the things that the honor code 00:30:34.720 --> 00:30:37.680 says not to do, to do the things the honor code says 00:30:37.680 --> 00:30:38.480 to do. 00:30:38.480 --> 00:30:42.000 And notably, I'm not using honor code in the sense it's often 00:30:42.000 --> 00:30:46.640 used in academia, although those are related concepts. 00:30:46.640 --> 00:30:51.920 And so that motivation is just inherently there when you have a 00:30:51.920 --> 00:30:56.240 national, a civilizational standard of behavior. 00:30:56.240 --> 00:30:58.560 Because you have a goal. 00:30:58.560 --> 00:31:01.280 This is what men are supposed to do. 00:31:01.280 --> 00:31:02.880 This is what a man will do. 00:31:02.880 --> 00:31:04.560 This is what a man will not do. 00:31:04.560 --> 00:31:08.320 The motivation there is to live up to that standard. 00:31:08.320 --> 00:31:11.600 If you have no standards, where is the motivation? 00:31:11.600 --> 00:31:12.880 There is no motivation. 00:31:12.880 --> 00:31:15.120 Do whatever you want, make your own standard. 00:31:15.120 --> 00:31:18.320 If your standard is eating Cheetos all day and sleeping in till 00:31:18.320 --> 00:31:21.200 three in the afternoon, well you've lived up to your standard, and 00:31:21.200 --> 00:31:26.400 that's your standard, and if there's no competing standard from society, who's 00:31:26.400 --> 00:31:28.160 to say that man is wrong? 00:31:28.160 --> 00:31:32.560 Now of course we know from scripture and philosophy and any number 00:31:32.560 --> 00:31:36.880 of other sources, that is not a way to live one's life. 00:31:36.880 --> 00:31:42.400 But you need standards in society, you need rules to which individuals 00:31:42.400 --> 00:31:44.560 must comport their behavior. 00:31:44.560 --> 00:31:49.200 If you do not have these things, then you have in the 00:31:49.200 --> 00:31:52.560 words of Scripture, every man doing what is right in his own 00:31:52.560 --> 00:31:57.440 eyes. You have chaos, you have dysfunction, and you eventually have societal 00:31:57.440 --> 00:32:03.920 collapse. We're not dealing with things that are ancillary or peripheral or 00:32:03.920 --> 00:32:11.120 unimportant. These are things that are core necessities of human society, 00:32:11.120 --> 00:32:14.800 of the formation of any given individual. 00:32:14.800 --> 00:32:18.000 These are things that are needed. 00:32:18.000 --> 00:32:21.840 Not something that we can simply ignore or something that's interesting to 00:32:21.840 --> 00:32:23.520 discuss simply because it's interesting 00:32:25.120 --> 00:32:31.360 It's necessary to discuss these things because these things are themselves necessary. 00:32:31.360 --> 00:32:35.760 If your society has no sense of honor, if your society has 00:32:35.760 --> 00:32:39.280 no sense of shame or guilt, if your society has no sense 00:32:39.280 --> 00:32:43.440 of duty, you don't really have a civilization. 00:32:43.440 --> 00:32:44.640 You have a bazaar. 00:32:44.640 --> 00:32:49.760 You have some sort of marketplace that it exists, but it's not 00:32:49.760 --> 00:32:53.120 something that we would call a culture or a society. 00:32:53.120 --> 00:32:57.120 It's chaos, it's every man for himself, which is certainly not what 00:32:57.120 --> 00:32:59.520 we should want as Christians, and it's not we should want as 00:32:59.520 --> 00:33:02.880 men. It's not what Scripture says we should want, not what's Scripture 00:33:02.880 --> 00:33:03.840 says we should build. 00:33:03.840 --> 00:33:05.920 It's certainly not what the commandments say. 00:33:05.920 --> 00:33:08.320 The commandments deal with honor, a number of them. 00:33:08.320 --> 00:33:12.080 We'll get into that later in the episode, I'm sure. 00:33:12.080 --> 00:33:18.560 But these matters are of foundational and core importance, because these are 00:33:18.560 --> 00:33:21.200 the sorts of things that if you have them you can build 00:33:21.200 --> 00:33:26.400 a society, if you lose them, you lose society with them. 00:33:29.520 --> 00:33:34.240 One of the chief mechanisms by which these standards are propagated is 00:33:34.240 --> 00:33:37.120 in their public enforcement. 00:33:37.120 --> 00:33:40.320 And again, enforcement isn't necessarily negative. 00:33:40.320 --> 00:33:43.760 Often, you're in the case of the glory as Corey was describing 00:33:44.000 --> 00:33:48.240 of parades and things for you know when Buzz Aldrin and Neil 00:33:48.240 --> 00:33:51.280 Armstrong and the name and no one remembers cause he didn't walk 00:33:51.280 --> 00:33:55.360 on the moon when they went there, they were honored with parades. 00:33:55.680 --> 00:33:59.120 They were honored by the whole world for having done something that 00:33:59.120 --> 00:34:01.440 humanity had never done before. 00:34:01.440 --> 00:34:06.320 So sometimes the example that's set is something that no one else 00:34:06.320 --> 00:34:09.840 can possibly achieve, and that's fine because it's the benchmark. 00:34:09.840 --> 00:34:12.880 Like this is the highest good that is achievable. 00:34:12.880 --> 00:34:15.440 And so it becomes aspirational. 00:34:15.440 --> 00:34:19.440 One of the interesting things I think about honor and shame as 00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.640 they work out in a society is that they have a polarity 00:34:24.880 --> 00:34:29.040 is a concept that I've introduced several times in various scenarios where 00:34:29.200 --> 00:34:31.840 you have you know a subject, you have the verb and you 00:34:31.840 --> 00:34:32.480 have the object. 00:34:32.480 --> 00:34:34.480 There's a polarity through any sentence. 00:34:34.480 --> 00:34:39.600 The subject's doing something to the direct object in a simple sentence. 00:34:39.760 --> 00:34:44.320 We as a society choose to honor certain types of behavior that 00:34:44.320 --> 00:34:45.360 we want to reinforce. 00:34:45.360 --> 00:34:49.280 So those standards that Corey was describing, we say yes more like 00:34:49.280 --> 00:34:55.120 this. And the selection of the men whom we honor, it's usually 00:34:55.120 --> 00:34:58.000 men, not always, yeah there are many reasons why women should be 00:34:58.000 --> 00:35:02.400 honored, but they need to be tailored in such a way that 00:35:02.400 --> 00:35:06.640 you don't end up with Instagram fame. 00:35:06.640 --> 00:35:11.440 There's honor that can be accorded to women that doesn't encourage them 00:35:11.440 --> 00:35:16.320 to go nuts, doesn't encourage them to put themselves in public more. 00:35:16.320 --> 00:35:20.720 It's a particular aspect of the female psyche that we all see 00:35:20.720 --> 00:35:22.560 on display in the worst ways. 00:35:22.560 --> 00:35:24.720 And it's not the girls are terrible, it's that that's one of 00:35:24.720 --> 00:35:25.680 their weaknesses. 00:35:25.680 --> 00:35:28.960 Men have lots of other weaknesses, including falling for that crap and 00:35:28.960 --> 00:35:30.960 encouraging it when we shouldn't. 00:35:30.960 --> 00:35:34.960 And so when you set a standard as a society, you have 00:35:34.960 --> 00:35:39.040 to draw a line and say, well, that's actually shameful behavior. 00:35:39.040 --> 00:35:42.240 You know, there's there's few things that you can say about a 00:35:42.240 --> 00:35:46.160 man or a woman that's more insulting than that guy's shameless. 00:35:46.160 --> 00:35:47.920 That's shameless behavior. 00:35:47.920 --> 00:35:48.560 What is that saying? 00:35:48.560 --> 00:35:49.920 It's saying there's no floor. 00:35:49.920 --> 00:35:52.800 It's saying there's nothing that that sort of person won't do. 00:35:52.800 --> 00:35:54.400 They have no off switch. 00:35:54.400 --> 00:35:58.480 If someone is shameless, it's just whatever they can get away with. 00:35:58.480 --> 00:36:02.320 And so on one hand, glorifying honor, on the other hand, enforcing 00:36:02.320 --> 00:36:06.320 shame. Shame draws lines and says you're not gonna go there. 00:36:06.320 --> 00:36:09.680 And so the polarity that I was mentioning is that the culture 00:36:09.680 --> 00:36:13.360 says we're going to honor an individual as an example. 00:36:13.360 --> 00:36:14.960 Here's a guy that's a benchmark. 00:36:14.960 --> 00:36:16.960 Buzz Aldrin is a benchmark for 00:36:18.080 --> 00:36:21.920 personal scientific performance achievement, whatever. 00:36:21.920 --> 00:36:24.160 Millions of kids wanted to become astronauts. 00:36:24.160 --> 00:36:25.920 I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid. 00:36:25.920 --> 00:36:27.680 I wanted to be an astronaut until I was about 10 and 00:36:27.680 --> 00:36:28.320 got glasses. 00:36:28.320 --> 00:36:31.200 Like, can't be a pilot, can't be an astronaut, because that's the 00:36:31.200 --> 00:36:33.280 way it was at the time. 00:36:33.280 --> 00:36:37.120 But setting that benchmark and giving that sort of honor to those 00:36:37.120 --> 00:36:41.600 men tells everybody else it's a price signal to the market, effectively. 00:36:41.760 --> 00:36:44.480 If you want to talk like a libertarian, that's what it is. 00:36:44.480 --> 00:36:45.440 It's a price signal. 00:36:45.440 --> 00:36:47.840 You're saying this is what we're going to reward or this is 00:36:47.840 --> 00:36:48.880 what we're going to punish. 00:36:48.880 --> 00:36:50.320 You know, we talk about honor and shame. 00:36:50.320 --> 00:36:53.920 They the mechanisms pretty much work the same way, just in opposite 00:36:53.920 --> 00:36:58.320 directions. So polarity wise, when a culture says we're going to honor 00:36:58.320 --> 00:37:01.120 this sort of behavior, and then they select an individual and say 00:37:01.200 --> 00:37:06.080 we're going to honor this man for exemplifying this sort of behavior, 00:37:06.080 --> 00:37:08.560 the individual is the terminus of the honor. 00:37:08.560 --> 00:37:09.680 He's the recipient. 00:37:09.680 --> 00:37:12.880 So, you know, there's a Christian organization that Corey and I are 00:37:12.880 --> 00:37:15.840 aware of that every year they honor a man who has been 00:37:15.840 --> 00:37:18.400 a bold confessor for, you know, his whole life. 00:37:18.400 --> 00:37:20.400 He's been showing up for decades. 00:37:21.040 --> 00:37:27.200 Demonstrating Christian teaching and confession of the faith publicly and whatever is 00:37:27.200 --> 00:37:28.880 appropriate for that scenario. 00:37:28.880 --> 00:37:30.720 And he's singled out and honored. 00:37:30.720 --> 00:37:33.120 And once a year they say this is a guy, we're honoring 00:37:33.120 --> 00:37:34.880 him. We're doing a really good job at the stuff that we 00:37:34.880 --> 00:37:37.200 all aspire to. 00:37:37.200 --> 00:37:41.680 When an individual is selected for honors, there's a second aspect that 00:37:41.680 --> 00:37:43.200 kicks in, or for shame. 00:37:43.200 --> 00:37:44.960 Again, it's going to apply in either direction. 00:37:44.960 --> 00:37:47.120 When you honor a man, when the culture honors a man says 00:37:47.280 --> 00:37:50.480 this guy right here, Buzz Aldrin, we want more guys like Buzz 00:37:50.480 --> 00:37:53.600 Aldrin, even knowing that of you know, I don't know how many 00:37:53.760 --> 00:37:56.000 billions of people on the planet at that time, probably four or 00:37:56.000 --> 00:37:59.360 five billion, you know, there were only a handful of guys that 00:37:59.360 --> 00:38:02.640 could have gone through the process to be in a position to 00:38:02.640 --> 00:38:05.040 do what those guys did. 00:38:05.040 --> 00:38:09.120 When the honor is accorded by a culture, there's then a second 00:38:09.120 --> 00:38:11.280 aspect that's more invisible to us. 00:38:11.280 --> 00:38:14.480 We don't think about it as much, but it's equally prevalent. 00:38:14.480 --> 00:38:17.840 And you'll see it in those individuals in those moments. 00:38:17.840 --> 00:38:20.640 I think a simpler one that, you know, I've said before, I'm 00:38:20.640 --> 00:38:23.760 a big fight fan, I really enjoy UFC. 00:38:23.760 --> 00:38:26.880 When there's a man in the ring, two men in the ring, 00:38:26.880 --> 00:38:30.400 two enter, one leaves, at least one leaves as honor, they're both 00:38:30.400 --> 00:38:33.040 honored for being fighters and for showing up and doing something that's 00:38:33.040 --> 00:38:34.240 incredibly difficult. 00:38:34.240 --> 00:38:36.960 But there's certainly greater honor accorded to the winner. 00:38:36.960 --> 00:38:41.280 You know, especially if he's declared a champion, he gets the belt. 00:38:41.280 --> 00:38:45.040 When you have this entire machinery of the entire fight industry and 00:38:45.040 --> 00:38:47.520 all the people, the promoters and all the stuff that are going 00:38:47.520 --> 00:38:52.800 into getting the guy to that point, when he receives the belt, 00:38:52.800 --> 00:38:55.680 although there's only one belt, and it's for one man, there's only 00:38:55.680 --> 00:38:58.000 one name that's in the record books. 00:38:58.000 --> 00:39:00.240 Everyone around him is also honored. 00:39:00.240 --> 00:39:02.240 Not everyone in the world, but his crew. 00:39:02.240 --> 00:39:05.440 So after they win, his trainers in there, you know, the guys 00:39:05.440 --> 00:39:10.000 he's sparring with, you know, nutritionists maybe, some cases a cup man's 00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:12.480 part, like they're all a vital part of a team. 00:39:12.480 --> 00:39:16.080 Because even though it's an individual achievement, it took a bunch of 00:39:16.080 --> 00:39:17.280 people to make that happen. 00:39:17.280 --> 00:39:18.960 He couldn't have done it by himself. 00:39:18.960 --> 00:39:23.200 And so they're always generally, not always, they're usually very appropriately humble 00:39:23.200 --> 00:39:26.960 about the only way that they got there was that their family, 00:39:26.960 --> 00:39:31.040 their friends, their trainers, their coaches, everybody, hundreds of people maybe in 00:39:31.040 --> 00:39:34.720 their lives have contributed to them being able to have that kind 00:39:34.720 --> 00:39:35.920 of performance. 00:39:35.920 --> 00:39:39.120 And so when they're accorded that honor, they're put on the belt, 00:39:39.120 --> 00:39:42.000 you know, they show it off and they take their selfies and 00:39:42.000 --> 00:39:43.440 stuff, they pull their crew in. 00:39:43.440 --> 00:39:46.000 They pull some other guys in, and they usually give them shout-outs 00:39:46.080 --> 00:39:49.680 to family and to God and coaches and whomever to say it 00:39:49.680 --> 00:39:51.040 wasn't just me. 00:39:51.040 --> 00:39:55.040 You are according me honor for having one and for being a 00:39:55.040 --> 00:39:57.760 champion. But a whole bunch of people were involved. 00:39:58.080 --> 00:40:01.040 And so the principal honor goes to the guy holding the belt, 00:40:01.040 --> 00:40:02.560 like he won the championship. 00:40:02.560 --> 00:40:04.640 No one else's names are going to be remembered. 00:40:04.640 --> 00:40:06.960 No one else's names are going to be in the record book. 00:40:06.960 --> 00:40:10.800 But he appropriately acknowledges that that honor belongs to all of them 00:40:10.880 --> 00:40:12.160 to a lesser degree. 00:40:12.160 --> 00:40:15.840 The principal, the lion's share of the honor goes to the champion. 00:40:15.840 --> 00:40:19.360 But you know, if he has a particular gym that he's been 00:40:19.360 --> 00:40:22.720 working out at and his coach was instrumental in getting him to 00:40:22.720 --> 00:40:23.680 that point. 00:40:23.680 --> 00:40:25.280 That coach has a lot of honor. 00:40:25.280 --> 00:40:27.600 A lot of guys who are up and comers want to go 00:40:27.600 --> 00:40:30.800 there because they want to participate in the sort of program that's 00:40:30.800 --> 00:40:32.400 going to generate champions. 00:40:32.400 --> 00:40:35.920 And so everyone shares in his immediate circle in the in the 00:40:35.920 --> 00:40:37.680 glory that he receives. 00:40:37.680 --> 00:40:40.160 And this exact same thing is true in the reverse. 00:40:40.160 --> 00:40:43.600 When someone is shamed, when someone is singled out and says this 00:40:43.600 --> 00:40:47.040 is the worst low life imaginable, you know, and hit pieces are 00:40:47.040 --> 00:40:52.000 published and people are screaming how evil someone is, that tells everyone 00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:54.320 in his circle, you're garbage too. 00:40:54.320 --> 00:40:57.120 If you don't flee, you need to get outside of the blast 00:40:57.120 --> 00:41:01.360 radius of this subhuman piece of crap, because all the hatred of 00:41:01.360 --> 00:41:04.000 the world is being poured out on this shameful man for the 00:41:04.320 --> 00:41:05.920 shameful things that he does. 00:41:05.920 --> 00:41:07.840 So the mechanism is identical. 00:41:07.840 --> 00:41:10.240 It's just the effect. 00:41:10.240 --> 00:41:13.360 Either everybody wants to be your friend when you're the champion, or 00:41:13.360 --> 00:41:16.240 everybody wants to get away from you, pretend they ever even knew 00:41:16.240 --> 00:41:16.960 you in the first place. 00:41:16.960 --> 00:41:20.160 They won't even acknowledge your name if you're the one who's targeted 00:41:20.160 --> 00:41:21.280 for shaming. 00:41:21.280 --> 00:41:23.200 And again, that's not inherently a bad thing. 00:41:23.200 --> 00:41:25.520 There are plenty of things that should be shameful. 00:41:25.520 --> 00:41:29.200 The question, particularly for a Christian society, is what do we declare 00:41:29.200 --> 00:41:30.800 to be shameful? 00:41:30.800 --> 00:41:34.400 There's a whole lot of things that the Bible says to do 00:41:34.400 --> 00:41:37.600 or says not to do that as a culture we just don't 00:41:37.600 --> 00:41:38.320 care about. 00:41:38.320 --> 00:41:39.600 We don't care at all. 00:41:39.600 --> 00:41:42.960 And then there are other things that God is either silent about, 00:41:42.960 --> 00:41:45.920 in some cases he either commands or condemns where the world at 00:41:45.920 --> 00:41:48.000 large is like, nah, forget that. 00:41:48.000 --> 00:41:49.200 Here's what's shameful. 00:41:49.200 --> 00:41:50.720 Here's what's honorable. 00:41:50.720 --> 00:41:53.600 And then, you know, one of the cheap shot examples, but I 00:41:53.600 --> 00:41:57.200 think a prime one is the sort of e celeb stuff that 00:41:57.200 --> 00:42:01.760 we see on Instagram and TikTok and whatever's popular in any particular 00:42:01.760 --> 00:42:05.360 area where you have guys that are flashy, girls who are blingy 00:42:05.440 --> 00:42:08.240 or they're yeah, it's not like a boomer talking like that. 00:42:08.240 --> 00:42:09.280 You know what I mean? 00:42:09.280 --> 00:42:14.160 People are ostentatious in disgusting ways. 00:42:14.160 --> 00:42:19.200 Like if they were actually rich, it's usually related to either sexuality 00:42:19.840 --> 00:42:22.160 or to riches, and usually both. 00:42:22.160 --> 00:42:25.280 The more of both things that you can display at once, the 00:42:25.280 --> 00:42:29.760 more honorable they're pretending that the society sees you to be. 00:42:29.760 --> 00:42:31.920 And for the most part, society goes along with it. 00:42:31.920 --> 00:42:34.080 There's some people who grumble and say, Well, that's gross. 00:42:34.080 --> 00:42:34.800 We shouldn't do that. 00:42:34.800 --> 00:42:37.760 You know, put something on, show a little bit of modesty in 00:42:37.760 --> 00:42:39.840 the way you approach life. 00:42:39.840 --> 00:42:43.840 But most people, certainly younger people who are more impressionable, even if 00:42:43.840 --> 00:42:47.520 aesthetically maybe they're not attracted to it, they see everyone else looking 00:42:47.520 --> 00:42:50.080 at it and saying, yeah, this is the path. 00:42:50.080 --> 00:42:50.880 More money. 00:42:50.960 --> 00:42:53.360 I'm gonna talk the way they talk, but you know what I'm 00:42:53.280 --> 00:42:53.840 talking about. 00:42:53.840 --> 00:42:58.240 It's more of things that aren't actually good for society and less 00:42:58.240 --> 00:43:00.320 of the things that we should have. 00:43:00.320 --> 00:43:03.520 You know, no one no one there's very few people who are 00:43:03.520 --> 00:43:10.160 glorifying family formation and doing a good job at work and helping 00:43:10.160 --> 00:43:10.960 your neighbors. 00:43:10.960 --> 00:43:12.400 Like boring stuff. 00:43:12.400 --> 00:43:13.280 That's boring. 00:43:13.280 --> 00:43:14.320 That's not sexy. 00:43:14.320 --> 00:43:15.520 That's not exciting. 00:43:15.520 --> 00:43:17.120 It's vitally important. 00:43:17.120 --> 00:43:18.400 And it is a blessing. 00:43:18.400 --> 00:43:21.280 And it is exciting in moments when you're doing it as a 00:43:21.280 --> 00:43:22.480 man or a woman. 00:43:22.480 --> 00:43:24.560 But it's not the sort of thing that's flashy. 00:43:24.560 --> 00:43:28.240 Now it's for better or worse, you know, particularly on social media, 00:43:28.240 --> 00:43:31.840 now there are people who are becoming influencers specifically pitching s those 00:43:31.840 --> 00:43:35.120 things. And so they get millions of followers for cooking everything from 00:43:35.120 --> 00:43:36.960 scratch for their kids or whatever. 00:43:36.960 --> 00:43:38.160 It's an improvement. 00:43:38.160 --> 00:43:40.960 I don't know if it's the solution, but like at least the 00:43:40.960 --> 00:43:43.200 right things are being glorified. 00:43:43.200 --> 00:43:46.240 For better or worse, that's the way people's views are shaped. 00:43:46.240 --> 00:43:47.920 This is what we're honoring. 00:43:47.920 --> 00:43:53.840 And unfortunately, and it's dire, but in the social media oriented mentality 00:43:53.840 --> 00:43:57.200 that drives much of the world today, at least in the West, 00:43:57.200 --> 00:44:01.280 whoever's getting the most views, getting the most likes, the most replies, 00:44:01.280 --> 00:44:06.000 whatever, that is That is seen as the perception of honor. 00:44:06.000 --> 00:44:08.560 Even if there's some scandal, even if there's something like, you know, 00:44:08.560 --> 00:44:11.520 some people are criticizing it, the fact that there's buzz is itself 00:44:11.520 --> 00:44:12.320 a kind of honor. 00:44:12.320 --> 00:44:14.160 That's the thing that people are talking about. 00:44:14.160 --> 00:44:17.920 And so if somebody wants to emulate that, they're gonna emulate whatever's 00:44:17.920 --> 00:44:19.360 getting the most attention. 00:44:19.360 --> 00:44:24.400 You know, in an attention driven economy, the attention itself becomes the 00:44:24.400 --> 00:44:27.040 capital of what is perceived as honor. 00:44:27.040 --> 00:44:31.200 That's deeply broken because it's very easy to get attention by being 00:44:31.200 --> 00:44:34.800 awful. It's harder to get attention for doing good things. 00:44:34.800 --> 00:44:37.760 It's nice that that's starting to come back a little bit, even 00:44:37.760 --> 00:44:40.320 if again I don't know if it's a good thing, but it's 00:44:40.320 --> 00:44:41.760 certainly an improvement. 00:44:41.760 --> 00:44:44.640 If there If there are pretty girls who are in a kitchen 00:44:44.720 --> 00:44:48.640 who are married, who are cooking for their kids and encouraging others 00:44:48.640 --> 00:44:52.080 to do that because it sets a good example, it's way down 00:44:52.080 --> 00:44:54.240 on my list of things to even worry about. 00:44:54.240 --> 00:44:57.120 Because there's so many problems in the world where things that are 00:44:57.120 --> 00:44:59.360 shameful aren't treated that way. 00:44:59.360 --> 00:45:04.000 So just remember as you're thinking about the mechanism of honor and 00:45:04.000 --> 00:45:06.560 shame, there are those two aspects. 00:45:06.560 --> 00:45:10.720 There's a societal aspect directing to an individual, and then there's the 00:45:10.720 --> 00:45:15.120 splash effects, whether it's splash benefit or the splash damage to everyone 00:45:15.120 --> 00:45:16.800 around the individual. 00:45:16.800 --> 00:45:19.920 Because when a man is set up to be an example for 00:45:19.920 --> 00:45:23.200 everybody, in a lot of cases it wrecks most men. 00:45:23.200 --> 00:45:26.160 Most men eat who've done good things when suddenly a whole bunch 00:45:26.160 --> 00:45:28.320 of attention is shown on them. 00:45:28.320 --> 00:45:32.000 Like fame is itself a corrupting and twisted thing. 00:45:32.000 --> 00:45:34.400 It's I mean, not that I'm gonna be famous, but one of 00:45:34.400 --> 00:45:37.200 the reasons that I'm still pseudonymous is I don't want attention. 00:45:37.200 --> 00:45:39.600 I like to vanish as soon as possible. 00:45:39.600 --> 00:45:42.640 The idea of standing up and like, oh look at me, it's 00:45:42.640 --> 00:45:44.560 inherently corrupting to any man. 00:45:44.560 --> 00:45:48.400 And usually when a man for other reasons is put in the 00:45:48.400 --> 00:45:51.280 center of honor and then everyone wants to talk to him and 00:45:51.280 --> 00:45:52.080 interview him. 00:45:52.080 --> 00:45:54.160 A lot of times the guys are not particularly good at talking 00:45:54.240 --> 00:45:55.520 or they're shy or whatever. 00:45:55.520 --> 00:45:59.440 And if people keep pounding them, sometimes they kind of fall apart. 00:45:59.440 --> 00:46:02.000 And then people start digging into their lives like, oh, he's not 00:46:02.000 --> 00:46:02.480 that great. 00:46:02.480 --> 00:46:04.240 And then they want to tear him down. 00:46:04.240 --> 00:46:08.000 Because as soon as someone's given a bunch of honor, vultures want 00:46:08.000 --> 00:46:10.080 to come in and say, Well, let's find the dirt. 00:46:10.080 --> 00:46:12.800 Let's find the nastiest stuff about this guy who walked on the 00:46:12.800 --> 00:46:16.000 moon. We want to tear him down to say he's just like 00:46:16.000 --> 00:46:17.360 us, he's nothing. 00:46:17.360 --> 00:46:19.840 It's perverted to treat people that way. 00:46:19.840 --> 00:46:21.040 Everybody has problems. 00:46:21.040 --> 00:46:23.280 You don't need to go digging into it. 00:46:23.280 --> 00:46:28.640 Just remember that whenever you are participating in any sort of mass 00:46:28.640 --> 00:46:34.160 collective adulation or program, if you're cheering or if you're shouting down 00:46:34.160 --> 00:46:37.440 an individual, it doesn't end with that person. 00:46:37.440 --> 00:46:40.400 It splashes to everyone around them. 00:46:40.400 --> 00:46:43.760 So if you want to honor people who are doing trashy terrible 00:46:43.760 --> 00:46:47.040 things, everyone around them is going to you know glom onto that 00:46:47.120 --> 00:46:48.960 and more people are going to want a piece of it. 00:46:48.960 --> 00:46:51.840 If on the other hand, you want to shame certain things, just 00:46:51.920 --> 00:46:54.240 know it's gonna blow up everybody around them. 00:46:54.240 --> 00:46:57.680 In the case of honor, people want to glom onto it, in 00:46:57.680 --> 00:46:59.600 the case of shame, people want to flee. 00:46:59.600 --> 00:47:02.400 So when you do that, no, you're not just talking about you 00:47:02.400 --> 00:47:06.800 know principles and I ideas and whatever somebody has done, you're changing 00:47:06.800 --> 00:47:08.560 somebody's life one way or another. 00:47:08.560 --> 00:47:11.200 And you have that power, even as an individual. 00:47:11.600 --> 00:47:16.080 when you like or repost or talk about something that's gross and 00:47:16.080 --> 00:47:20.480 disgusting, you're either, you know, shaming it or you're saying, yeah, look 00:47:20.480 --> 00:47:22.160 how much attention this will get. 00:47:22.160 --> 00:47:27.200 In either case, our attention is fueling the very machinery of what 00:47:27.200 --> 00:47:30.720 should be culturally useful, but it's been so far divorced divorced from 00:47:30.720 --> 00:47:35.520 morality, from God, from any actual decent standards, that it's really taken 00:47:35.520 --> 00:47:36.800 on a life of its own. 00:47:36.800 --> 00:47:39.200 And I think one of the things that we need to do 00:47:39.200 --> 00:47:42.960 as individuals is be aware of our participation, whatever it is. 00:47:42.960 --> 00:47:47.680 If we are participating in things that are devouring and tearing people 00:47:47.680 --> 00:47:49.280 down because they made a mistake. 00:47:49.280 --> 00:47:50.640 They said something stupid. 00:47:50.640 --> 00:47:53.760 Like that guy needs to be destroyed forever. 00:47:53.760 --> 00:47:56.880 That's not the sort of thing that you would ever want pointed 00:47:56.880 --> 00:47:57.360 at you. 00:47:57.360 --> 00:47:59.600 And I can assure you as an individual who's been on the 00:47:59.600 --> 00:48:03.280 receiving end of that, that most people cannot handle it. 00:48:03.280 --> 00:48:04.800 Some can, but most can't. 00:48:04.800 --> 00:48:06.080 And no one should have to. 00:48:06.080 --> 00:48:10.000 Like forget whether somebody survives that sort of torment, that sort of 00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:14.240 shaming. If it's something that actually needs to be treated that way, 00:48:14.240 --> 00:48:15.120 that's one thing. 00:48:15.120 --> 00:48:16.960 And so that's where the moral stuff comes in. 00:48:16.960 --> 00:48:19.440 That's where the true religion comes in. 00:48:19.440 --> 00:48:25.280 There are certain things that are absolutely morally indefensible and must be. 00:48:25.280 --> 00:48:26.880 You gotta hound people out of town. 00:48:26.880 --> 00:48:28.400 I have no problem with that. 00:48:28.400 --> 00:48:29.680 Absolutely none. 00:48:29.680 --> 00:48:32.320 If something deserves it, you're gonna find me at the front of 00:48:32.320 --> 00:48:35.760 the line piling onto something that's despicable. 00:48:35.760 --> 00:48:39.280 But the question is always what is actually despicable? 00:48:39.280 --> 00:48:41.360 What is actually intolerable? 00:48:41.360 --> 00:48:45.440 And as Christians, we can't have our threshold for what we honor 00:48:45.600 --> 00:48:49.680 or what we despise be defined by MSMBC. 00:48:49.680 --> 00:48:55.360 If your HR department finds the same things despicable as you, you're 00:48:55.360 --> 00:48:58.880 not treating things as a Christian would treat things when they're despicable 00:48:58.880 --> 00:48:59.840 or honorable. 00:49:00.080 --> 00:49:02.960 It's one of the very basic ideas of Stone Choir. 00:49:02.960 --> 00:49:04.960 Where are you getting this stuff from? 00:49:04.960 --> 00:49:08.640 The genealogy of the idea of what I'm gonna honor or I'm 00:49:08.640 --> 00:49:12.320 going to despise and call shameful, either it's coming from God or 00:49:12.320 --> 00:49:13.520 it's coming from the world. 00:49:13.520 --> 00:49:14.400 That's the bottom line. 00:49:14.400 --> 00:49:18.640 We could tack that comment generically onto almost all of our episodes 00:49:18.800 --> 00:49:20.800 because it's the same thing over and over again. 00:49:20.800 --> 00:49:24.080 So much of what we see in the world is not honoring 00:49:24.080 --> 00:49:28.000 that which is actually godly and decent, and is not actually shaming 00:49:28.000 --> 00:49:30.960 the fact that are ungodly and wicked. 00:49:31.040 --> 00:49:36.080 How many men are shamed for despising the Christian creeds? 00:49:36.080 --> 00:49:40.560 Nobody. You despise the Trinity, you blaspheme Christ. 00:49:40.560 --> 00:49:43.840 You're never going to be doxxed and shamed or any of the 00:49:43.840 --> 00:49:47.600 worst treatment that we muster for people who say things that are 00:49:47.600 --> 00:49:50.560 completely outside of Christian doctrine. 00:49:50.560 --> 00:49:51.600 It's not bizarre. 00:49:51.600 --> 00:49:52.960 It's entirely predictable. 00:49:52.960 --> 00:49:55.120 It's something that's prophesied in the New Testament. 00:49:55.360 --> 00:49:58.640 This is how things are gonna go when hearts are growing cold 00:49:58.640 --> 00:50:00.720 and when the church is falling away. 00:50:00.720 --> 00:50:04.400 And so part of the reason for this exhortation is look, where 00:50:04.400 --> 00:50:05.920 are you getting this stuff from? 00:50:05.920 --> 00:50:08.720 You should be honoring that which God says to honor. 00:50:08.720 --> 00:50:11.600 And we should be shaming that which God says to shame. 00:50:11.600 --> 00:50:13.840 It's not the doing of these things that's bad. 00:50:13.840 --> 00:50:16.080 Even though some of the examples that you know we gave earlier 00:50:16.320 --> 00:50:19.520 from Rome and Greece, another completely pagan societies. 00:50:19.920 --> 00:50:21.680 The mechanism is good. 00:50:21.680 --> 00:50:23.680 The mechanism is godly. 00:50:23.680 --> 00:50:27.680 The rules themselves, the rule set that you plug into the mechanism 00:50:27.680 --> 00:50:30.560 to decide who gets the honor and who gets the shame. 00:50:30.560 --> 00:50:33.760 That's where the judgment of the Christian mind comes in. 00:50:33.760 --> 00:50:36.160 And if you're not getting it from God, you're still going to 00:50:36.160 --> 00:50:36.960 be doing it. 00:50:36.960 --> 00:50:38.320 That's one of the lessons here. 00:50:38.320 --> 00:50:41.360 We all do this intrinsically because it's human behavior. 00:50:41.360 --> 00:50:44.720 What we honor, if it's not informed by God, it's still going 00:50:44.720 --> 00:50:48.560 to be honored by the ambient morality of this depraved world. 00:50:48.560 --> 00:50:50.960 And the things that we shame are going to be the things 00:50:50.960 --> 00:50:53.200 that are sins against the new global religion. 00:50:53.200 --> 00:50:55.760 They'll not be the things that are shameful in God's eyes. 00:50:55.760 --> 00:51:00.000 They'll be shamefulness of the eyes of the people who anchor CNN. 00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:03.200 If that's the way you want to live your life, that's the 00:51:03.200 --> 00:51:05.600 way you're gonna live your afterlife. 00:51:06.320 --> 00:51:11.920 I want to return briefly, as it were, to the issue of 00:51:11.920 --> 00:51:15.840 the difference between male honor and female honor. 00:51:15.840 --> 00:51:18.640 And not just because I know we have a number of female 00:51:18.640 --> 00:51:24.960 listeners, but obviously every single man in the audience has a mother. 00:51:24.960 --> 00:51:30.080 Many have wives, daughters, women who are important to them, and every 00:51:30.080 --> 00:51:34.640 woman in our nation should be important to you, obviously, depending on 00:51:34.640 --> 00:51:38.160 how closely related to you they are, it'll be at different degrees, 00:51:38.160 --> 00:51:41.360 but none the less important to you, and so it matters the 00:51:41.360 --> 00:51:44.800 difference between male honor and female honor. 00:51:44.800 --> 00:51:50.720 Women sort of have an advantage over men when it comes to 00:51:51.040 --> 00:51:56.000 the starting conditions, as it were, with regard to honor. 00:51:56.000 --> 00:52:02.240 Because outside of due honor, that is inherited, that is given to 00:52:02.320 --> 00:52:07.520 a man by virtue of his rank or his station, men have 00:52:07.520 --> 00:52:09.920 to earn honor. 00:52:09.920 --> 00:52:14.400 Men have to do things in order to receive honor. 00:52:15.120 --> 00:52:17.600 Women do not. 00:52:17.600 --> 00:52:22.720 Because by virtue of her sex, woman is granted a sort of 00:52:22.720 --> 00:52:25.840 honor as a starting condition. 00:52:25.840 --> 00:52:29.760 And so for women, it is a It is a matter of 00:52:29.760 --> 00:52:31.040 maintaining that honor. 00:52:31.040 --> 00:52:34.480 Yes, a woman can also earn honor by doing the things that 00:52:34.480 --> 00:52:38.640 are befitting her sex, and so a woman who has and raises 00:52:38.640 --> 00:52:42.720 godly children, who keeps a godly home, who is submissive to her 00:52:42.720 --> 00:52:46.720 husband I'm saying all the things that are required by the laws 00:52:46.720 --> 00:52:48.000 of God, of course. 00:52:48.000 --> 00:52:54.240 The woman who does these things does by them earn honor. 00:52:54.480 --> 00:53:00.000 But women have that starting position of by virtue of their sex 00:53:00.960 --> 00:53:02.320 having a sort of honor. 00:53:02.320 --> 00:53:07.200 There is a due honor with regard to the female sex. 00:53:07.440 --> 00:53:09.440 But it can be lost. 00:53:09.440 --> 00:53:13.040 And part of this is very much a matter of chastity. 00:53:13.040 --> 00:53:16.080 And there's a reason that historically we have 00:53:17.040 --> 00:53:23.360 had a secondary sense of a woman's honor as being her chastity. 00:53:23.360 --> 00:53:29.440 That's not for nothing, that is an accurate representation of the reality. 00:53:29.440 --> 00:53:32.960 A woman is to be loyal to her husband Husband 00:53:34.160 --> 00:53:40.560 That matter of chastity, that matter of faithfulness, is a matter of 00:53:40.560 --> 00:53:45.360 honor. If she is loyal to her husband, if she is loyal 00:53:45.360 --> 00:53:49.280 to her family, she maintains that honor, so she starts with it 00:53:49.440 --> 00:53:51.200 and can maintain it. 00:53:51.200 --> 00:53:54.240 It can again be lost, and we all know the ways in 00:53:54.240 --> 00:53:56.720 which it can be lost. 00:53:56.720 --> 00:53:59.200 The disadvantage for the female sex is 00:54:00.160 --> 00:54:05.760 that her honor once lost cannot be regained, because it is something 00:54:05.760 --> 00:54:09.840 that is a physical factual change. 00:54:09.840 --> 00:54:15.760 Often, when a man does something that is dishonorable, he can atone 00:54:15.760 --> 00:54:21.760 for it because there are ways in which society has rituals or 00:54:22.000 --> 00:54:27.040 in the Christian concept it is repentance, a man can regain his 00:54:27.040 --> 00:54:30.960 honor, perhaps not to the same degree, he may have lost something 00:54:30.960 --> 00:54:35.840 that cannot be regained, but often a man can regain his honor. 00:54:35.840 --> 00:54:38.560 Part of the reason for that is of course that a man 00:54:38.720 --> 00:54:43.040 again earns his honor, and so he is re earning it, whereas 00:54:43.040 --> 00:54:46.800 a woman starts with it and can lose it. 00:54:46.800 --> 00:54:50.240 To be clear I'm not saying that a woman cannot repent and 00:54:50.240 --> 00:54:51.600 be forgiven for her sins. 00:54:51.600 --> 00:54:52.480 These are different things. 00:54:52.480 --> 00:54:55.360 We're not dealing with repentance. 00:54:55.360 --> 00:54:56.800 We're not dealing with justification. 00:54:56.800 --> 00:54:58.560 We're not dealing with sanctification. 00:54:58.560 --> 00:55:03.200 We are dealing with shame and honor and guilt. 00:55:03.200 --> 00:55:04.720 They're related. 00:55:04.720 --> 00:55:08.560 These things are very obviously related because of course that internal honor 00:55:08.560 --> 00:55:11.520 again is based on the moral law, whether or not you have 00:55:11.520 --> 00:55:15.840 lived up to it, whether or not your conscience accuses you because 00:55:15.840 --> 00:55:19.920 of the things that you have done or failed to do, but 00:55:19.920 --> 00:55:22.880 they are not identical concepts. 00:55:22.880 --> 00:55:28.800 And so honor can be lost permanently in this life, particularly for 00:55:28.800 --> 00:55:33.120 women. Whereas yes, you can be forgiven for the sins. 00:55:33.120 --> 00:55:37.680 But there are consequences of sin, and the consequences in this life 00:55:37.680 --> 00:55:41.440 cannot always be undone, often cannot be undone. 00:55:41.440 --> 00:55:46.160 And so with regard to honor again, woman has a sort of 00:55:46.160 --> 00:55:51.360 advantage because her starting position is one of due honor. 00:55:51.360 --> 00:55:54.800 Because the woman who is chaste has due honor. 00:55:54.800 --> 00:55:56.480 The wife who remains chaste 00:55:57.360 --> 00:55:59.520 has due honor. 00:55:59.520 --> 00:56:02.080 It can only be lost. 00:56:02.080 --> 00:56:06.480 Whereas the man again has to earn honor by his actions, with 00:56:06.640 --> 00:56:10.400 the minor exception, as it were, of due honor according to rank 00:56:10.400 --> 00:56:12.080 or station. 00:56:12.080 --> 00:56:16.480 But to emphasize again and to expand on what Wo was just 00:56:16.480 --> 00:56:21.680 saying with regard to the two types of honor, as it were. 00:56:21.680 --> 00:56:26.800 Again, I'm speaking of the internal and external, not earned versus due. 00:56:26.800 --> 00:56:28.640 But you need both. 00:56:28.640 --> 00:56:31.920 And what I mean by that is that you have to have 00:56:31.920 --> 00:56:35.760 your conscience formed by the word of God. 00:56:35.760 --> 00:56:41.840 Your conscience, your internal moral compass, must be formed by and conformed 00:56:42.160 --> 00:56:44.480 to the things of God. 00:56:44.480 --> 00:56:47.120 And so that is your internal honor. 00:56:47.120 --> 00:56:51.680 That is the internal check on your behavior, your thoughts, and everything 00:56:51.680 --> 00:56:57.440 else. It will accuse you when you transgress, but it will also 00:56:57.440 --> 00:57:02.400 reward you when you comport yourself with the moral law, when you 00:57:02.400 --> 00:57:10.080 are true to the moral law, with regard to your external honor, 00:57:10.080 --> 00:57:14.960 you need a godly society, and so with regard to the internal 00:57:14.960 --> 00:57:20.960 honor, your conscience, you need a godly conscience, formed according to God's 00:57:20.960 --> 00:57:26.080 word. But with regard to external things, you need a godly society 00:57:26.160 --> 00:57:29.200 that will shame you when you transgress. 00:57:29.200 --> 00:57:33.840 And so internally, honor is a matter of guilt because your conscience 00:57:33.840 --> 00:57:37.440 accusing you of sin, driving you to repentance. 00:57:39.840 --> 00:57:45.040 In a society where things are properly formed, properly structured, and properly 00:57:45.040 --> 00:57:50.400 enforced, you will have a godly shame that is inflicted on those 00:57:50.400 --> 00:57:52.880 who transgress the moral law. 00:57:52.880 --> 00:57:56.000 This is what we should want as Christians. 00:57:56.000 --> 00:57:59.280 This is what we should attempt to build. 00:57:59.280 --> 00:58:03.040 These are the things to which we should aspire. 00:58:03.040 --> 00:58:06.880 Because if you have these things properly structured, if you have these 00:58:07.200 --> 00:58:11.760 safeguards, you have these standards in place, it helps everyone to live 00:58:11.760 --> 00:58:13.200 a Christian life. 00:58:13.200 --> 00:58:17.280 This is one of the overarching goals of Christian nationalism. 00:58:17.360 --> 00:58:20.720 This is one of the overarching goals of any man who is 00:58:20.720 --> 00:58:22.320 a true Christian. 00:58:22.320 --> 00:58:26.640 You want to build a Christian society because it helps those in 00:58:26.640 --> 00:58:29.040 your society to remain Christian. 00:58:29.040 --> 00:58:32.880 It is much easier to be a Christian, to behave as a 00:58:32.880 --> 00:58:37.440 Christian, to run the race successfully in a Christian nation than it 00:58:37.440 --> 00:58:41.120 is in a heathen one or an apostate one. 00:58:41.600 --> 00:58:45.760 If you are the only Christian in a city, that is a 00:58:45.760 --> 00:58:48.160 terrible position in which to find yourself. 00:58:48.160 --> 00:58:51.280 I know that some modern pastors will say, well, think of all 00:58:51.280 --> 00:58:53.200 the evangelization opportunities. 00:58:53.200 --> 00:58:54.320 And no. 00:58:54.320 --> 00:58:56.880 I mean, yes, those are there to some degree, but you're living 00:58:56.880 --> 00:58:58.560 in a horrible situation. 00:58:58.560 --> 00:59:00.480 You want the example of that from scripture? 00:59:00.480 --> 00:59:02.960 It's Lot living in Sodom. 00:59:02.960 --> 00:59:05.600 Was that a great opportunity for him? 00:59:05.600 --> 00:59:08.240 Should he have rejoiced for living there? 00:59:08.240 --> 00:59:10.240 No, of course not. 00:59:10.240 --> 00:59:13.600 That is a terrible situation in which to find yourself, and it 00:59:13.600 --> 00:59:17.360 is difficult to remain Christian under those conditions. 00:59:17.360 --> 00:59:19.920 Some men will, some men won't. 00:59:19.920 --> 00:59:23.280 Depends on the measure of your faith, the strength of your faith, 00:59:23.280 --> 00:59:24.800 the security of your faith. 00:59:24.800 --> 00:59:27.600 And of course you should remain in God's word and pray and 00:59:27.600 --> 00:59:30.400 endeavor to keep that faith strong and secure. 00:59:30.400 --> 00:59:33.600 So even if you live through those sorts of trials, you will 00:59:33.600 --> 00:59:36.800 remain steadfast to the end. 00:59:36.800 --> 00:59:42.400 But the fact remains, in a Christian society, more men are going 00:59:42.400 --> 00:59:46.480 to be Christian and remain Christian than if they live in a 00:59:46.480 --> 00:59:53.440 heathen apostate, atheist, pagan, whatever it happens to be society. 00:59:53.440 --> 00:59:57.440 And so we should endeavor to build the systems that will not 00:59:57.440 --> 01:00:02.160 only produce Christians, but help them to maintain their faith. 01:00:03.040 --> 01:00:05.200 This is not a matter of 01:00:06.640 --> 01:00:11.120 focusing on the things of this world, or a matter of focusing 01:00:11.120 --> 01:00:15.840 on the temporal, or whatever the accusations are that are constantly flung 01:00:15.840 --> 01:00:19.520 at those who advocate for Christian nationalism. 01:00:19.520 --> 01:00:24.720 This is a matter of eternal things, because these are matters of 01:00:24.720 --> 01:00:27.680 whether or not men persevere in the faith. 01:00:28.880 --> 01:00:34.400 And so you need God's word, you need good preaching, you need 01:00:34.400 --> 01:00:38.880 good teaching, because those are the things that form your conscience, so 01:00:38.880 --> 01:00:42.080 that when you transgress, because of course you will sin in this 01:00:42.080 --> 01:00:48.320 life, but when you transgress, your conscience will accuse you, that internal 01:00:48.320 --> 01:00:51.680 sense of honor will be pricked, it will be triggered. 01:00:51.680 --> 01:00:53.280 But you also need that external 01:00:54.560 --> 01:00:57.200 guard, that check on your behavior. 01:00:57.200 --> 01:00:58.400 You need shame. 01:00:58.400 --> 01:01:02.640 And that requires a godly society. 01:01:02.640 --> 01:01:05.280 Both of those are important. 01:01:05.280 --> 01:01:10.160 I won't say necessary because they're not truly necessary in the philosophical 01:01:10.160 --> 01:01:13.840 sense. We don't intend to make this a philosophy podcast, although obviously 01:01:13.920 --> 01:01:17.600 we have to delve into it with episodes like this one. 01:01:17.600 --> 01:01:20.480 But I will say that it is a very important matter with 01:01:20.480 --> 01:01:25.680 regard to both of those aspects, because they are self-reinforcing, and they 01:01:25.680 --> 01:01:27.360 are also a feedback loop. 01:01:27.360 --> 01:01:29.280 The one enforces the other. 01:01:29.280 --> 01:01:34.080 If you have a godly conscience formed according to God's word, that 01:01:34.080 --> 01:01:38.480 will help you to remain Christian, to persevere, that will help you 01:01:38.480 --> 01:01:41.360 to remain steadfast in the faith. 01:01:41.360 --> 01:01:45.760 But if you also have a society that is Christian, that shames 01:01:45.760 --> 01:01:50.560 you when you transgress, that helps you to form your conscience. 01:01:50.560 --> 01:01:54.800 If you act as a Christian in society, that helps you to 01:01:54.800 --> 01:02:00.160 form society, to have that rightful standard by which it shames behavior. 01:02:00.160 --> 01:02:02.960 All of these things reinforce each other. 01:02:02.960 --> 01:02:07.840 It's just like when you build some important structure, even just a 01:02:07.840 --> 01:02:11.520 house. You don't have one form of support. 01:02:11.520 --> 01:02:14.800 Because if you have one form of support, when a storm comes 01:02:14.800 --> 01:02:17.520 through, your house falls on you. 01:02:17.520 --> 01:02:22.320 You have various systems that work together to ensure the structure remains 01:02:22.320 --> 01:02:27.520 sound. The same thing is true with regard to Christian groups, Christian 01:02:27.520 --> 01:02:30.960 organizations, all the way up to Christian nations. 01:02:30.960 --> 01:02:36.240 You want all of these systems to be thoroughly Christian, because it 01:02:36.240 --> 01:02:40.960 increases the odds that you will persevere, and also it's just a 01:02:40.960 --> 01:02:42.000 better life. 01:02:42.000 --> 01:02:45.360 Living in a Christian society is far better than living in a 01:02:45.360 --> 01:02:46.720 pagan one. 01:02:46.720 --> 01:02:49.280 All else being held equal. 01:02:49.280 --> 01:02:55.120 There's no rational argument, there's certainly no Christian argument, to oppose that. 01:02:55.120 --> 01:02:59.440 Anyone who says that we shouldn't be endeavoring to accomplish those things, 01:02:59.440 --> 01:03:02.720 to build that sort of society, is a wicked man. 01:03:02.720 --> 01:03:04.880 That's evil. 01:03:04.880 --> 01:03:10.800 Because what that person is actually opposing is conforming whatever it happens 01:03:10.800 --> 01:03:14.640 to be, and usually these days it's an argument against Christian nationalism, 01:03:14.640 --> 01:03:19.120 and so they're opposing the idea of conforming the behavior of the 01:03:19.120 --> 01:03:23.440 nation to God's word, to God's law, to God's standards. 01:03:23.440 --> 01:03:26.800 No Christian can make that argument. 01:03:26.800 --> 01:03:28.800 Because all you're doing is saying 01:03:29.840 --> 01:03:36.640 while I personally I'm giving them the possible the best possible construction, 01:03:36.640 --> 01:03:40.640 they're saying while I personally will conform my behavior to the word 01:03:40.800 --> 01:03:44.640 of God and God's law, God's requirements. 01:03:44.640 --> 01:03:49.680 I couldn't possibly want my society to be conform to that, because 01:03:49.760 --> 01:03:53.840 I should leave society to be free to do whatever the No. 01:03:53.840 --> 01:03:58.480 We want everyone to conform to God's standards. 01:03:58.480 --> 01:04:00.160 It's not just because 01:04:01.120 --> 01:04:03.920 it's easier for us to live in that society. 01:04:03.920 --> 01:04:07.360 It's not just because that makes it easier to persevere, to run 01:04:07.360 --> 01:04:08.880 the race successfully. 01:04:08.880 --> 01:04:12.800 It's also because God blesses faithful nations. 01:04:12.800 --> 01:04:17.520 He doesn't just bless individuals, in fact God blesses primarily, first and 01:04:17.520 --> 01:04:20.720 foremost, nations that are faithful. 01:04:20.720 --> 01:04:23.920 Let's at all the blessings in the Old Testament. 01:04:23.920 --> 01:04:27.680 They largely flow to nations, not to individuals. 01:04:27.680 --> 01:04:31.120 I'm not, of course, saying there are no blessings to individuals, because 01:04:31.200 --> 01:04:34.800 of course the greatest blessing is eternal life, which goes to individuals. 01:04:34.800 --> 01:04:37.120 You must have individual faith. 01:04:37.120 --> 01:04:44.480 However, large scale blessings, God's blessing of rain in its rightful 01:04:44.480 --> 01:04:47.600 season, and do remember that God controls those things, and they are 01:04:47.600 --> 01:04:48.560 blessings from God. 01:04:48.560 --> 01:04:54.240 God's God's blessing of bountiful harvests, of a lack of wildfires, of 01:04:54.240 --> 01:04:59.760 a lack of disease, of a lack of serious natural disasters. 01:04:59.760 --> 01:05:03.120 All of those things are on the larger scale. 01:05:03.360 --> 01:05:09.440 They are blessings on nations, on peoples, on eras, or curses, depending 01:05:09.440 --> 01:05:11.280 on which comes. 01:05:11.280 --> 01:05:15.760 So we should, of course, want to be a Christian society, a 01:05:15.760 --> 01:05:20.640 Christian nation, a Christian civilization, because God promises to bless us if 01:05:20.640 --> 01:05:23.120 that is the case. 01:05:23.120 --> 01:05:27.680 And above and beyond that, it's not just a matter of things 01:05:27.680 --> 01:05:33.040 being easier and receiving blessings, it's also our duty to God. 01:05:33.040 --> 01:05:39.120 God requires of us to conform everything to his will, to conform 01:05:39.120 --> 01:05:41.200 everything to his standards. 01:05:41.440 --> 01:05:46.480 It's not just my personal opinions or my personal behavior, my personal 01:05:46.480 --> 01:05:51.440 beliefs. It's also those of my family, of my tribe, and of 01:05:51.440 --> 01:05:52.800 my nation. 01:05:52.800 --> 01:05:57.120 All of those things are to be conformed to what God demands, 01:05:57.120 --> 01:06:01.360 because that is what God demands of Christians. 01:06:01.360 --> 01:06:05.760 God does not just say that your personal behavior has to comport 01:06:05.760 --> 01:06:12.080 with the moral law, that you personally must not do these things. 01:06:12.080 --> 01:06:15.280 Think about what Genesis nine six says. 01:06:15.280 --> 01:06:19.280 That's very straightforward moral law. 01:06:19.280 --> 01:06:26.640 Genesis 9 6 commands that society execute those who commit murder. 01:06:26.640 --> 01:06:29.760 That's a requirement of a Christian society, of a Christian 01:06:30.640 --> 01:06:35.680 nation, because that requires at the very least some sort of trial, 01:06:35.680 --> 01:06:39.200 some sort of justice system, because again, there are other requirements in 01:06:39.200 --> 01:06:42.400 Scripture where you can't have just one witness, you have to have 01:06:42.400 --> 01:06:43.600 two or three. 01:06:43.600 --> 01:06:48.080 And to have witnesses, you have to have them witnessing to someone, 01:06:48.080 --> 01:06:49.920 repeating what they saw. 01:06:49.920 --> 01:06:53.040 That's a requirement of a justice system. 01:06:53.040 --> 01:06:56.480 You have the rudiments then of a Christian society, of a Christian 01:06:57.200 --> 01:07:01.120 nation. That is what God requires in His Word. 01:07:01.120 --> 01:07:04.960 No Christian can possibly stand against that. 01:07:04.960 --> 01:07:09.600 And so you have to have not just Christian individuals whose consciences 01:07:10.160 --> 01:07:13.840 are formed by the Word of God, but a Christian society that 01:07:13.840 --> 01:07:17.200 is built on the Word of God and that enforces it with 01:07:17.200 --> 01:07:21.200 various mechanisms, not the least of which is shame. 01:07:21.440 --> 01:07:23.440 That's sort of the first step. 01:07:23.440 --> 01:07:28.560 Shaming wrongful behavior is very low cost for the one shamed. 01:07:28.560 --> 01:07:35.360 Yes, shame is painful and obviously shameful in the moment, but it's 01:07:35.360 --> 01:07:41.760 a very low cost generally speaking, certainly lower than prison or execution. 01:07:41.760 --> 01:07:45.200 And so if we have these things in place, if we have 01:07:45.200 --> 01:07:49.440 these feedback loops, as it were, you are again going to have 01:07:49.520 --> 01:07:49.680 not 01:07:50.560 --> 01:07:50.880 just 01:07:51.840 --> 01:07:56.800 more Christians, but better Christians, and Christians who are living Christian lives 01:07:56.800 --> 01:08:00.160 more easily than would be the case with the alternative sort of 01:08:00.560 --> 01:08:06.000 arrangement. One of the ways that I have thought about this for 01:08:06.000 --> 01:08:11.040 many years that I believe many will find helpful is to compare 01:08:11.040 --> 01:08:15.280 and contrast the economy and the culture. 01:08:15.280 --> 01:08:18.000 And I'm taking culture in a very broad sense here, so do 01:08:18.000 --> 01:08:20.240 bear that in mind. 01:08:20.240 --> 01:08:24.960 Despite the critiques that we've leveled against capitalism, and I do mean 01:08:24.960 --> 01:08:29.360 the uppercase C when I say capitalism, In the past in various 01:08:29.360 --> 01:08:35.040 episodes, on Twitter and elsewhere, there's nothing wrong with markets. 01:08:35.040 --> 01:08:37.040 We've never said there is. 01:08:37.040 --> 01:08:40.560 We've often used the market as an illustration. 01:08:40.560 --> 01:08:45.040 A market economy, as long as it is properly limited and regulated 01:08:45.040 --> 01:08:50.000 and subjected to the things that God requires and prohibits, is fine. 01:08:50.000 --> 01:08:53.440 There's nothing wrong with using the market as a tool. 01:08:53.440 --> 01:08:58.240 And so economically, you can have a market system. 01:08:58.240 --> 01:09:01.360 Culturally, you cannot. 01:09:01.360 --> 01:09:06.800 Because culturally, there are standards, there are things that God permits and 01:09:06.800 --> 01:09:08.720 things that God prohibits. 01:09:08.720 --> 01:09:12.640 You cannot have a market for the culture, because if you have 01:09:12.640 --> 01:09:15.760 a market for the culture, you wind up with what we have 01:09:15.760 --> 01:09:20.560 today. And what we have today is certainly not in line with 01:09:20.560 --> 01:09:22.000 what God requires. 01:09:22.000 --> 01:09:25.360 It is certainly not in line with God's word. 01:09:25.360 --> 01:09:28.880 And so you have to have, and it's a dirty word, certainly 01:09:28.960 --> 01:09:33.360 to libertarians and many in our society, but you have to have 01:09:33.360 --> 01:09:36.000 a command culture. 01:09:36.000 --> 01:09:41.200 Because we have a command culture, because the proper command culture is 01:09:41.200 --> 01:09:46.080 the one that is according to God's commands, God's commandments. 01:09:46.080 --> 01:09:49.440 There are things that God tells us we must do, things that 01:09:49.440 --> 01:09:51.760 God tells us we must not do. 01:09:51.760 --> 01:09:55.840 And so you cannot have a culture that is up to majority 01:09:55.840 --> 01:10:00.320 vote. Because often the majority will do things that are wicked. 01:10:00.320 --> 01:10:03.200 The majority will legalize abortion. 01:10:03.200 --> 01:10:06.320 The majority will legalize homosexual marriage. 01:10:06.320 --> 01:10:09.200 And yes, I am ignoring the times it went up to vote 01:10:09.200 --> 01:10:10.000 and was shot down. 01:10:10.000 --> 01:10:11.040 It doesn't matter because guess what? 01:10:12.080 --> 01:10:15.120 Majorities in certain places now approve of it. 01:10:15.120 --> 01:10:20.320 And so no, you cannot have the culture submitted to a majority 01:10:20.320 --> 01:10:24.080 vote. Because there is a right and a wrong. 01:10:24.080 --> 01:10:27.120 It's not a matter of what the majority prefers, it is a 01:10:27.120 --> 01:10:28.880 matter of what God says. 01:10:28.880 --> 01:10:32.960 And so economically again, you can have a market, that's fine, use 01:10:32.960 --> 01:10:38.080 that tool where it is appropriate, but with regard to the culture, 01:10:38.080 --> 01:10:42.960 it has to be a culture that is conformed to God's requirements. 01:10:42.960 --> 01:10:47.360 And the only way you can ensure that is rightful hierarchy, is 01:10:47.360 --> 01:10:52.240 having an actual authority, not democracy, not putting it up to a 01:10:52.240 --> 01:10:56.560 vote, and certainly this is timely considering we are recording on election 01:10:56.560 --> 01:11:02.480 day. But various things with regard to the culture, with regard to 01:11:02.480 --> 01:11:06.880 the moral law, cannot be put up to a vote, cannot be 01:11:06.880 --> 01:11:11.840 subjected to the tyranny of the majority, must be commanded, must be 01:11:11.840 --> 01:11:16.880 instituted by godly authorities who will one day answer to God for 01:11:16.880 --> 01:11:20.640 the things they did and the things they failed to do. 01:11:20.640 --> 01:11:24.960 And so as Christians, what we want is a Christian society. 01:11:24.960 --> 01:11:28.560 We don't just want individual Christians. 01:11:28.560 --> 01:11:31.440 Yes, of course we want individual Christians. 01:11:31.440 --> 01:11:34.480 We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't want that. 01:11:34.480 --> 01:11:38.880 But individual Christians form Christian groups. 01:11:38.880 --> 01:11:45.760 They form Christian families, and ultimately they form Christian nations. 01:11:45.760 --> 01:11:47.440 That is one of the goals. 01:11:47.440 --> 01:11:50.800 That must always be one of the goals of Christian men. 01:11:50.800 --> 01:11:56.640 To construct a Christian society, to construct a Christian nation in which 01:11:57.280 --> 01:12:05.040 God's law, God's moral law is transposed into the positive law, transposed 01:12:05.040 --> 01:12:10.000 into the culture, transposed into the norms and the standards to which 01:12:10.000 --> 01:12:13.600 individual members of society are held. 01:12:13.600 --> 01:12:18.000 Anything less than that falls short of what it means to actually 01:12:18.000 --> 01:12:19.280 be a Christian 01:12:21.200 --> 01:12:21.280 where 01:12:21.440 --> 01:12:26.800 you spoke earlier about the difference between the external and internal impetus 01:12:26.800 --> 01:12:27.840 of shame. 01:12:27.840 --> 01:12:31.120 I wanna point us now back to scripture to the first time 01:12:31.120 --> 01:12:34.640 that shame appears in the Bible, because it's at the very beginning 01:12:34.640 --> 01:12:36.160 of sin. 01:12:36.160 --> 01:12:40.640 In Genesis three, the end of Genesis two, I'm gonna read skipping 01:12:40.640 --> 01:12:43.280 a couple parts just to get to the part I want. 01:12:43.280 --> 01:12:47.200 Genesis says, And the man and his wife were both naked and 01:12:47.200 --> 01:12:49.600 were not ashamed. 01:12:49.600 --> 01:12:52.480 Eve took of the fruit and ate, and she also gave some 01:12:52.480 --> 01:12:54.720 to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 01:12:54.720 --> 01:12:57.680 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they 01:12:57.680 --> 01:13:02.400 were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loinclaws. 01:13:02.400 --> 01:13:04.720 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the 01:13:04.720 --> 01:13:07.040 garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his 01:13:07.040 --> 01:13:10.160 wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees 01:13:10.160 --> 01:13:11.360 of the garden. 01:13:11.360 --> 01:13:13.360 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, 01:13:13.760 --> 01:13:14.720 Where are you? 01:13:14.720 --> 01:13:16.880 And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, 01:13:16.880 --> 01:13:20.720 and I was afraid, because I was naked and I hid myself. 01:13:20.720 --> 01:13:23.760 Now I'm going to continue on to the whole thing, but this 01:13:23.760 --> 01:13:25.600 is the beginning of shame. 01:13:25.600 --> 01:13:30.000 Now notably, before they ate from the tree of knowledge of good 01:13:30.000 --> 01:13:33.440 and evil, they were naked and they were not ashamed, and they 01:13:33.440 --> 01:13:35.520 did not sin. 01:13:35.520 --> 01:13:40.400 I think equally importantly after they ate of the tree, after they 01:13:40.960 --> 01:13:44.320 had knowledge of good and evil that God had not yet ordained 01:13:44.320 --> 01:13:47.200 to give to them, when they found out on their own that 01:13:47.200 --> 01:13:50.960 they were naked, and they became ashamed of their nakedness. 01:13:50.960 --> 01:13:52.560 They weren't sinning. 01:13:52.560 --> 01:13:55.040 God didn't tell them to uncover themselves. 01:13:55.040 --> 01:13:57.200 In fact, one of the things he did when he kicked them 01:13:57.200 --> 01:14:00.720 out was he killed animals and made proper loinclaws for them. 01:14:00.720 --> 01:14:04.640 He gave them actual clothing made from animals that God killed. 01:14:04.640 --> 01:14:07.840 That was the first sacrifice made for their clothing, so that their 01:14:07.840 --> 01:14:11.440 nakedness would be covered, because it was shameful. 01:14:11.440 --> 01:14:13.200 So the notion that 01:14:14.160 --> 01:14:19.040 shame is somehow it's tied to sin, but it is not sinful 01:14:19.040 --> 01:14:20.480 to be ashamed. 01:14:20.480 --> 01:14:23.600 In fact, it is sinful not to be ashamed. 01:14:23.600 --> 01:14:27.200 And this is something that we have seen play out especially in 01:14:27.200 --> 01:14:30.320 the last two centuries, particularly I think in the middle of the 01:14:30.320 --> 01:14:35.280 last century, as we were contacting lots of these tribes, what's now 01:14:35.280 --> 01:14:39.520 called the global south, these people who have been in communion with 01:14:39.520 --> 01:14:44.400 demons for four thousand years, they had They have lost all sense 01:14:44.400 --> 01:14:45.280 of shame. 01:14:45.280 --> 01:14:48.160 They run around naked and they don't care. 01:14:48.160 --> 01:14:51.040 When Adam and Eve realized that they were naked, they were ashamed 01:14:51.120 --> 01:14:52.640 and they covered themselves up. 01:14:52.640 --> 01:14:53.280 And God didn't 01:14:54.160 --> 01:14:56.640 admonish them because they had done something wrong. 01:14:56.640 --> 01:15:00.000 What they had done wrong was eating what they were told not 01:15:00.000 --> 01:15:04.320 to. But they did not sin by covering their nakedness. 01:15:04.320 --> 01:15:08.960 When we find people in the global south, these consorts of demons 01:15:08.960 --> 01:15:13.120 for four thousand years, they no longer even have that sense of 01:15:13.120 --> 01:15:15.120 shame that Adam and Eve had. 01:15:15.120 --> 01:15:19.920 That was a natural consequence of the knowledge of good and evil. 01:15:19.920 --> 01:15:22.800 The fact that those in the global south, the fact that these 01:15:22.800 --> 01:15:27.760 demon consorts have lost even that is fundamentally subhuman. 01:15:27.760 --> 01:15:31.840 They are less human because of the absence of their shame. 01:15:31.840 --> 01:15:35.200 I know that's gonna set some hair on fire, but what else 01:15:35.200 --> 01:15:36.480 do we do with this? 01:15:36.480 --> 01:15:41.280 And it's particularly notable because when we have Christian missionaries going into 01:15:41.280 --> 01:15:46.320 these places especially lately, and they find these people who run around 01:15:46.320 --> 01:15:49.760 naked because they don't know any better, we don't tell them to 01:15:49.760 --> 01:15:50.240 cover up. 01:15:50.240 --> 01:15:52.480 We don't tell them that that's shameful. 01:15:52.480 --> 01:15:55.120 What is said when you go look at what people who call 01:15:55.120 --> 01:15:59.920 themselves Christians who contact these societies, if you can even call it 01:15:59.920 --> 01:16:03.520 that. These races that have been separated from God and from all 01:16:04.000 --> 01:16:07.520 of civilization elsewhere, because they never had any of their own. 01:16:07.520 --> 01:16:10.960 When we come to them and we tell them about God, we 01:16:10.960 --> 01:16:12.640 celebrate. We shouldn't. 01:16:12.640 --> 01:16:14.160 Christians cannot. 01:16:14.160 --> 01:16:18.880 But the people contacting them as missionaries in many cases will celebrate 01:16:18.880 --> 01:16:22.000 their nakedness, say, Oh, they're they're one with nature. 01:16:22.000 --> 01:16:24.480 They don't have these hang ups that we have in the West 01:16:24.640 --> 01:16:26.160 with nakedness. 01:16:26.160 --> 01:16:28.640 That is abject evil. 01:16:28.640 --> 01:16:34.560 To condone shamefulness, to condone nakedness like that is wicked. 01:16:34.560 --> 01:16:36.000 It's plainly wicked. 01:16:36.000 --> 01:16:39.280 You cannot read Genesis 3 or any of the rest of the 01:16:39.280 --> 01:16:43.200 Bible and come away with the notion that when we find people 01:16:43.200 --> 01:16:46.240 who consorted with demons for four thousand years to the point that 01:16:46.240 --> 01:16:48.400 they have lost the capacity. 01:16:48.400 --> 01:16:50.720 When you try to explain it to them, they don't understand. 01:16:50.720 --> 01:16:55.040 They they've literally lost the capacity for that which came completely naturally 01:16:55.040 --> 01:16:56.320 to Adam and Eve. 01:16:56.320 --> 01:16:59.760 And it wasn't that they were closer to God by proximity. 01:16:59.760 --> 01:17:03.680 Is that there's been a devolution, there's been a loss of things 01:17:03.680 --> 01:17:07.280 that should have been natural and even fallen man. 01:17:07.280 --> 01:17:11.280 And yet we find Aborigines and the like even further away than 01:17:11.280 --> 01:17:15.680 that. That is horrific, absolutely horrific condition. 01:17:15.680 --> 01:17:20.080 Which is why what Corey was saying about Christian nations being so 01:17:20.080 --> 01:17:23.200 vital is intrinsic to all of this. 01:17:23.200 --> 01:17:27.920 If you lose Christian guidelines for hey, let's not do this because 01:17:27.920 --> 01:17:30.480 we're gonna end up devolving, it's no joke. 01:17:31.280 --> 01:17:35.360 If you separate from God long enough, you will lose the parts 01:17:35.360 --> 01:17:38.800 of humanity that make it possible to even get back to where 01:17:38.800 --> 01:17:39.600 we were. 01:17:39.600 --> 01:17:43.840 It's no longer a matter of education when someone doesn't understand that 01:17:43.840 --> 01:17:48.400 violent acts and shameful behaviors they don't understand. 01:17:48.400 --> 01:17:49.840 And you can't explain to them. 01:17:49.840 --> 01:17:52.160 They've lost the capacity. 01:17:52.160 --> 01:17:55.120 This is not me picking on things to try to make this 01:17:55.120 --> 01:17:55.920 is about race. 01:17:55.920 --> 01:17:58.560 This is pointing out that the different races they were They were 01:17:58.560 --> 01:18:01.040 in different places separated by God. 01:18:01.040 --> 01:18:04.720 Those who were further separated from the Word, having lost it after 01:18:04.720 --> 01:18:08.720 coming off the ark, after being separated at the Tower of Babel. 01:18:08.720 --> 01:18:11.600 Some of them communed with demons for so long that we don't 01:18:11.520 --> 01:18:12.880 know how to get them back. 01:18:12.880 --> 01:18:16.560 It's not that they cease to be sons of God in genetic 01:18:16.560 --> 01:18:18.400 terms. They're all descended from Adam. 01:18:18.400 --> 01:18:20.000 That hasn't changed. 01:18:20.000 --> 01:18:23.040 But for them to have been rendered incapable of shame 01:18:24.080 --> 01:18:28.080 It should instill such horror in us that we have to fast 01:18:28.080 --> 01:18:30.240 and repent for a week when we see it. 01:18:30.240 --> 01:18:33.840 And yet most of what we see today from so-called Christians is 01:18:33.840 --> 01:18:34.720 a celebrated. 01:18:34.800 --> 01:18:36.320 Say, look how they're not hung up. 01:18:36.320 --> 01:18:39.520 They don't have our shameful Western ideas about these things. 01:18:39.520 --> 01:18:41.840 Adam and Eve weren't Western. 01:18:41.840 --> 01:18:43.280 They were Christian. 01:18:43.280 --> 01:18:46.480 They were fallen Christians, but they still knew the rules. 01:18:46.480 --> 01:18:48.320 When you have people who have been reduced to the point they 01:18:48.320 --> 01:18:53.360 can't even understand the rules, even shame has lost the capacity to 01:18:53.360 --> 01:18:55.280 govern their behavior. 01:18:55.280 --> 01:18:58.480 And this is a political matter because as we encounter some of 01:18:58.480 --> 01:19:01.120 these races, what do we do with people that are incapable of 01:19:01.120 --> 01:19:07.760 shame? You have a very limited set of social and legal enforcements 01:19:07.760 --> 01:19:10.560 that are able to reign that sort of person in. 01:19:10.560 --> 01:19:12.080 This isn't hypothetical. 01:19:12.080 --> 01:19:14.160 And that's one of the reasons that these people should be kept 01:19:14.160 --> 01:19:19.600 apart. They shouldn't be in contact with our societies because coexistence with 01:19:19.600 --> 01:19:21.600 that is impossible. 01:19:21.600 --> 01:19:24.240 And it's not to say that we don't continue to try to 01:19:24.240 --> 01:19:28.640 take the gospel to them and help them modulo dusting off our 01:19:28.640 --> 01:19:31.440 feet. You know, when you shake off the dust from your feet 01:19:31.520 --> 01:19:35.520 as a curse against those who reject God, something that God commanded, 01:19:35.520 --> 01:19:37.440 we don't know where the lines are for those. 01:19:37.440 --> 01:19:40.720 I still have yet to hear any Christian teacher propose one. 01:19:40.720 --> 01:19:43.200 Maybe we'll have to come up with one on our own if 01:19:43.200 --> 01:19:44.960 somebody else doesn't. 01:19:44.960 --> 01:19:48.880 When we look at these people who have fallen so much further 01:19:48.880 --> 01:19:52.080 than Adam and Eve fell, we have to admit that that is 01:19:52.080 --> 01:19:52.640 the case. 01:19:52.640 --> 01:19:54.880 And we have to have a Christian explanation for why. 01:19:55.680 --> 01:19:58.720 The unchristian explanation is to say they're not human. 01:19:58.720 --> 01:19:59.920 They're not humans at all. 01:19:59.920 --> 01:20:01.920 They're some lesser animal. 01:20:01.920 --> 01:20:06.400 I don't want Christian men to be able to go there, but 01:20:06.400 --> 01:20:08.960 the only way to do that is to have a sound theological 01:20:08.960 --> 01:20:13.520 reason for inhuman behavior, because the behavior is inhuman. 01:20:13.520 --> 01:20:18.000 That is the net result of failing to honor that which is 01:20:18.000 --> 01:20:21.120 honorable and to shame that which is shameful. 01:20:21.120 --> 01:20:25.760 Not only do you lose your society, eventually your very race becomes 01:20:25.760 --> 01:20:29.040 devolved to the point that you cease to be human in some 01:20:29.040 --> 01:20:30.160 fundamental ways. 01:20:30.160 --> 01:20:32.640 And again, I know some people are gonna get very angry at 01:20:32.640 --> 01:20:35.600 that. I'm saying it knowing you're gonna be angry because I want 01:20:35.600 --> 01:20:38.160 you to go look at the text and find where I'm wrong. 01:20:38.160 --> 01:20:39.280 I wish I were. 01:20:39.280 --> 01:20:41.360 I wish I were just making this up. 01:20:41.360 --> 01:20:47.440 But the alternative to your view, if someone disagrees, is that it's 01:20:47.440 --> 01:20:50.480 actually possible for things to get much worse than they are. 01:20:50.480 --> 01:20:55.600 And we as Christian men who are fighting for the preservation of 01:20:55.600 --> 01:20:58.160 Christendom have to believe that's true. 01:20:58.160 --> 01:21:01.280 We have to think that things can get so much worse that 01:21:01.280 --> 01:21:05.680 we become unrecognizable as human beings because it's true. 01:21:05.680 --> 01:21:08.080 I don't want that for anyone. 01:21:08.080 --> 01:21:10.960 I especially don't want that for my own people because we have 01:21:10.960 --> 01:21:13.600 the things of God and we should know better. 01:21:13.600 --> 01:21:16.560 But the only way we can preserve them is to honor the 01:21:16.560 --> 01:21:20.000 things of God and to call out that which is shameful, whatever 01:21:20.000 --> 01:21:21.360 God calls shameful. 01:21:21.360 --> 01:21:25.120 When we deviate from Scripture, when we deviate from what is clearly 01:21:25.120 --> 01:21:28.160 laid out by God, we're still gonna be doing something else. 01:21:28.160 --> 01:21:31.040 Who knows what those people thought were shameful two, three, four thousand 01:21:31.120 --> 01:21:31.840 years ago. 01:21:31.840 --> 01:21:35.120 At some point, they lost the plot to the point that now 01:21:35.440 --> 01:21:40.560 they're rendered incapable as a subspecies of doing it. 01:21:40.560 --> 01:21:42.320 And you can't explain it to 'em. 01:21:42.320 --> 01:21:45.200 Aborigines have IQs around fifty or sixty. 01:21:45.200 --> 01:21:48.160 There's nothing left that we can reason with. 01:21:48.160 --> 01:21:50.080 And that is it's horrifying. 01:21:50.240 --> 01:21:52.560 You have to point to that as an example of we can't 01:21:52.560 --> 01:21:54.400 let this happen to anyone else. 01:21:54.400 --> 01:21:55.440 Anyone else. 01:21:55.440 --> 01:21:57.840 I don't want to see anyone devolve any further. 01:21:57.840 --> 01:21:59.280 I don't wanna see the West devolve. 01:21:59.280 --> 01:22:00.800 I don't wanna see Asia devolve. 01:22:00.800 --> 01:22:03.440 I don't wanna see Africa devolve any worse. 01:22:03.440 --> 01:22:06.320 As bad as things are, they can always keep getting worse. 01:22:06.320 --> 01:22:08.720 Because you can always get further away from God. 01:22:08.720 --> 01:22:11.440 You can always find new ways to be evil. 01:22:11.440 --> 01:22:13.680 Even with no sense whatsoever. 01:22:13.680 --> 01:22:16.160 Demons come along and they whisper and people like, oh, that sounds 01:22:16.160 --> 01:22:18.640 like a good idea, and they go do stuff. 01:22:18.640 --> 01:22:20.960 People that don't even have an inner monologue, when they hear the 01:22:20.960 --> 01:22:23.200 voice in their head, they're just gonna do it. 01:22:23.200 --> 01:22:29.920 Uh these enforcement mechanisms, these civilizational cultural enforcement mechanisms Of shame and 01:22:29.920 --> 01:22:34.000 of honor, they're guardrails in both directions. 01:22:34.000 --> 01:22:35.920 It's kind of the Overton window. 01:22:35.920 --> 01:22:38.080 You have the shame at the far end, say you can't go 01:22:38.080 --> 01:22:40.000 further than that, or you're gonna get the whip. 01:22:40.000 --> 01:22:42.400 And you have the honor at the other end saying, if you 01:22:42.400 --> 01:22:44.960 go beyond this point, we're gonna lodge you. 01:22:44.960 --> 01:22:48.160 You're gonna get a parade, you're gonna get a bonus, we're gonna 01:22:48.160 --> 01:22:51.280 write you a big check to show to everyone this is really 01:22:51.280 --> 01:22:54.560 good, more of this and less of the other thing. 01:22:54.560 --> 01:22:56.800 Somebody's always doing that every day. 01:22:57.200 --> 01:22:59.520 Society is doing that all the time. 01:22:59.520 --> 01:23:02.320 And we all receive those price signals from the market. 01:23:02.320 --> 01:23:05.440 We're all told this is what's honorable, do more of this. 01:23:05.440 --> 01:23:07.840 This is what's shameful, do less of this. 01:23:07.840 --> 01:23:11.520 If we don't pay attention to the Christian standards for that, we 01:23:11.520 --> 01:23:13.680 will end up devolving to the point that no one will be 01:23:13.680 --> 01:23:16.240 able to explain right and wrong to us. 01:23:16.240 --> 01:23:18.000 It can actually happen. 01:23:18.000 --> 01:23:21.920 The fact that these people are incapable of understanding even nakedness is 01:23:21.920 --> 01:23:24.560 proof of that by itself. 01:23:24.560 --> 01:23:26.640 That's why these things matter. 01:23:26.640 --> 01:23:29.840 That's why the subject of race matters and the division of nations 01:23:29.840 --> 01:23:34.000 matter. Because in history, these things have already played out. 01:23:34.000 --> 01:23:37.200 There's not some wild theory from a couple of podcasters that just 01:23:37.200 --> 01:23:38.720 hate people for no reason. 01:23:38.720 --> 01:23:40.000 We don't hate anyone. 01:23:40.000 --> 01:23:41.040 We hate evil. 01:23:41.040 --> 01:23:44.480 We hate the fact that things can get to the point that 01:23:44.480 --> 01:23:48.800 you can't even explain God to someone who doesn't understand the future, 01:23:48.800 --> 01:23:50.560 doesn't understand consequences. 01:23:50.560 --> 01:23:53.920 Because a consequence is a hypothetical of something that either will or 01:23:53.920 --> 01:23:55.360 won't happen. 01:23:55.360 --> 01:23:59.120 When we set guardrails like honor and shame, it's way up the 01:23:59.120 --> 01:24:00.160 causal chain. 01:24:00.160 --> 01:24:03.760 It's ensuring that if we do those things correctly, we never get 01:24:03.760 --> 01:24:05.440 to the point that we have to worry about whether or not 01:24:05.440 --> 01:24:08.240 you can explain to one of us, hey man, you're naked. 01:24:08.240 --> 01:24:09.440 Like, what's that? 01:24:09.440 --> 01:24:11.760 Let's make sure we don't get there as a society. 01:24:11.760 --> 01:24:14.640 Let's make sure we don't get there as a civilization. 01:24:14.640 --> 01:24:18.960 Because today our peoples, our nations understand. 01:24:18.960 --> 01:24:21.200 Even when we do the wrong thing, we know it's the wrong 01:24:21.280 --> 01:24:23.920 thing. But we will rapidly reach a point where we don't even 01:24:23.920 --> 01:24:24.960 understand anymore. 01:24:24.960 --> 01:24:28.560 And we too will say what is naked. 01:24:28.560 --> 01:24:28.880 Let me 01:24:28.880 --> 01:24:33.680 just briefly drive home the point that Wo just made and that 01:24:33.680 --> 01:24:38.880 we have made in a number of other episodes and other places. 01:24:39.120 --> 01:24:42.080 that things can always get worse. 01:24:42.080 --> 01:24:48.720 As I've formulated it often, there is no floor. 01:24:48.720 --> 01:24:50.560 When Europeans first 01:24:51.840 --> 01:24:54.640 sailed to the African continent. 01:24:54.640 --> 01:24:56.800 The things that they found there 01:24:57.760 --> 01:25:04.160 do not bear description, certainly not on this podcast and not here, 01:25:04.160 --> 01:25:05.680 but they were so terrible 01:25:06.800 --> 01:25:12.240 that it was unbelievable to many of the men who first witnessed 01:25:12.240 --> 01:25:14.160 those things. 01:25:14.160 --> 01:25:18.160 One thing in particular that was widespread that can certainly be stated 01:25:18.160 --> 01:25:22.160 on this podcast, was cannibalism. 01:25:22.160 --> 01:25:26.400 Cannibalism was widespread in Africa, it still is to this day, and 01:25:26.400 --> 01:25:30.400 it's widespread in many of the places where Africans have been transported 01:25:30.400 --> 01:25:32.720 in their diaspora. 01:25:32.720 --> 01:25:38.960 The same thing was true when Europeans first conquered Australia. 01:25:38.960 --> 01:25:43.920 The Aborigines engaged in cannibalism, both just because 01:25:45.040 --> 01:25:47.520 and ritualistically. 01:25:47.520 --> 01:25:50.160 The Africans did the same as well, by the way. 01:25:50.160 --> 01:25:52.240 There was ritual cannibalism. 01:25:52.240 --> 01:25:56.560 The same thing was true when Europeans first sailed to, discovered, and 01:25:56.560 --> 01:26:02.240 conquered the New World both South America and North America. 01:26:02.240 --> 01:26:08.080 The Amerindian peoples engaged in cannibalism. 01:26:08.080 --> 01:26:12.080 This is one of those things that you see everywhere that has 01:26:12.080 --> 01:26:17.680 been in long communion with demons, that has been away from God 01:26:18.000 --> 01:26:22.320 for centuries or millennia. 01:26:22.320 --> 01:26:30.000 We don't currently have any real cannibalism problem anywhere in the West. 01:26:30.000 --> 01:26:32.800 That could change. 01:26:32.800 --> 01:26:37.680 If we continue to move away from God and things continue to 01:26:37.680 --> 01:26:42.640 get worse, that will eventually become part of our praxis. 01:26:42.640 --> 01:26:44.720 Because it always does. 01:26:44.720 --> 01:26:49.360 Because the demons always whisper about that And they will always try 01:26:49.360 --> 01:26:54.640 to get humans to commit that sort of wickedness because God hates 01:26:54.640 --> 01:27:01.680 it. Any society, any culture that engages in cannibalism is 01:27:01.680 --> 01:27:04.160 cursed by God. 01:27:04.160 --> 01:27:06.960 And things will undoubtedly degenerate from there. 01:27:06.960 --> 01:27:09.600 They will continue to get worse. 01:27:09.600 --> 01:27:14.800 Because as Wo said, when you are dealing with certain Aboriginal populations, 01:27:14.800 --> 01:27:16.960 they have IQs in the fifties. 01:27:16.960 --> 01:27:22.080 That is incomprehensibly stupid. 01:27:22.080 --> 01:27:28.400 eighty five is considered mentally retarded, at least historically, and just objectively 01:27:28.400 --> 01:27:29.360 it is. 01:27:29.360 --> 01:27:33.920 fifty is so profoundly retarded that it is on the level of 01:27:33.920 --> 01:27:35.040 an animal. 01:27:35.040 --> 01:27:38.880 There are gorillas that are more intelligent than that. 01:27:40.080 --> 01:27:41.680 That should tell you something. 01:27:41.680 --> 01:27:45.280 That should terrify you in the fullest sense of that term. 01:27:45.280 --> 01:27:49.040 That is a possibility for human beings. 01:27:50.320 --> 01:27:52.800 God did not create them that way. 01:27:53.360 --> 01:27:57.520 They were not that way when they came off the ark, in 01:27:57.520 --> 01:28:01.440 Ham, and in some cases in Shem. 01:28:01.440 --> 01:28:03.280 That happened later. 01:28:03.280 --> 01:28:08.800 They have degenerated, they have devolved to that point That is a 01:28:08.800 --> 01:28:13.040 possibility for Western populations as well. 01:28:13.040 --> 01:28:16.320 That is the sort of thing that we want to avoid. 01:28:16.320 --> 01:28:19.760 That is the sort of thing that you can avoid only if 01:28:19.760 --> 01:28:21.840 you have a moral society. 01:28:22.560 --> 01:28:28.160 Now I'm not going to say necessarily an explicitly Christian society, because 01:28:28.160 --> 01:28:32.640 even the pagan societies in Europe did not descend that far. 01:28:32.640 --> 01:28:38.000 Although part of that is because they remained closer to, and truer 01:28:38.000 --> 01:28:40.000 to, the true faith. 01:28:40.000 --> 01:28:44.560 You can look at the mythologies, compare the mythologies of Europe and 01:28:44.560 --> 01:28:50.320 the Aborigines, and the Amerindians and others, the Africans, you will very 01:28:50.320 --> 01:28:57.440 readily and very quickly notice, the European mythologies are closer to Christianity. 01:28:57.440 --> 01:28:59.360 They're not perfectly Christian. 01:28:59.360 --> 01:29:00.960 I wouldn't ever say that. 01:29:00.960 --> 01:29:05.200 They certainly got things wrong, they corrupted things, because they lost the 01:29:05.200 --> 01:29:06.320 truth at some point. 01:29:06.320 --> 01:29:11.360 We don't know exactly when, but they certainly lost it after the 01:29:11.360 --> 01:29:13.200 rest of the world. 01:29:13.200 --> 01:29:16.160 And God blessed them for that, because they held on to the 01:29:16.160 --> 01:29:19.920 truth longer, and when they lost it, they did not fall as 01:29:19.920 --> 01:29:27.360 far. Pagan historians noted that some of the northern European pagans were 01:29:27.360 --> 01:29:32.000 particularly loyal when it came to fidelity in marriage. 01:29:32.000 --> 01:29:34.960 God is going to bless you for that, whether you are pagan 01:29:34.960 --> 01:29:40.720 or Christian, because the blessings for that flow naturally from the faithfulness 01:29:40.720 --> 01:29:45.280 itself, from the fidelity, from the chastity. 01:29:45.280 --> 01:29:49.680 Some things carry the punishment or the blessing with them as a 01:29:49.680 --> 01:29:51.920 natural consequence. 01:29:51.920 --> 01:29:55.120 So even if you are a pagan population and you remain closer 01:29:55.120 --> 01:29:58.240 to the things of God, you will be more blessed than a 01:29:58.240 --> 01:30:02.880 pagan population that has moved further away from the things of God. 01:30:02.880 --> 01:30:07.440 However, all of that comes with a caveat. 01:30:07.440 --> 01:30:10.960 I do not think that it is possible at this point in 01:30:10.960 --> 01:30:14.720 history to return to a sort of virtuous paganism. 01:30:14.720 --> 01:30:17.120 I think we see that today if you look at most of 01:30:17.120 --> 01:30:19.040 the pagan groups. 01:30:19.040 --> 01:30:22.320 They are incredibly degenerate. 01:30:22.320 --> 01:30:26.400 Rampant drug use, promiscuity, all sorts of other problems. 01:30:26.400 --> 01:30:30.400 I don't mean to say that all neo pagans are that way. 01:30:30.400 --> 01:30:33.600 Because of course they aren't, but many are. 01:30:33.600 --> 01:30:36.240 And I don't think that we can return again to some sort 01:30:36.240 --> 01:30:37.840 of virtuous paganism. 01:30:37.840 --> 01:30:42.720 It's simply not a possibility If we were to go down that 01:30:42.720 --> 01:30:47.120 route, we would wind up in the sort of wickedness and depravity 01:30:47.120 --> 01:30:49.600 that we see in the rest of the world for any of 01:30:49.600 --> 01:30:50.480 a number of reasons. 01:30:50.480 --> 01:30:54.240 This isn't the episode for going into that in detail, but that 01:30:54.240 --> 01:30:54.800 is the reality. 01:30:54.800 --> 01:30:57.920 That is where we would go. 01:30:57.920 --> 01:31:01.040 That is where our society would end up. 01:31:01.040 --> 01:31:07.520 In that sort of evil and wickedness, degeneration, devolution, depravity. 01:31:07.520 --> 01:31:10.240 That is not where we want to go. 01:31:10.240 --> 01:31:14.080 The only way to avoid that, and of course, I'm not saying 01:31:14.080 --> 01:31:18.000 this is purely a matter of what is practical or what is 01:31:18.320 --> 01:31:18.640 best 01:31:19.520 --> 01:31:24.560 in the sense of the purely sort of secular sense, because obviously 01:31:24.800 --> 01:31:29.040 adhering to Christianity is proper because it is true. 01:31:29.040 --> 01:31:33.520 But the only way that we are going to maintain a society 01:31:33.520 --> 01:31:35.840 that is worthy of the term, a civilization that is worthy of 01:31:35.840 --> 01:31:43.200 the term, is remaining Christian and becoming more Christian, returning to Christendom 01:31:43.280 --> 01:31:48.160 in which we have a pervasive Christianity in our population. 01:31:48.160 --> 01:31:52.000 If we do not have that, we are going to end up 01:31:52.000 --> 01:31:57.120 falling just as far as the African or the Aboriginal. 01:31:57.120 --> 01:32:02.720 Because that is where humanity inevitably goes without God. 01:32:02.720 --> 01:32:05.680 The pagans would have eventually ended up there. 01:32:05.680 --> 01:32:08.720 I don't know how quickly, I don't know if it would have 01:32:08.720 --> 01:32:14.080 been five hundred more years, five thousand more years, it doesn't really 01:32:14.080 --> 01:32:19.040 matter. Because that is eventually where every group that walks away from 01:32:19.040 --> 01:32:21.360 God ends up. 01:32:21.360 --> 01:32:25.520 That is the end of leaving God, of turning your back on 01:32:25.520 --> 01:32:28.240 God and walking away from him. 01:32:28.240 --> 01:32:31.360 Because again, as we have said many times in many episodes, you 01:32:31.360 --> 01:32:33.760 are always going Godward or hellward. 01:32:33.760 --> 01:32:38.480 And if you're going hellward, things are going to get worse. 01:32:38.480 --> 01:32:42.480 They will never get better, they will always get worse. 01:32:42.480 --> 01:32:45.920 And at some point it seems like there's some sort of cliff. 01:32:45.920 --> 01:32:50.160 Things get slightly worse up to a certain point, and then all 01:32:50.160 --> 01:32:54.080 of a sudden things are significantly orders of magnitude worse. 01:32:54.080 --> 01:32:58.240 At some point European pagans would have fallen off that cliff. 01:32:58.240 --> 01:33:01.120 That is just the inevitable outcome. 01:33:01.120 --> 01:33:02.640 We do not want that 01:33:04.240 --> 01:33:07.040 We live in a post-fall world. 01:33:07.040 --> 01:33:13.440 There is no ability, no possibility, of restoring things to how God 01:33:13.600 --> 01:33:15.840 wanted them to be. 01:33:16.080 --> 01:33:20.640 We cannot even restore things to what our ancestors had as a 01:33:20.640 --> 01:33:26.480 possibility. Because this world is degenerating as it goes. 01:33:26.480 --> 01:33:31.680 Because this world is cursed and disconnected in a sense from God. 01:33:31.680 --> 01:33:38.240 Things get worse over time, problems accumulate. 01:33:38.240 --> 01:33:41.840 All that we can do is hold on to what is left 01:33:41.920 --> 01:33:46.880 of the good that God built into creation. 01:33:46.880 --> 01:33:52.960 We should absolutely, categorically oppose anything that destroys what is left of 01:33:52.960 --> 01:33:58.320 the good, whether that is beauty or goodness or truth, or any 01:33:58.320 --> 01:34:02.720 of the ways those work out in creation and in human beings 01:34:02.720 --> 01:34:07.840 themselves, we should never accept destruction of any of those things, because 01:34:07.840 --> 01:34:11.760 destruction of those things is destruction of the things of God, is 01:34:11.760 --> 01:34:15.600 an assault on what God has created, and it is also not 01:34:15.600 --> 01:34:20.960 just a diminishment of humanity, but a diminishment of the ability to 01:34:20.960 --> 01:34:25.120 hold on to the truth. 01:34:25.120 --> 01:34:32.240 If we manage to get the entire population of Australian Aboriginals to 01:34:32.240 --> 01:34:38.560 convert to Christianity, to believe Christianity, to be Christian, and then left 01:34:38.560 --> 01:34:40.400 them alone for a thousand years. 01:34:40.400 --> 01:34:45.200 When we went back there would not be a single Christian. 01:34:45.200 --> 01:34:48.000 That's not because the Word of God fails. 01:34:48.000 --> 01:34:51.200 It's not because God is not faithful. 01:34:51.200 --> 01:34:54.080 It is because there is a way in which the Christian truth, 01:34:54.080 --> 01:34:59.040 in which the Christian faith is transmitted, and there are requirements. 01:34:59.040 --> 01:35:05.280 There's a certain level of capacity that is necessary for teachers, also 01:35:05.360 --> 01:35:09.120 for students, but certainly for teachers. 01:35:09.120 --> 01:35:13.120 You cannot teach the Christian faith if you have an IQ of 01:35:13.760 --> 01:35:19.360 fifty. You can receive it, because of course we have talked about 01:35:19.360 --> 01:35:24.320 those with mental disabilities in previous episodes, and they can be Christians, 01:35:24.320 --> 01:35:26.240 but they can't teach the faith. 01:35:26.240 --> 01:35:29.840 And so they can't transmit the faith. 01:35:29.840 --> 01:35:35.120 If a population falls below a certain level, it will inevitably lose 01:35:35.120 --> 01:35:39.760 the Christian faith, unless it is maintained externally 01:35:41.200 --> 01:35:46.560 If we in the West lose the ability to transmit the Christian 01:35:46.560 --> 01:35:50.880 faith, that is the end of Christianity. 01:35:50.880 --> 01:35:54.400 No one else is going to step up because essentially no one 01:35:54.400 --> 01:35:55.280 else can. 01:35:55.280 --> 01:35:59.760 There are some pockets of populations here and there that have the 01:35:59.760 --> 01:36:04.320 hardware, as it were, the horsepower, the capacity. 01:36:04.320 --> 01:36:08.560 They could theoretically do it, but look at history. 01:36:08.560 --> 01:36:11.360 Look at the last two thousand years. 01:36:11.360 --> 01:36:15.120 No one else has maintained the Christian faith. 01:36:15.120 --> 01:36:18.400 No one else has spread the Christian faith. 01:36:18.640 --> 01:36:22.080 with the small exception of a couple pockets here and there that 01:36:22.080 --> 01:36:24.800 have kept an insular Christian faith. 01:36:24.800 --> 01:36:27.760 They've never spread it, they've never gone to the rest of the 01:36:27.760 --> 01:36:31.520 world. It was only Europeans who did that. 01:36:31.520 --> 01:36:36.320 And so if we lose that capacity, what does it mean for 01:36:36.320 --> 01:36:37.760 the future of the church? 01:36:39.760 --> 01:36:44.400 That is why these things matter, Because if we do not maintain 01:36:44.560 --> 01:36:46.640 these standards. 01:36:46.640 --> 01:36:51.840 If we do not have a society that shames behavior, that transgresses 01:36:51.840 --> 01:36:57.520 the moral law, behavior that is against God, that violates his word, 01:36:57.520 --> 01:37:00.720 that is destructive, and these things are all synonymous, you can use 01:37:00.720 --> 01:37:02.800 them interchangeably. 01:37:02.800 --> 01:37:08.000 If we do not shame that behavior, if individuals do not feel 01:37:08.000 --> 01:37:12.240 guilt when they engage in that behavior, we will simply go down 01:37:12.240 --> 01:37:18.400 the same path of degeneration as basically everyone else has. 01:37:18.400 --> 01:37:19.840 That's the outcome. 01:37:19.840 --> 01:37:23.280 We know that outcome is a possibility. 01:37:23.280 --> 01:37:29.200 Because when they walked off the ark, they were not like that. 01:37:29.200 --> 01:37:35.680 Every single man on this planet is a son of Noah. 01:37:35.680 --> 01:37:39.200 But look at the various populations around the world. 01:37:39.200 --> 01:37:42.240 We are very clearly not equal today. 01:37:42.240 --> 01:37:46.320 It is possible to go from what Noah was and what his 01:37:46.320 --> 01:37:50.720 forefathers before him were to what we see today in every single 01:37:50.720 --> 01:37:52.720 part of the world. 01:37:52.720 --> 01:37:57.280 You can be a European with an IQ of 160, or you 01:37:57.280 --> 01:38:00.240 can be an Aboriginal with an IQ of 50. 01:38:00.240 --> 01:38:04.560 Both of those are possibilities starting with Father Noah. 01:38:04.560 --> 01:38:08.160 Only one of those can transmit the Christian faith. 01:38:08.160 --> 01:38:13.760 It is necessary to maintain, to build, to jealously guard the sort 01:38:13.760 --> 01:38:18.800 of Christian society that can still create the men who have the 01:38:18.800 --> 01:38:22.800 capacity to spread the Christian faith, and not just to spread the 01:38:22.800 --> 01:38:26.160 Christian faith, but to defend the Christian faith. 01:38:26.160 --> 01:38:29.920 Satan is not going to stop attacking the Christian faith. 01:38:29.920 --> 01:38:33.200 He is going to accelerate his attacks because he knows that his 01:38:33.200 --> 01:38:34.640 time is short. 01:38:34.640 --> 01:38:37.760 And so you need the sort of men who can defend the 01:38:37.760 --> 01:38:41.600 faith, not just against all of the ancient attacks because of course, 01:38:41.600 --> 01:38:43.840 those are still out there. 01:38:43.840 --> 01:38:47.200 We like to think those battles were won, and to some degree 01:38:47.200 --> 01:38:51.040 they were, but they weren't one for all time. 01:38:51.040 --> 01:38:55.760 Look at Christianity in various parts of the world, and the heresies 01:38:55.760 --> 01:39:00.080 that have sprung up, they're ancient heresies, that were solved five hundred, 01:39:00.080 --> 01:39:03.120 a thousand, fifteen hundred years ago in the West. 01:39:03.120 --> 01:39:06.000 Because Satan knows that he can bring them right back in if 01:39:06.000 --> 01:39:10.400 the men who can defend against them are no longer there. 01:39:10.400 --> 01:39:12.720 And he is also going to bring in novel heresies. 01:39:12.720 --> 01:39:15.520 We see that happening today. 01:39:15.520 --> 01:39:19.760 We have often pointed out that Satan with regard to the West 01:39:19.920 --> 01:39:24.400 is not is not attacking justification by and large. 01:39:24.400 --> 01:39:26.160 He doesn't need to do that. 01:39:26.160 --> 01:39:28.400 He's going to attack creation. 01:39:28.400 --> 01:39:32.080 He's going to attack the first article of the Creed, because that's 01:39:32.080 --> 01:39:33.920 more effective in the West. 01:39:33.920 --> 01:39:36.480 In the other parts of the world, he'll attack whatever he feels 01:39:36.480 --> 01:39:40.480 is most effective at that time, and so he'll attack justification there. 01:39:40.480 --> 01:39:44.640 Or he'll bring up the prosperity gospel, which we also have in 01:39:44.640 --> 01:39:48.160 some parts of the US, or the Liberation Gospel, or any of 01:39:48.160 --> 01:39:52.480 these other heresies that are effective in other parts of the world. 01:39:52.480 --> 01:39:57.280 Because the men who are capable of defending against the heresy no 01:39:57.280 --> 01:40:01.280 longer exist in those populations. 01:40:01.280 --> 01:40:05.440 It is a very real possibility that we can lose the Christian 01:40:05.440 --> 01:40:10.560 faith. That shouldn't be something that is unheard of. 01:40:10.560 --> 01:40:13.920 That shouldn't be something that is unthinkable. 01:40:13.920 --> 01:40:16.240 It should be abhorrent, certainly. 01:40:16.240 --> 01:40:19.040 It should be a terrible possibility. 01:40:19.040 --> 01:40:22.480 But it is something we have to recognize as a possibility. 01:40:22.480 --> 01:40:24.160 Look at history. 01:40:25.360 --> 01:40:30.560 All of those who walked off the ark knew the Christian faith. 01:40:30.720 --> 01:40:33.920 They had heard it directly from a man who at the time 01:40:34.160 --> 01:40:38.000 was prophet, priest, and king. 01:40:38.080 --> 01:40:39.680 Because he was their father. 01:40:39.680 --> 01:40:46.480 They heard it from him directly over a course of many years, 01:40:46.480 --> 01:40:51.520 because do keep in mind they lived centuries unlike us. 01:40:51.520 --> 01:40:55.600 These were not men who were unfamiliar with the Christian faith, and 01:40:55.600 --> 01:41:01.200 yet look at their descendants, most of them lost the Christian faith. 01:41:01.200 --> 01:41:03.840 The same can happen to us. 01:41:03.840 --> 01:41:04.720 And so it may seem 01:41:05.600 --> 01:41:11.280 like honor is just some sort of philosophical concept that, well, it's 01:41:11.280 --> 01:41:16.400 a part of society and it forms different sort of backbones and 01:41:16.400 --> 01:41:22.640 plays different roles in different places at different times in different cultures. 01:41:22.640 --> 01:41:27.680 But in reality it is something that is fundamental both to civilization 01:41:27.840 --> 01:41:29.600 and to the Christian faith. 01:41:29.840 --> 01:41:34.080 Because when it is properly conceived, it's not just a matter of 01:41:34.080 --> 01:41:39.440 the shame or the guilt, because certain cultures have emphasized one or 01:41:39.440 --> 01:41:40.320 the other. 01:41:40.320 --> 01:41:42.320 Both are necessary. 01:41:42.320 --> 01:41:44.560 But Both are part of honor. 01:41:44.560 --> 01:41:48.720 Both defend the Christian faith when they are properly formed. 01:41:48.720 --> 01:41:53.440 As Wo said earlier, the enforcement mechanism is good. 01:41:53.440 --> 01:41:57.840 It is a matter of the standard on which the rules are 01:41:57.840 --> 01:42:03.040 based. Because the enforcement mechanism is simply enforcing those rules. 01:42:03.040 --> 01:42:05.280 What is the source of those rules? 01:42:05.280 --> 01:42:06.800 Where did you get that? 01:42:06.800 --> 01:42:09.040 Why do you believe that? 01:42:09.040 --> 01:42:10.240 Why is that true? 01:42:10.240 --> 01:42:12.320 Why do you think that's true? 01:42:12.320 --> 01:42:15.280 With regard to your conscience, again, it should be because it is 01:42:15.280 --> 01:42:18.400 formed by the Word of God, because you have conformed it to 01:42:18.400 --> 01:42:19.760 the things of God. 01:42:19.760 --> 01:42:25.360 And with regard to society, it should be because those consciences, formed 01:42:25.360 --> 01:42:30.720 by the word of God, have transposed God's law into the positive 01:42:30.720 --> 01:42:34.240 law. Again the positive law is just the laws of society. 01:42:35.360 --> 01:42:39.440 The positive law should be based on the moral law. 01:42:39.440 --> 01:42:42.320 That's just simple Christian truth. 01:42:42.320 --> 01:42:48.080 Again, Genesis 9:6, God requires us to have laws against murder. 01:42:48.400 --> 01:42:51.120 And he requires a certain punishment for it. 01:42:51.120 --> 01:42:57.120 That is a requirement to transpose his moral law, Genesis 9:6, into 01:42:57.120 --> 01:42:59.280 our positive law. 01:42:59.280 --> 01:43:04.720 All of our laws against murder and unjust killing, whatever we happen 01:43:04.720 --> 01:43:09.040 to call it in the various laws in our various lands. 01:43:09.040 --> 01:43:14.240 Whether or not we have a Christian society is not an optional 01:43:14.240 --> 01:43:17.600 matter. As Christians it is required. 01:43:17.600 --> 01:43:20.880 Now it's optional in the sense that we can simply ignore that 01:43:20.880 --> 01:43:26.480 duty and lose Christianity, and our perhaps not sons, but grandsons or 01:43:26.480 --> 01:43:31.600 great grandsons will wind up apostate. 01:43:31.600 --> 01:43:35.520 But that is not something that a Christian would consider an option. 01:43:35.520 --> 01:43:42.560 The goal again must be to construct Christian societies that produce Christian 01:43:42.560 --> 01:43:47.440 men who can maintain those very same Christian societies. 01:43:47.440 --> 01:43:52.320 Because however long we have left in this creation, however long we 01:43:52.320 --> 01:43:57.680 have left on this earth, before God draws everything to a close, 01:43:57.680 --> 01:44:03.600 we have to maintain Christendom and the ability to maintain Christendom for 01:44:03.600 --> 01:44:06.880 that period of time, we do not know how long it will 01:44:06.880 --> 01:44:10.960 be. So we have to live as if we will maintain this 01:44:10.960 --> 01:44:16.640 forever. It's a now but not yet, of a different kind. 01:44:16.640 --> 01:44:20.160 We have to live as if we would live forever, but also 01:44:20.160 --> 01:44:22.080 as if we would die tomorrow. 01:44:22.080 --> 01:44:27.760 And so personally we conduct ourselves, hopefully, and certainly we should attempt 01:44:27.760 --> 01:44:31.120 to conduct ourselves as if we will die tomorrow. 01:44:31.360 --> 01:44:34.560 We want to be right with God, we want to have our 01:44:34.560 --> 01:44:38.080 affairs in order as it were, but we have to build our 01:44:38.080 --> 01:44:42.640 societies as if things will just keep going, as if they will 01:44:42.640 --> 01:44:46.560 not be drawn to a close, because we don't know when God 01:44:46.560 --> 01:44:47.360 will end things. 01:44:47.360 --> 01:44:50.480 No man knows the day or the hour. 01:44:50.480 --> 01:44:55.280 And so as Christians, we have to maintain this deposit of the 01:44:55.280 --> 01:44:59.600 faith. We have to maintain this truth that we have that was 01:44:59.600 --> 01:45:04.720 transmitted to us by our forefathers, for which we should be infinitely 01:45:04.720 --> 01:45:08.640 grateful. We have to maintain it so that it can be passed 01:45:08.640 --> 01:45:12.320 on to others and certainly and most And most importantly to future 01:45:12.320 --> 01:45:15.040 generations of our own people. 01:45:15.040 --> 01:45:19.520 Because if we do not do that, eventually there will come a 01:45:19.520 --> 01:45:23.040 time where the Christian faith will be lost in the West, and 01:45:23.040 --> 01:45:26.480 from there forward, because no one else is going to come and 01:45:26.480 --> 01:45:31.680 reintroduce Christianity, it will just be generations of the damned all the 01:45:31.680 --> 01:45:34.000 way until the end of time.