WEBVTT 00:00:03.040 --> 00:00:06.000 It is the 13th of March 2026. 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:07.120 I am Cory J. 00:00:07.120 --> 00:00:09.840 Mahler, and this is at any cost. 00:00:09.840 --> 00:00:14.720 This is episode 20, a QA episode, and I really do not 00:00:15.200 --> 00:00:18.960 have any housekeeping, just one little point before I get started on 00:00:18.960 --> 00:00:20.480 the questions here tonight. 00:00:20.480 --> 00:00:23.600 I'm also copying some questions over from the chat so that I 00:00:23.600 --> 00:00:24.800 can get them. 00:00:24.800 --> 00:00:27.920 If not tonight, at least next time, I don't know that I'll 00:00:27.840 --> 00:00:30.480 get that at least all of them tonight. 00:00:30.480 --> 00:00:35.120 I have a number of questions prepared and ready to go. 00:00:35.120 --> 00:00:38.080 Insofar as the housekeeping goes, the one point is I know that 00:00:38.080 --> 00:00:41.280 I have been asked a number of times about 00:00:42.320 --> 00:00:47.280 the issue of beauty and the moral salience of beauty, particularly because 00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:51.120 of that one post on X that blew up and got twenty 00:00:51.200 --> 00:00:53.120 million views or something. 00:00:53.120 --> 00:00:57.360 At any rate, I wound up writing an article on that. 00:00:57.360 --> 00:01:02.480 I'm going to transcribe that hopefully tomorrow and then go ahead and 00:01:02.480 --> 00:01:03.040 publish that. 00:01:03.040 --> 00:01:03.600 That'll be my 00:01:04.560 --> 00:01:09.120 core answer to the issue of the moral salience of beauty, how 00:01:09.120 --> 00:01:11.120 that ties into these matters. 00:01:11.120 --> 00:01:13.280 So that will be an answer for those of you who've been 00:01:13.280 --> 00:01:14.160 asking about that. 00:01:14.160 --> 00:01:18.960 I'll probably also record something about it in the future, but the 00:01:18.960 --> 00:01:25.280 article will be the core of my answer to that. 00:01:25.280 --> 00:01:32.800 So getting into the questions here pull up the first one. 00:01:32.880 --> 00:01:38.560 In today's political climate, it is evident that liberalism and race realism 00:01:38.560 --> 00:01:40.240 are incompatible. 00:01:40.240 --> 00:01:42.000 But this was not always the case. 00:01:42.000 --> 00:01:46.160 When we think of a nation like Australia and their federation in 00:01:46.240 --> 00:01:51.360 1901, one of the first policies passed was the White Australia policy. 00:01:51.360 --> 00:01:54.320 But the men of that time and the following prime ministers who 00:01:54.400 --> 00:02:00.560 endorse this policy wouldn't self describe as fascists or national socialists. 00:02:00.560 --> 00:02:04.240 The men of this time were quite liberal around trade, markets, civil 00:02:04.240 --> 00:02:07.760 liberties, democracy, and other such things. 00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:13.120 Was the liberalism of that time something different from the incarnation today, 00:02:13.120 --> 00:02:15.680 or is it a category error to say that these men were 00:02:15.680 --> 00:02:19.440 liberal? Or is it the case that liberalism was intended for a 00:02:19.440 --> 00:02:23.920 white homogeneous society and when these parameters are not met, the system 00:02:23.920 --> 00:02:26.000 collapses in on itself. 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:31.840 Additionally, is liberalism a political philosophy worth hanging on to or trying 00:02:31.840 --> 00:02:39.120 to reinvent or revitalize still just copying over a couple 00:02:39.360 --> 00:02:43.600 questions here from the chat to make sure that I get those 00:02:43.600 --> 00:02:44.800 for next time. 00:02:44.800 --> 00:02:51.200 But insofar as liberalism is concerned, I think the fundamental problem is 00:02:51.520 --> 00:02:56.240 that it rests on the assumption of things that it destroys, in 00:02:56.240 --> 00:02:58.400 the fullness of time destroys. 00:02:58.400 --> 00:02:59.440 And this is similar to 00:03:00.800 --> 00:03:04.640 what we see with capitalism in the economic sphere, which capitalism and 00:03:04.640 --> 00:03:06.320 liberalism kind of go hand in hand. 00:03:06.320 --> 00:03:10.160 You have one is you even mentioned some of the economic aspects 00:03:10.160 --> 00:03:11.520 of liberalism. 00:03:11.520 --> 00:03:15.840 Liberalism is sort of the ideology or the philosophy of capitalism, and 00:03:15.840 --> 00:03:20.640 capitalism is itself also a bit of an ideology or philosophy, but 00:03:20.640 --> 00:03:23.520 more the economics of the philosophy. 00:03:23.520 --> 00:03:28.080 Obviously they're related, you can't really extract the one from the other, 00:03:28.080 --> 00:03:28.400 but 00:03:29.520 --> 00:03:33.760 the issue with them is that they rely on all of this 00:03:33.760 --> 00:03:37.280 groundwork, all of these things that have been built up over a 00:03:37.280 --> 00:03:43.680 course of at least centuries in Christendom, under a system that was 00:03:43.680 --> 00:03:50.000 very much not capitalist or liberal, and then relying on those things, 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:54.560 they basically parasitize them and destroy them and then eventually the system 00:03:54.560 --> 00:03:57.920 collapses because it can't sustain itself. 00:03:57.920 --> 00:04:02.400 It doesn't actually create the sort of conditions it needs to exist. 00:04:02.400 --> 00:04:06.960 It exploits the conditions that existed prior to it due to other 00:04:06.960 --> 00:04:09.280 systems that preceded it. 00:04:09.280 --> 00:04:11.280 So the short answer is no. 00:04:11.280 --> 00:04:16.240 I don't believe that trying to revive liberalism or bring back classical 00:04:16.240 --> 00:04:20.480 liberalism or whatever it happens to be, is a good idea. 00:04:20.480 --> 00:04:26.080 There is a particularly noxious atheist on X who happens to be 00:04:26.400 --> 00:04:29.840 not exactly a neighbor, but he lives nearby close enough that he's 00:04:29.840 --> 00:04:32.400 sort of a neighbor for Neighbor for me. 00:04:32.400 --> 00:04:37.360 Forty minutes away, thankfully, decent distance, but that's his whole thing. 00:04:37.360 --> 00:04:41.520 That's his whole shtick, is he's a classical liberal and wants to 00:04:41.520 --> 00:04:42.560 bring back those policies. 00:04:42.560 --> 00:04:46.000 And you can see exactly where those sort of men end up 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:47.280 where that leads. 00:04:47.280 --> 00:04:50.640 The sort of men who are pushing for classical liberalism are the 00:04:50.640 --> 00:04:55.680 ones who generally lead a dissolute life and want to encourage others 00:04:55.680 --> 00:04:57.360 to do the same. 00:04:57.360 --> 00:05:00.640 So regardless of what it may have meant for those men, and 00:05:00.640 --> 00:05:03.360 for those men at the time, it did not mean what it 00:05:03.360 --> 00:05:04.640 means today. 00:05:04.640 --> 00:05:09.040 There's some overlap, of course, in so far as the economics is 00:05:09.040 --> 00:05:12.160 concerned, tons of overlap there. 00:05:12.160 --> 00:05:17.840 But insofar as the social policy and the morality and things like 00:05:17.840 --> 00:05:22.000 that, insofar as those are concerned, significantly less overlap. 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:24.960 But like I said at the outset, I think the problem is 00:05:25.280 --> 00:05:30.640 that the system itself naturally leads to those consequences. 00:05:30.640 --> 00:05:34.560 I think that you end up there as just a natural outcome 00:05:34.560 --> 00:05:36.960 of pursuing liberalism. 00:05:36.960 --> 00:05:41.200 Because what liberalism ultimately does is it tears down all of those 00:05:41.200 --> 00:05:45.200 boundaries. It tears down Chesterton's fence, basically. 00:05:45.200 --> 00:05:49.120 It tears down everything that not only made it possible for that 00:05:49.120 --> 00:05:54.160 system to sit atop what it had not constructed, but also that 00:05:54.160 --> 00:05:59.440 makes it possible for the sort of society that can exercise that 00:05:59.440 --> 00:06:01.520 in a reasonable fashion. 00:06:01.680 --> 00:06:04.480 It makes it impossible for that to exist for any length of 00:06:04.480 --> 00:06:07.920 time. And in fact, it is the cause, it is the solvent 00:06:07.920 --> 00:06:11.040 that dissolves that society. 00:06:11.040 --> 00:06:14.560 I can't think of a single instance in which you can point 00:06:14.560 --> 00:06:21.120 to liberalizing things in our society and the outcome has been good. 00:06:21.120 --> 00:06:25.920 I don't think that liberalizing the interactions between men and women has 00:06:25.920 --> 00:06:27.600 led to anything good. 00:06:27.600 --> 00:06:32.720 I don't think liberalizing the fashion for women has led to anything 00:06:32.720 --> 00:06:36.880 good. I don't think that liberalizing behavior in public spaces has led 00:06:36.880 --> 00:06:37.600 to anything good. 00:06:37.600 --> 00:06:41.200 And everyone in this chat could go on and do that for 00:06:41.200 --> 00:06:44.240 dozens, if not hundreds of things. 00:06:44.240 --> 00:06:44.560 So 00:06:45.760 --> 00:06:49.600 those men were mistaken, I believe, in what they were pursuing. 00:06:49.600 --> 00:06:52.480 I don't think most of them were doing it for evil or 00:06:52.480 --> 00:06:53.600 nefarious purposes. 00:06:53.600 --> 00:06:55.680 I think they were simply mistaken, but 00:06:56.560 --> 00:07:00.560 we have the advantage of hindsight. 00:07:00.560 --> 00:07:02.560 We should not repeat their errors. 00:07:02.560 --> 00:07:06.160 We know that it was deeply unwise, that it was something they 00:07:06.160 --> 00:07:07.440 shouldn't have done. 00:07:07.440 --> 00:07:09.440 We shouldn't give it another go. 00:07:09.440 --> 00:07:13.360 That's sort of like saying that wasn't real communism, right? 00:07:13.520 --> 00:07:15.600 Hear that all the time from leftists. 00:07:15.600 --> 00:07:18.000 And you hear people today trying to say, well, it's not real 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:20.560 capitalism. No, what we have is real capitalism. 00:07:20.560 --> 00:07:24.480 It's just the natural evolution of capitalism. 00:07:24.480 --> 00:07:26.640 It's late stage capitalism. 00:07:26.640 --> 00:07:28.720 It's late stage liberalism. 00:07:28.720 --> 00:07:32.160 So, no, I don't think that we should try to pursue that. 00:07:32.160 --> 00:07:35.600 And I think that anyone who does fundamentally does not understand 00:07:36.640 --> 00:07:39.520 The things that are facing us and what needs to be done 00:07:39.520 --> 00:07:41.760 to address those problems. 00:07:41.760 --> 00:07:48.320 Going back to you know, late 1900s, first half of the 19, 00:07:48.320 --> 00:07:52.560 or late 1800s, first half of the 1900s liberalism, that's not going 00:07:52.560 --> 00:07:53.920 to solve our problems. 00:07:53.920 --> 00:07:57.600 In fact, given how bad things are now, it is just going 00:07:57.600 --> 00:08:00.480 to exacerbate them significantly. 00:08:00.480 --> 00:08:04.480 And of course, there's also a great number of malefactors who are 00:08:04.480 --> 00:08:05.440 pushing for it. 00:08:05.440 --> 00:08:08.400 I mentioned one. 00:08:08.400 --> 00:08:16.240 The next question, question two, is a related question 00:08:16.880 --> 00:08:25.600 as soon as it comes up here. 00:08:25.600 --> 00:08:31.440 The tab is taking a second to load. 00:08:31.440 --> 00:08:33.840 At any rate, I remember the question, so I will just go 00:08:33.840 --> 00:08:35.600 over it instead of specifically reading it. 00:08:35.600 --> 00:08:38.960 The question is about on the Jews and their lies and which 00:08:38.960 --> 00:08:40.160 one, of course, now it loads 00:08:41.040 --> 00:08:45.840 and which one you should purchase basically which one is the the 00:08:45.840 --> 00:08:47.360 best copy of it. 00:08:47.360 --> 00:08:49.520 I'll read the question now that it's actually loaded. 00:08:49.520 --> 00:08:52.000 I was hoping that you could speak about Luther's on the Jews 00:08:52.000 --> 00:08:54.320 and their lies unrelated to recent events. 00:08:54.320 --> 00:08:57.840 I started reading this from Luther's Works Volume forty seven. 00:08:57.840 --> 00:09:01.280 In this case it is Luther's Works the American Edition. 00:09:01.280 --> 00:09:08.000 That is jointly produced by the LCMS, which is Concordia Publishing House, 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:12.320 and unfortunately ELCA, which is Fortress Press. 00:09:12.320 --> 00:09:15.200 Historically, wasn't as bad of a collaboration. 00:09:15.200 --> 00:09:18.000 Now Elkha's gone so far off the rails. 00:09:18.000 --> 00:09:22.000 It's unfortunate that they're working with them, but thus far they haven't 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:27.920 done anything destructive to the American Edition, so I guess pray that 00:09:27.920 --> 00:09:31.360 continues. I was speaking with someone about this and he said that 00:09:31.360 --> 00:09:34.640 he had read it also, but after speaking further I found out 00:09:34.640 --> 00:09:36.800 that we read different versions. 00:09:36.800 --> 00:09:38.400 Unfortunately those exist. 00:09:38.400 --> 00:09:41.840 His version was only about forty pages, whereas the one in in 00:09:42.080 --> 00:09:43.120 the A.E. 00:09:43.040 --> 00:09:45.120 is about 170. 00:09:45.120 --> 00:09:48.000 I have heard that this is some disag I've heard there is 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:52.720 some disagreement on the text whether it's from Luther, accusations ranging from 00:09:52.720 --> 00:09:55.920 that Luther didn't really write this document to Luther attacking the problem 00:09:56.000 --> 00:09:59.280 The prophets, Jeremiah in particular. 00:09:59.280 --> 00:10:02.320 I'm about three-quarters of the way through it myself, and I have 00:10:02.320 --> 00:10:06.160 not found anything that would indicate that this did not come from 00:10:06.160 --> 00:10:08.160 Luther. I agree on that point. 00:10:08.160 --> 00:10:11.360 I could see Luther being taken out of context given his liberal 00:10:11.360 --> 00:10:15.680 use of sarcasm, particularly Germanic sarcasm, which escapes many when they are 00:10:15.680 --> 00:10:19.680 reading. Personally I have found the text underwhelming given the reputation it 00:10:19.680 --> 00:10:19.920 has 00:10:20.880 --> 00:10:22.480 I think that's fair. 00:10:22.480 --> 00:10:25.760 Many think that because of the title on the Jews and their 00:10:25.920 --> 00:10:33.440 lies, it's just going to be some full-blown polemic, just decrying 00:10:33.440 --> 00:10:37.040 the evils of the Jews and basically saying that, you know, we 00:10:37.040 --> 00:10:38.240 should destroy them, etc. 00:10:38.400 --> 00:10:41.920 If you want that, read his letters to his wife and his 00:10:41.920 --> 00:10:43.200 final sermon. 00:10:43.200 --> 00:10:46.160 But insofar as on the Jews and their lives is concerned, it's 00:10:46.080 --> 00:10:48.480 primarily a theological treatise. 00:10:48.480 --> 00:10:50.160 It is against the Jews. 00:10:50.160 --> 00:10:51.440 It is polemic. 00:10:51.440 --> 00:10:57.040 He does make frequent use of sarcasm in a particularly German way, 00:10:57.040 --> 00:11:02.480 but it's really not sensationalist like most people expect it to be. 00:11:02.480 --> 00:11:07.120 The 40 page versions and the ones in that sort of vein 00:11:07.200 --> 00:11:11.360 usually run about that length are basically sort of pamphlet versions of 00:11:11.360 --> 00:11:16.480 it reduced down down to often just the polemical bits removing the 00:11:16.480 --> 00:11:21.840 theology. And those were popular decades ago. 00:11:21.840 --> 00:11:23.120 They're not very good. 00:11:23.120 --> 00:11:25.440 I don't bother with those why. 00:11:25.440 --> 00:11:28.000 The actual ones not that long. 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:32.240 The full length of it, the Weimar edition is about sixty five 00:11:32.240 --> 00:11:33.680 thousand words. 00:11:33.680 --> 00:11:37.120 And that's basically the equivalent in the AE. 00:11:37.120 --> 00:11:40.720 So if you are going to read it, the American Edition is 00:11:40.720 --> 00:11:41.920 a good option. 00:11:41.920 --> 00:11:44.880 It is unfortunately not available for free. 00:11:44.880 --> 00:11:51.200 There is, insofar as I'm aware, no widely available PDF of it, 00:11:51.200 --> 00:11:54.320 no one has yet made that available. 00:11:54.320 --> 00:11:58.880 So you're going to have to pay the combination there, CPH, Fortress 00:11:59.040 --> 00:12:01.200 Press, I don't know how they divide it up, but however that 00:12:01.200 --> 00:12:04.000 works, fifty to sixty bucks. 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:10.000 If you know someone who has a subscription to Luther's works from, 00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:15.600 for instance, CPH, that person, he can order volumes at a discount. 00:12:15.600 --> 00:12:17.200 So if you have a friend, a passage. 00:12:17.200 --> 00:12:20.000 Pastor, someone who has that, your pastor might if you're Lutheran. 00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:22.160 Ask him to order you a copy, he can get it a 00:12:22.160 --> 00:12:23.200 little cheaper. 00:12:23.200 --> 00:12:26.560 So you can maybe get it for forty five or get it 00:12:26.560 --> 00:12:30.240 used for less, but unfortunately, they have not done what they should 00:12:30.240 --> 00:12:32.640 and made it freely available. 00:12:32.640 --> 00:12:32.720 So 00:12:34.880 --> 00:12:39.360 yes, the volume is not going to be as sensationalist as you 00:12:39.360 --> 00:12:44.320 think. Yes, the American Edition, Volume forty-seven specifically, is probably the one 00:12:44.320 --> 00:12:45.920 you should read. 00:12:45.920 --> 00:12:49.280 There aren't major concerns about it. 00:12:49.280 --> 00:12:54.560 I am not fond of the man who edited that volume. 00:12:54.560 --> 00:12:58.480 I do not have any I have not personally gone through and 00:12:58.480 --> 00:13:01.520 checked the translation against the German, but 00:13:02.720 --> 00:13:06.800 I don't have any hard evidence showing he played games with this, 00:13:06.800 --> 00:13:09.840 but I know that he was friendlier with the Jews than a 00:13:09.840 --> 00:13:12.640 Christian should be, certainly than a Lutheran should be. 00:13:12.640 --> 00:13:16.160 Certainly the Lutheran editing this volume of Luther. 00:13:16.160 --> 00:13:19.280 But he's ultimately not the man who translated. 00:13:19.280 --> 00:13:23.200 Bertram translated it, I believe was the gentleman's last name. 00:13:23.200 --> 00:13:26.320 The other man who edited it, the editor is the one who 00:13:26.320 --> 00:13:28.480 has some some questions there. 00:13:28.480 --> 00:13:31.360 But again, I don't have hard evidence that he did anything wrong. 00:13:31.360 --> 00:13:34.160 As far as I know, the volume is reliable. 00:13:34.160 --> 00:13:37.760 I've read it, nothing stood out as wrong to me, nothing clashed 00:13:37.760 --> 00:13:41.680 with what I know from the German, so it's probably fine. 00:13:41.680 --> 00:13:45.840 If you are concerned about any particular passage, you can always just 00:13:45.840 --> 00:13:48.480 take the German and drop it into an AI and get a 00:13:48.480 --> 00:13:50.560 literal translation of the German. 00:13:50.560 --> 00:13:54.800 That's going to be sufficient to see if the editor played any 00:13:54.800 --> 00:13:55.840 games there. 00:13:55.840 --> 00:13:58.720 But basically, yes, that's the option you want if you're going to 00:13:58.720 --> 00:14:02.720 read it in English, and it's not going to be what people 00:14:02.720 --> 00:14:06.720 have built it up to be because it's a theological treatise. 00:14:06.720 --> 00:14:07.920 It's not just polemic. 00:14:07.920 --> 00:14:09.040 It has polemical elements. 00:14:09.040 --> 00:14:13.600 It is a polemic as well, but it's not exclusively that. 00:14:13.600 --> 00:14:16.560 But yes, I to emphasize what I said at the beginning to 00:14:16.560 --> 00:14:19.040 repeat it, I do believe that Luther Luther wrote it. 00:14:19.040 --> 00:14:22.400 It sounds just like Luther, it sounds like his other polemics. 00:14:22.400 --> 00:14:25.280 You can read ones against, for instance, Henry VIII, he has a 00:14:25.280 --> 00:14:29.120 polemic against him in those more recent volume, it's on my shelves 00:14:29.120 --> 00:14:33.920 here, but I can't remember the number. 00:14:33.920 --> 00:14:38.720 The next question, I'm actually going to sort of punt this one, 00:14:38.720 --> 00:14:39.760 I guess, but 00:14:41.680 --> 00:14:45.200 I am in a position where I am increasingly asked to give 00:14:45.200 --> 00:14:49.200 counsel to people regarding a wide variety of issues, marriage, lack of 00:14:49.200 --> 00:14:52.080 marriage, addictions, anxiety, etc. 00:14:52.240 --> 00:14:57.440 Often these problems and the requisite counsel are relatively simple, but sometimes 00:14:57.440 --> 00:15:00.560 something complex comes up and I am not as thoroughly equipped to 00:15:00.560 --> 00:15:02.560 deal with it as I would like to be. 00:15:02.560 --> 00:15:05.840 The trained and credentialed people to whom I would typically be advised 00:15:05.840 --> 00:15:10.960 to refer To refer them, pastors, psychologists, therapists, are often questionable, and 00:15:10.960 --> 00:15:14.160 I feel I'd be doing them a disservice by doing so. 00:15:14.160 --> 00:15:17.680 Do you have any advice or recommendations for books or other resources 00:15:17.680 --> 00:15:18.960 that would be helpful? 00:15:18.960 --> 00:15:22.720 Both secular and Christian works on the subject are often reductive in 00:15:22.720 --> 00:15:27.040 the ways expounded in the addicted to psychologizing episode of Stone Choir. 00:15:27.040 --> 00:15:30.000 And then the reason given given the failings of the churches, this 00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:33.760 is a task that Christian men will have to more often bear. 00:15:33.920 --> 00:15:35.280 That's true. 00:15:35.280 --> 00:15:39.200 I I'll say a few things about it, but I'm going to 00:15:39.200 --> 00:15:41.360 make a note for myself. 00:15:41.360 --> 00:15:46.000 This is something where it just makes more sense if I add 00:15:46.000 --> 00:15:50.160 this to the show notes so that you can actually click through 00:15:50.160 --> 00:15:53.360 and find the resources that makes a little more sense than my 00:15:53.360 --> 00:15:54.720 just listing books. 00:15:54.720 --> 00:15:56.560 And also I want to spend the time to look at it 00:15:56.560 --> 00:15:58.000 a little more thoroughly. 00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:01.760 Since I have kept up with the psychology literature and those things 00:16:01.760 --> 00:16:06.320 to some degree, but I haven't been heavily invested in that in, 00:16:06.320 --> 00:16:09.120 you know, twelve years or so, so I would like to do 00:16:09.120 --> 00:16:12.640 a refresher before I give too many recommendations on that. 00:16:12.640 --> 00:16:18.000 Yes, I answered previous questions about modalities that are permissible or at 00:16:18.000 --> 00:16:22.720 least not entirely suspect when it comes to psychology and therapy and 00:16:22.720 --> 00:16:23.280 things like that. 00:16:23.280 --> 00:16:25.120 That was in a previous QA episode. 00:16:25.120 --> 00:16:29.440 So it's related to that, but insofar as specific resources are concerned, 00:16:29.440 --> 00:16:30.880 I'll put that in the show notes. 00:16:30.880 --> 00:16:34.880 I'll try and go over that this this coming week. 00:16:34.880 --> 00:16:39.440 But just sort of a basic starting point for a lot of 00:16:39.440 --> 00:16:43.360 people, just recommend some changes in behavior. 00:16:43.360 --> 00:16:47.440 A lot of the stuff where you're going to run into it, 00:16:47.440 --> 00:16:49.600 just go do some exercise. 00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:51.280 It's particularly for men. 00:16:51.280 --> 00:16:53.440 Lift something heavy, go for a walk. 00:16:53.440 --> 00:16:56.320 Your mental health is going to be so much better if you 00:16:56.320 --> 00:16:59.360 just get in a little bit of exercise and then lift something 00:16:59.360 --> 00:17:02.080 heavy? It's pretty simple. 00:17:02.080 --> 00:17:06.320 A lot of this stuff seems really complicated and really difficult and 00:17:06.640 --> 00:17:08.720 some of it is, I won't say that it isn't, but a 00:17:08.720 --> 00:17:10.800 lot of the system is really simple. 00:17:10.800 --> 00:17:14.320 God made what it takes for men to be happy a pretty 00:17:14.320 --> 00:17:17.680 short list of things and relatively achievable. 00:17:17.680 --> 00:17:20.320 Part of it is you need to be in decent physical shape, 00:17:20.320 --> 00:17:22.480 not you know great physical shape. 00:17:22.480 --> 00:17:25.520 If you can achieve that, by all means, go for it. 00:17:25.520 --> 00:17:30.800 But get in a little bit of cardio, lift something heavy, do 00:17:30.800 --> 00:17:32.320 something you enjoy. 00:17:32.320 --> 00:17:36.960 Don't spend all of your time staring at the anxiety box, whichever 00:17:36.960 --> 00:17:40.160 one it is you prefer, your iPhone, your TV, whatever it is. 00:17:40.160 --> 00:17:42.240 Go out and do something else. 00:17:42.240 --> 00:17:45.200 Those are sort of the baseline recommendations, and those things are all 00:17:45.360 --> 00:17:46.880 free practically. 00:17:46.880 --> 00:17:51.040 That's where you want to start and then from there obviously you 00:17:51.040 --> 00:17:54.480 can make recommendations out of God's word, you know, God cares for 00:17:54.480 --> 00:17:57.280 the sparrows, certainly he cares for you, and things like that. 00:17:57.280 --> 00:17:58.960 You're aware of those things. 00:17:58.960 --> 00:18:02.240 So that's some of the Krishna approach. 00:18:02.240 --> 00:18:07.200 But for specific resources for reading on it and understanding some of 00:18:07.200 --> 00:18:10.000 the underlying theory and theory and things like that. 00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:12.240 I will again put that in the show notes. 00:18:12.240 --> 00:18:12.560 So 00:18:14.320 --> 00:18:21.040 look for that in the coming week or two. 00:18:21.040 --> 00:18:24.640 The next question is question four. 00:18:31.520 --> 00:18:33.840 Don't know why my form is being a little slow. 00:18:33.840 --> 00:18:35.680 There we go. 00:18:35.680 --> 00:18:39.680 For those of us who aspire to marry one day, which should 00:18:39.680 --> 00:18:44.000 be most men, how should we go about navigating laws regarding marriage? 00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:47.680 For example, what is your opinion on prenuptial agreements in light of 00:18:47.680 --> 00:18:51.120 the eighty percent of divorces being initiated by women? 00:18:51.120 --> 00:18:55.680 Is it permissible to be de facto married, rightly ordered without involving 00:18:55.680 --> 00:18:59.360 the state in your marriage, for example, getting a marriage license. 00:18:59.360 --> 00:19:01.840 Do you think it would be worth moving to a state with 00:19:01.840 --> 00:19:06.960 better marriage laws, for example, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Arizona permit covenant marriages 00:19:07.120 --> 00:19:10.240 that enable the married couple to legally waive the possibility of no 00:19:10.400 --> 00:19:11.440 fault divorce? 00:19:11.680 --> 00:19:16.960 Permitting divorce only in cases of adultery or abandonment. 00:19:16.960 --> 00:19:22.960 Yes, it is definitely better if you can be somewhere that has 00:19:22.960 --> 00:19:23.920 better laws. 00:19:23.920 --> 00:19:28.720 That doesn't mean you necessarily move just for that, you know. 00:19:28.720 --> 00:19:32.880 California is going to be a great example since I'm a California 00:19:32.880 --> 00:19:35.680 attorney and I used to live in California. 00:19:35.680 --> 00:19:37.200 California marriage laws are 00:19:38.160 --> 00:19:41.680 really bad in terms of how they are enforced. 00:19:41.680 --> 00:19:43.280 On the books, they're not as bad. 00:19:43.280 --> 00:19:46.560 This is actually a really significant problem in California. 00:19:46.560 --> 00:19:49.520 On the books, California's laws are often pretty good. 00:19:49.520 --> 00:19:52.480 Sometimes they have some cruft and things that have been added in 00:19:52.480 --> 00:19:56.160 recent years, but they're generally not that bad. 00:19:56.160 --> 00:20:01.600 It's the enforcement because the courts are insane and the judges are 00:20:01.600 --> 00:20:03.360 evil. So 00:20:04.400 --> 00:20:08.640 you're going to have to go to an attorney who specializes in 00:20:08.640 --> 00:20:13.200 the law in your state with regard to this, because there will 00:20:13.200 --> 00:20:16.240 be things you can do in some states that you cannot do 00:20:16.240 --> 00:20:21.280 in other states And so what is permissible in a prenuptial agreement 00:20:21.280 --> 00:20:23.760 is going to be a matter of state law. 00:20:23.760 --> 00:20:28.480 It's not a matter of there's no national standard for that. 00:20:28.480 --> 00:20:33.120 I do not object to prenuptial agreements per se. 00:20:33.120 --> 00:20:37.520 I would object to the inclusion of certain things in them. 00:20:37.520 --> 00:20:40.800 And so that's going to be a matter of ensuring that the 00:20:40.800 --> 00:20:47.120 covenants, the specific clauses in the prenuptial agreement are consonant with Christian 00:20:47.120 --> 00:20:51.600 morality. And so, just as an example, your state may or may 00:20:51.600 --> 00:20:52.400 not permit this. 00:20:52.400 --> 00:20:56.160 But if your state permits it, by all means have a prenuptial 00:20:56.160 --> 00:21:01.920 agreement that says in the case of infidelity, the party at fault 00:21:01.920 --> 00:21:03.280 gets nothing. 00:21:03.280 --> 00:21:08.160 The children go one hundred percent to the party not at fault. 00:21:08.160 --> 00:21:09.680 If your state permits that. 00:21:09.680 --> 00:21:10.880 Your state may very well not. 00:21:10.880 --> 00:21:14.240 It's probably kind of likely that they will have some caveats there. 00:21:14.240 --> 00:21:17.680 But things like that are perfectly permissible because that's how it should 00:21:17.680 --> 00:21:18.960 be in our laws. 00:21:18.960 --> 00:21:22.000 So what you're doing is as a matter of private law, which 00:21:22.000 --> 00:21:25.280 is all a contract is, it's private law, as a matter of 00:21:25.280 --> 00:21:28.800 private law, you're filling in the gaps in the public law. 00:21:28.800 --> 00:21:32.320 And you're bringing it more in line with the moral law insofar 00:21:32.320 --> 00:21:33.360 as you are able to do so. 00:21:33.360 --> 00:21:35.920 That's perfectly permissible. 00:21:35.920 --> 00:21:39.520 But no, you can't include in your prenuptial agreement, if I decide 00:21:39.520 --> 00:21:41.360 I don't like you anymore, I can just tell you to leave 00:21:41.440 --> 00:21:42.640 and you get nothing. 00:21:42.640 --> 00:21:44.560 That's not morally acceptable. 00:21:44.560 --> 00:21:46.080 You can't do that. 00:21:46.080 --> 00:21:49.680 So it's going to be a matter of what your state permits 00:21:49.920 --> 00:21:53.120 and then what is in line with Christian morality. 00:21:53.120 --> 00:21:55.840 Just make sure that you line up with both of those. 00:21:55.840 --> 00:21:58.800 And again, you're going to have to involve an attorney because this 00:21:58.800 --> 00:22:00.880 is going to be specific to your state. 00:22:02.000 --> 00:22:04.960 Yes, I recognize that's sort of the general advice you get from 00:22:04.960 --> 00:22:09.280 most attorneys is get a turn get an attorney's advice advice, right? 00:22:09.280 --> 00:22:12.640 But that is the reality for certain parts of the law, particularly 00:22:12.800 --> 00:22:14.880 this one. 00:22:14.880 --> 00:22:19.440 So So I would like to comment on the divorce rates as 00:22:19.440 --> 00:22:20.320 well, because 00:22:21.280 --> 00:22:25.440 the divorce rates look a lot worse than they actually are. 00:22:25.440 --> 00:22:29.440 And the reason they look worse than they actually are is because 00:22:29.680 --> 00:22:33.760 the people who are pushing the narrative hate marriage they want you 00:22:33.760 --> 00:22:35.360 to despair. 00:22:35.360 --> 00:22:39.920 Only ever look at the statistics for first marriages. 00:22:40.240 --> 00:22:42.000 That's the game they play. 00:22:42.000 --> 00:22:45.040 Because what they'll say is they'll say, oh, this giant percentage of 00:22:45.040 --> 00:22:48.240 marriages end in div well, yeah, it's they end in divorce because 00:22:48.240 --> 00:22:51.200 it's the woman who's had 15 husbands. 00:22:51.200 --> 00:22:53.600 They don't throw out the outlier. 00:22:53.600 --> 00:22:56.320 So if you're going to look at those data, make sure you're 00:22:56.320 --> 00:22:58.640 looking at first marriages and maybe second marriages. 00:22:58.640 --> 00:23:02.240 Don't include the people who've had six, seven marriages. 00:23:02.240 --> 00:23:08.000 That's going to throw off the actual relevant answer because those people 00:23:08.000 --> 00:23:11.200 are horrible outliers and you don't want to include them. 00:23:11.200 --> 00:23:14.160 Because unless you're going to be the kind of person who is 00:23:14.160 --> 00:23:18.160 going to have seven marriages, then that's not really particularly relevant to 00:23:18.160 --> 00:23:22.000 you that the person who has a sixth marriage often also gets 00:23:22.000 --> 00:23:23.840 divorced and has a seventh. 00:23:23.840 --> 00:23:26.480 So just recognize they play games of those statistics. 00:23:26.480 --> 00:23:31.760 It's you know the standard thing, lies, damned lies and statistics, right? 00:23:31.760 --> 00:23:35.120 So you have to be aware of how they play these games. 00:23:35.120 --> 00:23:42.320 And that is very much done with the marriage and divorce rates. 00:23:42.320 --> 00:23:43.680 With regard to 00:23:44.720 --> 00:23:48.720 marrying, but not being married in the eyes of the state. 00:23:48.720 --> 00:23:53.280 So in other words, going and having the church ceremony, but not 00:23:53.280 --> 00:23:59.680 being married according to what the state considers a marriage. 00:23:59.680 --> 00:24:03.920 I would generally say you should avoid doing that unless there is 00:24:04.080 --> 00:24:07.680 I won't give a categorical blanket no you must not do that, 00:24:07.680 --> 00:24:08.960 it's always wrong. 00:24:08.960 --> 00:24:14.240 If the state is so evil and corrupt that the best thing 00:24:14.240 --> 00:24:17.920 you can do is not have the state involved at all. 00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:21.280 The state's going to involve itself anyway, just so you know. 00:24:21.280 --> 00:24:23.600 But if you can minimize that involvement 00:24:24.640 --> 00:24:28.560 under those circumstances, I don't think that that's morally impermissible. 00:24:28.560 --> 00:24:32.480 You know, if you're in the Soviet Union and somehow it's going 00:24:32.480 --> 00:24:35.520 to decrease your odds of being sent to the gulag, then by 00:24:35.520 --> 00:24:38.000 all means don't tell the state. 00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:38.320 But 00:24:39.600 --> 00:24:40.880 most of the time 00:24:42.080 --> 00:24:47.840 under current circumstances in our country, in the United States, it's not 00:24:47.840 --> 00:24:52.400 really going to benefit you in any significant way to have the 00:24:52.400 --> 00:24:55.360 church, which the church may not even sign off on your marriage 00:24:55.360 --> 00:24:59.680 if you don't go through the the proper process so called. 00:24:59.680 --> 00:25:02.880 It's not going to benefit you significantly, if at all. 00:25:02.880 --> 00:25:06.560 In many cases, it may actually make things more difficult for you 00:25:06.560 --> 00:25:10.800 and harm you in terms of the outcome you want to achieve. 00:25:10.800 --> 00:25:13.760 In a lot of states, it's not going to protect you with 00:25:13.760 --> 00:25:17.040 regard to regard to personal property or anything like that, if you 00:25:17.040 --> 00:25:18.960 should happen to get divorced. 00:25:18.960 --> 00:25:22.720 Again a question for an attorney who's actually versed in your state 00:25:22.720 --> 00:25:25.840 law, since I do not know the law of marriage in every 00:25:25.840 --> 00:25:28.480 state. I've never practiced that sort of law. 00:25:29.120 --> 00:25:33.840 But odds are not going to significantly benefit you, not going to 00:25:33.840 --> 00:25:36.960 be something that you necessarily want to pursue. 00:25:36.960 --> 00:25:40.800 And I don't think that our circumstances are bad enough to make 00:25:40.800 --> 00:25:42.800 it compelling that you should do that. 00:25:42.800 --> 00:25:47.760 I think follow the ordinary procedure, do the thing that is considered 00:25:47.760 --> 00:25:50.080 the right way to do it, and 00:25:50.960 --> 00:25:55.920 take advantage of premarriage counseling, if it is available and you have 00:25:55.920 --> 00:26:00.080 a good pastor, talk to couples who are in your church and 00:26:00.080 --> 00:26:03.360 have been married for forty, fifty, sixty years. 00:26:03.360 --> 00:26:06.800 Make sure that you are purposeful in what you are trying to 00:26:06.800 --> 00:26:12.080 do with that marriage, and that both you and your wife understand, 00:26:12.080 --> 00:26:16.800 your future wife in this case understand, this is for better or 00:26:16.800 --> 00:26:21.120 worse, in sickness or health, until death do us part. 00:26:21.120 --> 00:26:23.600 Make sure you're both on the same page and understand exactly what 00:26:23.600 --> 00:26:24.800 it is you're doing. 00:26:24.800 --> 00:26:28.400 That's going to go a long way toward resolving these issues. 00:26:28.400 --> 00:26:31.280 Part of it is just choosing the right person up front, right? 00:26:31.280 --> 00:26:33.040 That's the reality of it. 00:26:33.040 --> 00:26:37.440 That doesn't make it easier to do, but you can take some 00:26:37.440 --> 00:26:40.320 steps to try and sort of hedge your odds, right? 00:26:40.320 --> 00:26:44.080 To make it more likely you've chosen a woman who's going to 00:26:44.080 --> 00:26:46.480 make a good and loyal wife. 00:26:46.480 --> 00:26:49.840 And for the women listening, you've chosen a man who's going to 00:26:49.840 --> 00:26:51.680 make a good and loyal husband. 00:26:51.680 --> 00:26:55.360 Right? Take advantage of the resources you have available to you. 00:27:00.640 --> 00:27:05.280 I did see someone ask about taking questions from live chat. 00:27:05.280 --> 00:27:08.400 This is not actually going to be one of the numbered questions 00:27:08.480 --> 00:27:13.520 since I'm just answering it and passing, of course, the transcript. 00:27:13.920 --> 00:27:15.600 We'll go ahead and number em wrong. 00:27:15.600 --> 00:27:17.360 But yes, I do look at the chat. 00:27:17.360 --> 00:27:19.840 I often will take them and then answer them in the future 00:27:19.920 --> 00:27:23.520 if I do not have time to get to them tonight. 00:27:23.520 --> 00:27:26.480 Because I try to keep this around an hour. 00:27:26.560 --> 00:27:29.440 I often run over, but I try not to run over by 00:27:29.440 --> 00:27:30.240 too much. 00:27:30.240 --> 00:27:33.040 In part because the transcript then runs over and then I have 00:27:33.040 --> 00:27:35.760 to split the transcript on the forum and other places and it 00:27:35.760 --> 00:27:38.800 just makes it a little bit more of a mess to handle. 00:27:38.800 --> 00:27:41.200 But the next question 00:27:43.040 --> 00:27:46.480 question number five. 00:27:46.480 --> 00:27:50.480 This issue has been bothering me for some time for reading and 00:27:50.480 --> 00:27:53.280 scripture memorization I use the ESV. 00:27:53.280 --> 00:27:56.800 Do you know why the choice was made not to capitalize the 00:27:56.800 --> 00:28:01.760 pronouns which refer to God when they were producing that translation? 00:28:01.760 --> 00:28:06.000 In either formal or casual writing, shouldn't the pronouns which refer to 00:28:06.000 --> 00:28:09.280 God be capitalized to be the most reverent we can be? 00:28:09.280 --> 00:28:11.920 This has bothered me for years. 00:28:11.920 --> 00:28:16.320 That actually bothers me as well, and I think it's obvious from 00:28:16.800 --> 00:28:20.720 my writing that my personal preference is certainly to capitalize all of 00:28:20.720 --> 00:28:25.840 the pronouns and pretty much all the nouns that refer to God. 00:28:25.920 --> 00:28:26.240 So 00:28:28.720 --> 00:28:32.480 this has really two different answers. 00:28:32.480 --> 00:28:35.600 The one is the answer they always give, and sort of the 00:28:35.600 --> 00:28:39.680 practical answer, and then the second is the real answer, right? 00:28:40.640 --> 00:28:46.480 The first answer is that capitalizing the pronouns that refer to God 00:28:46.480 --> 00:28:48.960 is actually relatively novel. 00:28:48.960 --> 00:28:53.920 I think the earliest translation that did it in English goes back 00:28:53.920 --> 00:28:54.240 to 00:28:55.280 --> 00:28:58.160 maybe the 1800s, maybe the 1700s. 00:28:58.160 --> 00:29:00.000 It's not very far back. 00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.160 Notably, the 1611 King James did not. 00:29:04.160 --> 00:29:07.280 And so people who are reading the King James and saying, well, 00:29:07.280 --> 00:29:11.200 the King James cap Yes, your King James does. 00:29:11.200 --> 00:29:12.960 The original did not. 00:29:12.960 --> 00:29:15.920 Of course you go back far enough and English turns back into 00:29:15.920 --> 00:29:21.200 German and then it's capitalizing things again because German capitalizes nouns, but 00:29:21.200 --> 00:29:22.240 not pronouns. 00:29:22.640 --> 00:29:24.800 Which is another thing worth noting. 00:29:24.800 --> 00:29:28.000 In Luther's translation, for instance, in Luther, no one is going to 00:29:28.000 --> 00:29:31.520 accuse Luther of being irreverent with regard to his view of the 00:29:31.520 --> 00:29:33.200 transcendent God, right? 00:29:33.280 --> 00:29:37.840 He didn't capitalize God's pronouns because German doesn't do that. 00:29:37.840 --> 00:29:43.200 Now, he did write the German equivalent of the Lord de Herr 00:29:43.520 --> 00:29:47.040 in all caps, which I believe is part of how we wound 00:29:47.040 --> 00:29:47.760 up with that convention 00:29:48.880 --> 00:29:54.000 when translating the Lord in the Old Testament, it is in small 00:29:54.000 --> 00:29:55.600 caps in many English Bibles. 00:29:55.600 --> 00:30:00.320 I believe that was following Luther's basically, he started that convention with 00:30:00.320 --> 00:30:05.200 his first translation of the scriptures into German. 00:30:05.200 --> 00:30:11.040 So insofar as the capitalization in the ESV and other such translation 00:30:11.040 --> 00:30:16.080 is concerned, the reason that the translators will give for not doing 00:30:16.080 --> 00:30:20.080 so, there are four or five, but the two core reasons, the 00:30:20.080 --> 00:30:23.680 two most important, most salient reasons. 00:30:23.680 --> 00:30:27.760 One, it's just not something that we really have historically done in 00:30:27.760 --> 00:30:32.640 English. It was something that people started doing, but it doesn't go 00:30:32.640 --> 00:30:35.680 back very far, and they just stopped doing it. 00:30:35.680 --> 00:30:39.360 And then also, there is no style guide that recommends it, they 00:30:39.520 --> 00:30:41.920 love to appeal to that, you know, take that or leave it, 00:30:41.920 --> 00:30:44.400 whatever that's of a value to you, right? 00:30:44.400 --> 00:30:48.320 If you're following a style guide, then you follow the style guide 00:30:48.400 --> 00:30:50.960 unless you make your own subversion of it. 00:30:50.960 --> 00:30:55.200 Right. The other reason they'll give, and this one I actually find 00:30:55.200 --> 00:30:59.520 more compelling, but I don't find it sufficiently compelling to change my 00:30:59.520 --> 00:31:04.720 stance. They will say that if you are deciding to capitalize or 00:31:04.720 --> 00:31:09.920 not capitalize a pronoun, you are in addition to making the translation 00:31:09.920 --> 00:31:13.600 choices, right, which the translator has to make translation choices. 00:31:13.600 --> 00:31:15.600 That's another layer. 00:31:15.600 --> 00:31:18.720 You're now actually making some theology choices. 00:31:18.720 --> 00:31:22.720 Because, for instance, there are some places in the Old Testament where 00:31:22.720 --> 00:31:25.520 you're going to have to decide if the angel of the Lord 00:31:25.520 --> 00:31:28.320 is an angel or Christ. 00:31:28.320 --> 00:31:36.240 And if you don't capitalize things other than basically proper nouns referring 00:31:36.240 --> 00:31:41.120 to God, then you don't have to make that theological call. 00:31:41.120 --> 00:31:45.760 I understand that, because often translators are not going to be the 00:31:45.760 --> 00:31:47.920 one who should be making that theological call. 00:31:47.920 --> 00:31:50.400 Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. 00:31:50.400 --> 00:31:54.880 I think that when a proper English translation of the Septuagint is 00:31:54.880 --> 00:31:58.240 made, those calls will have to be made at that time. 00:31:58.240 --> 00:32:00.000 I think that's the right way to do it. 00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:03.360 And I think incidentally angel of the Lord, angel should probably be 00:32:03.360 --> 00:32:07.120 capitalized in many of those cases because it's very clearly, to my 00:32:07.120 --> 00:32:09.120 mind, referring to Christ. 00:32:09.120 --> 00:32:12.400 And so it is referring to God and should be capitalized. 00:32:12.400 --> 00:32:15.440 I think it is a proper sign of reverence. 00:32:15.440 --> 00:32:18.640 It is something that English permits us to do. 00:32:18.640 --> 00:32:23.280 You can't do it in German because capitalizing pronouns would make you 00:32:23.280 --> 00:32:25.280 kind of seem insane. 00:32:25.280 --> 00:32:30.240 Because either you follow the modern orthography and don't capitalize them at 00:32:30.240 --> 00:32:35.440 all, or you follow the older orthography and capitalize them all. 00:32:36.240 --> 00:32:38.080 You do one or the other. 00:32:38.080 --> 00:32:40.640 It'd be a weird hodgepodge system if you tried to do it 00:32:40.640 --> 00:32:41.120 in German. 00:32:41.120 --> 00:32:42.400 English doesn't have that problem. 00:32:42.400 --> 00:32:46.080 This is an instance where English provides us the flexibility to do 00:32:46.080 --> 00:32:48.240 this. I think we should do it. 00:32:48.240 --> 00:32:52.880 We sort of randomly capitalize nouns and things sometimes in English when 00:32:52.880 --> 00:32:56.000 we want to show a certain sort of emphasis on things, right? 00:32:56.000 --> 00:32:59.520 If you're talking about the establishment and you want to imply some 00:32:59.520 --> 00:33:01.680 things, you capitalize the E. 00:33:01.680 --> 00:33:05.760 So I don't think capitalizing the pronouns for God is at odds 00:33:05.760 --> 00:33:07.040 with English grammar. 00:33:07.040 --> 00:33:09.120 I think it's permitted by English grammar. 00:33:09.120 --> 00:33:10.720 I think it is a sign of reverence. 00:33:10.720 --> 00:33:12.800 I think it's something we should do. 00:33:12.800 --> 00:33:16.320 And then the second point, the real reason, many of them are 00:33:16.560 --> 00:33:18.160 theological liberals. 00:33:18.160 --> 00:33:22.320 Ultimately what they're doing is trying to downgrade the status of God. 00:33:22.320 --> 00:33:25.520 They're playing games with the text, insofar as they can get away 00:33:25.520 --> 00:33:28.160 with it, they're doing it for nefarious reasons. 00:33:28.160 --> 00:33:31.680 A lot of times they're just spineless liberals, but they are doing 00:33:31.680 --> 00:33:36.080 it for wicked reasons, not because the Chicago style manual tells them 00:33:36.080 --> 00:33:37.280 they have to. 00:33:37.280 --> 00:33:42.160 That's the excuse they give, but the real reason is that they 00:33:42.160 --> 00:33:45.600 don't hold God in the high esteem they should. 00:33:45.600 --> 00:33:48.800 And they should never have been on a translation committee. 00:33:48.800 --> 00:33:52.000 So you have their reasons and then you have the real reason. 00:33:52.000 --> 00:33:53.840 I'm not saying all of them are wicked, of course. 00:33:53.840 --> 00:33:56.560 There are some translators who try very hard to be faithful to 00:33:56.560 --> 00:33:59.440 scripture, but there are a lot of men who do it for 00:33:59.440 --> 00:34:02.800 the academic prowess, and they're not good men. 00:34:11.680 --> 00:34:17.600 The next question here, I guess shifting gears a little bit, tangentially 00:34:17.680 --> 00:34:24.320 related. I was wondering if you had any insight into speed reading 00:34:24.320 --> 00:34:27.680 courses. I know you have had to do a lot of reading 00:34:27.680 --> 00:34:31.200 for your legal profession and on theology. 00:34:31.200 --> 00:34:34.400 And about 15 other subjects, yes. 00:34:34.400 --> 00:34:36.960 I have to do a lot of reading for work, most of 00:34:36.960 --> 00:34:39.520 which is skim worthy for me to get the gist. 00:34:39.520 --> 00:34:43.280 I also want to read faster to go through other material. 00:34:43.280 --> 00:34:46.400 So insofar as speed reading is concerned, this is actually an issue 00:34:46.400 --> 00:34:51.680 that I looked into a lot back when I was doing psychology 00:34:52.320 --> 00:34:52.640 in 00:34:53.600 --> 00:34:57.200 undergrad and then also interested in it up through sort of law 00:34:57.200 --> 00:35:01.920 school, but I went back and looked at the current state of 00:35:01.920 --> 00:35:05.680 the research to make sure that what I remembered was consistent with 00:35:05.680 --> 00:35:09.360 what they have found and it's been consistent over a course of 00:35:09.360 --> 00:35:10.720 decades now. 00:35:11.040 --> 00:35:14.160 Speed reading by and large is snake oil. 00:35:14.160 --> 00:35:18.080 Not entirely, so before anyone gets angry at me about that, or 00:35:18.080 --> 00:35:20.240 get angry at me, I don't really care. 00:35:20.400 --> 00:35:25.840 But the claims of a thousand words a minute, two thousand words 00:35:25.840 --> 00:35:28.160 a minute, you get even crazier claims than you get the people 00:35:28.160 --> 00:35:31.040 who are just sitting there flipping pages saying they they read the 00:35:31.040 --> 00:35:35.440 page, right, as it barely hit their retina they read it. 00:35:35.440 --> 00:35:36.800 Complete nonsense. 00:35:36.800 --> 00:35:39.120 It's not something human beings can do. 00:35:39.200 --> 00:35:41.760 Is there maybe a weird outlier out there? 00:35:41.760 --> 00:35:43.360 Sure, Asperger's exist. 00:35:43.360 --> 00:35:46.080 Like maybe that guy is out there somewhere. 00:35:46.080 --> 00:35:50.080 Most people can see some sort of improvement. 00:35:50.080 --> 00:35:54.800 There are different levels of how quickly people read basically, they correlate 00:35:54.800 --> 00:35:59.280 almost exactly with level of education, at least they did historically. 00:35:59.280 --> 00:36:02.720 Now, because of the weakening of admissions standards and things like that, 00:36:02.720 --> 00:36:03.760 they no longer do. 00:36:03.760 --> 00:36:08.320 It's partly a correlation with intelligence, but not entirely. 00:36:08.320 --> 00:36:13.200 Someone with some university education, if I remember correctly, is going to 00:36:13.200 --> 00:36:16.160 be around two hundred and fifty to three hundred words per minute. 00:36:16.160 --> 00:36:17.280 That's sustained. 00:36:17.280 --> 00:36:20.560 And there's a difference between sort of burst and sustained. 00:36:20.560 --> 00:36:24.240 So reading a short article is different from reading a thousand-page book. 00:36:24.240 --> 00:36:27.680 The sustained one is going to matter more given what you're saying 00:36:27.680 --> 00:36:30.640 about reading and just generally this sort of question, the couching of 00:36:30.640 --> 00:36:32.960 the question here. 00:36:32.960 --> 00:36:35.600 So if you can get up to that 300 words per minute 00:36:35.600 --> 00:36:36.480 level, that's pretty good. 00:36:36.480 --> 00:36:38.080 That's about what you want to hit. 00:36:38.080 --> 00:36:40.480 Are there individuals who can go higher? 00:36:40.480 --> 00:36:45.680 Sure. If you take some of the reputable courses, and there are 00:36:45.680 --> 00:36:50.000 some that are reputable because they're actually based on psychology, understanding of 00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:54.880 how human beings process things, short-term memory, how your eyes move across 00:36:55.200 --> 00:36:57.760 the page is actually really important. 00:36:57.760 --> 00:36:59.360 You could maybe get 00:37:00.240 --> 00:37:03.360 ten to twenty percent improvement in your readings, which it it's not 00:37:03.360 --> 00:37:06.240 nothing. But it's not a miracle claim, right? 00:37:06.240 --> 00:37:12.000 You're not tripling or quadrupling or whatever your reading speed, you can 00:37:12.000 --> 00:37:13.840 see some benefit from that. 00:37:13.840 --> 00:37:19.120 But beyond that, I think just some practical recommendations may serve you 00:37:19.120 --> 00:37:20.480 even better. 00:37:20.480 --> 00:37:26.000 And the state of the research basically shows that the training for 00:37:26.000 --> 00:37:31.840 speed reading is about as beneficial, or perhaps even slightly less beneficial, 00:37:31.840 --> 00:37:38.880 than the metacognition, which basically means understanding how your brain processes the 00:37:38.880 --> 00:37:43.600 things that you read, and then how to take what you've processed 00:37:43.840 --> 00:37:47.200 and store it in a way that will be retrievable in the 00:37:47.200 --> 00:37:54.560 future. So understanding those things is probably a better starting place. 00:37:54.560 --> 00:37:56.560 So that would be one of my two recommendations. 00:37:56.560 --> 00:38:00.320 The other would be do what is within your power to do 00:38:00.800 --> 00:38:03.680 to improve your attention span. 00:38:04.160 --> 00:38:07.040 That's not obviously a personal attack. 00:38:07.040 --> 00:38:11.040 We all have shortened attention spans these days because of the hell 00:38:11.040 --> 00:38:12.320 rectangle, right? 00:38:12.320 --> 00:38:14.720 Because of Because of all the screens in our lives and all 00:38:14.720 --> 00:38:18.240 the other things that are designed to give you that dopamine hit 00:38:18.400 --> 00:38:22.080 and to make you want to click next, next, next, and just 00:38:22.080 --> 00:38:24.720 never stop staring at it, you know, doom scrolling, whatever you want 00:38:24.720 --> 00:38:26.320 to call it. 00:38:26.320 --> 00:38:30.160 If you can pull yourself out of that morass, then by all 00:38:30.160 --> 00:38:33.120 means that's going to help you with reading, because part of the 00:38:33.120 --> 00:38:39.520 reason modern readers have so much trouble maintaining a reasonable speed of 00:38:39.520 --> 00:38:42.800 reading is because they're getting distracted constantly. 00:38:42.800 --> 00:38:46.000 If you read ten words and then stare at your phone, you're 00:38:46.000 --> 00:38:48.000 not going to get as much done as the person who can 00:38:48.000 --> 00:38:49.760 sit for an hour and just read. 00:38:49.760 --> 00:38:53.040 Which is something human beings used to be able to do. 00:38:53.040 --> 00:38:57.200 So improve your attention span, focus on metacognition. 00:38:57.200 --> 00:39:00.800 If you can find a reputable course, maybe consider doing a little 00:39:00.800 --> 00:39:03.680 bit of it just to get that, you know, ten, fifteen percent 00:39:03.680 --> 00:39:08.320 boost But don't expect to read a thousand words per minute. 00:39:08.320 --> 00:39:16.000 Even under ideal laboratory conditions with men who are already 00:39:16.000 --> 00:39:21.600 very good at reading quickly, highly intelligent, trained men, they could only 00:39:21.600 --> 00:39:24.720 get them up to like six hundred, seven hundred words per minute. 00:39:24.720 --> 00:39:29.280 Which is fast, of course, but it's not the crazy claims of 00:39:29.280 --> 00:39:33.680 the speed reading programs, and it's under laboratory conditions for a limited 00:39:33.680 --> 00:39:35.040 period of time. 00:39:35.040 --> 00:39:36.800 You're just not going to achieve that. 00:39:36.800 --> 00:39:41.440 So if you can hit that 250, 300 words per minute sustained, 00:39:41.440 --> 00:39:43.680 by all means consider that a good achievement. 00:39:43.680 --> 00:39:45.760 That's probably enough. 00:39:45.760 --> 00:39:49.280 Then the other practical recommendation is just you're going to need a 00:39:49.280 --> 00:39:54.240 hierarchy. Prioritize the things that are actually worthy of your time and 00:39:54.240 --> 00:39:56.320 don't read the things that aren't. 00:39:56.480 --> 00:39:58.960 You get men who think that as long as they're reading, they're 00:39:58.960 --> 00:40:02.640 achieving something, you may be reading complete crap. 00:40:02.640 --> 00:40:05.120 You may just be wasting your time. 00:40:05.120 --> 00:40:07.920 So why? 00:40:07.920 --> 00:40:11.600 Focus Focus on the things you need to read and set aside 00:40:11.600 --> 00:40:13.280 the things you don't, right? 00:40:20.320 --> 00:40:24.720 The next question, definitely shifting gears a little bit here. 00:40:24.720 --> 00:40:28.400 I'm gonna open up a couple so that I don't have this 00:40:28.400 --> 00:40:30.720 tab loading issue going on. 00:40:34.080 --> 00:40:37.520 And I do see Do see people asking about taking questions and 00:40:37.520 --> 00:40:40.080 things, and yes, you can just ask them in the chat. 00:40:40.080 --> 00:40:42.400 I will likely notice them. 00:40:42.400 --> 00:40:44.880 If I don't, then please put them on the forum. 00:40:44.880 --> 00:40:46.720 Question about the gift of celibacy. 00:40:46.720 --> 00:40:48.560 This one comes up every so often. 00:40:48.560 --> 00:40:51.760 I've heard you mention the gift of celibacy and how rare it 00:40:51.760 --> 00:40:54.480 is several times, if you're willing to share, do you have that 00:40:54.480 --> 00:40:58.720 gift? No, I do actually like women, so no. 00:40:58.720 --> 00:41:02.560 That would certainly make focusing on reading and things more convenient and 00:41:02.560 --> 00:41:06.400 easier because women are very distracting as every man who does not 00:41:06.400 --> 00:41:08.720 have the gift of celibacy knows. 00:41:08.720 --> 00:41:11.760 So as I pointed out, just go over the the basic of 00:41:11.760 --> 00:41:13.040 the gift. 00:41:13.280 --> 00:41:18.480 You know if you have it because if you have ever been 00:41:18.800 --> 00:41:21.120 tempted by a woman, you don't. 00:41:21.120 --> 00:41:22.960 Because that's what the gift of celibacy is. 00:41:22.960 --> 00:41:26.560 It's God removing that desire from you so that you can just 00:41:26.720 --> 00:41:30.800 100% focus on whatever it is you're doing. 00:41:30.800 --> 00:41:35.440 Which for some men, doing some tasks, God wants them to have 00:41:35.440 --> 00:41:38.080 that because then they can focus on whatever it is of that 00:41:38.080 --> 00:41:40.080 utmost importance. 00:41:40.160 --> 00:41:42.560 No one listening to this is going to have the gift. 00:41:42.560 --> 00:41:44.400 It's just it's very rare. 00:41:44.400 --> 00:41:47.520 And it seems like God almost never hands it out these days, 00:41:47.520 --> 00:41:51.760 so but no, I am I would not count myself as one 00:41:51.760 --> 00:41:52.800 who has that gift. 00:41:52.800 --> 00:41:56.640 I have indeed dated women in the past. 00:41:56.640 --> 00:42:01.680 The next question, question eight. 00:42:01.680 --> 00:42:05.520 How do you know if you have the characteristics or traits needed 00:42:05.520 --> 00:42:12.400 to be a leader, more specifically a political leader of some sort. 00:42:12.400 --> 00:42:15.200 This is one of those where you're sort of going to know 00:42:15.920 --> 00:42:18.800 if you are a leader, you're going to have a general sense 00:42:18.800 --> 00:42:22.640 that you have the abilities, you have the capacity to do that. 00:42:22.640 --> 00:42:24.880 You know, you run into Dunning Kruger and things like that, of 00:42:24.880 --> 00:42:25.280 course too. 00:42:25.280 --> 00:42:27.440 You're going to get many who have no ability who think they 00:42:27.440 --> 00:42:28.320 do. But 00:42:29.600 --> 00:42:33.920 you can look at how your life has played out and get 00:42:33.920 --> 00:42:38.480 some idea of whether or not you have those abilities. 00:42:38.480 --> 00:42:41.360 And, you know, part of it depends on your age, right? 00:42:41.680 --> 00:42:44.320 If you're always the one in your group of friends who winds 00:42:44.320 --> 00:42:44.400 up 00:42:45.440 --> 00:42:49.440 making the plans or at least saying we're going with that plan, 00:42:49.440 --> 00:42:52.640 you're kind of filling the role of the leader of the group. 00:42:52.640 --> 00:42:56.480 If people look to you for answers, you're kind of filling the 00:42:56.480 --> 00:42:58.240 role of the leader of the group. 00:42:58.240 --> 00:43:04.240 If you're comfortable filling that role, that's also a positive indicator. 00:43:04.240 --> 00:43:08.000 It's going to be something that you're going to have a personal 00:43:08.000 --> 00:43:11.840 internal sense of it with regard to whether or not you have 00:43:11.840 --> 00:43:17.040 been given the abilities, whether or not you have cultivated the abilities 00:43:17.040 --> 00:43:19.440 necessary to be a leader. 00:43:19.440 --> 00:43:23.840 I'm not saying you can't equip yourself better than you are currently 00:43:23.840 --> 00:43:26.480 equipped, because certainly you can study some of these things, right? 00:43:26.480 --> 00:43:29.280 I've got books on rhetoric on my shelves here. 00:43:29.280 --> 00:43:32.080 You can do things like that that will make you better at 00:43:32.080 --> 00:43:36.240 that role than you are now, but there are some things you 00:43:36.240 --> 00:43:38.400 have or you don't. 00:43:38.400 --> 00:43:41.520 One of the things is going to be charisma. 00:43:41.520 --> 00:43:44.560 Leaders need a certain amount of charisma. 00:43:44.560 --> 00:43:47.200 You need more of it the higher up you are, basically, in 00:43:47.200 --> 00:43:48.800 the hierarchy. 00:43:48.800 --> 00:43:53.520 A man who has zero charisma can probably lead, but he's going 00:43:53.520 --> 00:43:54.960 to find it a lot more difficult. 00:43:54.960 --> 00:43:59.520 He's going to have to convince men in practically a purely rational 00:43:59.520 --> 00:44:02.640 way, which is really not how human beings operate. 00:44:02.640 --> 00:44:06.720 So there are things that you have to have innately and there 00:44:06.720 --> 00:44:09.680 are things that you cultivate and those are related of course because 00:44:09.920 --> 00:44:13.680 even having an innate ability doesn't mean that you're an expert. 00:44:13.680 --> 00:44:18.560 If you have innate artistic ability, it's still going to take years 00:44:18.560 --> 00:44:23.440 of effort to become the best version of you at that. 00:44:23.440 --> 00:44:27.520 The same thing is true with leaders, with public speakers. 00:44:27.520 --> 00:44:31.520 So if you are thinking about going that route and you have 00:44:31.520 --> 00:44:34.320 questions about whether or not you have what it takes, join a 00:44:34.320 --> 00:44:35.600 debate club. 00:44:35.600 --> 00:44:38.480 See if public speaking is something that you can even do. 00:44:38.480 --> 00:44:42.320 Some people think that public speaking is worse than death, so If 00:44:42.320 --> 00:44:44.560 you're one of those, you're probably going to find leadership kind of 00:44:44.560 --> 00:44:50.480 challenging. Put yourself in situations where you have the opportunity to see 00:44:50.480 --> 00:44:53.040 if you are able to rise to the level of a leader 00:44:53.040 --> 00:44:53.920 in a group. 00:44:53.920 --> 00:44:55.920 If not, then you don't have that. 00:44:55.920 --> 00:44:57.120 Do something else. 00:44:57.120 --> 00:45:00.480 If you have it, pursue it, cultivate that talent, and see where 00:45:00.480 --> 00:45:02.240 it takes you. 00:45:11.600 --> 00:45:15.840 The next question is question nine. 00:45:15.840 --> 00:45:18.160 When do you quit your job? 00:45:18.160 --> 00:45:21.040 This is tangential to the Iran conflict. 00:45:21.920 --> 00:45:24.640 Now it seemed to me in that domain you would want as 00:45:24.640 --> 00:45:28.240 many whites as possible, so that way if we later get control 00:45:28.240 --> 00:45:31.040 back we already have ample people to ensure we are able to 00:45:31.040 --> 00:45:36.560 properly defend ourselves Particularly when it comes to the production of weapons. 00:45:36.560 --> 00:45:39.920 It is jam-packed with Jews and all sorts of other groups. 00:45:39.920 --> 00:45:42.640 In my mind, it would actually be very bad if that were 00:45:42.640 --> 00:45:44.960 completely 100% controlled by them. 00:45:44.960 --> 00:45:46.160 I would agree. 00:45:46.160 --> 00:45:50.080 That was my rationalization at any rate, although destroying the Iranian regime 00:45:50.080 --> 00:45:53.360 is not in and of itself particularly wicked in my opinion. 00:45:53.360 --> 00:45:57.440 Nevertheless it seems to me that aiding in their destruction even indirectly 00:45:57.440 --> 00:46:00.080 still gives the wicked reason to rejoice. 00:46:00.080 --> 00:46:01.040 My main problem here is 00:46:02.000 --> 00:46:04.320 I am made uncomfortable by the fact that I have no real 00:46:04.320 --> 00:46:05.760 exit criteria. 00:46:05.760 --> 00:46:09.360 I suppose I have to think of something regardless, but Penny for 00:46:09.360 --> 00:46:11.840 your thoughts. 00:46:11.840 --> 00:46:12.160 So 00:46:13.760 --> 00:46:18.400 obviously this person is w working in the munitions field, we'll call 00:46:18.400 --> 00:46:20.000 it broadly. 00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:25.360 I don't think if you're working for Northrop Grumman or whatever other 00:46:25.360 --> 00:46:27.200 Raytheon, whatever other 00:46:28.160 --> 00:46:30.480 defense industry contractor it happens to be. 00:46:30.480 --> 00:46:32.240 I have a number of friends who work for those. 00:46:32.240 --> 00:46:36.400 I lived near some of their facilities in California. 00:46:36.400 --> 00:46:39.360 If you are working for them, I don't think what you're doing 00:46:39.360 --> 00:46:40.640 is inherently wicked. 00:46:40.640 --> 00:46:44.160 I don't think that it's sin to continue working there. 00:46:44.160 --> 00:46:50.320 Weapons of war have to be produced because war is a reality 00:46:50.400 --> 00:46:53.360 of man's life upon the earth, right? 00:46:53.360 --> 00:46:55.440 You can think of the line from Job. 00:46:55.440 --> 00:46:58.160 Yes, it is slightly different in the Septuagint, so I have to 00:46:58.160 --> 00:47:03.120 rememorize it, but the life of man upon the earth is war. 00:47:03.120 --> 00:47:06.080 Now are there lines? 00:47:06.080 --> 00:47:07.760 I think the answer is yes. 00:47:07.760 --> 00:47:11.840 If you were, say, living in the Soviet Union, we'll just go 00:47:11.840 --> 00:47:16.320 back to that example, much like earlier, and you are working on 00:47:16.320 --> 00:47:20.480 their nuclear weapons program, I do think that you should have some 00:47:20.480 --> 00:47:25.600 very serious moral qualms about arming a regime that wicked with nuclear 00:47:25.600 --> 00:47:30.320 weapons. Now, is the US regime currently wicked? 00:47:30.320 --> 00:47:34.400 I think the answer is unequivocally yes. 00:47:34.400 --> 00:47:37.200 Are you arming them with nuclear weapons? 00:47:37.200 --> 00:47:41.120 No, they already have rather many thousands of those. 00:47:41.120 --> 00:47:46.400 What you are ultimately doing is producing the armaments of war for 00:47:46.720 --> 00:47:48.720 your government. 00:47:48.720 --> 00:47:53.600 Even if your government is doing some things that are evil, it 00:47:53.600 --> 00:47:56.400 is still doing some things that are good because the military does 00:47:56.400 --> 00:48:01.920 still act as defense of the United States of America. 00:48:01.920 --> 00:48:06.160 So I won't pretend that it's a simple question, you know, it's 00:48:06.160 --> 00:48:08.800 not a trivial question, it's not an irrelevant question. 00:48:08.800 --> 00:48:10.080 There's a moral 00:48:10.960 --> 00:48:13.840 aspect to these things. 00:48:13.840 --> 00:48:18.560 But I don't think that you are violating any hard and fast 00:48:18.640 --> 00:48:23.040 black and white moral rule by being involved in the defense industry. 00:48:23.040 --> 00:48:26.400 And yes, I think our men should still be involved in these 00:48:26.400 --> 00:48:30.640 industries because we don't want them to be wholly owned by the 00:48:30.640 --> 00:48:34.480 enemy. Maybe you can get into a position at some point, it 00:48:34.480 --> 00:48:37.520 depends on you know, your career path and things like that, but 00:48:37.520 --> 00:48:40.640 you may be able to make decisions that are very important down 00:48:40.640 --> 00:48:42.480 the line. 00:48:42.480 --> 00:48:42.800 And 00:48:43.760 --> 00:48:47.520 if we all just up and left society, right? 00:48:47.520 --> 00:48:53.040 If we just completely abandoned our society because our government is wicked, 00:48:53.040 --> 00:48:55.280 that would not actually make things better. 00:48:55.280 --> 00:48:57.840 It would make them significantly worse. 00:48:57.840 --> 00:49:00.320 And it would make them significantly worse for all of us as 00:49:00.320 --> 00:49:04.160 well, because we'd then all be unemployed and powerless, which is not 00:49:04.160 --> 00:49:09.360 ideal. So as far as exit criteria are concerned, you know, when 00:49:09.360 --> 00:49:10.960 should you leave? 00:49:10.960 --> 00:49:15.680 If they ask you to deny Christ is obviously a pretty obvious 00:49:15.680 --> 00:49:18.160 black and white line, you can't do that. 00:49:18.160 --> 00:49:21.360 If they ask you to worship a false God, you can't do 00:49:21.360 --> 00:49:25.600 that. Anything that is denying the faith, you can't do. 00:49:25.840 --> 00:49:30.240 But if it's just producing weapons of war and you have moral 00:49:30.240 --> 00:49:33.600 qualms about how your government is going to use them, I don't 00:49:33.520 --> 00:49:37.040 think that is sufficient to say that you have to. 00:49:37.040 --> 00:49:41.920 Now, if they ask you to personally deploy these things, that's a 00:49:41.920 --> 00:49:42.960 different matter. 00:49:42.960 --> 00:49:45.840 I have said that I think that soldiers, if they are told 00:49:45.840 --> 00:49:50.000 that they have to go be boots on the ground in Iran, 00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:53.200 they should say that they have a religious objection. 00:49:53.200 --> 00:49:54.560 They have a moral objection. 00:49:54.560 --> 00:49:56.400 They're a conscientious objector. 00:49:56.400 --> 00:49:58.800 Whatever it happens to be that you need to say to get 00:49:58.800 --> 00:50:00.480 out of it, I think you should. 00:50:00.480 --> 00:50:03.360 I don't you I do not think that you should participate in 00:50:03.360 --> 00:50:04.560 that way. 00:50:04.560 --> 00:50:07.280 But there's a difference here. 00:50:07.280 --> 00:50:10.800 It's not just because there's a level of attenuation, certainly that's part 00:50:10.800 --> 00:50:11.680 of it. 00:50:11.680 --> 00:50:18.560 But there is a difference in arming your nation for war generally 00:50:18.960 --> 00:50:26.000 and specifically doing X that you know to be immoral. 00:50:26.000 --> 00:50:28.560 I can't give you a hard and fast rule, I can't give 00:50:28.560 --> 00:50:30.880 you black and white rule because it's a matter of wisdom and 00:50:30.880 --> 00:50:34.400 it's a matter of conscience as you correctly recognize. 00:50:34.400 --> 00:50:37.120 But in this case, I don't think what you're doing is wrong, 00:50:37.120 --> 00:50:39.760 and I think it's good that we have men in these fields 00:50:39.760 --> 00:50:44.240 doing these things who are Christian men who have these concerns. 00:50:44.240 --> 00:50:45.920 Because what's the alternative? 00:50:45.920 --> 00:50:50.080 Men who have no concerns, who have no conscience doing whatever they 00:50:50.080 --> 00:51:00.640 please, probably to us. 00:51:03.840 --> 00:51:11.360 The next question, question number 10. 00:51:11.360 --> 00:51:14.880 What do you believe is the role of small business owners in 00:51:14.880 --> 00:51:17.040 the current situation? 00:51:17.680 --> 00:51:22.240 Only hire white male Christians, as much as practical seems obvious. 00:51:22.240 --> 00:51:27.440 What is the historical understanding of our duties? 00:51:27.440 --> 00:51:31.040 So obviously I can't tell you to do anything illegal. 00:51:31.200 --> 00:51:33.200 I mean I could, but I'm not going to tell you to 00:51:33.200 --> 00:51:36.160 do anything illegal, and this is not legal advice. 00:51:36.160 --> 00:51:36.480 But 00:51:38.080 --> 00:51:38.400 The 00:51:39.360 --> 00:51:44.480 duty with regard to being a Christian is to provide for those 00:51:44.480 --> 00:51:46.400 closest to you first. 00:51:46.400 --> 00:51:52.240 Because it's those same as always, it's the concentric circles radiating outward, 00:51:52.240 --> 00:51:54.160 decreasing duty as you go. 00:51:54.160 --> 00:51:57.760 Inversely, increasing duty as you get closer. 00:51:57.760 --> 00:52:01.200 We recognize this, the Ten Commandments are hierarchical, so you have a 00:52:01.600 --> 00:52:05.680 greater duty to your parents than you have to your neighbor. 00:52:05.680 --> 00:52:07.920 You have a greater duty to your neighbor than you have to 00:52:07.920 --> 00:52:08.800 the stranger. 00:52:08.800 --> 00:52:12.320 You have a greater duty to the stranger who is sojourning in 00:52:12.320 --> 00:52:14.480 your country than you do to someone on the other side of 00:52:14.480 --> 00:52:15.120 the world. 00:52:15.120 --> 00:52:19.200 You have a greater duty to the person visiting your country than 00:52:19.200 --> 00:52:22.000 a hostile alien, right? 00:52:22.000 --> 00:52:26.800 There are there's a hierarchy, or the concentric circles, whichever way you 00:52:26.800 --> 00:52:29.280 want to visualize that. 00:52:29.280 --> 00:52:36.080 So So, if you make it your explicit policy to hire only 00:52:36.080 --> 00:52:41.040 white male Christians, you will be sued and you will almost certainly 00:52:41.040 --> 00:52:43.440 lose. So don't do that. 00:52:43.600 --> 00:52:45.040 That would be unwise. 00:52:45.040 --> 00:52:46.720 Do not be unwise. 00:52:46.720 --> 00:52:50.240 I guess the basic recommendation there is don't break the law, right? 00:52:50.240 --> 00:52:53.600 Which that I can give is legal advice, but it's useless legal 00:52:53.600 --> 00:53:00.880 advice. But what can you do that is permissible under the 00:53:00.880 --> 00:53:05.120 law and is very unlikely to get you in trouble? 00:53:05.120 --> 00:53:08.160 And part of this depends on right the business. 00:53:08.160 --> 00:53:11.280 For a small business, you're less likely to be harassed by the 00:53:11.280 --> 00:53:13.120 government than a larger business. 00:53:13.120 --> 00:53:17.520 But a larger business has a compliance department. 00:53:17.520 --> 00:53:20.560 Hire those who are your neighbors. 00:53:20.560 --> 00:53:20.960 Hire 00:53:21.920 --> 00:53:25.040 the friend of a friend or the nephew of a friend of 00:53:25.040 --> 00:53:26.240 a friend. 00:53:26.240 --> 00:53:28.400 The good version of nepotism. 00:53:28.400 --> 00:53:31.840 Which nepotism comes from nephew, nepos. 00:53:31.840 --> 00:53:32.160 So 00:53:33.280 --> 00:53:39.280 put up your help wanted ads at church, at whatever your local 00:53:39.280 --> 00:53:40.880 club is. 00:53:40.880 --> 00:53:43.680 Put them up in places where you're going to get the response 00:53:43.680 --> 00:53:47.040 from the sort of men you want to hire There's nothing wrong 00:53:47.040 --> 00:53:47.440 with that. 00:53:47.440 --> 00:53:50.000 There's nothing wrong with using word of mouth to hire people. 00:53:50.000 --> 00:53:53.440 There's nothing wrong with hiring your friends or your family. 00:53:53.440 --> 00:53:55.920 Perfectly permissible. 00:53:55.920 --> 00:53:59.840 So don't do the things the law says you cannot do, but 00:53:59.840 --> 00:54:04.960 do the things you're permitted to do to help those God has 00:54:04.960 --> 00:54:09.200 entrusted to your care, because God has entrusted resources to you so 00:54:09.200 --> 00:54:12.640 that you can use them to perform your duties and to aid 00:54:12.640 --> 00:54:16.800 your fellow man, those to whom you owe the highest duty. 00:54:16.800 --> 00:54:22.640 So that's the basics of it, but at another level of it, 00:54:22.640 --> 00:54:26.320 this is an anecdote that many will know from history. 00:54:26.640 --> 00:54:30.000 There was a saint who basically asked, and the story may be 00:54:30.000 --> 00:54:33.360 apocryphal or not, but the point drawn out of it is good. 00:54:33.360 --> 00:54:36.000 There was a saint who prayed to be shown how he could 00:54:36.000 --> 00:54:38.480 be a great Christian and if God would show him a great 00:54:38.480 --> 00:54:42.880 Christian, and he was shown a shoemaker. 00:54:42.880 --> 00:54:46.400 And he wondered how how this shoemaker is a great Christian, how 00:54:46.400 --> 00:54:49.920 can this be the perfect good Christian life? 00:54:49.920 --> 00:54:52.880 The man said a short prayer before he went into work, and 00:54:52.880 --> 00:54:54.880 then he made good shoes. 00:54:54.880 --> 00:54:59.120 He didn't put crosses on the shoes, he didn't emblazen verses from 00:54:59.120 --> 00:55:02.400 scripture into them, he didn't do any of those things, which is 00:55:02.400 --> 00:55:05.200 sort of the kitsch version of people believing, oh this is how 00:55:05.200 --> 00:55:06.080 you're a good Christian. 00:55:06.080 --> 00:55:08.000 No, you make good shoes. 00:55:08.000 --> 00:55:10.320 Your neighbor needs good shoes. 00:55:10.320 --> 00:55:15.520 Your neighbor needs good food, good woodwork, a good desk, whatever it 00:55:15.520 --> 00:55:18.480 happens to be, good glassware for his tea, right? 00:55:18.480 --> 00:55:20.640 These are the things your neighbor needs. 00:55:20.640 --> 00:55:23.840 You serve God by serving your neighbor, and you serve your neighbor 00:55:23.920 --> 00:55:25.360 by doing a good job. 00:55:25.360 --> 00:55:28.480 You do a good job at a fair price. 00:55:28.480 --> 00:55:30.400 That's how you serve as a Christian. 00:55:30.400 --> 00:55:35.120 It's not stamping crosses into everything and loudly declaring, oh, I'm a 00:55:35.120 --> 00:55:37.200 Christian. And that's performance. 00:55:37.200 --> 00:55:39.120 That's not Christianity. 00:55:39.120 --> 00:55:41.520 Christianity is doing your duty. 00:55:41.520 --> 00:55:45.120 Being good at whatever job it is, doing the best that you 00:55:45.120 --> 00:55:47.440 can do for the people around you. 00:55:47.440 --> 00:55:50.000 That's what you should do as a small business owner. 00:55:50.000 --> 00:55:53.440 Give people a good product at a fair price and hire the 00:55:53.440 --> 00:55:57.680 people you can who are the men to whom you owe duties. 00:55:57.680 --> 00:56:02.240 So again, family, friends, members of your church. 00:56:02.240 --> 00:56:03.760 That's what you do. 00:56:03.760 --> 00:56:08.160 It's not a matter of the performative version of Christianity. 00:56:08.160 --> 00:56:10.080 It's the reality instead. 00:56:10.080 --> 00:56:12.640 Because the concrete stuff matters. 00:56:12.640 --> 00:56:17.120 The person who is praying really loudly on the street corner is 00:56:17.120 --> 00:56:20.560 not the one who is helping the man who is homeless and 00:56:20.560 --> 00:56:22.400 naked, right? 00:56:22.400 --> 00:56:25.360 The guy who's homeless and naked would probably rather that you give 00:56:25.360 --> 00:56:26.880 him a coat and a sandwich. 00:56:37.280 --> 00:56:44.240 The next question, question eleven. 00:56:44.240 --> 00:56:49.440 Given microplastics and other things in the modern world seeming to be 00:56:49.440 --> 00:56:53.200 assaulting our hormones and masculinity in new ways. 00:56:53.200 --> 00:56:56.720 Indeed, this has come up a couple times already about microplastics at 00:56:56.720 --> 00:57:01.360 least. Is testosterone replacement therapy permissible for Christian men in our late 00:57:01.360 --> 00:57:02.720 thirties, early forties? 00:57:02.720 --> 00:57:05.680 I don't want to chase the fountain of youth, but do modern 00:57:05.680 --> 00:57:07.520 problems call for modern solutions? 00:57:07.520 --> 00:57:10.000 The good news is the fountain of youth doesn't exist, and if 00:57:10.000 --> 00:57:12.400 it did, it would be called hell. 00:57:12.400 --> 00:57:14.640 So TRT is just fine. 00:57:14.640 --> 00:57:16.080 Nothing wrong with it. 00:57:16.080 --> 00:57:19.600 Perfectly acceptable if you can find a good doctor to make sure 00:57:19.600 --> 00:57:24.240 that you, you know, calibrate things properly, by all means do so. 00:57:24.240 --> 00:57:29.360 That's uh there's nothing wrong with taking measures to safeguard your health, 00:57:29.360 --> 00:57:32.720 which is all testosterone replacement therapy is, right? 00:57:32.720 --> 00:57:38.560 It's not trying to subvert God's plan or God's design, it's accounting 00:57:39.280 --> 00:57:42.080 for the reality of living in a post-fall world. 00:57:42.080 --> 00:57:45.360 It's similar to I was looking to see if I had anything 00:57:45.360 --> 00:57:47.200 on my desk to use an example, but I've got you know 00:57:47.280 --> 00:57:48.160 nicotine here. 00:57:48.160 --> 00:57:51.040 It's not exactly what I wanted. 00:57:51.360 --> 00:57:53.680 It's similar to taking supplements, right? 00:57:53.680 --> 00:57:57.920 If you supplement vitamin D, which you should be doing, because past 00:57:57.920 --> 00:58:02.800 a certain age, you actually stop producing it in sufficient quantities. 00:58:02.800 --> 00:58:05.120 There are those who think, you know, oh, if I get just 00:58:05.120 --> 00:58:08.960 get enough sun, if you're a 40-year-old man and you spend your 00:58:08.960 --> 00:58:11.920 entire day outside naked and manage not to get arrested for public 00:58:11.920 --> 00:58:15.040 indecency, you still will not have enough vitamin D. 00:58:15.040 --> 00:58:18.320 Even if you live somewhere like southern California. 00:58:18.320 --> 00:58:20.400 Because your body just doesn't produce enough. 00:58:20.400 --> 00:58:23.920 So that's something you should be supplementing if you're over I don't 00:58:23.840 --> 00:58:26.640 remember the exact age, but it's somewhere in your mid-thirties. 00:58:26.640 --> 00:58:28.800 You should be supplementing that. 00:58:28.800 --> 00:58:32.400 There's nothing wrong with supplementing testosterone as well, because yes, we have 00:58:32.400 --> 00:58:37.840 environmental factors that are pushing that, trending that downward, and that's not 00:58:37.840 --> 00:58:41.840 good. Because God designed men to have a higher level than modern 00:58:41.840 --> 00:58:42.640 men do. 00:58:42.640 --> 00:58:46.160 So by all means if you can find a doctor who will 00:58:46.160 --> 00:58:49.120 prescribe that for you, I think that's perfectly acceptable. 00:58:49.120 --> 00:58:50.560 It's probably even a good idea. 00:58:50.560 --> 00:58:54.320 It's something that more men probably should be doing. 00:58:54.320 --> 00:58:58.560 Get your levels checked if that's something that your health plan provides 00:58:58.720 --> 00:59:00.640 or you have some way of doing that. 00:59:00.640 --> 00:59:02.160 And just keep that in mind. 00:59:02.160 --> 00:59:05.360 It's similar to how we test other things about our health, right? 00:59:05.360 --> 00:59:10.480 You get an ECG or you occasionally check your heart rate or 00:59:10.480 --> 00:59:12.480 your blood oxygen level. 00:59:12.480 --> 00:59:15.760 These are things that you can test very easily. 00:59:15.760 --> 00:59:18.240 I have, you know, an oxygen meter right here. 00:59:18.240 --> 00:59:20.960 This thing costs probably ten dollars. 00:59:20.960 --> 00:59:25.760 They're easy things you can do to keep track of your health 00:59:26.080 --> 00:59:28.800 and detect issues before they arise. 00:59:28.800 --> 00:59:32.400 And checking your testosterone level is certainly one of them. 00:59:32.400 --> 00:59:36.160 It will probably help your marriage if you make sure that your 00:59:36.160 --> 00:59:38.960 level is where it should be, or at least close to where 00:59:38.960 --> 00:59:42.880 it should be, instead of way below where it should be. 00:59:42.880 --> 00:59:46.800 But yes, the basic answer is it's perfectly fine, it's moral to 00:59:46.800 --> 00:59:51.040 do, and likely also something that is, as a matter of wisdom, 00:59:51.040 --> 00:59:56.480 wise to do. 00:59:56.960 --> 01:00:01.280 The next question is sort of a theological question. 01:00:01.280 --> 01:00:03.600 The other one was as well, but this one's sort of I 01:00:03.600 --> 01:00:07.200 guess more core theological question, as it were. 01:00:07.200 --> 01:00:10.880 Do you have an opinion or any knowledge of the old apostolic 01:00:10.880 --> 01:00:13.680 Lutherans? So these are 01:00:14.640 --> 01:00:16.560 one of the subgroups of 01:00:18.640 --> 01:00:23.360 one of the revivalistic Pietistic Lutheran groups. 01:00:23.360 --> 01:00:24.160 They are 01:00:25.280 --> 01:00:27.120 separated out from 01:00:28.960 --> 01:00:32.240 The Swedish Lutherans, it was the Swedish Lutherans, right. 01:00:32.400 --> 01:00:38.400 One of the pastors went up there into the Samilands, which is 01:00:38.400 --> 01:00:44.160 sort of their version of obviously not Amerindians, but their version of 01:00:44.160 --> 01:00:46.720 natives living out in the middle of nowhere. 01:00:46.720 --> 01:00:51.760 So he went up there to try to convert them to Christianity 01:00:51.840 --> 01:00:53.600 because they converted pretty late. 01:00:54.000 --> 01:00:56.640 And he was a Lutheran pastor. 01:00:56.640 --> 01:00:59.760 Lystadius. I that's the gentleman's name. 01:00:59.760 --> 01:01:01.920 So these are Lystadians. 01:01:01.920 --> 01:01:04.080 Don't critique me on pronouncing Swedish. 01:01:04.080 --> 01:01:05.840 I have no idea how to pronounce Swedish. 01:01:05.840 --> 01:01:09.840 So if I said it wrong, then I apologize to the Swedish, 01:01:09.840 --> 01:01:13.200 but that's that's only fair because every time I run across something 01:01:13.200 --> 01:01:16.080 on social media that's Swedish, I get a few words in and 01:01:16.080 --> 01:01:18.400 I think it's German, then I hit the little symbol on the 01:01:18.400 --> 01:01:20.160 A and realize it's Swedish. 01:01:20.160 --> 01:01:23.360 But at any rate, he was trying to convert these people, same 01:01:23.360 --> 01:01:27.920 sort of problem we have with the Amerindians, wild heavy drinkers, alcoholism 01:01:27.920 --> 01:01:29.520 was rampant. 01:01:29.520 --> 01:01:37.280 So he went overboard because for instance he became a teetotaler almost 01:01:37.520 --> 01:01:39.520 because he still used wine in the sacrament. 01:01:39.520 --> 01:01:43.120 Thankfully he didn't mess that one up, but he otherwise was a 01:01:43.120 --> 01:01:47.920 teetotaler with regard to alcohol consumption, partly because he was working with 01:01:47.920 --> 01:01:51.360 the Sammy, but it's the same sort of thing that you see 01:01:51.360 --> 01:01:54.640 in a lot of these movements where they're going to say, oh 01:01:54.720 --> 01:01:56.560 well all dancing is bad. 01:01:56.560 --> 01:01:59.440 Right? You should never go to the movies. 01:01:59.440 --> 01:02:01.840 You shouldn't smoke nicotine's all bad. 01:02:01.840 --> 01:02:03.120 You should never drink. 01:02:03.120 --> 01:02:06.320 Basically, all worldly pleasure is evil and bad, and you just you 01:02:06.320 --> 01:02:07.920 know, it's horrible. 01:02:07.920 --> 01:02:10.080 That's not Christian. 01:02:10.080 --> 01:02:13.920 Because God created the worldly pleasures as well. 01:02:13.920 --> 01:02:19.120 You should not abuse them, but using them in the right way, 01:02:19.120 --> 01:02:21.120 in the way God intended, is perfectly fine. 01:02:21.120 --> 01:02:23.600 Like I said, I have some nicotine sitting here on my desk. 01:02:23.600 --> 01:02:27.840 I don't use it a lot, certainly, but there's nothing wrong with 01:02:28.080 --> 01:02:33.440 consuming nicotine or alcohol in reasonable amounts. 01:02:33.440 --> 01:02:36.400 It's not to be done in excess, because that would of course 01:02:36.400 --> 01:02:40.320 be in the case of alcohol, alcoholism, which is not good. 01:02:40.320 --> 01:02:42.560 You don't want to be a drunk. 01:02:42.560 --> 01:02:45.680 But there's nothing morally impermissible about drinking. 01:02:45.680 --> 01:02:49.440 In fact, scripture praises alcohol in a number of places One of 01:02:49.440 --> 01:02:54.480 the ways you could worship God in Old Testament Israel was liquor. 01:02:54.480 --> 01:02:58.400 Not as strong as our liquor, Sakara, is what they called it, 01:02:58.400 --> 01:03:00.640 but still liquor. 01:03:00.640 --> 01:03:03.360 So I don't like these groups. 01:03:03.360 --> 01:03:05.760 They go overboard with these things. 01:03:05.760 --> 01:03:09.120 But at the same time, they're not that relevant because I think 01:03:09.120 --> 01:03:12.880 there's only about 25,000 of them in the United States. 01:03:12.880 --> 01:03:15.040 And like a hundred and eighty thousand of them 01:03:16.160 --> 01:03:23.440 worldwide. So I guess if you are Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, 01:03:23.440 --> 01:03:27.440 or Sami, then they're going to be more relevant to you because 01:03:27.440 --> 01:03:30.560 they're going to be be, if not in your area where you 01:03:30.560 --> 01:03:35.760 live, then at least relevant back in your lineage to your people. 01:03:35.760 --> 01:03:39.360 Maybe you don't have those people in your direct lineage, but you 01:03:39.360 --> 01:03:42.880 live somewhere they used to be, or maybe still are. 01:03:43.120 --> 01:03:46.160 If you're not descended from those groups or living in those areas, 01:03:46.160 --> 01:03:49.440 then they're just completely irrelevant to you, go join an actual Lutheran 01:03:49.440 --> 01:03:54.880 church. Insofar as joining one of their churches is concerned, I would 01:03:54.880 --> 01:03:57.760 say just join an actual Lutheran church. 01:03:57.760 --> 01:04:01.600 Maybe there are good congregations, I don't personally know. 01:04:01.600 --> 01:04:04.720 But I do know that many of them are sort of in 01:04:04.720 --> 01:04:08.960 the habit of doing the mutual excommunication sort of thing where you'll 01:04:08.960 --> 01:04:12.640 have the old apostolic Lutherans and then you have 01:04:14.000 --> 01:04:15.600 I can't remember the name of the other group. 01:04:15.600 --> 01:04:18.640 They're there are three main groups of the Lystadians. 01:04:18.640 --> 01:04:21.360 I can't remember the the other ones, but two of them have 01:04:21.360 --> 01:04:24.480 mutually excommunicated each other basically and said, No, you're going to hell, 01:04:24.480 --> 01:04:26.240 no, you're going to hell. 01:04:26.240 --> 01:04:28.240 That's not productive or helpful. 01:04:28.240 --> 01:04:29.600 That's just nonsense. 01:04:29.600 --> 01:04:34.080 And it's also false theology because they're denying the reality of the 01:04:34.080 --> 01:04:40.000 invisible church, the church universal, which includes believers from if not every, 01:04:40.000 --> 01:04:42.000 at least most denominations. 01:04:42.000 --> 01:04:42.960 I'm Lutheran. 01:04:42.960 --> 01:04:46.000 I'm have significant disagreements with Rome. 01:04:46.000 --> 01:04:49.280 I believe there are Christians in Roman Catholic churches. 01:04:49.280 --> 01:04:51.920 I believe there are many Christians in Baptist churches. 01:04:51.920 --> 01:04:54.320 I have significant disagreements with them. 01:04:54.320 --> 01:04:57.840 If you deny the reality of the invisible church, you're just making 01:04:57.840 --> 01:05:03.360 a complete nonsense claim about about no no no this one corporate 01:05:03.520 --> 01:05:11.280 structure, physical entity, legal fiction thing in the world is Christ Church. 01:05:11.280 --> 01:05:12.800 That's absurd. 01:05:12.800 --> 01:05:17.680 And it's bad theology., if you just look at scripture, Adam's the 01:05:17.680 --> 01:05:19.200 first Christian. 01:05:19.200 --> 01:05:23.600 Of which church was Adam a member? 01:05:23.600 --> 01:05:26.880 Was Adam ever a member of the Roman Catholic Church? 01:05:26.880 --> 01:05:29.680 Was Adam ever member of the Lutheran Church? 01:05:29.680 --> 01:05:33.200 The answer is no, because he was member of the Church Universal. 01:05:33.200 --> 01:05:39.040 So claims about any specific group being the church on earth are 01:05:39.040 --> 01:05:43.120 almost always per se incorrect Can you say that you have the 01:05:43.120 --> 01:05:44.560 best theology? 01:05:44.560 --> 01:05:45.360 Of course. 01:05:45.360 --> 01:05:47.520 And you should believe that if you're a member of that church. 01:05:47.520 --> 01:05:49.760 That should be one of the reasons you're a member. 01:05:49.760 --> 01:05:53.840 But does that make you the church and no one outside of 01:05:53.840 --> 01:05:55.280 your body can be saved? 01:05:55.280 --> 01:05:56.400 Of course not. 01:05:56.400 --> 01:05:59.680 Because the only church that matters is Christ's Church. 01:05:59.680 --> 01:06:02.240 And it is only his church, and that is the church that 01:06:02.240 --> 01:06:05.600 is constituted from all believers. 01:06:05.600 --> 01:06:09.280 So if you happen to have one of these congregations near you 01:06:09.360 --> 01:06:14.080 and they're a good one, because there are different branches of Lystadion, 01:06:14.080 --> 01:06:17.840 you mentioned this one in particular, but there are different ones. 01:06:18.000 --> 01:06:22.160 If they're good, they're not teaching anything weird, so they're not emphasizing 01:06:22.160 --> 01:06:25.280 some of these weird bits of their theology. 01:06:25.280 --> 01:06:28.000 I don't have significant issues with them. 01:06:28.000 --> 01:06:32.240 I don't believe that they actually hold to the Augsburg Confession, which 01:06:32.800 --> 01:06:35.520 is a meaningful point for Lutherans, right? 01:06:35.520 --> 01:06:37.360 That is our confession. 01:06:37.360 --> 01:06:38.960 They say that they hold to it. 01:06:38.960 --> 01:06:43.360 This is sort of, I guess, inside baseball for Lutherans, but they 01:06:43.360 --> 01:06:45.680 hold to the Augsburg Confession. 01:06:45.680 --> 01:06:49.360 I believe they also say they hold to Luther's Catechisms and maybe 01:06:49.360 --> 01:06:52.320 the small cult articles, but I don't think they hold to the 01:06:52.320 --> 01:06:55.760 book the formula of Concord, the last two documents in the book 01:06:55.760 --> 01:06:56.880 of Concord. 01:06:56.880 --> 01:07:01.120 That's a little more common among Scandinavian Lutherans. 01:07:01.120 --> 01:07:02.560 Are they Lutheran or not? 01:07:02.560 --> 01:07:04.560 We could have that argument. 01:07:04.560 --> 01:07:09.360 But I think the problem with Lystadians is that they actually violate 01:07:09.360 --> 01:07:16.080 one of the articles of of just the Augsburg Confession because Article 01:07:16.080 --> 01:07:23.680 fourteen is about who should or should not publicly in the congregation 01:07:23.920 --> 01:07:27.360 administer the sacraments and teach and preach. 01:07:27.360 --> 01:07:30.160 And we believe it is only those who have a rightly ordered 01:07:30.160 --> 01:07:34.800 call. And incidentally, this article, translate it from the German with an 01:07:34.800 --> 01:07:37.280 AI, do not use the English translations. 01:07:37.280 --> 01:07:41.120 They're really bad, which is unfortunate because it's really simple German. 01:07:41.120 --> 01:07:43.520 They just botch it totally. 01:07:43.520 --> 01:07:43.840 But 01:07:44.880 --> 01:07:51.280 the Lystadians actually use lay ministers to for instance absolve people of 01:07:51.280 --> 01:07:54.720 sin in their services. 01:07:54.720 --> 01:07:59.200 They're also kind of non-liturgical, so I have major problems with them, 01:07:59.200 --> 01:08:01.920 but I could say that about the Baptists and many others as 01:08:01.920 --> 01:08:06.400 well. So again, if you have a good congregation near you, then 01:08:06.400 --> 01:08:08.880 maybe it's worth considering. 01:08:08.880 --> 01:08:11.040 It would not be my top choice. 01:08:11.040 --> 01:08:13.360 It probably wouldn't be my top five. 01:08:13.360 --> 01:08:16.080 But But I don't know where you are, and I don't know 01:08:16.080 --> 01:08:18.560 what churches you have around you, and I don't know if you 01:08:18.560 --> 01:08:21.680 happen to have maybe there's a really good one. 01:08:21.680 --> 01:08:26.080 But that's sort of the the general overview of the Lystadians and 01:08:26.400 --> 01:08:30.320 this particular group, the old apostolic Lutherans, I believe they are the 01:08:30.320 --> 01:08:33.120 first of the three, and they claim to be they're one of 01:08:33.120 --> 01:08:35.760 the ones that claim to be the only one, and so they're 01:08:35.680 --> 01:08:39.280 going to say you can't join another one because they're heretics and 01:08:41.600 --> 01:08:44.080 But they're probably not relevant to you because there are so few 01:08:44.080 --> 01:08:47.840 of them. 01:08:47.920 --> 01:08:51.520 Sort of a little bit of inside baseball for Lutheran and Lutheran 01:08:51.520 --> 01:08:52.400 adjacent groups, but 01:08:53.680 --> 01:08:56.800 useful for some men. 01:08:56.800 --> 01:08:59.360 The next question, question 13. 01:08:59.360 --> 01:09:01.920 I think I will also try to get to some of the 01:09:01.920 --> 01:09:04.240 questions from the chat. 01:09:04.240 --> 01:09:05.920 I see someone brought up gambling. 01:09:05.920 --> 01:09:08.960 I've commented on gambling before, I'll just answer that one quickly before 01:09:08.960 --> 01:09:12.080 I get to question thirteen proper, so this is I guess a 01:09:12.080 --> 01:09:14.880 little bonus question. 01:09:14.880 --> 01:09:21.360 Gambling is not absolutely, categorically, morally impermissible, but it should not be 01:09:21.360 --> 01:09:24.400 something that we encourage as a society, not be something that we 01:09:24.400 --> 01:09:26.480 engage in an organized fashion. 01:09:26.480 --> 01:09:29.680 So I would ban casinos and things like that. 01:09:29.680 --> 01:09:32.480 But if you want to play a ten dollar poker game with 01:09:32.480 --> 01:09:36.160 your friends or whatever the equivalent is for you in your income 01:09:36.160 --> 01:09:41.120 bracket, ten dollars on Friday night, I have no moral objection to 01:09:41.120 --> 01:09:42.320 that whatsoever. 01:09:42.320 --> 01:09:45.200 I don't see any way you could possibly object to that. 01:09:46.240 --> 01:09:48.800 You know, it's it's a within reason sort of thing. 01:09:48.800 --> 01:09:52.320 Don't gamble money that you can't lose. 01:09:52.320 --> 01:09:57.040 And don't gamble huge amounts, don't make it, you know, your life 01:09:57.360 --> 01:10:02.400 or your entire personality, it's fine as a hobby, basically, or just 01:10:02.400 --> 01:10:07.680 an activity that you do with friends on the weekend. 01:10:07.680 --> 01:10:09.040 Question 13. 01:10:09.040 --> 01:10:12.720 I know this has been covered extensively throughout the SC catalog and 01:10:12.720 --> 01:10:16.400 your Twitter account, but I find myself struggling to come up with 01:10:16.400 --> 01:10:20.160 a concise rebuttal to the claim that Jesus was a Jew. 01:10:20.160 --> 01:10:23.520 The best I can muster is Jesus was a Judean, obviously, but 01:10:23.520 --> 01:10:27.120 modern But modern Jews have almost nothing in common with them other 01:10:27.120 --> 01:10:29.840 than their satanic and murderous intentions. 01:10:29.840 --> 01:10:34.240 Assuming all the baggage that comes along with someone that makes that 01:10:34.240 --> 01:10:37.680 statement, how would you respond to that claim in a way that 01:10:37.680 --> 01:10:38.480 makes sense to them 01:10:41.280 --> 01:10:42.880 The issue with 01:10:43.840 --> 01:10:46.640 the Jesus is a Jew thing, right? 01:10:46.880 --> 01:10:50.400 First off, the people who say it often give away the game 01:10:50.400 --> 01:10:53.120 by saying Jesus was a Jew. 01:10:53.120 --> 01:10:57.840 And that use of the past tense is not determinative, right? 01:10:57.840 --> 01:11:01.440 It doesn't always mean something, but it kind of implies something about 01:11:01.840 --> 01:11:03.760 the beliefs of the person advancing it. 01:11:03.760 --> 01:11:05.680 You're probably not dealing with a Christian, right? 01:11:05.680 --> 01:11:08.160 You're probably not even dealing with someone who is open to the 01:11:08.160 --> 01:11:09.680 idea of Christianity. 01:11:09.680 --> 01:11:13.520 You're probably dealing with someone who is hostile to Christianity. 01:11:13.520 --> 01:11:18.720 And my general approach, if someone pops into my replies at this 01:11:18.720 --> 01:11:22.480 point and just comments, well, Jesus was a Jew, or Jesus something 01:11:22.480 --> 01:11:26.400 on those lines, it's almost always just that verbatim, I just block 01:11:26.400 --> 01:11:28.880 them. I'm not going to get anywhere with that person. 01:11:28.880 --> 01:11:33.040 The person is obviously just trying to sow discord and dissent and 01:11:33.040 --> 01:11:34.320 cause problems. 01:11:34.320 --> 01:11:37.120 And it's a waste of everyone's time and I'm not going to 01:11:37.120 --> 01:11:38.560 engage in it. 01:11:38.560 --> 01:11:38.880 So 01:11:41.120 --> 01:11:45.600 if it is someone who is not that, if you happen to 01:11:45.600 --> 01:11:49.680 know this person to some extent, this is someone who has a 01:11:49.680 --> 01:11:53.840 legitimate concern, someone who has an actual curiosity, someone who actually will 01:11:53.840 --> 01:11:55.920 listen to what you are saying. 01:11:56.400 --> 01:12:01.920 Then you can actually probably get somewhere by pointing out just the 01:12:01.920 --> 01:12:05.600 reality. You can, of course, point them to the episode, which is 01:12:05.600 --> 01:12:10.160 the fuller treatment of it, but I think the best starting point 01:12:10.400 --> 01:12:15.200 Starting point is use an analogy, right? 01:12:15.520 --> 01:12:19.520 Use something on which you and that person agree. 01:12:19.520 --> 01:12:21.520 And it's going to depend on your context. 01:12:21.520 --> 01:12:26.720 If I'm talking to an American audience, right, I could say something 01:12:26.720 --> 01:12:29.680 about, you know, the founding fathers and were they American? 01:12:29.680 --> 01:12:34.080 Right? Was George Washington an American? 01:12:34.800 --> 01:12:37.440 That rather depends on what I mean by a lot of different 01:12:37.440 --> 01:12:38.960 terms, doesn't it? 01:12:38.960 --> 01:12:40.720 At what point in his life? 01:12:40.720 --> 01:12:43.920 Because he was British, then he became American. 01:12:43.920 --> 01:12:46.720 Was he American according to citizenship? 01:12:46.720 --> 01:12:52.000 Well, after America became a thing, was he American according to blood 01:12:52.000 --> 01:12:53.200 and birth? 01:12:53.200 --> 01:12:56.080 Yes, but also British. 01:12:56.080 --> 01:13:00.000 And so you can see how it depends on what we mean 01:13:00.000 --> 01:13:01.360 by the term. 01:13:01.360 --> 01:13:03.840 You can do the same thing with languages, right? 01:13:03.840 --> 01:13:07.600 If I say I speak English, is that the same thing as 01:13:07.600 --> 01:13:13.040 saying that Chauser speaks English, spoke English. 01:13:13.040 --> 01:13:14.960 Yes and no. 01:13:14.960 --> 01:13:18.960 He spoke middle English as a different thing. 01:13:18.960 --> 01:13:22.880 Still English, so it depends what you mean by the term. 01:13:22.880 --> 01:13:26.160 And you you're basically trying to point out to the person just 01:13:26.160 --> 01:13:29.760 because we're using a word doesn't mean that we're using it in 01:13:29.760 --> 01:13:33.120 the exact same sense and doesn't mean that it has only one 01:13:33.120 --> 01:13:36.160 sense. So you have to define your terms. 01:13:36.160 --> 01:13:41.280 Anyone who has any familiarity with debate of any kind, discussion, academic 01:13:41.360 --> 01:13:45.120 discourse, knows that one of the most important things is defining your 01:13:45.120 --> 01:13:49.920 terms. Because if you don't define your terms, you're going to have 01:13:49.920 --> 01:13:51.040 a real problem. 01:13:51.120 --> 01:13:53.600 You could give a concrete example, right? 01:13:54.160 --> 01:13:59.840 Let's say for instance you are meeting someone for dinner, right? 01:13:59.840 --> 01:14:05.440 And you say, We'll go to your favorite Italian restaurant, and you 01:14:05.440 --> 01:14:10.720 think his favorite Italian restaurant is restaurant A. 01:14:10.720 --> 01:14:14.480 But he in his own head knows, oh, it's restaurant B, I'll 01:14:14.480 --> 01:14:15.280 meet you. 01:14:15.280 --> 01:14:18.080 How likely are you to meet each other for dinner? 01:14:18.080 --> 01:14:22.640 The answer is you won't because you're using the same term, favorite 01:14:22.720 --> 01:14:25.280 Italian restaurant, to mean two different things. 01:14:25.280 --> 01:14:27.520 You have to know to what you're referring. 01:14:27.520 --> 01:14:31.280 And so this is where the episode really lays it out in 01:14:31.280 --> 01:14:33.440 a way that is going to be what you want for someone 01:14:33.440 --> 01:14:35.200 who's actually open to this. 01:14:35.200 --> 01:14:40.000 But when a modern the short version for you, when a modern 01:14:40.000 --> 01:14:45.040 person says Jew, he means someone who does not believe in Jesus 01:14:45.040 --> 01:14:48.800 Christ, who does believe in the things the Jews believe, who is 01:14:48.800 --> 01:14:53.840 an inherent of Judaism, and is probably also ethnically Jewish. 01:14:55.360 --> 01:15:01.680 Was Jesus Jesus a non believer in Jesus I think that's probably 01:15:01.680 --> 01:15:04.960 already enough for most rational men to go there's a problem here. 01:15:04.960 --> 01:15:09.040 Okay. Was Jesus a believer in Judaism? 01:15:09.040 --> 01:15:13.200 No, because Judaism postdates Christianity. 01:15:13.200 --> 01:15:18.640 You have the Old Testament civil law, you have the ceremonial law, 01:15:18.640 --> 01:15:22.400 these were for Old Testament Israel and are a separate thing from 01:15:22.880 --> 01:15:30.160 Judaism, which is Talmudic and from the 500s AD notably, little irony 01:15:30.160 --> 01:15:35.280 there as well, that is something that doesn't even work chronologically. 01:15:35.280 --> 01:15:38.480 And so the only way in which you can say that he 01:15:38.480 --> 01:15:43.600 was a Jew is if you mean Judean. 01:15:43.600 --> 01:15:46.160 But then why are you using the word Jew? 01:15:46.160 --> 01:15:49.520 Well you're using it because you want to do something with the 01:15:49.520 --> 01:15:54.160 term. The person using it is using it in a deliberate way, 01:15:54.160 --> 01:15:56.400 usually to sow discord. 01:15:56.400 --> 01:15:59.280 And so I usually, like I said, block those people as malefactors 01:15:59.360 --> 01:16:02.560 because they're just going to waste my time and everyone else's. 01:16:02.560 --> 01:16:02.880 But 01:16:04.160 --> 01:16:06.560 you kind of have to run through the logic and point out 01:16:06.560 --> 01:16:09.520 to the person just because you're using a word doesn't mean that 01:16:09.520 --> 01:16:12.720 everyone using the word means the same thing. 01:16:12.720 --> 01:16:17.120 Another one that I've used sometimes is, you know, auto antonyms, right? 01:16:17.120 --> 01:16:20.080 There are words that have opposite meanings. 01:16:20.080 --> 01:16:23.120 You are supposed to cleave to your wife. 01:16:23.120 --> 01:16:26.400 Well, that's not the sense we usually use these days in modern 01:16:26.400 --> 01:16:30.480 English because the most common sense of that word now, cleave, is 01:16:30.480 --> 01:16:32.160 to split in two. 01:16:32.160 --> 01:16:38.400 But the autoantonym of cleave also has a definition of to hold 01:16:38.400 --> 01:16:41.920 fast. There are a number of words like that in English, so 01:16:42.000 --> 01:16:43.840 that's another good example you can give people. 01:16:43.840 --> 01:16:47.680 You have to understand what you are saying when you use the 01:16:47.680 --> 01:16:53.360 term. So, my first recommendation is just to block these people because 01:16:53.440 --> 01:16:56.720 it really is just people trying to be divisive for the sake 01:16:56.720 --> 01:16:59.920 of being divisive and obnoxious on social media. 01:16:59.920 --> 01:17:03.520 But if it is someone who is earnest, then by all means 01:17:03.600 --> 01:17:04.720 take the time to try and understand 01:17:05.920 --> 01:17:07.920 what is the person saying? 01:17:07.920 --> 01:17:08.960 What are you claiming? 01:17:08.960 --> 01:17:10.720 That's partly how you could start off. 01:17:10.720 --> 01:17:12.960 I think this is usually a good way to do it. 01:17:12.960 --> 01:17:15.520 If you're dealing with someone who makes some sort of claim and 01:17:15.520 --> 01:17:19.040 you object, just say what do you mean? 01:17:19.040 --> 01:17:21.680 What do you mean by the word Jew? 01:17:21.680 --> 01:17:24.160 To you, what is a Jew? 01:17:24.160 --> 01:17:27.520 And if he can't even define it, why is he asking you 01:17:27.520 --> 01:17:28.560 the question? 01:17:28.560 --> 01:17:31.280 Right? I think that's probably a good place to start. 01:17:31.280 --> 01:17:36.640 Just ask him to define his terms. 01:17:36.640 --> 01:17:41.200 That was question 13, so now I can get to some of 01:17:41.200 --> 01:17:47.600 the questions that I pulled out of the chat chat earlier. 01:17:47.840 --> 01:17:52.000 Be able to scroll up here. 01:17:52.080 --> 01:17:54.000 Question 14. 01:17:54.000 --> 01:17:56.800 I will try to write these down as I go so that 01:17:56.800 --> 01:17:57.280 I can 01:17:58.960 --> 01:18:04.160 Add them into the show notes. 01:18:04.160 --> 01:18:08.960 How do we square the necessity of incest for humanity to multiply 01:18:08.960 --> 01:18:11.840 out of Adam and Eve, and later from Noah's sons, with the 01:18:11.840 --> 01:18:15.200 fact that God's morality cannot change. 01:18:15.200 --> 01:18:19.680 This actually interestingly, tangentially related to the last question. 01:18:19.680 --> 01:18:21.520 We have to define our terms. 01:18:21.520 --> 01:18:22.000 And so 01:18:23.440 --> 01:18:27.520 if by incest you mean 01:18:28.400 --> 01:18:34.800 someone producing children from someone who has similar blood, right? 01:18:35.040 --> 01:18:42.160 Someone who is too closely related, consanguinity, then yes, you're going 01:18:42.160 --> 01:18:44.560 to have some sort of issue there, right? 01:18:45.200 --> 01:18:50.880 But if you are instead appealing to the law and what is 01:18:50.880 --> 01:18:53.840 prohibited, that's a different thing. 01:18:53.840 --> 01:18:56.080 For instance, we have this today. 01:18:56.080 --> 01:19:00.880 There are countries that permit first-cousin marriage, and there are countries that 01:19:00.880 --> 01:19:01.600 prohibit it. 01:19:01.600 --> 01:19:04.080 In fact, there are states that permit it. 01:19:04.400 --> 01:19:05.680 They shouldn't, but 01:19:07.200 --> 01:19:14.720 the issue is not that it is morally, absolutely, categorically prohibited 01:19:14.720 --> 01:19:16.480 in all cases. 01:19:16.480 --> 01:19:20.480 And so historically, yes, there are relationships that are, right? 01:19:20.480 --> 01:19:26.640 You know, parent-child banned, period, never acceptable, violation of the moral law. 01:19:26.640 --> 01:19:33.360 Siblings, permissible back then, because the degradation of the genome had not 01:19:33.360 --> 01:19:36.320 proceeded to the point where it would have caused problems. 01:19:36.320 --> 01:19:38.880 That's basically the reason we have the law. 01:19:38.880 --> 01:19:40.400 We don't have the law so much 01:19:41.440 --> 01:19:45.040 because it is an absolute moral prohibition. 01:19:45.040 --> 01:19:49.920 Yes, God has now built into us disgust mechanism and revulsion and 01:19:49.920 --> 01:19:52.480 things like that to avoid these problems. 01:19:52.480 --> 01:19:55.120 But the reason the law is in place, the reason law was 01:19:55.120 --> 01:19:58.480 enacted, is because of the consequences of it. 01:19:58.480 --> 01:20:01.520 Well what happens if you marry your first cousin for five hundred 01:20:01.520 --> 01:20:05.520 years? Well, you wind up with certain nations, and I'm sure we're 01:20:05.440 --> 01:20:09.520 all thinking of one in particular, but you wind up with problems 01:20:10.640 --> 01:20:12.720 that you can avoid by not doing that. 01:20:12.720 --> 01:20:16.400 And so that's why God has that law for us today. 01:20:16.400 --> 01:20:22.000 Again, nothing absolutely categorically morally impermissible there, it is a matter of 01:20:22.000 --> 01:20:25.200 the consequence of the action post-fall world. 01:20:25.200 --> 01:20:30.160 So would God have made that a law in a world without 01:20:30.160 --> 01:20:31.040 the fall? 01:20:31.040 --> 01:20:32.400 I don't know. 01:20:32.480 --> 01:20:36.560 Maybe he would have for the sake of human diversity and spreading 01:20:36.560 --> 01:20:39.120 out over the planet and subduing the planet. 01:20:39.120 --> 01:20:42.480 But it's a counterfactual we can't run because we don't know what 01:20:42.480 --> 01:20:44.480 the world would have been like without the fall. 01:20:44.480 --> 01:20:47.920 We can't even envision that perfect world because we're living post fall 01:20:47.920 --> 01:20:51.440 with the consequences of it in our own bodies and minds. 01:20:51.440 --> 01:20:56.000 So it's not that God's law changed, it's that God enacted law 01:20:56.000 --> 01:20:57.840 to deal with something. 01:20:57.840 --> 01:21:01.600 It's not that the morality of it changed, right? 01:21:01.600 --> 01:21:04.880 Because for instance that there are certain relationships that are still absolutely 01:21:04.880 --> 01:21:08.080 categorically prohibited at all times, because it's a matter of the moral 01:21:08.080 --> 01:21:10.240 law. But there are other things that aren't. 01:21:10.240 --> 01:21:16.400 They're basically civil law. 01:21:16.400 --> 01:21:19.440 A second question from the same person. 01:21:19.440 --> 01:21:22.000 This is the question 15. 01:21:24.640 --> 01:21:27.360 What is the best way to tackle the problem of the fate 01:21:27.360 --> 01:21:29.280 of the unevangelized? 01:21:29.280 --> 01:21:32.800 Is there a way for someone living in a society like Aristotle, 01:21:32.800 --> 01:21:37.600 or Aristotle himself, to dimly believe in Christ? 01:21:38.880 --> 01:21:40.480 This is one that 01:21:42.080 --> 01:21:45.920 has come up many times down through the centuries, of course, and 01:21:46.160 --> 01:21:51.040 you have the Roman Catholics who start making things up to try 01:21:51.040 --> 01:21:52.640 to deal with this. 01:21:52.560 --> 01:21:56.400 You know, limbo does not exist, it's not in Scripture, things like 01:21:56.400 --> 01:22:00.080 that. But I don't think you have to do that, because you 01:22:00.080 --> 01:22:03.680 have places in Scripture where, for instance, God speaks of the times 01:22:03.680 --> 01:22:04.320 of ignorance. 01:22:04.320 --> 01:22:06.160 He overlooked. 01:22:06.160 --> 01:22:10.480 And you have places where it speaks of the nations groping toward 01:22:10.480 --> 01:22:12.720 God to find the light. 01:22:12.720 --> 01:22:17.120 And you have places where God speaks of assignment and things like 01:22:17.120 --> 01:22:22.000 that. So I don't think that we have like a hard and 01:22:22.000 --> 01:22:25.520 fast set of rules that we can say, oh well this pagan 01:22:25.840 --> 01:22:29.760 or this heathen, this unbeliever, whichever term you want to use, in 01:22:29.760 --> 01:22:34.960 this sense, not necessarily a pejorative sense of the term meant. 01:22:34.960 --> 01:22:37.280 This one went to paradise and this one didn't. 01:22:37.280 --> 01:22:39.040 I don't think we can do that. 01:22:39.040 --> 01:22:42.480 Because God didn't give us enough information to make that call. 01:22:42.720 --> 01:22:46.000 But we don't have to make that call because that's God's call. 01:22:46.000 --> 01:22:51.200 So do I think that there were those living in those societies 01:22:51.520 --> 01:22:56.400 who had enough of the light to be saved? 01:22:56.400 --> 01:22:58.640 I think that's probably the case. 01:22:58.640 --> 01:23:03.360 I think that God preserved enough of it in some way that 01:23:03.360 --> 01:23:04.480 that was possible. 01:23:04.480 --> 01:23:06.320 I don't know exactly how that played out. 01:23:06.320 --> 01:23:08.720 I won't even hazard a guess at the percentages. 01:23:08.720 --> 01:23:10.240 I don't know. 01:23:10.240 --> 01:23:14.240 But I don't think that we have to categorically say that everyone 01:23:14.240 --> 01:23:17.280 living in those societies was simply damned. 01:23:17.280 --> 01:23:20.560 I think that goes overboard, and I think it also ignores some 01:23:20.560 --> 01:23:23.440 verses in scripture that hint at things that are not fully explained. 01:23:24.480 --> 01:23:29.440 So we leave it to God's perfect mercy and perfect justice, and 01:23:30.400 --> 01:23:33.200 we're content with that because God is perfect and he will do 01:23:33.200 --> 01:23:34.080 what is right 01:23:40.080 --> 01:23:43.120 Other question from the same person about 01:23:46.640 --> 01:23:47.600 Original sin 01:23:49.040 --> 01:23:54.640 let's see. 01:23:54.640 --> 01:24:00.960 Basically the question over a few messages here is how does inheriting 01:24:00.960 --> 01:24:03.120 original sin actually work. 01:24:03.120 --> 01:24:03.760 And so 01:24:04.640 --> 01:24:07.040 there are two aspects to this. 01:24:07.040 --> 01:24:11.440 One you have concupiscence, which is what original sin is. 01:24:11.440 --> 01:24:14.400 It's the desire to do that which is wicked, a desire contrary 01:24:14.400 --> 01:24:19.360 to God God and a lack of original righteousness and in a 01:24:19.360 --> 01:24:22.000 sense also a lack of the Imago Dei, the image of God 01:24:22.000 --> 01:24:25.600 and man, which is tied up with original righteousness and things like 01:24:25.600 --> 01:24:27.440 that. And 01:24:28.320 --> 01:24:33.520 original sin impairs these things in man, thoroughly impairs these things. 01:24:33.680 --> 01:24:36.480 It doesn't replace them because that would be to confuse substance and 01:24:36.480 --> 01:24:38.080 accident, right? 01:24:38.080 --> 01:24:41.920 But it impairs them in man and it does it in such 01:24:41.920 --> 01:24:45.200 a way that everything we do is tainted by sin because we 01:24:45.200 --> 01:24:48.400 are sinners, as I've pointed out many times before and will undoubtedly 01:24:48.400 --> 01:24:50.160 many times in the future. 01:24:50.160 --> 01:24:52.080 We sin because we're sinners. 01:24:52.080 --> 01:24:54.000 We're not sinners because we sin. 01:24:54.240 --> 01:24:58.400 Yes, we're also additionally sinners because we sin, but the reason we 01:24:58.400 --> 01:25:00.400 sin in the first place is because we're sinners. 01:25:00.400 --> 01:25:02.720 And we're sinners because we fell in Adam. 01:25:02.720 --> 01:25:06.160 You can think of this as similar to I think it's the 01:25:06.240 --> 01:25:12.080 seventh chapter of Hebrews, you have the author of Hebrews pulling out 01:25:12.320 --> 01:25:17.840 the example of the Levites tithing to Melchizedek. 01:25:17.840 --> 01:25:21.520 Well, the Levites didn't exist yet, it was Abraham who did, but 01:25:21.520 --> 01:25:25.520 the Levites were in his loins in the word of Scripture. 01:25:25.520 --> 01:25:29.200 And that's the way you have to think about these things. 01:25:29.200 --> 01:25:34.640 When Adam fell, Adam being the head, the federal head of all 01:25:34.640 --> 01:25:40.320 creation, not just of mankind, but of creation, everything fell in Adam. 01:25:40.320 --> 01:25:43.360 You fell when Adam fell. 01:25:43.360 --> 01:25:47.040 You were already corrupt at that point. 01:25:47.040 --> 01:25:50.480 Yes, you are then born and you inherit as part of that 01:25:50.480 --> 01:25:55.680 process original sin, but you fell in Adam because the fall happened 01:25:55.680 --> 01:26:00.800 then. It's not a fall every single time some new creature comes 01:26:00.800 --> 01:26:01.920 into existence. 01:26:01.920 --> 01:26:06.160 The fall happened with Adam, it corrupted all things at that time. 01:26:06.160 --> 01:26:11.280 Now, the cumulative effects of the fall related to the previous two 01:26:11.280 --> 01:26:17.440 questions, primarily the first question, those cumulative effects over time get worse. 01:26:17.440 --> 01:26:22.240 And so if you ignore God's laws and you do the wicked 01:26:22.240 --> 01:26:24.160 things that the Canaanites did, right? 01:26:24.160 --> 01:26:28.240 Incest was part of how they worshiped their gods and child sacrifice 01:26:28.320 --> 01:26:30.160 and all sorts of horrible things. 01:26:30.160 --> 01:26:35.040 If you do that, the effects of that accumulate over time and 01:26:35.040 --> 01:26:40.560 you wind up worse off physically with regard to your body. 01:26:40.560 --> 01:26:44.320 Yes, there's also a relationship between of course the soul and the 01:26:44.320 --> 01:26:51.440 body, but it is not original sin that directly causes all 01:26:51.440 --> 01:26:54.560 of those consequences down through the centuries. 01:26:54.560 --> 01:26:58.000 There are intervening their intermediate steps. 01:26:58.000 --> 01:27:02.800 There are the actions of your wicked ancestors ancestors accumulating over a 01:27:02.800 --> 01:27:04.720 course of many generations. 01:27:04.720 --> 01:27:09.760 So you have original sin, everyone fell when Adam fell, you inherit 01:27:09.760 --> 01:27:13.520 it through natural generation, and then you have also this accumulation of 01:27:13.520 --> 01:27:19.120 consequences of wicked actions actions subsequent to the fall by previous generations. 01:27:19.120 --> 01:27:23.440 So you have to have a generational outlook and a headship view 01:27:23.440 --> 01:27:27.680 of these things, not an individual view, because you're not a disconnected 01:27:27.680 --> 01:27:30.320 individual. You're a link in a chain, leading all the way back 01:27:30.320 --> 01:27:38.800 to Adam. 01:27:38.960 --> 01:27:42.880 Person also asked a question about how do we balance prayer and 01:27:42.880 --> 01:27:44.960 the sovereign will of God. 01:27:44.960 --> 01:27:47.840 I went over that in a previous episode, so I would just 01:27:47.840 --> 01:27:49.040 direct you to that. 01:27:49.040 --> 01:27:51.520 Maybe someone knows which specific episode. 01:27:51.520 --> 01:27:53.120 I don't know off the top of my head which one it 01:27:53.120 --> 01:27:53.360 was. 01:27:54.320 --> 01:27:58.800 But basically the short version is that time and causation don't apply 01:27:58.800 --> 01:27:59.760 to God. 01:27:59.760 --> 01:28:02.480 So you're thinking about it from a human framework? 01:28:02.480 --> 01:28:05.040 Don't. Think about it from God's viewpoint. 01:28:09.200 --> 01:28:09.520 So 01:28:11.600 --> 01:28:19.840 write those down so I remember them for later. 01:28:19.840 --> 01:28:21.200 The next question. 01:28:21.200 --> 01:28:23.520 Question 18. 01:28:23.520 --> 01:28:27.280 What do you believe about partial preterism in regard to end times 01:28:27.360 --> 01:28:31.040 beliefs? How do you deal with the time indicators this generation shortly 01:28:31.040 --> 01:28:32.560 take place? 01:28:33.600 --> 01:28:37.120 This is a broad topic, so I'm going to do a superficial 01:28:37.120 --> 01:28:40.240 treatment of it right now because I'm not going to spend, you 01:28:40.240 --> 01:28:42.880 know, an hour right now going over this. 01:28:42.880 --> 01:28:47.520 Insofar as the fulfillment of prophecy is concerned, there are some prophecies 01:28:47.520 --> 01:28:53.840 that have been fulfilled, but for most prophecies, particularly eschatological prophet prophecies, 01:28:53.840 --> 01:28:57.520 prophecies dealing with the end times, you have sort of a cyclical 01:28:58.000 --> 01:29:02.960 fulfillment. You'll have lesser fulfillments in the sense of sort of minor, 01:29:02.960 --> 01:29:07.200 just not complete, not you know, lesser in the sense of unimportant. 01:29:07.200 --> 01:29:14.480 But you'll have them basically symbolizing or mirroring in an essence 01:29:14.640 --> 01:29:17.680 the future full fulfillment of the thing. 01:29:17.680 --> 01:29:20.480 And God loves to do this. 01:29:20.480 --> 01:29:22.880 God loves symbolism. 01:29:22.880 --> 01:29:25.680 God loves typology. 01:29:25.680 --> 01:29:28.240 This is how He loves to do things. 01:29:28.240 --> 01:29:31.280 You have this all over the Old Testament and the New Testament 01:29:31.280 --> 01:29:31.920 as well. 01:29:31.920 --> 01:29:37.760 And so for instance, you have Abraham serving as both a type 01:29:37.760 --> 01:29:39.200 of Christ and a type of God, right? 01:29:39.440 --> 01:29:41.760 Because he's sacrificing his son. 01:29:41.760 --> 01:29:45.520 In his case he doesn't actually sacrifice his son, but it's typologically 01:29:45.520 --> 01:29:48.800 connected to God sacrificing his son. 01:29:48.800 --> 01:29:53.600 You have the times where he delivers his relatives serving as a 01:29:53.600 --> 01:29:57.360 type of Christ, delivering from not from relatives, but from Satan, so 01:29:57.360 --> 01:30:00.560 a greater fulfillment, the antitype versus the type. 01:30:00.560 --> 01:30:04.720 You have Joseph as a type of Christ who goes ahead of 01:30:04.720 --> 01:30:07.360 the people and then comes out of Egypt and things like that. 01:30:07.360 --> 01:30:12.560 You have Israel itself serving as a type of Christ in bondage, 01:30:12.560 --> 01:30:17.440 in Israel and being called out of that bondage, right, symbolizing sin 01:30:17.520 --> 01:30:18.720 and things like that. 01:30:18.720 --> 01:30:20.720 This is all over the scriptures. 01:30:20.720 --> 01:30:24.080 The same thing happens with prophecies about the end times. 01:30:24.080 --> 01:30:29.200 You have minor fulfillments, you have typological fulfillments, and then for most 01:30:29.280 --> 01:30:34.080 of them, there is a future true fulfillment. 01:30:34.080 --> 01:30:38.960 And so for those who wouldn't, for instance, pass away until these 01:30:38.960 --> 01:30:42.400 things take place, 70 AD was one of the fulfillments when the 01:30:42.400 --> 01:30:44.560 Romans destroyed Jerusalem. 01:30:44.560 --> 01:30:48.080 And so sometimes when Christ is talking about it, he is meaning 01:30:48.080 --> 01:30:53.200 that fulfillment in that typological sense, not the ultimate one that will 01:30:53.200 --> 01:30:57.040 come at some point in the future, even from our perspective. 01:30:57.040 --> 01:31:01.040 So insofar as partial preterism is concerned, it depends on what the 01:31:01.040 --> 01:31:02.480 person means by it. 01:31:02.480 --> 01:31:06.880 If they just mean that some things have been fulfilled, okay fine. 01:31:06.880 --> 01:31:09.600 If they mean that some things have been fulfilled in a way 01:31:09.600 --> 01:31:12.800 that means they can't have a future greater fulfillment, then I probably 01:31:12.800 --> 01:31:18.160 disagree. Because I think that generally speaking there are future greater fulfillments 01:31:18.240 --> 01:31:28.480 even for the prophecies that have had minor fulfillments in the past. 01:31:28.560 --> 01:31:32.720 The next question I don't know how many more I'm going to 01:31:32.720 --> 01:31:35.200 go through, probably not too many more though. 01:31:35.200 --> 01:31:39.520 Since we've run about an hour and a half, I think. 01:31:40.160 --> 01:31:43.920 Question regarding the Pentecostal or charismatic movements. 01:31:43.920 --> 01:31:47.760 I understand the argument against the against them for being modern innovations, 01:31:47.760 --> 01:31:50.480 nineteen hundreds and nineteen sixties respectively. 01:31:50.480 --> 01:31:54.400 True. And I am aware of many of the excesses that go 01:31:54.400 --> 01:31:57.920 on, but what is the theological argument against the common use of 01:31:57.920 --> 01:32:00.160 spiritual gifts in church that seems to be laid out in out 01:32:00.240 --> 01:32:04.320 in 1 Corinthians 12. 01:32:04.320 --> 01:32:11.920 And so we will, of course, turn to 1 Corinthians 12, 01:32:11.920 --> 01:32:16.000 because it is always best to actually look at the scripture when 01:32:16.000 --> 01:32:18.640 we are going to use it. 01:32:18.640 --> 01:32:19.280 And so 01:32:20.240 --> 01:32:22.480 we'll pull up logos here. 01:32:32.480 --> 01:32:35.840 Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be 01:32:35.840 --> 01:32:38.960 uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray 01:32:38.960 --> 01:32:41.920 to mute idols, however you were led. 01:32:41.920 --> 01:32:44.800 Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the 01:32:44.800 --> 01:32:48.400 Spirit of God ever says Jesus is accursed, and no one can 01:32:48.400 --> 01:32:51.280 say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit. 01:32:51.520 --> 01:32:55.120 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit, and there 01:32:55.120 --> 01:32:58.880 are varieties of service, but the same Lord, and there are varieties 01:32:58.880 --> 01:33:02.240 of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all 01:33:02.240 --> 01:33:03.280 and every one. 01:33:03.280 --> 01:33:06.640 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common 01:33:06.640 --> 01:33:09.920 good, for to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of 01:33:09.920 --> 01:33:13.760 wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same 01:33:13.760 --> 01:33:17.520 Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of 01:33:17.520 --> 01:33:21.840 healing by the one spirit, to another the working of miracles, to 01:33:21.840 --> 01:33:26.800 another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another 01:33:26.800 --> 01:33:31.840 various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues, all these 01:33:31.840 --> 01:33:35.520 are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each 01:33:35.520 --> 01:33:40.240 one individually, as He wills. 01:33:40.480 --> 01:33:42.080 So the question for 01:33:43.360 --> 01:33:45.200 the gifts, right? 01:33:45.200 --> 01:33:50.000 Is well first off, are you a cessationist or not, right? 01:33:50.000 --> 01:33:51.040 That's sort of the first step. 01:33:51.040 --> 01:33:53.680 Lutherans or not, at least not in the sense of being a 01:33:53.680 --> 01:33:59.680 full cessationist, which basically means have the sign gifts, these sorts of 01:33:59.680 --> 01:34:02.480 gifts, ceased in the modern church? 01:34:02.480 --> 01:34:04.960 Has God stopped handing these things out? 01:34:04.960 --> 01:34:08.320 Lutherans are not full cessationists. 01:34:08.320 --> 01:34:11.120 Now, have these things certainly 01:34:12.160 --> 01:34:13.920 petered off, right? 01:34:13.920 --> 01:34:15.840 Are they less frequent these days? 01:34:15.840 --> 01:34:21.280 Absolutely. Because by and large God was using these in order to 01:34:21.280 --> 01:34:26.880 establish the early church in a way that was completely irrefutable, right? 01:34:26.880 --> 01:34:29.040 And you can think of Christ's words, right? 01:34:29.040 --> 01:34:32.000 Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. 01:34:32.000 --> 01:34:36.560 And so is it more blessed to believe, despite not having had 01:34:36.560 --> 01:34:38.880 sort of the thunderbolt from heaven strike you. 01:34:38.880 --> 01:34:42.400 Yes, Scripture's very clear on that. 01:34:42.400 --> 01:34:45.600 But that doesn't mean these gifts are never given out. 01:34:45.600 --> 01:34:48.480 And so are there people who have these gifts? 01:34:48.800 --> 01:34:51.440 I would say yes, there probably are. 01:34:51.440 --> 01:34:54.240 The issue would be identifying them, right? 01:34:54.240 --> 01:34:55.680 And you have to test the spirits. 01:34:55.680 --> 01:34:58.480 You have to discern whether or not this is someone who has 01:34:58.480 --> 01:34:59.680 these abilities. 01:34:59.680 --> 01:35:03.040 And I think that the issue with regard to the Pentecostals and 01:35:03.040 --> 01:35:09.280 others is that it never takes the form that we see in 01:35:09.280 --> 01:35:13.200 the ancient church, and it never takes a form that is good 01:35:13.200 --> 01:35:17.840 and orderly and orderly and builds up, it's always chaos. 01:35:17.840 --> 01:35:22.480 And for some reason it's always speaking in tongues, right? 01:35:22.480 --> 01:35:26.080 When's the last time you went to a Pentecostal service and saw 01:35:26.080 --> 01:35:31.840 someone tell a cripple, stand up and go home. 01:35:31.840 --> 01:35:34.720 If someone does that, then okay, I'm going to say fine, he 01:35:34.720 --> 01:35:35.760 has the gift of healing. 01:35:35.760 --> 01:35:37.520 God has given him the gift of healing. 01:35:37.520 --> 01:35:40.320 As long as he can also say, you know, Jesus is Lord. 01:35:40.320 --> 01:35:41.200 But it's never that. 01:35:41.200 --> 01:35:44.080 It's always someone standing up and screaming gibberish. 01:35:44.080 --> 01:35:46.560 Well, what does it say just even here? 01:35:46.560 --> 01:35:50.400 Some are given the gift of tongues, and some the interpretation of 01:35:50.400 --> 01:35:53.040 tongues. And then there are other places, of course, where Paul says, 01:35:53.040 --> 01:35:54.880 unless someone is present to interpret 01:35:55.760 --> 01:35:57.920 shut up is basically what Paul says. 01:35:57.920 --> 01:36:00.240 He says it in a slightly nicer fashion, but that's what he's 01:36:00.240 --> 01:36:01.920 saying. Okay. 01:36:01.920 --> 01:36:05.360 If someone is present to interpret what it is you're saying, and 01:36:05.360 --> 01:36:09.200 what you're saying is coherent, then by all means, maybe God is 01:36:09.680 --> 01:36:11.760 but there's also the misunderstanding. 01:36:11.760 --> 01:36:16.640 People think that tongues are some new language God has given you. 01:36:16.640 --> 01:36:18.160 Think of Pentecost. 01:36:18.160 --> 01:36:21.360 The gift of tongues was so that men could understand what was 01:36:21.360 --> 01:36:24.400 being said in their own languages. 01:36:24.400 --> 01:36:29.200 Great. If someone who has spent his entire life living in the 01:36:29.200 --> 01:36:34.080 United States has never left whatever whatever state, I won't pick one 01:36:34.240 --> 01:36:37.440 because someone will be annoyed that I'm picking on their state, but 01:36:37.600 --> 01:36:40.880 you know, someone has lived in this state in his entire life, 01:36:40.880 --> 01:36:43.760 never left, knows only English, and suddenly stands up in church and 01:36:43.760 --> 01:36:45.840 he speaks fluent Dutch, okay, fine. 01:36:45.840 --> 01:36:48.400 He has the gift of tongues. 01:36:48.400 --> 01:36:52.640 But it's never Dutch or German or French. 01:36:52.640 --> 01:36:54.080 It's gibberish. 01:36:54.080 --> 01:36:57.520 That's the problem that I have with Pentecostalism. 01:36:57.520 --> 01:36:59.360 It's emotionalism. 01:36:59.360 --> 01:37:01.200 It is enthusiasm. 01:37:01.200 --> 01:37:04.160 It is a denial of the way in which God has said 01:37:04.160 --> 01:37:07.520 that He wants to work with and through His people. 01:37:07.520 --> 01:37:10.640 Because God is very clear in the scriptures that the way that 01:37:10.640 --> 01:37:13.520 He works with His people, the way that He bestows His gifts 01:37:13.760 --> 01:37:18.080 is the Word and the Sacraments, and the enthusiasts always go for 01:37:18.080 --> 01:37:21.040 the burning in the bosom, which is the same argument that we 01:37:21.040 --> 01:37:22.240 hear from the Mormons. 01:37:22.240 --> 01:37:25.040 And I give it about the same credence that I give the 01:37:25.040 --> 01:37:29.040 Mormons. That would be the real issue that I have with regard 01:37:29.040 --> 01:37:33.840 to the Pentecostals, the Charismatics, and any of the sign gifts. 01:37:33.840 --> 01:37:38.960 They're less common these days, doesn't mean they've ceased totally, but demonstrate 01:37:38.960 --> 01:37:42.000 them in a way that is consonant with scripture, that is a 01:37:42.000 --> 01:37:46.960 matter of good order, and is real as opposed to what I 01:37:46.960 --> 01:37:49.200 always see when I see the Pentecostals. 01:37:49.200 --> 01:37:51.360 You know, don't just stand up and scream gibberish. 01:37:51.360 --> 01:37:52.880 Anyone can do that. 01:37:53.920 --> 01:38:04.160 Play any online game and you'll hear that in voice chat. 01:38:04.800 --> 01:38:07.760 See a couple questions popped up and people answered them with Stone 01:38:07.760 --> 01:38:10.400 Choir episodes, so I can keep scrolling. 01:38:19.360 --> 01:38:25.200 I'm going to guess that the question about Eastern esoteric practices regarding 01:38:25.200 --> 01:38:28.000 sexuality is meant as a joke. 01:38:28.000 --> 01:38:28.320 So 01:38:29.680 --> 01:38:34.400 but the real answer to that question, not directly but indirectly, is 01:38:34.400 --> 01:38:37.920 that you should be having sex with your wife frequently. 01:38:37.920 --> 01:38:42.160 Pretty much as often as you can manage in your schedule. 01:38:42.720 --> 01:38:46.640 Another reason to go back to the earlier question of cardio and 01:38:46.640 --> 01:38:47.600 lifting heavy things. 01:38:47.600 --> 01:38:50.480 Hopefully the heavy thing not being your wife in this case. 01:38:58.400 --> 01:38:59.360 Question 01:39:01.040 --> 01:39:04.320 twenty. I won't count the question about sex as a question, but 01:39:04.320 --> 01:39:05.600 question twenty. 01:39:05.600 --> 01:39:09.280 I have a close friend looking to get into reading the Bible 01:39:09.280 --> 01:39:10.320 for the first time. 01:39:10.320 --> 01:39:12.240 What order would you recommend? 01:39:12.240 --> 01:39:14.960 Mark, Luke first, Acts, then some letters. 01:39:14.960 --> 01:39:18.720 I think that's probably a pretty good way to go about it. 01:39:18.720 --> 01:39:20.240 Part of it depends on 01:39:21.360 --> 01:39:22.560 your friend, right? 01:39:22.560 --> 01:39:24.080 You know your friend better than I do. 01:39:24.080 --> 01:39:26.800 If he's the sort of man who will enjoy Job, then you 01:39:26.800 --> 01:39:29.520 know, by all means read Job, Proverbs. 01:39:29.520 --> 01:39:32.720 For the average person, though, I think 01:39:33.840 --> 01:39:40.400 Luke is probably my general first recommendation for a European, for a 01:39:40.400 --> 01:39:45.440 white man, because it reads more like how we think. 01:39:45.440 --> 01:39:47.760 Unsurprising, Luke being Greek. 01:39:48.160 --> 01:39:53.120 So I think Luke first, then maybe Mark. 01:39:53.120 --> 01:39:59.280 John is more heavily theological, so if your friend has the mind 01:39:59.280 --> 01:40:02.480 for that, he will probably enjoy John. 01:40:02.480 --> 01:40:05.760 I mean, obviously you eventually get around to John, but you could 01:40:05.760 --> 01:40:09.440 recommend John Acts, of course, is also a very good one to 01:40:09.440 --> 01:40:13.120 have early on to learn about how the early church handled things, 01:40:13.120 --> 01:40:15.760 how it spread, some of the history to tie things in in 01:40:15.760 --> 01:40:17.760 a concrete way. 01:40:17.760 --> 01:40:18.400 And then 01:40:19.360 --> 01:40:25.840 definitely Genesis should be in your top handful, top five, probably, top 01:40:25.920 --> 01:40:28.480 five, top six. 01:40:28.480 --> 01:40:32.880 Because Genesis is going to give you a grounding in the history 01:40:33.040 --> 01:40:36.240 and you're going to start seeing echoes in the New Testament of 01:40:36.240 --> 01:40:38.000 things that take place in the Old Testament. 01:40:38.640 --> 01:40:43.120 And that's an important part of the Christian faith, is recognizing that 01:40:43.120 --> 01:40:47.120 continuity exists and that God has been consistent over a course of 01:40:47.120 --> 01:40:48.480 many generations. 01:40:48.480 --> 01:40:54.640 And then of course, to answer the theological questions, Romans, and if 01:40:54.800 --> 01:40:58.800 your friend is the kind of man who's going to enjoy John, 01:40:58.800 --> 01:41:00.160 then Hebrews. 01:41:00.160 --> 01:41:04.640 Right. Get around to Revelation whenever you get around to it. 01:41:04.640 --> 01:41:07.600 Guys go off the rails, revelation, so it's not ever going to 01:41:07.600 --> 01:41:09.680 be in my top recommendations. 01:41:26.000 --> 01:41:31.360 Someone asked about the stone choir intro theme and if it changed. 01:41:31.360 --> 01:41:36.240 If it did that was not intentional. 01:41:36.240 --> 01:41:42.400 So if that changed, it would probably be when I changed 01:41:44.240 --> 01:41:46.960 I think I may have edited 01:41:48.160 --> 01:41:52.720 the really early episodes initially in GarageBand and then switched to Logic 01:41:52.720 --> 01:41:55.440 Pro. But those two 01:41:57.040 --> 01:42:00.720 dogs should be totally compatible, so I don't know why that would 01:42:00.720 --> 01:42:05.040 change. So if that changed, good ear. 01:42:05.040 --> 01:42:06.640 I don't have perfect pitch. 01:42:06.640 --> 01:42:09.280 So at least I don't think I have perfect pitch. 01:42:09.280 --> 01:42:10.560 I've never tested myself for it. 01:42:10.560 --> 01:42:11.760 I don't believe I do. 01:42:11.760 --> 01:42:15.840 So if you notice something that I didn't notice, well done. 01:42:15.840 --> 01:42:17.360 But I did not do it intentionally. 01:42:17.360 --> 01:42:19.920 I was not it was not an Easter egg. 01:42:19.920 --> 01:42:20.240 So 01:42:26.560 --> 01:42:29.920 Okay, I think I will go with one more question for this 01:42:29.920 --> 01:42:33.200 episode and then call it an evening so you can all as 01:42:33.200 --> 01:42:35.680 well get to your weekends. 01:42:37.920 --> 01:42:40.560 I will have to pick a question that is about someone I 01:42:40.560 --> 01:42:44.160 know because I scrolled to a question and gave me a name 01:42:44.160 --> 01:42:48.080 of someone I do not know. 01:42:48.080 --> 01:42:49.280 Let's see. 01:42:56.320 --> 01:42:58.800 I am not German slash Nordic. 01:42:58.800 --> 01:43:01.600 How can I feel like I'm not LARPing by joining a Lutheran 01:43:01.600 --> 01:43:04.880 church? I am Iberian and Irish and agree with the Book of 01:43:04.880 --> 01:43:11.280 Concord, but I feel like I'm LARPing because my ancestors weren't Lutheran. 01:43:11.280 --> 01:43:13.680 I don't think that the problem there 01:43:14.640 --> 01:43:17.680 is that your ancestors weren't Lutheran. 01:43:17.680 --> 01:43:19.280 So, and I'm going to 01:43:20.240 --> 01:43:22.000 two different lines here. 01:43:22.000 --> 01:43:24.320 One is the theology, right? 01:43:24.640 --> 01:43:29.600 We all should agree on theology because the theology is a statement 01:43:29.600 --> 01:43:32.000 of truths about the Christian faith. 01:43:32.000 --> 01:43:34.800 It's a statement of the tenets of the Christian faith and an 01:43:34.800 --> 01:43:36.960 explanation of them. 01:43:36.960 --> 01:43:40.800 We should all agree on that because in so far as we 01:43:40.800 --> 01:43:44.080 are correct about them, we should all want to be correct. 01:43:44.080 --> 01:43:45.920 And I believe Lutheranism is correct. 01:43:45.920 --> 01:43:49.440 You say you agree with the book of Concord, that's going to 01:43:49.440 --> 01:43:51.040 be a great step in the right direction. 01:43:51.040 --> 01:43:52.960 We agree on that On that. 01:43:52.960 --> 01:43:58.240 The other aspect of this though is insofar as praxis is concerned, 01:43:58.240 --> 01:44:02.160 so as opposed to sort of theology is the theory, right? 01:44:02.160 --> 01:44:05.920 Doctrine's the theory, what you do in church and how you live 01:44:05.920 --> 01:44:09.280 out your Christian life is the praxis. 01:44:09.280 --> 01:44:11.520 That's going to have some similarities. 01:44:11.520 --> 01:44:12.960 We're all going to pray. 01:44:12.960 --> 01:44:14.880 We're all going to sing in church. 01:44:14.880 --> 01:44:17.920 I guess hearkening back to the question about the Lystadians, they don't 01:44:17.840 --> 01:44:20.160 use instruments I like instruments. 01:44:20.160 --> 01:44:21.760 Lutherans always use them. 01:44:21.760 --> 01:44:24.800 I'm sure you agree on that. 01:44:24.800 --> 01:44:29.040 These things, and many like them, are going to be similar across 01:44:29.040 --> 01:44:31.600 denominations, right? 01:44:31.600 --> 01:44:32.000 So So 01:44:33.920 --> 01:44:35.680 that is good. 01:44:35.680 --> 01:44:37.280 We should have some similarities. 01:44:37.280 --> 01:44:39.280 We're worshiping the same God. 01:44:39.280 --> 01:44:41.600 We're all Christians. 01:44:41.600 --> 01:44:44.320 But we're not racially identical. 01:44:44.320 --> 01:44:46.960 We're not racially interchangeable. 01:44:46.960 --> 01:44:49.360 And there's nothing wrong with that. 01:44:49.360 --> 01:44:52.720 The Irish should not worship in the same way as the Germans. 01:44:52.720 --> 01:44:55.840 The British are not going to worship in the same way as 01:44:55.840 --> 01:44:56.800 the Germans. 01:44:56.800 --> 01:45:01.040 And you can get differences that are even more significant, right? 01:45:01.040 --> 01:45:04.240 The Russians are not going to worship in the same way as 01:45:04.240 --> 01:45:05.200 the Spanish. 01:45:05.200 --> 01:45:08.240 The Spanish won't worship in the same way as the Japanese. 01:45:08.240 --> 01:45:09.760 There's nothing wrong with that. 01:45:09.760 --> 01:45:14.160 There's going to be an ethnic, a racial, a national expression of 01:45:14.160 --> 01:45:19.680 Christianity. As long as you maintain the right doctrine and that core 01:45:19.680 --> 01:45:23.120 of reverence, I don't think you should be completely irreverent in church. 01:45:23.120 --> 01:45:26.560 church, but different levels of that, right? 01:45:26.560 --> 01:45:30.320 Germans are going to be a little more rule bound, as it 01:45:30.320 --> 01:45:34.400 were. The expressions are going to be different, and I think that's 01:45:34.400 --> 01:45:35.120 a good thing. 01:45:35.120 --> 01:45:38.000 God wanted diversity in this world. 01:45:38.000 --> 01:45:40.400 Diversity is not a dirty word. 01:45:40.400 --> 01:45:44.560 Diversity is a good thing that God wanted in its place. 01:45:44.560 --> 01:45:49.040 The problem is when you have it mixed up in a way 01:45:49.040 --> 01:45:50.960 that destroys what God actually wanted. 01:45:50.960 --> 01:45:53.680 You can think of it like invasive species, right? 01:45:53.680 --> 01:45:56.960 There is a diversity of life on this planet, but if you 01:45:56.960 --> 01:45:59.520 have a species that's supposed to be in one place and it's 01:45:59.520 --> 01:46:03.440 in another, it's going to be destructive to that environment because it 01:46:03.440 --> 01:46:04.480 shouldn't be there. 01:46:04.480 --> 01:46:07.200 Or it'll get destroyed by the environment, which is actually the better 01:46:07.200 --> 01:46:08.480 outcome. So 01:46:09.440 --> 01:46:12.400 there's nothing wrong with having these different expressions. 01:46:12.400 --> 01:46:18.400 I wish that there were a significant Lutheran church in Ireland and 01:46:18.400 --> 01:46:23.520 in Spain and in Italy, and I wish that those were respectively 01:46:23.520 --> 01:46:26.560 Irish, Spanish, and Italian, that's how it should be. 01:46:26.560 --> 01:46:26.960 I don't want 01:46:27.840 --> 01:46:32.560 the Irish to take the German Lutheran Church, transplant it into Ireland, 01:46:32.560 --> 01:46:35.520 and then go to church on Sunday and pretend they're German. 01:46:35.520 --> 01:46:36.960 That's absurd. 01:46:36.960 --> 01:46:40.240 I want them to be faithful Christians. 01:46:40.240 --> 01:46:43.440 It happens to be, I believe that is the Lutheran expression of 01:46:43.440 --> 01:46:49.120 Christianity, and so doctrinally and theologically I want them to be essentially 01:46:49.120 --> 01:46:53.440 identical to the Germans, but not with regard to the praxis, because 01:46:53.440 --> 01:46:55.120 I want them to be Irish Christians. 01:46:55.200 --> 01:46:59.280 The same as I want Americans to be American Christians, not French 01:46:59.280 --> 01:47:01.280 Christians, or British Christians. 01:47:01.280 --> 01:47:05.040 We're going to express things in similar ways because those are our 01:47:05.040 --> 01:47:09.520 cousins. But they will be distinct still because they're different from us, 01:47:09.520 --> 01:47:11.600 we're different from them. 01:47:11.600 --> 01:47:16.560 So it's not a LARP to join a Lutheran church because you're 01:47:16.560 --> 01:47:21.200 not joining it because oh it's German or oh it's Nordic, right? 01:47:21.200 --> 01:47:23.760 The Nordics weren't originally Lutheran either. 01:47:23.760 --> 01:47:25.680 Lutheranism had to spread there. 01:47:25.680 --> 01:47:27.920 And you could even think back all the way to the beginnings 01:47:27.920 --> 01:47:33.200 of Christianity in you know Greece and in Rome, right, for us 01:47:33.360 --> 01:47:40.560 Europeans. It didn't start off with the Germans, the Germanics being Christian. 01:47:40.560 --> 01:47:43.600 We had to be re Christianized, and the Celts had to be 01:47:43.600 --> 01:47:46.960 re Christianized, and the Slavs had to be re Christianized. 01:47:46.960 --> 01:47:50.400 In fact, they had to have an alphabet given to them by 01:47:50.400 --> 01:47:53.840 Christians in order to spread the word for them, right? 01:47:54.160 --> 01:47:58.800 So you're not LARPing as a Lutheran. 01:47:58.800 --> 01:48:03.920 You're just being an Irish and Spanish in this case, Lutheran. 01:48:03.920 --> 01:48:07.680 You're being what you are, but adhering to what you have been 01:48:07.680 --> 01:48:12.160 convinced is the actual true statement of the Christian faith. 01:48:12.160 --> 01:48:15.760 So don't pretend you're a German because you're not. 01:48:15.760 --> 01:48:18.000 Don't pretend you're Swedish because you're not. 01:48:18.000 --> 01:48:23.920 But being Lutheran is not inconsistent with being whatever you happen to 01:48:23.920 --> 01:48:26.080 be. This is the same sort of thing that I get to 01:48:26.080 --> 01:48:26.320 explain 01:48:27.200 --> 01:48:31.280 to the ones who will listen anyway, neo pagans and some others, 01:48:31.280 --> 01:48:36.320 right? It's not inconsistent to be a German and a Christian. 01:48:36.320 --> 01:48:40.320 It's not inconsistent to be an American and a Christian. 01:48:40.320 --> 01:48:45.200 The inconsistency would be pretending you're a Jew, which you're not. 01:48:45.200 --> 01:48:46.560 And you know what? 01:48:46.560 --> 01:48:49.520 The one thing that above all certainly destroys a Jew is when 01:48:49.520 --> 01:48:51.520 he becomes a Christian. 01:48:51.520 --> 01:48:55.200 Granted, I don't think that that really happens these days, as some 01:48:55.200 --> 01:48:58.640 of my more recent posts on X certainly indicate. 01:48:58.640 --> 01:49:03.920 But there's nothing wrong with being a member of the denomination, the 01:49:03.920 --> 01:49:09.520 tradition of Christianity that you believe is consonant with scripture, even if 01:49:09.520 --> 01:49:15.120 it is something that has been ethnically something slightly different from you, 01:49:15.120 --> 01:49:19.520 right? And in this case, yes it's different, but it's not a 01:49:19.840 --> 01:49:20.800 world of difference. 01:49:20.800 --> 01:49:23.680 It's not like I'm saying, you know, you're Ugandan and now you 01:49:23.680 --> 01:49:26.640 have to behave exactly like a German and worship exactly like a 01:49:26.640 --> 01:49:29.520 German and build your churches exactly like a Saxon, right? 01:49:29.520 --> 01:49:31.600 That that's absurd. 01:49:31.600 --> 01:49:33.760 So it's not a LARP. 01:49:33.760 --> 01:49:38.000 What you're doing is you are acting out your faith as you 01:49:38.000 --> 01:49:40.480 have been convinced of the truth by the book of Concord, which 01:49:40.480 --> 01:49:42.720 is why I recommend people read it, because you know what, go 01:49:42.720 --> 01:49:43.680 argue with those men. 01:49:43.680 --> 01:49:45.200 Don't believe me, argue with them. 01:49:45.200 --> 01:49:47.920 See if see if what they say agrees with scripture. 01:49:47.920 --> 01:49:49.760 If it doesn't, great. 01:49:49.760 --> 01:49:53.120 If you don't believe it agrees, then find what you think agrees 01:49:53.120 --> 01:49:53.920 with scripture. 01:49:53.920 --> 01:49:57.600 But if you believe it agrees with scripture, then become a Lutheran. 01:49:57.600 --> 01:49:59.840 It may be that you have to have a home church for 01:49:59.840 --> 01:50:04.000 a period of time, and that's true in Lutheran lands, historically Lutheran 01:50:04.000 --> 01:50:07.360 lands, as well as those that have not historically had a Lutheran 01:50:07.360 --> 01:50:10.240 church, because there are so many faithless churches these days. 01:50:10.240 --> 01:50:13.920 And as I've gone over before in other episodes, there's nothing wrong 01:50:13.920 --> 01:50:15.280 with having a home church. 01:50:15.280 --> 01:50:19.200 A home church will many times be the best option around. 01:50:19.200 --> 01:50:21.520 That's how the church started out. 01:50:21.520 --> 01:50:23.120 There's nothing wrong with going back to that. 01:50:23.120 --> 01:50:24.240 It's unfortunate we have to. 01:50:24.240 --> 01:50:26.560 It'd be better if we had the cathedrals still. 01:50:26.560 --> 01:50:30.160 But until they're faithful, it's better to have a small faithful church 01:50:30.160 --> 01:50:32.320 than a large faithless one. 01:50:32.320 --> 01:50:34.800 So no, it's in short not LARPing. 01:50:34.800 --> 01:50:36.400 There's nothing wrong with it. 01:50:36.400 --> 01:50:39.040 Just be an Irish Lutheran. 01:50:39.040 --> 01:50:41.440 I'm an American Lutheran. 01:50:41.440 --> 01:50:46.400 Nothing inconsistent whatsoever. 01:50:46.400 --> 01:50:46.960 So I think that 01:50:47.920 --> 01:50:51.360 is it for this week. 01:50:51.360 --> 01:50:55.520 I will note down any questions I did not get to. 01:50:55.520 --> 01:50:59.520 And as always, if I do not get to your question, if 01:50:59.520 --> 01:51:02.080 you put something in chat or elsewhere. 01:51:02.080 --> 01:51:05.600 I believe this chat is giving me all of my messages, but 01:51:05.600 --> 01:51:06.160 it might not. 01:51:06.160 --> 01:51:09.920 It's a plug-in and you know there's concatenation and things. 01:51:09.920 --> 01:51:11.920 If I have your question. 01:51:12.640 --> 01:51:17.440 I will put it into the growing thread on Omniphora of the 01:51:17.440 --> 01:51:19.280 pending questions that I have. 01:51:19.280 --> 01:51:23.440 If you do not see it there, please go ahead and submit 01:51:23.440 --> 01:51:28.560 your question on Omniphora or you can submit it via Telegram or 01:51:28.560 --> 01:51:31.120 X. I am more likely to notice it on the forum. 01:51:31.120 --> 01:51:32.720 I try to get to those first. 01:51:32.720 --> 01:51:35.120 That's what I went through for the first handful of questions for 01:51:35.120 --> 01:51:37.440 this episode and for previous ones as well. 01:51:37.440 --> 01:51:40.400 That is the preferred way because it is easier for me and 01:51:40.400 --> 01:51:43.360 easier for people in the future to search. 01:51:43.360 --> 01:51:47.040 But that is it for this week. 01:51:47.040 --> 01:51:49.920 Thank you for those who submitted the questions and thank you for 01:51:49.920 --> 01:51:55.120 those who listened to the stream always appreciate that and for those 01:51:55.120 --> 01:51:58.240 who listen for audio only if you prefer audio only or you 01:51:58.240 --> 01:52:01.440 just want it for your collection whatever it happens to be maybe 01:52:01.440 --> 01:52:05.680 your digital pack rat if you are so inclined, the audio is 01:52:05.680 --> 01:52:10.560 put out slightly higher quality audio when the recording goes well anyway. 01:52:10.560 --> 01:52:13.440 I try to put that out in the day two, three after 01:52:13.440 --> 01:52:14.640 the episode. 01:52:14.640 --> 01:52:17.680 You can subscribe to that via the RSS feed and on my 01:52:17.680 --> 01:52:22.000 website coreyjmoller.com just click on the podcast link. 01:52:22.000 --> 01:52:24.160 And that will be it for me this week. 01:52:24.160 --> 01:52:27.280 I hope you all have a great weekend and God bless you 01:52:27.440 --> 01:52:29.040 and go to church on Sunday. 01:52:29.040 --> 01:52:32.560 I will see you next week, 01:52:44.320 --> 01:52:44.560 we'll be