WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.520 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:40.720 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:41.600 Mahler. 00:00:41.600 --> 00:00:44.080 And I'm still woe. 00:00:44.080 --> 00:00:48.320 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing loyalty. 00:00:48.320 --> 00:00:51.840 A few weeks ago we did an episode on honor and betrayal, 00:00:51.840 --> 00:00:54.080 and it was really functionally about betrayal. 00:00:54.080 --> 00:00:58.800 And various ways that treason either occurs or isn't present. 00:00:58.800 --> 00:01:01.840 Last week we did an episode on honor and shame. 00:01:02.080 --> 00:01:05.280 This week is really gonna be about honor and loyalty. 00:01:05.280 --> 00:01:10.960 And in some ways, betrayal and loyalty are really opposite directions of 00:01:10.960 --> 00:01:12.320 the same coin. 00:01:12.320 --> 00:01:15.520 What we're doing this week is nothing that has anything to do 00:01:15.520 --> 00:01:17.040 with binding consciences. 00:01:17.040 --> 00:01:19.920 This is basically a get out of jail free card. 00:01:19.920 --> 00:01:21.200 This is a permission slip. 00:01:21.200 --> 00:01:24.480 We're going to focus specifically on all the places where there is 00:01:24.480 --> 00:01:28.080 no duty of loyalty because that's really important too. 00:01:28.080 --> 00:01:32.480 We understand as honest, decent men, that loyalty is an important thing. 00:01:32.640 --> 00:01:33.760 You should be loyal. 00:01:33.760 --> 00:01:37.680 Like that's a compliment to say that someone is loyal about anything. 00:01:37.680 --> 00:01:40.560 And it's not an abuse of the word to sort of use 00:01:40.560 --> 00:01:44.000 it casually, to say you're a loyal listener of Stone Choir or 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:48.320 you're a loyal customer of wherever you buy your bread, it's perfectly 00:01:48.320 --> 00:01:53.200 fine. The distinction that we're making today is it's really kind of 00:01:53.200 --> 00:01:54.880 an ontological one. 00:01:54.880 --> 00:01:56.000 There are specific 00:01:56.880 --> 00:02:01.680 natural conditions where there is a duty to loyalty. 00:02:01.680 --> 00:02:04.080 And absent those conditions, there's no duty. 00:02:04.080 --> 00:02:06.320 And so even though there are things that we call loyalty, like 00:02:06.320 --> 00:02:10.400 listening some whatever podcast as a loyal listener, doesn't mean there's any 00:02:10.400 --> 00:02:11.440 duty to do so. 00:02:11.440 --> 00:02:14.720 You are free to stop listening at any time and you're not 00:02:14.720 --> 00:02:16.320 disloyal for doing so. 00:02:16.320 --> 00:02:20.560 If your favorite shopping center tells you they mess up the parking 00:02:20.560 --> 00:02:22.400 lot and you can never find a spot or you always get 00:02:22.400 --> 00:02:23.520 dinged or something. 00:02:23.520 --> 00:02:26.480 You can shop somewhere else and you're not disloyal. 00:02:26.480 --> 00:02:27.840 So it just doesn't apply. 00:02:27.840 --> 00:02:30.240 And that's the reason we're doing this episode because there's a lot 00:02:30.240 --> 00:02:35.520 of discussion, especially as men are looking at the institutions that they've 00:02:35.520 --> 00:02:38.320 trusted in the past and men that they've trusted in the past 00:02:38.480 --> 00:02:42.320 as leaders, as you know, guys who have good ideas that seem 00:02:42.320 --> 00:02:46.880 to be pointing the way correctly, there's usually some notion that I 00:02:46.880 --> 00:02:48.400 should be loyal to that guy. 00:02:48.400 --> 00:02:51.680 I should be loyal to this group, to this institution, to this 00:02:51.680 --> 00:02:53.760 brand, whatever it is. 00:02:53.760 --> 00:02:56.800 What we want to get across today is that simply does not 00:02:56.800 --> 00:03:00.480 apply. I don't ever want to hear someone say I'm loyal to 00:03:00.480 --> 00:03:01.440 Stone Choir. 00:03:01.440 --> 00:03:02.800 That's not a thing. 00:03:02.800 --> 00:03:03.840 It's a podcast. 00:03:03.840 --> 00:03:05.200 It's a show. 00:03:05.200 --> 00:03:09.760 The second that we say something that's stupid, you have no duty 00:03:09.760 --> 00:03:10.880 to agree with it. 00:03:10.880 --> 00:03:12.800 You're not disloyal if you don't. 00:03:12.800 --> 00:03:16.480 Now it's our duty as someone who's trying to influence people not 00:03:16.480 --> 00:03:20.080 to get things wrong, but our duty is fundamentally to God. 00:03:20.080 --> 00:03:22.640 Like it's not you know, we feel like we have a duty 00:03:22.640 --> 00:03:25.520 to our listeners, and it's not that we're casual, but no one 00:03:25.520 --> 00:03:28.320 has a duty to listen or not listen or anything like it 00:03:28.400 --> 00:03:29.360 just doesn't apply. 00:03:29.360 --> 00:03:32.880 It's a completely separate realm of concept. 00:03:32.880 --> 00:03:36.000 Which is why it was funny when we picked the subject over 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:38.400 the weekend and I went back and looked, I saw that we 00:03:38.400 --> 00:03:40.960 had recently done honor and betrayal and I thought, am I having 00:03:40.960 --> 00:03:41.680 a brain fart? 00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:43.840 Like, did we already talk about loyalty? 00:03:43.840 --> 00:03:44.800 And I forgot. 00:03:44.800 --> 00:03:48.320 Yesterday I re-listened to the entire betrayal episode to make sure that 00:03:48.320 --> 00:03:50.720 I wasn't just you know losing my mind. 00:03:50.720 --> 00:03:54.320 And thankfully that entire episode is really about betrayal and when that 00:03:54.320 --> 00:03:56.320 applies or doesn't apply. 00:03:56.320 --> 00:04:00.560 When we're talking about when man has some sort of actual affirmative 00:04:00.720 --> 00:04:04.960 duty to be loyal, obviously the flip side of that is betrayal, 00:04:04.960 --> 00:04:09.200 but there are lots of places, including very important places, where you 00:04:09.200 --> 00:04:11.840 don't have a duty to be loyal. 00:04:11.840 --> 00:04:14.400 You might be described as being loyal, but you don't have a 00:04:14.400 --> 00:04:18.960 duty. And so not to beat a dead horse, but it's really 00:04:18.960 --> 00:04:21.200 important to understand this distinction. 00:04:21.200 --> 00:04:25.280 It's fine for you to be loyal to whatever you like, understanding 00:04:25.280 --> 00:04:28.160 that that's an expression of preference or affinity. 00:04:28.160 --> 00:04:32.000 I think some of the best examples are things like your church 00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:35.520 denomination, or even perhaps your congregation. 00:04:35.520 --> 00:04:39.200 You should be, you know, a loyal member of your congregation, but 00:04:39.200 --> 00:04:41.200 your loyalty there is to God. 00:04:41.200 --> 00:04:45.600 Yeah, you have a community with those people, but if the deal 00:04:45.600 --> 00:04:50.160 changes, if the doctrine changes, if there's something that you find impermissible 00:04:50.400 --> 00:04:54.720 that you find to be intolerable, you're not being disloyal by going 00:04:54.720 --> 00:04:55.520 somewhere else. 00:04:55.520 --> 00:04:59.680 You're not being disloyal by saying this thing that I once dearly 00:04:59.680 --> 00:05:02.800 loved is not the thing that I loved anymore. 00:05:02.800 --> 00:05:07.760 And so it's important to acknowledge that because there's we're always gonna 00:05:07.760 --> 00:05:09.840 have a sense that we're being disloyal. 00:05:09.840 --> 00:05:13.520 If we went down one path and realized it doesn't work anymore. 00:05:13.520 --> 00:05:16.880 Like you said, this is a permission slip for you to narrowly 00:05:16.880 --> 00:05:20.160 define the places where you have a duty to be loyal and 00:05:20.160 --> 00:05:23.040 to freely set aside the rest, which is not to say be 00:05:23.040 --> 00:05:24.720 fickle in the slightest. 00:05:24.720 --> 00:05:27.760 The fact that you don't have a duty to loyalty in no 00:05:27.760 --> 00:05:31.680 way suggests that you become mercurial, that just at the drop of 00:05:31.680 --> 00:05:33.200 the hat, you're like, okay, I'm out of here. 00:05:33.200 --> 00:05:34.240 I don't like this anymore. 00:05:34.240 --> 00:05:36.400 That's childish and immature and unstable. 00:05:36.400 --> 00:05:37.760 It's not healthy. 00:05:37.760 --> 00:05:40.240 We're certainly not encouraging that. 00:05:40.400 --> 00:05:43.680 Again, when you focus specifically on duty, which is a part of 00:05:43.680 --> 00:05:47.600 honor, so I think we'll probably title this episode Honor and Loyalty 00:05:47.680 --> 00:05:50.400 just because it's turned out that we were inadvertently doing kind of 00:05:50.400 --> 00:05:55.040 an honor series with different facets of either positive duties or things 00:05:55.040 --> 00:05:58.640 that are kind of excluded from what is an obligation. 00:05:58.640 --> 00:06:01.360 When you realize that you don't have to be loyal to something 00:06:01.360 --> 00:06:04.400 where the rules have changed, where the nature of the thing has 00:06:04.400 --> 00:06:10.160 changed, uh you are free to make intelligent, honorable decisions about what 00:06:10.160 --> 00:06:11.600 you do next as a man. 00:06:11.600 --> 00:06:14.160 You know, and again, I point to listening to Stone Choir because 00:06:14.160 --> 00:06:15.680 it's such a trivial case. 00:06:15.680 --> 00:06:16.880 It's just a podcast. 00:06:16.880 --> 00:06:20.400 That's the least interesting thing I can give as an example. 00:06:20.400 --> 00:06:21.680 And so I think it's a really good one. 00:06:21.680 --> 00:06:24.320 Because it draws the floor for like no one can ever say 00:06:24.320 --> 00:06:25.280 you're disloyal. 00:06:25.520 --> 00:06:26.080 It's stupid. 00:06:26.080 --> 00:06:27.520 It's not even a thing. 00:06:27.520 --> 00:06:30.160 And yeah, it's fine to say that you loyally listen every week. 00:06:30.160 --> 00:06:31.440 We appreciate those who do. 00:06:31.440 --> 00:06:34.880 Incidentally, if you do, please leave a five star rating on Apple 00:06:34.880 --> 00:06:36.320 Podcasts and Spotify. 00:06:36.320 --> 00:06:39.040 We're getting brigaded lately by people who hate us. 00:06:39.040 --> 00:06:41.680 If you'd like to help, only about three or four percent of 00:06:41.680 --> 00:06:44.480 our audience is actually left a rating, chip in. 00:06:44.560 --> 00:06:47.200 If you want to be a loyal listener, give us five stars. 00:06:47.200 --> 00:06:48.480 You don't have to say anything. 00:06:48.480 --> 00:06:50.240 But if you don't, you're not disloyal. 00:06:50.240 --> 00:06:51.360 Like that's a request. 00:06:51.360 --> 00:06:53.680 It means nothing if someone doesn't want to do it. 00:06:53.920 --> 00:06:56.880 That distinction is crucial as we're looking at all these things in 00:06:56.880 --> 00:06:57.280 our lives. 00:06:57.280 --> 00:07:01.120 And again, you know, church is on a lot of people's minds. 00:07:01.120 --> 00:07:02.720 Politics is another thing. 00:07:02.720 --> 00:07:06.480 Like the all these areas where human beings are interacting, where we 00:07:06.480 --> 00:07:11.840 have elements of social cohesion, where we have organizations that are erected 00:07:11.840 --> 00:07:13.680 for specific purposes. 00:07:13.680 --> 00:07:17.840 It's fine to say I'm loyal to whatever organization to the extent 00:07:17.840 --> 00:07:20.400 that they continue to fulfill their duty. 00:07:20.400 --> 00:07:23.840 As soon as they stop doing faithfully the thing that they were 00:07:23.840 --> 00:07:27.600 established for, you don't have to be loyal to them anymore. 00:07:27.600 --> 00:07:30.880 Now, again, that doesn't mean you just pop smoke and vanish. 00:07:30.880 --> 00:07:33.680 You know, if you were loyal to the purpose for which the 00:07:33.680 --> 00:07:38.800 an organization was created, it's important to manifest that loyalty, that loyal 00:07:38.800 --> 00:07:40.560 intention by sticking with it. 00:07:40.560 --> 00:07:42.000 Like try to write the ship. 00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:44.720 You know, the second one thing goes wrong, you don't just say, 00:07:44.720 --> 00:07:45.280 I'm out of here. 00:07:45.280 --> 00:07:46.000 This is stupid. 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:47.040 It's I'm done. 00:07:47.040 --> 00:07:48.080 You try to fix it. 00:07:48.080 --> 00:07:50.640 If it was worth being a part of, it was worth fighting 00:07:50.640 --> 00:07:54.800 for and working on, it's worth defending even when things are starting 00:07:54.800 --> 00:07:56.000 to go awry. 00:07:56.000 --> 00:07:59.120 At some point, many things, it's like, you know what? 00:07:59.520 --> 00:08:02.000 Sometimes a house just becomes a teardown. 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:04.400 You know, maybe maintenance was deferred. 00:08:04.400 --> 00:08:05.760 Yeah, that's the euphemism. 00:08:05.760 --> 00:08:06.880 Deferred maintenance. 00:08:06.880 --> 00:08:09.200 Maybe things have just been let go for so long. 00:08:09.200 --> 00:08:12.640 The only way to remediate the situation is to tear the thing 00:08:12.640 --> 00:08:15.360 down, or maybe just to tear it down to the studs, and 00:08:15.360 --> 00:08:20.880 everything else has to go because it can't be repaired. 00:08:20.880 --> 00:08:23.840 The notion of loyalty has to be very carefully guarded 00:08:24.720 --> 00:08:26.400 when we're making it a rule. 00:08:26.400 --> 00:08:29.200 It's fine for it to be a principle, if it's an honorable 00:08:29.360 --> 00:08:31.760 principle, for men to be loyal to things that they like and 00:08:31.760 --> 00:08:33.040 have an affinity for. 00:08:33.040 --> 00:08:36.880 But it cannot become a moral rule except in the few narrow 00:08:36.880 --> 00:08:40.240 cases we're gonna talk about today where we have a positive obligation 00:08:40.240 --> 00:08:41.120 to do so. 00:08:41.120 --> 00:08:43.680 The rest of the time it's just an expression of preference. 00:08:43.680 --> 00:08:45.920 And so today in this what's probably going to be a very 00:08:45.920 --> 00:08:47.360 short episode, we'll see. 00:08:47.360 --> 00:08:48.560 You can see the runtime. 00:08:48.560 --> 00:08:49.760 I don't want this to be too long. 00:08:49.760 --> 00:08:52.960 You know, initially when we started Stone Choir, we were thinking episodes 00:08:52.960 --> 00:08:53.920 would be about an hour. 00:08:53.920 --> 00:08:56.640 And turned out that almost all of them are two hours, but 00:08:56.640 --> 00:09:00.800 largely that's because we bite off topics that typically take that long. 00:09:00.800 --> 00:09:02.800 So if this runs a lot shorter, that's fine. 00:09:02.800 --> 00:09:04.080 We're not shortchanging you. 00:09:04.080 --> 00:09:09.120 Because like I said, we've touched on different aspects of this loyalty 00:09:09.120 --> 00:09:10.640 bundle of ideas. 00:09:10.640 --> 00:09:14.000 And today we're just carving out the one portion that's a permission 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:15.600 slip. There's a whole bunch of stuff. 00:09:15.600 --> 00:09:19.040 Almost everything in your life you don't actually have to be loyal 00:09:19.040 --> 00:09:20.960 to in a rote sense. 00:09:20.960 --> 00:09:22.800 It's good to have affinity. 00:09:22.800 --> 00:09:27.040 It is not good to feel morally bound to something that's going 00:09:27.040 --> 00:09:29.760 down the tubes because it's no longer what you thought it was 00:09:29.760 --> 00:09:31.520 in the first place. 00:09:31.920 --> 00:09:32.000 So 00:09:32.160 --> 00:09:37.760 as Woe said, loyalty and honor are very closely related concepts, but 00:09:37.760 --> 00:09:40.080 they are not identical. 00:09:40.080 --> 00:09:44.000 And the reason they aren't identical is that loyalty is part of 00:09:44.000 --> 00:09:47.280 honor, but it is not the totality of it. 00:09:47.280 --> 00:09:50.800 But to speak specifically on the issue of loyalty, and as well 00:09:50.960 --> 00:09:58.080 mentioned, there are certain entities to whom to which you owe undisputed 00:09:58.320 --> 00:10:00.400 and unconditional loyalty. 00:10:00.400 --> 00:10:02.320 There are really only two of them. 00:10:02.320 --> 00:10:06.160 That would be God and your nation. 00:10:06.160 --> 00:10:09.760 You owe God unconditional loyalty, period. 00:10:09.760 --> 00:10:12.800 In the case of God, this is very easy because God does 00:10:12.800 --> 00:10:13.840 not change. 00:10:13.840 --> 00:10:18.720 And so the consideration, or the set of considerations, when it comes 00:10:18.720 --> 00:10:25.440 to other entities, so say your employer or your country, those can 00:10:25.440 --> 00:10:31.360 change. And so that duty of loyalty is absent. 00:10:31.360 --> 00:10:33.680 It does not exist in those cases. 00:10:33.920 --> 00:10:37.680 because the entity itself can change. 00:10:37.680 --> 00:10:41.200 Again, God does not change, that consideration is not present in the 00:10:41.200 --> 00:10:42.240 case of God. 00:10:42.240 --> 00:10:44.800 Your nation also really does not change. 00:10:44.800 --> 00:10:49.520 Your nation is something to which you owe loyalty, period. 00:10:49.520 --> 00:10:55.440 So even if your nation really betrays you, treats you very poorly, 00:10:55.440 --> 00:10:58.400 that does not entitle you to go over to the enemy and 00:10:58.400 --> 00:11:01.840 betray your nation, you would still in fact be a traitor in 00:11:01.840 --> 00:11:03.040 that case. 00:11:03.040 --> 00:11:08.560 But with virtually everything else, there are some conditions. 00:11:08.560 --> 00:11:13.040 The loyalty owed is conditional or really entirely absent in some cases. 00:11:13.200 --> 00:11:16.560 It's not a matter of loyalty, except in the sort of minor 00:11:16.560 --> 00:11:20.320 sense of you prefer this kind of bread, or this is your 00:11:20.320 --> 00:11:23.680 favorite restaurant, and so you're a loyal customer. 00:11:23.680 --> 00:11:26.400 It's not wrong to say you're a loyal customer, as well was 00:11:26.560 --> 00:11:31.120 saying, but it is loyalty used in a different sense. 00:11:31.120 --> 00:11:35.920 And so a rank below God and nation, as it were, would 00:11:35.920 --> 00:11:38.400 be your spouse and your family. 00:11:38.800 --> 00:11:44.320 You do owe a very strong kind of loyalty to your spouse 00:11:44.320 --> 00:11:46.240 and to your family. 00:11:46.240 --> 00:11:51.920 But it is not entirely unconditional, because, as scripture says, you can 00:11:51.920 --> 00:11:56.320 divorce your spouse for infidelity, so there is at least one condition 00:11:56.320 --> 00:12:00.240 there, and of course there's the issue of betrayal and such. 00:12:00.240 --> 00:12:03.840 But by and large, you owe a duty of loyalty to your 00:12:03.840 --> 00:12:04.480 spouse and to your 00:12:05.360 --> 00:12:10.160 family, with that sort of narrow exception when there's a serious betrayal 00:12:10.160 --> 00:12:13.680 by the other party by the other side. 00:12:13.680 --> 00:12:17.840 And then the step below that would basically be everything else. 00:12:17.840 --> 00:12:20.880 Do you owe a duty of loyalty to your employer? 00:12:20.880 --> 00:12:22.400 To some degree, yes. 00:12:22.400 --> 00:12:24.960 But is it the same as what you owe to your family 00:12:24.960 --> 00:12:25.920 or your nation? 00:12:25.920 --> 00:12:27.280 Absolutely not. 00:12:27.280 --> 00:12:31.040 And can that duty of loyalty, that minor duty of loyalty be 00:12:31.040 --> 00:12:33.440 destroyed. Very much so. 00:12:33.440 --> 00:12:38.240 If your employer changes the nature of the relationship, the terms of 00:12:38.240 --> 00:12:39.440 your employment. 00:12:39.440 --> 00:12:43.120 It may very well destroy whatever minor duty you have, because of 00:12:43.120 --> 00:12:47.120 course you're still not permitted to just betray your employer. 00:12:47.120 --> 00:12:50.080 In some cases, as we mentioned in a previous episode, that used 00:12:50.080 --> 00:12:53.840 to be a petty form, a minor form of treason, under certain 00:12:53.840 --> 00:12:58.640 circumstances. The more obvious case of that would be your country or 00:12:58.640 --> 00:12:59.840 your king. 00:12:59.840 --> 00:13:02.000 Do you owe a duty of loyalty? 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:04.960 Absolutely. Is it unconditional? 00:13:04.960 --> 00:13:06.640 Absolutely not. 00:13:06.640 --> 00:13:09.520 And we will get into that more in a future episode, as 00:13:09.520 --> 00:13:10.960 we've said previously. 00:13:10.960 --> 00:13:15.120 We will eventually go over the Magdeburg Confession, which deals with that 00:13:15.120 --> 00:13:18.800 loyalty that is owed and sort of the scope of it, the 00:13:18.800 --> 00:13:24.320 limits of it with regard to country or with regard to king. 00:13:24.320 --> 00:13:27.760 One way that you can sort of think about this is that 00:13:28.640 --> 00:13:34.000 you essentially don't owe a duty of loyalty in the unconditional or 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:38.320 the strong sense, to any sort of corporate entity. 00:13:38.320 --> 00:13:40.800 Your employer is a corporate entity. 00:13:40.800 --> 00:13:46.000 Your church, in so far as it is you know, a corporation, 00:13:46.000 --> 00:13:49.840 a separate entity from just the people, you don't owe the same 00:13:49.840 --> 00:13:53.280 sort of loyalty to that that you would owe to again your 00:13:53.280 --> 00:13:58.400 family, or your nation, or certainly to God. 00:13:58.400 --> 00:14:00.640 Now we should draw a distinction, though, between 00:14:01.520 --> 00:14:05.680 the individuals, the men, women, and children who make up your congregation 00:14:05.760 --> 00:14:07.840 and the congregation itself. 00:14:07.840 --> 00:14:14.080 If the congregation goes astray, if the congregation adopts and starts to 00:14:14.080 --> 00:14:16.080 teach false doctrine. 00:14:16.080 --> 00:14:19.200 You do not have a duty of loyalty to stay in that 00:14:19.200 --> 00:14:24.800 congregation. Yes, you should probably fight for it and try to overturn 00:14:24.800 --> 00:14:28.000 those errors to return them to the true past True path, but 00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:30.960 you do not have a duty of loyalty to that congregation, to 00:14:30.960 --> 00:14:33.120 that corporate entity itself. 00:14:33.120 --> 00:14:36.320 You have a duty of loyalty still to the members of the 00:14:36.320 --> 00:14:39.920 congregation. So you should tell them that they are going down a 00:14:39.920 --> 00:14:43.040 false path, that they need to turn from that error. 00:14:43.040 --> 00:14:46.080 But you again do not have a duty to stay in that 00:14:46.080 --> 00:14:49.040 congregation because the terms have changed. 00:14:49.040 --> 00:14:52.800 The thing itself to which you had some kind of loyalty at 00:14:52.800 --> 00:14:55.600 one point has changed. 00:14:55.600 --> 00:14:58.960 That is equivalent to, say, the case of your favorite restaurant. 00:14:58.960 --> 00:15:02.480 If your favorite restaurant stops making the food that you like, say 00:15:02.560 --> 00:15:05.680 your favorite restaurant's an Italian place, and suddenly one day they start 00:15:05.680 --> 00:15:07.920 making only sushi. 00:15:07.920 --> 00:15:11.840 If you don't like sushi, you have no duty to keep going 00:15:11.840 --> 00:15:13.040 to that restaurant. 00:15:13.040 --> 00:15:14.960 Even if they continue making your favorite food. 00:15:14.960 --> 00:15:16.080 You don't actually have a duty. 00:15:16.080 --> 00:15:18.960 You don't have a duty of loyalty to continue going to that 00:15:18.960 --> 00:15:21.760 restaurant, to continue patronizing that restaurant. 00:15:21.760 --> 00:15:24.000 It is a fundamentally different thing. 00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:27.600 You can be a loyal customer, and perhaps even in some cases 00:15:27.680 --> 00:15:29.760 and to some degree, that's an admirable thing. 00:15:29.760 --> 00:15:32.960 There's something to be said for consistency, for being sort of a 00:15:32.960 --> 00:15:38.720 stalwart part of your local economy, of your town, of your city. 00:15:38.720 --> 00:15:41.920 But it is not a loyalty that is owed. 00:15:41.920 --> 00:15:46.160 And so it's important to assess these sorts of relationships and what 00:15:46.160 --> 00:15:50.320 kind of relationship any given connection is. 00:15:50.320 --> 00:15:53.440 And so we all recognize this to some degree because we all 00:15:53.440 --> 00:15:55.920 know that you owe your spouse a duty of loyalty and that 00:15:55.920 --> 00:15:59.120 is distinct from what you owe to a friend? 00:15:59.120 --> 00:16:02.400 Do you owe loyalty to certainly a longtime friend? 00:16:02.400 --> 00:16:03.360 Of course. 00:16:03.360 --> 00:16:05.680 Is it different from what you owe to your spouse? 00:16:05.680 --> 00:16:08.320 Yes. Is that different from what you owe to God? 00:16:08.320 --> 00:16:13.760 Yes. So if someone tries to argue or tries to guilt or 00:16:13.760 --> 00:16:19.360 shame you into doing something because they say you're being disloyal, assess 00:16:19.360 --> 00:16:22.240 the kind of relationship that is in question. 00:16:22.240 --> 00:16:25.600 Is this the sort of relationship to which you owe a duty 00:16:25.600 --> 00:16:26.400 of loyalty? 00:16:26.400 --> 00:16:29.920 And if so, what kind of duty of loyalty is it? 00:16:29.920 --> 00:16:34.080 Because they are not univocal, they are not equivalent. 00:16:34.080 --> 00:16:36.720 There are different kinds, different types of loyalty 00:16:37.600 --> 00:16:42.800 that are owed to various different kinds of relationships. 00:16:42.800 --> 00:16:47.760 So don't let someone just bully you into remaining loyal by using 00:16:47.760 --> 00:16:48.640 that term. 00:16:48.800 --> 00:16:51.840 Because it may very well be that there is no duty of 00:16:51.840 --> 00:16:56.320 loyalty, or the duty of loyalty no longer exists because of what 00:16:56.320 --> 00:16:58.320 the other party has done. 00:16:58.960 --> 00:16:59.040 I 00:16:59.280 --> 00:17:02.080 looked up the etymology a little because I realized that I had 00:17:02.080 --> 00:17:07.600 no idea And found it very interesting that loyal comes into English 00:17:07.600 --> 00:17:12.000 through old French and it was originally derived from the Latin word 00:17:12.240 --> 00:17:14.720 that we get legal from. 00:17:14.720 --> 00:17:19.680 So loyal and legal, originally, like etymologically, the root is basically the 00:17:19.680 --> 00:17:20.560 same thing. 00:17:20.560 --> 00:17:22.960 And that's pretty much what we're saying here today. 00:17:22.960 --> 00:17:26.880 When you very narrowly talk about a duty of loyalty, you're talking 00:17:26.880 --> 00:17:29.920 about what is effectively a legal obligation. 00:17:29.920 --> 00:17:34.160 So loyal legal is the same kind of pair as royal and 00:17:34.160 --> 00:17:36.960 regal. They work the same way in terms of how they came 00:17:36.960 --> 00:17:39.120 into the English language. 00:17:39.200 --> 00:17:42.080 I think we kind of intrinsically understand this to this day. 00:17:42.080 --> 00:17:45.440 You know, one of the most typical examples of using loyal in 00:17:45.440 --> 00:17:49.600 a sentence would be He was a loyal subject of the crown. 00:17:49.920 --> 00:17:54.880 You've heard that on many period pieces for years, loyal subject of 00:17:54.880 --> 00:17:55.760 the crown. 00:17:55.920 --> 00:17:59.920 Subject of the crown is really the binding key there. 00:17:59.920 --> 00:18:01.040 That's the duty. 00:18:01.040 --> 00:18:02.960 That's where the law comes in. 00:18:02.960 --> 00:18:05.040 Someone is a subject of the crown, how? 00:18:05.040 --> 00:18:06.320 Because he was born there. 00:18:06.320 --> 00:18:10.400 He was born as, you know, an Englishman or whatever. 00:18:10.400 --> 00:18:15.040 And so to call him a loyal Englishman, a loyal subject, is 00:18:15.280 --> 00:18:20.160 a compliment, but it's also simply recognizing the duty that exists before 00:18:20.160 --> 00:18:21.120 the man even shows up. 00:18:21.920 --> 00:18:24.880 So you can either be a loyal subject or you can be 00:18:24.880 --> 00:18:26.240 a treasonous subject. 00:18:26.240 --> 00:18:28.880 You can be a betrayer, which we covered you know a few 00:18:28.880 --> 00:18:29.920 weeks ago. 00:18:29.920 --> 00:18:33.600 The fact that we say that someone is loyal is simply acknowledging 00:18:33.680 --> 00:18:37.040 in that context, they're doing what they're obligated to do. 00:18:37.040 --> 00:18:39.440 And so that's really what this is all about. 00:18:39.440 --> 00:18:43.120 Is there an absolute positive obligation to do something? 00:18:43.120 --> 00:18:45.600 And then when someone does that, you would say that he was 00:18:45.600 --> 00:18:47.600 loyally carrying out his duties. 00:18:47.600 --> 00:18:49.760 When it's a duty, loyalty attaches. 00:18:49.760 --> 00:18:52.800 When it's not a duty, when there's not a legal obligation, which 00:18:52.800 --> 00:18:56.480 includes a moral obligation, we're not just talking about man made laws. 00:18:56.480 --> 00:18:58.880 We're talking about something where you have to do it. 00:18:58.880 --> 00:19:01.920 You have to be loyal to your wife as a husband. 00:19:01.920 --> 00:19:05.520 And Corey gave the example of infidelity. 00:19:05.520 --> 00:19:09.680 The reason that infidelity terminates a marriage or can be viewed to 00:19:09.680 --> 00:19:12.320 terminate a marriage is that functionally it has. 00:19:12.320 --> 00:19:16.560 Someone who has committed adultery in a marriage has married someone else, 00:19:16.560 --> 00:19:22.000 not legally, but physically and in principle they have. 00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:26.960 And so the option to divorce in that case recognizes as we 00:19:26.960 --> 00:19:30.320 discussed in the episode about this, it recognizes the fact that the 00:19:30.320 --> 00:19:32.240 bond was already broken. 00:19:32.240 --> 00:19:36.800 And so the disloyalty in that particular case is not in the 00:19:36.880 --> 00:19:42.080 you know the aggrieved party choosing not to resume the marriage, the 00:19:42.080 --> 00:19:45.360 disloyalty was on the part of the one who cheated, the one 00:19:45.360 --> 00:19:48.400 who left the marriage to join with someone else. 00:19:48.400 --> 00:19:48.720 So 00:19:49.680 --> 00:19:52.800 really the exceptions are going to be ontological. 00:19:52.800 --> 00:19:55.920 Even in a case where it can be broken, and a husband 00:19:55.920 --> 00:19:57.280 and wife, they're one. 00:19:57.280 --> 00:19:59.840 That union is a real thing. 00:19:59.840 --> 00:20:02.560 The fact that it can be broken doesn't make it less real. 00:20:02.560 --> 00:20:04.480 It makes it more precious. 00:20:04.720 --> 00:20:08.560 The fact that it's potentially fragile is all the more reason to 00:20:08.560 --> 00:20:11.280 guard it in as many ways as possible. 00:20:11.280 --> 00:20:14.960 There's a duty of loyalty that's present there that's just not present 00:20:14.960 --> 00:20:15.600 for others. 00:20:15.600 --> 00:20:18.560 The loyalty that we have to family and to nation, you know, 00:20:18.560 --> 00:20:23.200 as Corey was describing some of the conditionality, it's important to understand 00:20:23.200 --> 00:20:25.040 who's breaking the rules. 00:20:25.040 --> 00:20:29.920 I think one of the few cases where outside of those bonds 00:20:29.920 --> 00:20:30.400 that are 00:20:31.680 --> 00:20:33.200 very fundamental. 00:20:33.200 --> 00:20:36.320 I think that there are cases where there are bonds of loyalty 00:20:36.320 --> 00:20:42.480 that are formed usually in things like combat situations, where men are 00:20:42.480 --> 00:20:46.800 thrown so closely together that there is a very real bond that 00:20:46.800 --> 00:20:50.160 is formed between them that exceeds even the bonds that they may 00:20:50.160 --> 00:20:51.440 have with their own family. 00:20:51.440 --> 00:20:54.880 And I think that that is very real in a sense that's 00:20:54.880 --> 00:20:58.240 not understandable to someone who hasn't been in those situations. 00:20:58.240 --> 00:21:02.240 And, you know, it's typically just inside those men's hearts and their 00:21:02.240 --> 00:21:05.120 minds, but the loyalty that they would have to someone that they 00:21:05.280 --> 00:21:09.680 gone through something difficult with, you know, decades prior, it's very common 00:21:10.080 --> 00:21:13.120 for such a man to still feel a a duty of loyalty 00:21:13.120 --> 00:21:14.960 to those men, no matter where they go in life. 00:21:14.960 --> 00:21:17.680 He might not have talked to somebody for forty years, but if 00:21:17.680 --> 00:21:20.560 he realized that one of those guys was in trouble, he would 00:21:20.560 --> 00:21:24.320 probably still feel a duty of loyalty to him because something has 00:21:24.320 --> 00:21:28.240 been, you know, terms like forged and fire use and I've never 00:21:28.240 --> 00:21:30.960 been there, so I'm not gonna try to abuse them, but I'm 00:21:30.960 --> 00:21:34.000 acknowledging that there is a real thing that can happen. 00:21:34.000 --> 00:21:36.240 But that's the level that we're talking about. 00:21:36.240 --> 00:21:40.320 There's no bond forged and fire when you prefer one baker over 00:21:40.320 --> 00:21:44.080 another, or you prefer one TV show or one podcast over another. 00:21:44.080 --> 00:21:45.040 There's nothing there. 00:21:45.040 --> 00:21:47.280 It's not remotely the same thing. 00:21:47.280 --> 00:21:47.600 And 00:21:48.480 --> 00:21:51.840 it's important that we think about this when someone wants to appeal 00:21:51.840 --> 00:21:55.840 to your loyalty, or if you yourself feel like you're being disloyal. 00:21:55.840 --> 00:21:58.000 The reason we're doing this episode is we're seeing a lot of 00:21:58.000 --> 00:22:01.280 conversations play out right now in real time, you know, over the 00:22:01.280 --> 00:22:04.880 last few weeks where guys are like, Well, I was on team 00:22:04.880 --> 00:22:09.040 A and then this fight occurred and I want to be loyal 00:22:09.040 --> 00:22:12.240 to team A, but I'm not really happy with the direction they're 00:22:12.240 --> 00:22:14.720 going. The details don't matter. 00:22:14.720 --> 00:22:18.560 Understand in your own life and in your context and with the 00:22:18.800 --> 00:22:22.160 particulars that you're dealing with, do you have a duty of loyalty? 00:22:22.160 --> 00:22:25.760 Because if you don't, again, not an excuse to be fickle, but 00:22:25.760 --> 00:22:26.800 what do you do? 00:22:26.800 --> 00:22:29.680 We have to cue our consciences. 00:22:29.680 --> 00:22:32.880 We have to form our consciences correctly and we have to obey 00:22:32.880 --> 00:22:38.160 them. And I don't want men to be feeling that they're conscience 00:22:38.320 --> 00:22:44.400 bound and therefore duty bound to show loyalty to organizations or men 00:22:44.720 --> 00:22:50.080 or whatever that is no longer fulfilling the purpose that originally attracted 00:22:50.080 --> 00:22:53.520 them. Because once again, this is fundamentally most of what we're talking 00:22:53.840 --> 00:22:57.600 about, like the huge carve out here is about affinity. 00:22:57.600 --> 00:22:59.520 You don't have affinity for God. 00:22:59.520 --> 00:23:01.840 You don't get to have affinity for your nation. 00:23:01.840 --> 00:23:03.680 You don't get to have affinity for your family. 00:23:03.680 --> 00:23:04.720 There's there. 00:23:04.720 --> 00:23:05.600 It's immutable. 00:23:06.240 --> 00:23:10.400 You get to have affinity for things that can come and go. 00:23:10.400 --> 00:23:12.560 Even things like doctrine. 00:23:12.560 --> 00:23:15.120 Now I'm not saying the doctrine is not unknowable. 00:23:15.120 --> 00:23:20.160 You should absolutely seek pure doctrine and you should stick to it. 00:23:20.160 --> 00:23:23.440 But the holding of a doctrine in the case of the Christian 00:23:23.440 --> 00:23:29.280 faith and the finding where that doctrine is taught faithfully, it's very 00:23:29.280 --> 00:23:33.920 closely related questions, but it's not exactly the same question because a 00:23:33.920 --> 00:23:38.880 denomination that has a historical root for whatever confession doesn't get to 00:23:38.880 --> 00:23:42.800 just de facto claim this is ours, this belongs to us, this 00:23:42.800 --> 00:23:44.320 is the only place to get it. 00:23:44.320 --> 00:23:48.240 That's one of the fundamental conceits of the Roman Catholic Church. 00:23:48.240 --> 00:23:48.880 We're it. 00:23:48.880 --> 00:23:50.320 You can't go anywhere else. 00:23:50.320 --> 00:23:54.640 And eventually enough guys realized actually they're not it. 00:23:54.640 --> 00:23:59.280 They've lost the plot significantly and they're not gonna fix it and 00:23:59.280 --> 00:24:02.640 the only way that we can actually have sound doctrine is to 00:24:02.640 --> 00:24:03.920 go somewhere else. 00:24:03.920 --> 00:24:05.680 And that was a disaster. 00:24:05.680 --> 00:24:08.720 It was disaster, but it wasn't disloyal on the part of the 00:24:08.720 --> 00:24:10.960 men who left in the Reformation. 00:24:10.960 --> 00:24:14.480 The disloyalty was to God on the part of those who had 00:24:14.800 --> 00:24:16.080 bungled everything. 00:24:16.080 --> 00:24:19.280 They had taken sound doctrine that had been held at one point, 00:24:19.280 --> 00:24:22.960 centuries earlier, and thrown it away and replaced it with something that 00:24:22.960 --> 00:24:23.920 was false. 00:24:24.160 --> 00:24:28.560 And so the question is always to whom is the loyalty due 00:24:28.720 --> 00:24:30.880 if it comes into play at all? 00:24:30.880 --> 00:24:34.800 So you have a duty to God, period. 00:24:34.800 --> 00:24:37.680 You have a duty to have loyalty to God. 00:24:37.680 --> 00:24:40.480 That includes seeking sound doctrine. 00:24:40.480 --> 00:24:44.000 But no one church body has a monopoly on the claim of 00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:44.640 sound doctrine. 00:24:44.800 --> 00:24:47.360 I'm not saying they're all the same, not saying that they all 00:24:47.360 --> 00:24:50.400 have, you know, different versions of the truth, you know what I'm 00:24:50.400 --> 00:24:53.440 talking. That's not what I mean at all. 00:24:53.440 --> 00:24:58.000 What we are saying here is that what you believe to be 00:24:58.000 --> 00:25:03.280 scripturally true, what you believe you've been faithfully taught, should bind your 00:25:03.280 --> 00:25:07.920 conscience. To the extent that a church body is teaching and exemplifying 00:25:07.920 --> 00:25:10.240 those beliefs, stick with them. 00:25:10.240 --> 00:25:16.880 Don't get mad because somebody gets something wrong and there's ongoing discussion. 00:25:16.960 --> 00:25:20.640 Again, it's ironic for us to point to the Declaration of Independence 00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:24.400 given what we think about much of the Enlightenment, but the phrase 00:25:24.400 --> 00:25:28.400 in there talking about the long train of usurpations and good men 00:25:28.400 --> 00:25:31.840 putting up with things as long as they can is entirely sound 00:25:31.840 --> 00:25:35.920 wisdom. Even if something is going wrong, again you don't immediately pop 00:25:35.920 --> 00:25:37.920 smoke. You don't say, I don't like this, I don't like that 00:25:37.920 --> 00:25:39.600 guy, I'm leaving. 00:25:39.600 --> 00:25:43.760 If the place, you know, if your church body, if your neighborhood 00:25:44.000 --> 00:25:48.000 was good a few years ago, and then things started going downhill, 00:25:48.000 --> 00:25:51.840 step one shouldn't be, I'm out of here. 00:25:51.840 --> 00:25:54.880 If you fight for what is right along the way, it won't 00:25:54.800 --> 00:25:55.600 get to that point. 00:25:55.600 --> 00:25:57.440 Yeah, as much as it's in your control. 00:25:57.440 --> 00:25:59.200 Some of these things are inexorable. 00:25:59.200 --> 00:26:01.040 Some of these things are not in our control. 00:26:01.040 --> 00:26:02.640 That's much of the problem. 00:26:02.640 --> 00:26:07.600 As these things devolve over time, as we lose parts of sound 00:26:07.600 --> 00:26:11.120 doctrine or new false doctrines are introduced through the back door and 00:26:11.120 --> 00:26:12.640 I said, oh this isn't doctrine at all. 00:26:12.640 --> 00:26:15.520 This is just this is obvious and everyone's thought this, even though 00:26:15.520 --> 00:26:17.680 no one before the 1960s believed it. 00:26:17.680 --> 00:26:21.280 There's a long list of those we've gone through in past episodes. 00:26:21.280 --> 00:26:25.440 When those things start creeping in, those errors start creeping in, where 00:26:25.440 --> 00:26:27.040 does your loyalty lie? 00:26:27.040 --> 00:26:29.520 You do have loyalty, but it must be to God. 00:26:29.520 --> 00:26:33.840 And if a church body, if your congregation, if your denomination is 00:26:33.840 --> 00:26:36.960 losing the plot, if they're changing, even while they're gonna be swearing 00:26:36.960 --> 00:26:38.560 up and down, nothing's changed. 00:26:38.560 --> 00:26:40.000 We're more faithful than ever. 00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:42.240 We're more faithful than those guys fifty years ago. 00:26:42.240 --> 00:26:44.480 Okay, red flag. 00:26:44.480 --> 00:26:46.240 Somebody was wrong at some point. 00:26:46.240 --> 00:26:47.200 Maybe it's now. 00:26:47.200 --> 00:26:48.720 That'd be great if it were true. 00:26:48.720 --> 00:26:50.400 But it's probably before. 00:26:50.400 --> 00:26:52.960 Just the way everything else is going in the world. 00:26:52.960 --> 00:26:55.760 We almost exclusively see devolution. 00:26:55.760 --> 00:26:59.440 So when someone says, Yeah, I'm breaking with history, I'm I'm breaking 00:26:59.440 --> 00:27:01.760 with my ancestors from a hundred years ago. 00:27:01.760 --> 00:27:03.520 It's probably for the worse. 00:27:03.520 --> 00:27:06.640 If you knew nothing else, except that some guy stands up in 00:27:06.640 --> 00:27:09.920 current year and says a hundred years ago, they believe something else, 00:27:09.920 --> 00:27:11.440 we're doing something better. 00:27:11.440 --> 00:27:14.240 If you knew nothing else, you could assume in almost every case 00:27:14.320 --> 00:27:15.920 they're gonna be wrong. 00:27:15.920 --> 00:27:18.960 And that's not an appeal to tradition, it's just a trajectory of 00:27:18.960 --> 00:27:19.680 these things. 00:27:19.680 --> 00:27:21.120 Everything is falling apart. 00:27:21.120 --> 00:27:23.680 There's very little that's being put back together. 00:27:23.680 --> 00:27:26.880 And the guys trying to put things back together are catching most 00:27:26.880 --> 00:27:28.240 of the fire. 00:27:28.240 --> 00:27:30.720 So where's the loyalty owed? 00:27:30.720 --> 00:27:32.720 It's owed to God, it's owed to truth. 00:27:32.720 --> 00:27:34.640 It's not owed to organizations. 00:27:34.640 --> 00:27:37.840 It's not owed to these ephemeral things that are stood up for 00:27:37.840 --> 00:27:41.840 a purpose and one day when they cease to serve that function, 00:27:41.840 --> 00:27:44.480 okay, at some point you do have to leave. 00:27:44.480 --> 00:27:46.480 Maybe, you know, ideally not. 00:27:46.480 --> 00:27:48.720 But if things get so bad, you're like, I can't be here 00:27:48.720 --> 00:27:50.960 anymore. I don't believe what is being taught here. 00:27:50.960 --> 00:27:54.960 We want you to understand that you should in your own understanding 00:27:54.960 --> 00:27:58.560 of scripture and God and everything that's true, that you don't have 00:27:58.560 --> 00:27:59.680 a duty to stick around. 00:27:59.680 --> 00:28:02.160 You don't have to be loyal to something that is no longer 00:28:02.160 --> 00:28:03.360 being loyal to God. 00:28:03.360 --> 00:28:04.400 That's the test. 00:28:04.400 --> 00:28:08.400 And that's why things like sola scriptura are so important, because scripture 00:28:08.400 --> 00:28:09.440 is immovable. 00:28:09.440 --> 00:28:12.000 Scripture is not changing underneath us. 00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:17.840 And so over the centuries as congregations, as denominations, as entire religions 00:28:18.560 --> 00:28:21.600 calling themselves Christianity, come and go. 00:28:21.600 --> 00:28:24.800 They're all gonna claim to have some root in scripture and then 00:28:24.800 --> 00:28:27.760 some of 'em say, but here's the real version, or we've tacked 00:28:27.760 --> 00:28:31.680 on these addenda, here's an entirely separate book that supersedes the first 00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:36.080 one. All those are ways of distracting people from the fact that 00:28:36.400 --> 00:28:41.280 there's a God, we have loyalty to him, anything else, with a 00:28:41.280 --> 00:28:44.080 very precious few exceptions as optional. 00:28:44.080 --> 00:28:47.680 And so when you root your loyalty, the proper sense of loyalty, 00:28:47.680 --> 00:28:51.360 only where it belongs, and those things that are immutable, it gets 00:28:51.360 --> 00:28:54.080 a whole lot easier to understand when do I stick around and 00:28:54.080 --> 00:28:54.960 when do I leave. 00:28:54.960 --> 00:28:57.200 Even if you Even if you used to like guys, if we've 00:28:57.200 --> 00:29:00.320 said in the past, like guys like Doug Wilson, I I know 00:29:00.320 --> 00:29:03.520 a bunch of you have been positively influenced by him in the 00:29:03.520 --> 00:29:06.960 past, not gonna argue in the slightest that you were misled or 00:29:06.960 --> 00:29:09.920 anything. The question is, what is the message that such men have 00:29:10.480 --> 00:29:13.600 today? And this is what they play on. 00:29:13.600 --> 00:29:15.280 I've been around for so long. 00:29:15.280 --> 00:29:17.760 You've been listening to me for so many decades. 00:29:17.760 --> 00:29:19.920 How dare you go do this other thing? 00:29:19.920 --> 00:29:22.000 You can't be disloyal to me. 00:29:22.000 --> 00:29:24.160 Not Not how this works. 00:29:24.160 --> 00:29:26.800 You cannot have loyalty to a man. 00:29:26.800 --> 00:29:28.080 You can't. 00:29:28.160 --> 00:29:29.520 Not in these circumstances. 00:29:29.520 --> 00:29:32.720 There's nothing in play in any of our lives where loyalty to 00:29:32.720 --> 00:29:34.000 a man applies. 00:29:34.000 --> 00:29:35.520 Our loyalty has to be to God. 00:29:35.520 --> 00:29:39.200 And when men step aside from what is in God's word, they're 00:29:39.200 --> 00:29:41.360 inevitably going to begin attacking it. 00:29:41.360 --> 00:29:45.280 And it's going to look for all the world like loyalty, honor, 00:29:45.280 --> 00:29:48.320 betrayal, like these subjects that Subjects that we kind of been filling 00:29:48.480 --> 00:29:52.800 bits and pieces, nooks and crannies of this past year's episodes with 00:29:52.800 --> 00:29:55.120 various aspects of this. 00:29:55.120 --> 00:29:59.040 Don't get confused by habit and affinity. 00:29:59.040 --> 00:30:00.720 You used to like a guy, fine. 00:30:01.040 --> 00:30:03.440 Like, wouldn't even say you made a mistake. 00:30:03.440 --> 00:30:04.240 Don't care. 00:30:04.240 --> 00:30:05.840 What is he doing today? 00:30:05.840 --> 00:30:08.240 It applies as much to us as anybody. 00:30:08.240 --> 00:30:10.880 A man is only as good as his last take. 00:30:10.880 --> 00:30:15.040 If we start saying stuff that's completely insane and wrong and contrary 00:30:15.040 --> 00:30:17.920 to scripture, you should walk away. 00:30:17.920 --> 00:30:20.000 I will never say that you're disloyal for doing so. 00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:23.120 And again, I only point us because it's such a trivial example. 00:30:23.120 --> 00:30:26.400 The examples of men who have set themselves up as pastors who 00:30:26.400 --> 00:30:30.480 have bound consciences with these things, it's a much bigger deal because 00:30:30.480 --> 00:30:34.480 then salvation is hanging in the balance for those who believe that 00:30:34.480 --> 00:30:38.960 these are matters of conscience, that sin is attached if you're disloyal 00:30:38.960 --> 00:30:41.840 to a man, well, no. 00:30:41.840 --> 00:30:44.960 Disloyalty to Jesus Christ is damnable. 00:30:44.960 --> 00:30:48.560 Disloyalty to any other living man, you know almost none of us 00:30:48.560 --> 00:30:51.360 are subjects to a king, and even the kings have no power 00:30:51.360 --> 00:30:53.840 anymore, so it's moot. 00:30:53.840 --> 00:30:57.840 Disloyalty is to God's principles. 00:30:57.840 --> 00:31:00.800 And everything else, either it works or it doesn't. 00:31:00.800 --> 00:31:03.440 And if it doesn't work, you are free to walk away. 00:31:03.440 --> 00:31:04.960 In fact, you must walk away. 00:31:05.280 --> 00:31:08.880 away. That's that's the crucial aspect of this. 00:31:08.880 --> 00:31:12.000 You have to be ready to walk away from something that turns. 00:31:12.000 --> 00:31:14.880 You know, when you buy food at the grocery store, it's fresh, 00:31:14.880 --> 00:31:17.680 it's delicious, but those things have dates on them. 00:31:17.680 --> 00:31:19.600 Sometimes they're called expiration dates. 00:31:19.600 --> 00:31:22.720 I think it's mostly now called freshness dates. 00:31:22.720 --> 00:31:25.920 If you drink from a cardinal milk that's one day past that 00:31:25.920 --> 00:31:27.760 date, it's still going to be fine. 00:31:27.760 --> 00:31:29.760 Probably still tastes okay too. 00:31:29.760 --> 00:31:33.600 If you drink from that cardon a week later, probably starting to 00:31:33.600 --> 00:31:35.280 smell and maybe taste a little off. 00:31:35.280 --> 00:31:38.640 A month later, it's probably actually gonna be getting close to hurting 00:31:38.640 --> 00:31:40.880 you. It's really not gonna make you feel good. 00:31:40.880 --> 00:31:44.160 Is that because the milk is no longer milk and I just 00:31:44.160 --> 00:31:47.360 turned. It was one thing and it was suitable for a purpose 00:31:47.360 --> 00:31:50.560 at that time, and then it turned into something that's no longer 00:31:50.560 --> 00:31:53.840 palatable. Now, men shouldn't be doing this. 00:31:53.840 --> 00:31:56.000 Men shouldn't be souring like milk. 00:31:56.400 --> 00:31:57.440 that's decay, that's bad. 00:31:58.240 --> 00:32:00.560 But we have to acknowledge that it happens. 00:32:00.560 --> 00:32:04.400 Guys start off fine, they're doing a great job, and sometimes they 00:32:04.400 --> 00:32:06.320 go off into the weeds for whatever reason. 00:32:06.320 --> 00:32:07.600 The reasons don't matter. 00:32:07.600 --> 00:32:10.720 The test is are they still consistent with scripture or are they 00:32:11.120 --> 00:32:14.160 adopting the new global religions morys? 00:32:14.160 --> 00:32:18.160 Are they doing things and saying things and fighting for things that 00:32:18.160 --> 00:32:19.920 aren't Christian anymore? 00:32:19.920 --> 00:32:21.440 They're gonna say they're Christian. 00:32:21.440 --> 00:32:23.680 They're gonna say they haven't changed at all. 00:32:23.680 --> 00:32:26.720 That's the difficult part for us who are onlookers. 00:32:26.720 --> 00:32:29.760 How do we determine is this guy still being faithful? 00:32:29.760 --> 00:32:33.280 Again, Protestants should have this easy in the one sense that we 00:32:33.280 --> 00:32:36.320 have scripture, and we can look to history and we can pick 00:32:36.320 --> 00:32:39.840 and choose where people were getting things right and getting things wrong. 00:32:39.840 --> 00:32:42.960 The Catholic Church got many things right for a thousand years. 00:32:42.960 --> 00:32:44.320 They got a lot of stuff right. 00:32:44.320 --> 00:32:45.440 It was Christian. 00:32:45.440 --> 00:32:47.200 It just wasn't entirely Christian. 00:32:47.200 --> 00:32:49.200 And more and more they threw away the things that were good 00:32:49.440 --> 00:32:51.200 and replaced them with things that were bad. 00:32:51.200 --> 00:32:55.520 The Protestant Reformation was not about throwing everything about. 00:32:55.520 --> 00:32:57.600 It was not about throwing everything out. 00:32:57.600 --> 00:33:01.360 It was about removing the cancer that had been growing. 00:33:01.360 --> 00:33:06.000 These discussions and these problems that we face individually as we're looking 00:33:06.000 --> 00:33:09.680 at fights and whatever, you have to understand that if you're not 00:33:09.680 --> 00:33:14.160 excising, if you can't rescue, you know, whatever the patient is, you 00:33:14.160 --> 00:33:15.360 don't have to be loyal to it. 00:33:15.360 --> 00:33:16.800 You're free to walk away. 00:33:16.800 --> 00:33:19.520 And at some point you're obligated to do so. 00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:20.160 To 00:33:20.160 --> 00:33:22.720 make sure that we're clear and to give you a sort of 00:33:22.720 --> 00:33:26.400 framework to help you think about the issue of loyalty and how 00:33:26.400 --> 00:33:29.840 it applies in different circumstances. 00:33:29.840 --> 00:33:33.760 There's essentially a hierarchy with three levels. 00:33:33.760 --> 00:33:35.680 The top is God, of course. 00:33:35.680 --> 00:33:39.680 You owe absolute unconditional loyalty to God. 00:33:40.240 --> 00:33:44.880 God does not change, again, so that's somewhat easier than the other 00:33:44.880 --> 00:33:48.160 levels, the other tiers in the hierarchy as it were. 00:33:48.160 --> 00:33:52.320 Because everything other than God can change, of course. 00:33:52.560 --> 00:33:55.920 The second level is nation and family. 00:33:55.920 --> 00:34:00.320 Now, some will try to argue that you have to place one 00:34:00.320 --> 00:34:03.600 above the other, and often these days people will argue that family 00:34:03.600 --> 00:34:05.200 should come before nation. 00:34:05.200 --> 00:34:07.200 They're really on the same level. 00:34:07.200 --> 00:34:10.320 And to some degree we all recognize this. 00:34:10.320 --> 00:34:14.080 One way in which you can recognize that family does not always 00:34:14.080 --> 00:34:17.280 trump nation, and we know that nation does not always trump family, 00:34:17.280 --> 00:34:19.760 so that basically goes without argument. 00:34:20.560 --> 00:34:25.840 But one way in which nation can trump family is that in 00:34:25.840 --> 00:34:29.600 the event of war, men can be called up to defend the 00:34:29.600 --> 00:34:32.640 nation. That takes them away from their family. 00:34:32.640 --> 00:34:36.400 That takes them away from the duties owed to the family, because 00:34:36.400 --> 00:34:40.560 those owed to the nation, at the very least, in times of 00:34:40.560 --> 00:34:43.920 war, trump the duties owed to family. 00:34:43.920 --> 00:34:48.720 And so sometimes, yes, nation is higher in the hierarchy than family, 00:34:48.720 --> 00:34:50.640 under certain circumstances. 00:34:50.640 --> 00:34:53.360 Some of these things are going to be matters of wisdom because 00:34:53.360 --> 00:34:57.840 that's simply unavoidable in so many of the things that we discuss, 00:34:57.840 --> 00:34:59.440 certainly in this area. 00:34:59.440 --> 00:35:02.640 And then last, of course, is everything else. 00:35:02.640 --> 00:35:08.160 And everything else has that sort of limited or lesser duty of 00:35:08.160 --> 00:35:12.800 loyalty if it is present at all. 00:35:12.800 --> 00:35:17.440 As we've mentioned a number of times, your favorite restaurant or bakery 00:35:17.520 --> 00:35:19.280 or anything like that. 00:35:19.280 --> 00:35:23.920 You can be a loyal customer, you can be a loyal patron, 00:35:23.920 --> 00:35:27.200 but you don't owe a duty of loyalty. 00:35:27.200 --> 00:35:31.200 Because it's simply not the same sort of thing. 00:35:31.200 --> 00:35:36.640 And as Will was mentioning and focusing on, a big part of 00:35:36.640 --> 00:35:38.240 this is change. 00:35:38.480 --> 00:35:42.800 God is unchanging, and so that duty of loyalty is never drawn 00:35:42.800 --> 00:35:44.880 into question with God. 00:35:44.880 --> 00:35:49.280 But men can change, men do change sometimes. 00:35:49.280 --> 00:35:54.000 And if that change is of such a character that he becomes 00:35:54.000 --> 00:35:58.720 different from what he once was in a salient way, then you 00:35:58.720 --> 00:36:02.320 no longer have whatever duty you may once have had to that 00:36:02.320 --> 00:36:03.440 man, because 00:36:04.640 --> 00:36:09.040 there's a distinction here between the duty that you owed to say, 00:36:09.040 --> 00:36:12.960 in the example of a teacher, it's sort of the clearest: a 00:36:12.960 --> 00:36:18.880 man who teaches God's word, you owe a duty both to God's 00:36:18.880 --> 00:36:22.400 word and in some limited sense to that man. 00:36:22.400 --> 00:36:26.320 For instance, with regard to pastors, they are supposed to make their 00:36:26.320 --> 00:36:29.840 living by the gospel, because they are teaching the gospel. 00:36:29.840 --> 00:36:32.960 It also applies to teachers, but in a slightly different way. 00:36:32.960 --> 00:36:35.200 We'll leave that aside for now. 00:36:35.200 --> 00:36:39.840 But you have those two different sorts of loyalty there, the stronger 00:36:39.840 --> 00:36:43.440 one being to God, and so you're loyal because what is being 00:36:43.440 --> 00:36:47.760 taught is true, is consonant with God's word, and you owe a 00:36:47.760 --> 00:36:51.680 duty to the man because he is the one doing that. 00:36:51.680 --> 00:36:55.840 If he starts to teach falsely, then You no longer owe any 00:36:55.840 --> 00:36:57.200 duty to him. 00:36:57.200 --> 00:37:00.800 You owe a duty to God's word, and so in fact, you 00:37:00.800 --> 00:37:04.240 have to abandon and desert that man because what he is doing 00:37:04.240 --> 00:37:06.080 is wicked. 00:37:06.080 --> 00:37:08.160 As Woe said, a man is only as good as his last 00:37:08.800 --> 00:37:12.720 take, and that is certainly true for teachers. 00:37:12.720 --> 00:37:17.920 Teachers of the Word are good as teachers of the Word only 00:37:18.080 --> 00:37:21.520 so long as and only so far as they Because they teach 00:37:21.520 --> 00:37:24.720 the word truthfully and correctly. 00:37:24.720 --> 00:37:29.440 As soon as they stray from that path, they're no longer orthodox 00:37:29.440 --> 00:37:34.640 teachers, they become false teachers, and we are instructed very clearly by 00:37:34.640 --> 00:37:39.760 God's Word not to entertain, not to listen to false teachers. 00:37:39.760 --> 00:37:44.560 And so that duty to God, the loyalty to God, trumps whatever 00:37:44.560 --> 00:37:49.280 you may have had in the past with regard to that teacher. 00:37:49.280 --> 00:37:53.120 And again, it is possible for men to change, and that's why 00:37:53.120 --> 00:37:55.360 we have to be cognizant of these issues. 00:37:55.360 --> 00:37:59.600 It's why we have to pay attention to what men are saying 00:37:59.600 --> 00:38:03.440 today, not just what they've said in the past. 00:38:03.440 --> 00:38:08.560 For instance, if we came out in the future and released an 00:38:08.560 --> 00:38:13.200 episode saying that you should become a neo pagan You should absolutely 00:38:13.200 --> 00:38:15.600 stop listening to this podcast. 00:38:15.600 --> 00:38:19.040 Because we would be false teachers if we were to do that. 00:38:19.040 --> 00:38:22.560 Does that mean that all of the material that we produced in 00:38:22.560 --> 00:38:23.840 the past is wrong? 00:38:23.840 --> 00:38:25.360 Of course not. 00:38:25.600 --> 00:38:30.240 Because Because committing an error in the future does not alter the 00:38:30.240 --> 00:38:33.600 past. That's not how causality works. 00:38:33.600 --> 00:38:38.400 Now, perhaps you would subject the older material to greater scrutiny if 00:38:38.400 --> 00:38:41.760 someone became a false teacher in the future, because you may wonder 00:38:41.920 --> 00:38:45.840 if any of that was hidden in the old stuff. 00:38:45.840 --> 00:38:50.720 But it doesn't necessarily mean that it was, because men can change. 00:38:50.720 --> 00:38:54.480 And so a man who becomes a false teacher, you stop listening 00:38:54.480 --> 00:38:55.120 to him. 00:38:55.120 --> 00:38:59.680 It doesn't mean that whatever relationship you had with that man or 00:38:59.680 --> 00:39:03.040 his teaching in the past was wrongful or was harmful. 00:39:03.040 --> 00:39:07.120 It may in fact have been very beneficial, because apostasy is a 00:39:07.120 --> 00:39:09.280 very real thing. 00:39:09.280 --> 00:39:14.640 There are men who were faithful teachers, perhaps for decades, who even 00:39:14.960 --> 00:39:19.680 preached and taught the word rightly and soundly, and then abandoned the 00:39:19.680 --> 00:39:23.040 faith. They became apostate. 00:39:23.040 --> 00:39:27.120 It doesn't change what they did in the past, but it does 00:39:27.120 --> 00:39:29.920 mean that you can no longer listen to them because they have 00:39:29.920 --> 00:39:31.680 become false teachers. 00:39:31.680 --> 00:39:36.160 And so the duty that you had to that man no longer 00:39:36.160 --> 00:39:40.560 exists. The stronger and higher duty you have to God and His 00:39:40.560 --> 00:39:42.720 Word still exists. 00:39:42.720 --> 00:39:47.120 That is theoretically and should certainly be why you were listening to 00:39:47.120 --> 00:39:49.200 that man in the past. 00:39:49.200 --> 00:39:52.720 It is also why you cannot listen to him in the future. 00:39:52.720 --> 00:39:56.560 And so a teacher who strays from the path again must be 00:39:56.560 --> 00:40:01.200 abandoned and deserted because he has become a false teacher, and your 00:40:01.200 --> 00:40:07.200 duty to God trumps whatever relationship, sentiment, affinity, whatever it is you 00:40:07.200 --> 00:40:09.760 had for that man in the past. 00:40:09.760 --> 00:40:12.960 And we see that happening today. 00:40:12.960 --> 00:40:17.040 And the most common area in which we see that happening, the 00:40:17.040 --> 00:40:20.720 most common way that we see it happening, is when men are 00:40:20.720 --> 00:40:25.920 faced with the decision between what society says is good and right 00:40:26.000 --> 00:40:30.960 and honorable and true and all of these wonderful things, and what 00:40:30.960 --> 00:40:35.360 the Word of God actually says when you read it carefully. 00:40:35.360 --> 00:40:40.160 Many of our past episodes have dealt with these issues. 00:40:40.160 --> 00:40:44.560 So for instance, the modern world says that slavery is a horrible 00:40:44.640 --> 00:40:45.840 wicked sin. 00:40:45.840 --> 00:40:47.040 A horrible evil. 00:40:47.040 --> 00:40:48.080 Something you could never do. 00:40:48.080 --> 00:40:51.680 You can't possibly be a Christian, and support slavery. 00:40:51.680 --> 00:40:58.160 Never mind Saint Paul, and many, many others down through the ages. 00:40:58.160 --> 00:41:02.240 Scripture does not condemn slavery, as we made very clear in the 00:41:02.240 --> 00:41:04.720 episode on slavery. 00:41:04.720 --> 00:41:08.240 And so many men when faced with the choice between saying 00:41:09.760 --> 00:41:15.680 slavery is morally permissible or slavery is evil will choose slavery as 00:41:15.680 --> 00:41:18.880 evil because they do not want to be condemned by the world, 00:41:18.880 --> 00:41:22.000 they don't want to be a social pariah, they do not want 00:41:22.000 --> 00:41:25.680 to stand up and draw fire for saying what God says in 00:41:25.680 --> 00:41:30.000 his word because God does not say that slavery is evil. 00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:33.600 God does not say that slavery is morally impermissible. 00:41:33.600 --> 00:41:35.440 In fact he says the opposite. 00:41:35.440 --> 00:41:39.600 He says it is morally permissible, he even instructs Old Testament Israel 00:41:39.600 --> 00:41:41.600 to take slaves, and then he regulates it. 00:41:42.320 --> 00:41:45.680 God doesn't regulate things that are evil per se. 00:41:45.680 --> 00:41:47.280 He bans them. 00:41:47.280 --> 00:41:51.040 The worship of false gods is evil per se, and so it 00:41:51.040 --> 00:41:52.480 is banned. 00:41:52.480 --> 00:41:57.360 But modern teachers, when faced with that choice, will often choose to 00:41:57.360 --> 00:41:58.640 abandon God. 00:41:58.640 --> 00:42:02.480 And so as Christians, we have to abandon them. 00:42:02.480 --> 00:42:05.600 Yes, we can first rebuke them and try to bring them back 00:42:05.600 --> 00:42:06.880 to the truth. 00:42:06.880 --> 00:42:09.440 But many of them have already made that choice. 00:42:09.440 --> 00:42:12.320 They have decided that they are going to side with the world 00:42:12.480 --> 00:42:16.480 and what the world says is good instead of what God says 00:42:16.480 --> 00:42:17.440 is good. 00:42:17.440 --> 00:42:19.120 They're going to say what the world says is evil 00:42:20.080 --> 00:42:22.160 is the actual sin that matters. 00:42:22.160 --> 00:42:26.160 Instead of the things that God says, No these are sins, these 00:42:26.160 --> 00:42:28.880 are the things you may not do, these are the things of 00:42:28.880 --> 00:42:30.480 which you must repent. 00:42:30.480 --> 00:42:32.880 And what are they doing when they do that? 00:42:32.880 --> 00:42:36.320 When a man tells you that something that is not a sin 00:42:36.480 --> 00:42:41.280 according to God is a sin, he's telling you that his religion 00:42:41.280 --> 00:42:44.560 is not the religion of Scripture, is not the religion of the 00:42:44.560 --> 00:42:45.600 Lord God. 00:42:45.600 --> 00:42:48.720 His God is not the God of the Bible. 00:42:48.720 --> 00:42:50.320 His God is a different God. 00:42:50.320 --> 00:42:53.440 His religion is a different religion. 00:42:53.440 --> 00:42:55.680 Because every religion has sins. 00:42:55.680 --> 00:42:57.680 Every religion has good works. 00:42:58.400 --> 00:43:01.840 If the sins of a religion, which is to say if a 00:43:01.840 --> 00:43:05.600 man tells you something is sin, is not something that is found 00:43:05.600 --> 00:43:08.400 in the Bible, that man is telling you that he is not 00:43:08.400 --> 00:43:09.760 a Christian. 00:43:09.760 --> 00:43:14.800 There are many, many instances of that in our world these days. 00:43:14.800 --> 00:43:16.720 Slavery is just one example. 00:43:16.720 --> 00:43:18.400 Polygyny is another. 00:43:18.400 --> 00:43:22.080 This one makes many uncomfortable when you point out, as we have 00:43:22.080 --> 00:43:27.200 done in previous episodes, that God does not prohibit polygyny. 00:43:27.200 --> 00:43:29.280 A man may have multiple wives. 00:43:29.280 --> 00:43:30.560 Is it advisable? 00:43:30.560 --> 00:43:32.560 No. Is it wise? 00:43:32.880 --> 00:43:34.240 Very seldom. 00:43:34.240 --> 00:43:36.080 Is it something to which one should aspire? 00:43:36.480 --> 00:43:37.920 Absolutely not. 00:43:37.920 --> 00:43:40.560 But is it morally permissible? 00:43:40.560 --> 00:43:47.360 Yes. Very few supposedly Christian teachers are willing to defend that. 00:43:47.360 --> 00:43:51.120 Because it runs counter to what society says. 00:43:51.120 --> 00:43:54.400 The great irony in that case, of course, is that society really 00:43:54.400 --> 00:44:00.560 doesn't believe that, because society is hell bent on maximizing promiscuity. 00:44:00.560 --> 00:44:04.320 Which is really just some sort of serial polygyny that's even less 00:44:04.320 --> 00:44:10.320 committed. It's in fact far worse than just having a harem. 00:44:10.320 --> 00:44:16.720 But modern Christians, so-called, have decided that that's a horrible, egregious sin. 00:44:16.720 --> 00:44:20.480 You can't possibly have more than one wife. 00:44:20.480 --> 00:44:24.400 That is something that is permissible for the Christian prince, or whatever 00:44:24.400 --> 00:44:28.320 the governing authority happens to be, to enshrine in the positive law. 00:44:28.320 --> 00:44:32.080 Because God doesn't say it's required, and he also doesn't say it's 00:44:32.080 --> 00:44:35.600 prohibited, so it is a matter left to wisdom. 00:44:35.600 --> 00:44:39.760 But a Christian teacher, when presented with the very clear word of 00:44:39.760 --> 00:44:44.080 God on the subject, must side with the Word of God. 00:44:44.080 --> 00:44:47.120 If instead of siding with the Word of God he says that 00:44:47.120 --> 00:44:50.800 polygyny is per se sin, he's telling you he has a different 00:44:50.800 --> 00:44:55.280 God. Because according to his God, this thing that Scripture does not 00:44:55.280 --> 00:44:58.240 ban is sin. 00:44:58.240 --> 00:45:01.280 And I could keep giving examples because there are so many of 00:45:01.280 --> 00:45:05.760 them. Obviously racism is one of the biggest ones. 00:45:05.760 --> 00:45:08.000 That's nowhere in Scripture. 00:45:08.320 --> 00:45:11.920 There is no sin of racism in Scripture. 00:45:11.920 --> 00:45:15.760 In fact, Scripture says rather the opposite, because it says if you 00:45:15.760 --> 00:45:20.000 do not provide for your own, you are worse than an unbeliever. 00:45:20.480 --> 00:45:26.240 And yet, when faced with the choice between condemning racism or saying 00:45:26.240 --> 00:45:30.400 that no, that's not a sin, that's modernism, that's Marxism, that's something 00:45:30.400 --> 00:45:34.240 that is alien to scripture and alien to the God of Scripture. 00:45:34.720 --> 00:45:41.760 Most teachers who claim to be Christian will choose to condemn racism. 00:45:41.760 --> 00:45:47.520 We have rampant false teaching and false teachers in the churches in 00:45:47.520 --> 00:45:51.600 the West, which is really the churches in the entire world. 00:45:51.600 --> 00:45:54.080 This is a serious problem. 00:45:54.080 --> 00:45:58.240 And they will try to tell you that you are disloyal or 00:45:58.240 --> 00:46:01.840 dishonorable, or you're not a real Christian, or any of a number 00:46:01.840 --> 00:46:04.880 of other terms, anything they can find to try and bully you 00:46:04.880 --> 00:46:08.720 into changing your position, into trying to yield to what they say 00:46:08.720 --> 00:46:13.200 is wrongful, because they will tell you Tell you these are the 00:46:13.200 --> 00:46:16.960 list of modern sins that you absolutely cannot commit. 00:46:16.960 --> 00:46:20.960 And how dare you compare those to the Word of God? 00:46:20.960 --> 00:46:22.720 But that's exactly what a Christian will do. 00:46:22.720 --> 00:46:25.600 A Christian will look to the Word of God and say, where 00:46:25.600 --> 00:46:27.440 is that in God's Word? 00:46:27.440 --> 00:46:31.920 Where does God's Word say that this thing is per se sin? 00:46:31.920 --> 00:46:35.280 Because if God's word does not say that is per se sin, 00:46:35.280 --> 00:46:37.040 I cannot say it either. 00:46:37.040 --> 00:46:39.680 Because if I say that it is per se sin, when God 00:46:39.680 --> 00:46:45.440 does not say, I am saying that I have a different God. 00:46:45.440 --> 00:46:49.520 Because confessing a sin that is no sin is worship of a 00:46:49.520 --> 00:46:50.720 false God. 00:46:50.720 --> 00:46:54.480 And so when you confess the sin of racism, you are confessing 00:46:54.480 --> 00:46:56.560 a false God. 00:46:56.560 --> 00:47:01.920 If you are faced with a teacher who has taught rightly on 00:47:01.920 --> 00:47:06.400 many subjects, and there are many of these, we could give examples, 00:47:06.400 --> 00:47:09.760 but if you are faced with a teacher who has taught rightly, 00:47:09.760 --> 00:47:13.840 soundly, truthfully, on a number of subjects, even over a course of 00:47:13.840 --> 00:47:20.320 decades, and then when faced with these modern questions today, he sides 00:47:20.320 --> 00:47:22.960 with the world against God. 00:47:22.960 --> 00:47:26.480 You cannot continue to listen to that man. 00:47:26.480 --> 00:47:28.960 It doesn't mean you have to throw out all of his books 00:47:29.040 --> 00:47:31.840 that we're sound on other topics. 00:47:31.840 --> 00:47:35.280 What he has done in the past is not destroyed by what 00:47:35.280 --> 00:47:36.960 he is doing now. 00:47:36.960 --> 00:47:40.560 Except in so far as his reputation is concerned, because of course 00:47:40.640 --> 00:47:43.200 a man can destroy his entire legacy. 00:47:43.200 --> 00:47:50.480 If he says things that are ill-advised or unwise or outright wicked, 00:47:50.480 --> 00:47:53.760 you do not have to destroy the past materials. 00:47:53.760 --> 00:47:56.960 You do not have to be ashamed of the relationship you had 00:47:56.960 --> 00:48:00.320 with the man or those materials in the past. 00:48:00.320 --> 00:48:04.960 But you cannot continue it going forward because your duty of loyalty 00:48:04.960 --> 00:48:11.600 to God trumps whatever relationship, whatever loyalty you have or had with 00:48:11.920 --> 00:48:13.440 that man. 00:48:13.440 --> 00:48:15.600 Because again, men can change. 00:48:15.600 --> 00:48:19.280 And so a teacher who was true can become false. 00:48:19.280 --> 00:48:25.680 If he becomes false, you do not owe a duty to him. 00:48:25.680 --> 00:48:29.680 With the exception, the minor exception, as it were, of the general 00:48:29.680 --> 00:48:33.200 Christian duty that we owe to Christian brothers to rebuke them if 00:48:33.200 --> 00:48:35.120 we are in a position to do so. 00:48:35.120 --> 00:48:38.640 And so if you know this false teacher, this man who's become 00:48:38.640 --> 00:48:42.160 a false teacher personally, absolutely you should go to him and tell 00:48:42.160 --> 00:48:45.040 him what you are saying is wrong. 00:48:45.040 --> 00:48:48.320 You are speaking contrary to the Word of God, you are on 00:48:48.320 --> 00:48:51.760 the path to apostasy, you need to repent. 00:48:51.760 --> 00:48:55.760 If he repents, you've won a brother, and that's great news. 00:48:55.760 --> 00:49:01.040 But with regard to these modern sins so-called, most men when confronted 00:49:01.200 --> 00:49:05.280 will not repent, because they have revealed to you they have a 00:49:05.280 --> 00:49:10.320 different God, and they are going to stick with that religion. 00:49:10.320 --> 00:49:14.880 And so you owe a duty of loyalty to God, to abandon 00:49:14.880 --> 00:49:18.160 them, to cease to listen to them, because they will lead you 00:49:18.160 --> 00:49:22.800 astray, they are false prophets, they are false teachers, they are wolves 00:49:22.800 --> 00:49:26.320 in sheep's clothing, they are dangerous to your soul, and they are 00:49:26.320 --> 00:49:30.800 dangerous to the souls of everyone else who hears them. 00:49:30.800 --> 00:49:35.840 We unfortunately do not currently have a Christian prince who suppresses these 00:49:35.840 --> 00:49:38.720 wolves, who destroys these false teachers. 00:49:38.720 --> 00:49:41.840 If we had that, we would be in much better shape. 00:49:41.840 --> 00:49:43.440 But we do not have that. 00:49:43.440 --> 00:49:46.480 And so the best that we can do today is to condemn 00:49:46.480 --> 00:49:50.080 those false teachers, cease to listen to them, cease to give them 00:49:50.080 --> 00:49:54.240 a platform, certainly don't give them money or support of any kind, 00:49:54.240 --> 00:49:58.800 support truthful teachers instead, because that's the best thing we can do 00:49:58.800 --> 00:50:02.480 at the present juncture, under current conditions. 00:50:03.920 --> 00:50:07.840 The more true teaching we have, and the more men we have 00:50:07.840 --> 00:50:11.760 listening to true teaching, the better off we are. 00:50:11.760 --> 00:50:16.080 But the flip side of that is not listening to false teachers, 00:50:16.080 --> 00:50:20.160 even if they were good teachers in the past. 00:50:21.040 --> 00:50:24.640 As in the case of many of our episodes, as funny as 00:50:24.640 --> 00:50:28.240 it is to say this is really about raising awareness. 00:50:28.960 --> 00:50:31.840 It's something you hear from Beauty Pageant, Queen. 00:50:32.960 --> 00:50:37.680 But raising awareness of the question when should I be loyal? 00:50:37.680 --> 00:50:41.520 When is it not disloyalty for me to say, Yeah, I'm done 00:50:41.520 --> 00:50:44.480 here. There's nothing more for me is vital. 00:50:44.480 --> 00:50:48.080 Particularly because we see so many men who are trying to do 00:50:48.080 --> 00:50:48.960 a better job. 00:50:48.960 --> 00:50:52.880 They're trying to live honorable lives to do that which is honorable. 00:50:52.880 --> 00:50:54.800 And that's completely commendable. 00:50:54.800 --> 00:50:58.720 In this episode, short though it may be, is emphasizing the fact 00:50:58.720 --> 00:51:03.840 that there is in fact not only no dishonor in refusing to 00:51:03.840 --> 00:51:07.360 be loyal to that which doesn't have the duty of loyalty, it 00:51:07.360 --> 00:51:10.320 is dishonorable for you to stick with someone who someone who's leading 00:51:10.320 --> 00:51:12.000 you down a false path. 00:51:12.000 --> 00:51:15.040 And discerning that is the hard part. 00:51:15.040 --> 00:51:18.080 We're all gonna answer to God for everything that we say and 00:51:18.080 --> 00:51:21.520 do. And there's no get out of jail free card for us 00:51:21.520 --> 00:51:24.720 to say, well, I was following the guy that was really popular. 00:51:24.720 --> 00:51:27.360 I I just did what the guy that I liked said. 00:51:27.360 --> 00:51:29.680 Whatever he said, I stuck with it. 00:51:29.680 --> 00:51:32.320 That is not the biblical test. 00:51:32.320 --> 00:51:36.000 That is kind of where the Jews were when Jesus showed up. 00:51:36.000 --> 00:51:38.400 That's where the Pharisees had led them. 00:51:38.400 --> 00:51:42.480 They had invented an entirely new religion that had bits and pieces 00:51:42.480 --> 00:51:45.600 of the old religion, and many were led astray by it. 00:51:45.600 --> 00:51:49.200 And so when Jesus came back and he cleaned house, one of 00:51:49.200 --> 00:51:53.680 the things that he did very dramatically was to divide the people 00:51:53.680 --> 00:51:55.360 from their teachers. 00:51:55.360 --> 00:51:58.960 Was that because he was there to create division and do harm? 00:51:58.960 --> 00:52:01.280 He said he was there to create division. 00:52:01.280 --> 00:52:07.120 But the division because false teachers were sweeping in among the sheep. 00:52:07.120 --> 00:52:10.720 So yes, there must be division where there's false teaching. 00:52:10.720 --> 00:52:14.080 There must be division where the sheep are being harmed. 00:52:14.080 --> 00:52:19.040 And unfortunately for us as sheep, most have no ability to discern 00:52:19.280 --> 00:52:20.640 subtle things. 00:52:20.640 --> 00:52:23.280 And that's why as much as possible we try to point to 00:52:23.280 --> 00:52:24.960 things that are obvious. 00:52:24.960 --> 00:52:28.400 You don't need to have some super IQ to be able to 00:52:28.400 --> 00:52:32.160 figure out when something is a complete break with all of Christian 00:52:32.160 --> 00:52:35.920 history and when you look at the scriptural arguments for and against, 00:52:35.920 --> 00:52:37.920 they don't look at all the same. 00:52:37.920 --> 00:52:41.760 The scriptural arguments on one side are thick, the scriptural arguments on 00:52:41.760 --> 00:52:45.200 the other side are almost always deranged. 00:52:45.200 --> 00:52:48.000 Whatever the topic is, you look at them side by side and 00:52:48.000 --> 00:52:51.760 you're like no one could possibly believe one of these. 00:52:51.760 --> 00:52:54.720 And yet there are teachers who will continue to push the thing 00:52:54.720 --> 00:52:57.920 that is plainly contrary to scripture. 00:52:57.920 --> 00:53:02.400 Everyone not only has a permission slip not to be loyal to 00:53:02.400 --> 00:53:06.160 teachers who are false, we have an obligation, a positive duty to 00:53:06.160 --> 00:53:07.520 God not to do so. 00:53:07.520 --> 00:53:09.520 And that is the honorable act. 00:53:09.520 --> 00:53:14.640 So none of this is about being casual about these matters, about 00:53:14.640 --> 00:53:19.280 being fickle, about being unforgiving or lacking in grace to people who 00:53:19.280 --> 00:53:20.400 make mistakes. 00:53:20.400 --> 00:53:21.280 That's fine. 00:53:21.280 --> 00:53:24.240 I mean it's not fine to make mistakes, especially as a teacher, 00:53:24.240 --> 00:53:26.800 because the consequences are so dire. 00:53:26.800 --> 00:53:29.280 But step one is not, I'm out of here. 00:53:29.280 --> 00:53:32.240 Step one is not, this is evil, get him. 00:53:32.240 --> 00:53:33.120 He's finished. 00:53:33.120 --> 00:53:38.640 Step one is brotherly rebuke to go to someone and say, hey, 00:53:38.640 --> 00:53:40.080 you've done something wrong. 00:53:40.080 --> 00:53:42.080 You've said something wrong. 00:53:42.080 --> 00:53:43.760 Let's get back on the same page. 00:53:43.760 --> 00:53:44.800 And the page is right here. 00:53:44.800 --> 00:53:46.160 It's in the Bible 00:53:47.840 --> 00:53:51.040 The honorable thing to do is to try to hammer those things 00:53:51.040 --> 00:53:55.440 out as Christian men, but the loyalty ultimately is always to God 00:53:55.440 --> 00:54:00.320 alone. In these circumstances, you cannot have loyalty to a denomination. 00:54:00.640 --> 00:54:03.040 You cannot have loyalty to a pastor. 00:54:03.040 --> 00:54:06.160 And that has nothing to do with being fickle, has nothing to 00:54:06.160 --> 00:54:09.760 do with being disrespectful or being suspicious. 00:54:09.760 --> 00:54:13.680 It's saying when an issue arises and you look at the argument 00:54:13.680 --> 00:54:16.640 for and against, you're gonna have to make a decision. 00:54:16.640 --> 00:54:19.840 And your decision has to be based on what God says and 00:54:19.840 --> 00:54:23.680 not the sunk cost of you've been going there for 30 years 00:54:23.760 --> 00:54:26.800 and you know, you don't want to move your membership. 00:54:26.800 --> 00:54:29.040 I don't want to see anybody leaving their churches. 00:54:29.040 --> 00:54:32.400 The purpose of this episode is not to subliminally message to anyone 00:54:32.560 --> 00:54:33.840 you should leave your congregation. 00:54:33.840 --> 00:54:35.040 That's not the point. 00:54:35.040 --> 00:54:38.000 What we're saying is that when these fights arise, when these disagreements 00:54:38.000 --> 00:54:43.440 occur, you have to understand that your positive duty must always be 00:54:43.440 --> 00:54:49.120 to God and where time and inertia and family history have a 00:54:49.120 --> 00:54:52.720 draw, they certainly have an affinity, and it's a shame to lose 00:54:52.720 --> 00:54:54.000 those things. 00:54:54.000 --> 00:54:58.080 It is nevertheless honorable to say for me to be loyal to 00:54:58.080 --> 00:55:01.200 God, for me to be faithful as a Christian, I have to 00:55:01.200 --> 00:55:02.480 be somewhere else. 00:55:02.480 --> 00:55:03.680 I don't wish that for anyone. 00:55:04.480 --> 00:55:07.600 I wish for all of our churches to be faithful and to 00:55:07.600 --> 00:55:11.280 be more faithful over time, not less as so many seem to 00:55:11.280 --> 00:55:15.280 be. But do not let anyone play on your sense of honor 00:55:15.280 --> 00:55:18.240 and your sense of loyalty to say, no, you're stuck here. 00:55:18.240 --> 00:55:20.960 We're doing this new thing now and you're coming along, or else 00:55:20.960 --> 00:55:21.840 you're a traitor. 00:55:21.840 --> 00:55:24.000 We're gonna isolate you. 00:55:24.000 --> 00:55:25.520 That may well happen. 00:55:25.520 --> 00:55:26.960 That often happens. 00:55:27.120 --> 00:55:29.200 Frankly, that's cult behavior. 00:55:29.200 --> 00:55:34.160 When someone is like, well, you've transgressed, you've lost all ties, you 00:55:34.160 --> 00:55:35.680 can't talk to these people anymore. 00:55:35.680 --> 00:55:37.200 They're outcasts. 00:55:37.200 --> 00:55:40.960 Christian duty says to do that when someone is behaving poorly. 00:55:40.960 --> 00:55:45.120 Again, I'm not disputing what's in scripture, but when you pay careful 00:55:45.120 --> 00:55:49.200 attention to when those rules are actually used, they're never used in 00:55:49.200 --> 00:55:50.400 a way that's godly. 00:55:50.400 --> 00:55:53.680 They're never used for things virtually never. 00:55:53.680 --> 00:55:54.480 I shouldn't say never. 00:55:54.480 --> 00:55:56.400 It's not an absolute statement. 00:55:56.400 --> 00:56:01.120 Overwhelmingly, when you see people in denominations that have never had any 00:56:01.120 --> 00:56:06.400 history any modern history of church discipline are suddenly screaming about church 00:56:06.400 --> 00:56:10.560 discipline, Don't think, yeah, church discipline, that's the thing that occurs in 00:56:10.560 --> 00:56:13.920 churches. Ask them where is your history of behaving like this in 00:56:13.920 --> 00:56:14.800 the past? 00:56:14.800 --> 00:56:18.400 Show me the last 20 men that you have treated this way. 00:56:18.400 --> 00:56:20.160 And they won't have a list that long. 00:56:20.160 --> 00:56:23.680 They'll have a list that's very short and very modern and has 00:56:23.680 --> 00:56:27.120 very particular targets that has nothing to do with anything that was 00:56:27.200 --> 00:56:28.880 historical belief of the church. 00:56:28.880 --> 00:56:30.720 Your loyalty must remain to God. 00:56:30.720 --> 00:56:33.600 And it can't be to anyone who behaves in that way. 00:56:33.600 --> 00:56:37.600 It's so easy for us to be tricked and deceived and exploited 00:56:37.600 --> 00:56:39.600 by brand affinity. 00:56:39.600 --> 00:56:42.320 And that has no place in moral matters. 00:56:42.320 --> 00:56:44.320 It's perfectly fine to have an affinity. 00:56:44.320 --> 00:56:47.040 I'm a very loyal customer to all sorts of things. 00:56:47.040 --> 00:56:49.840 If there's a sales guy that I like and trust, I don't 00:56:49.760 --> 00:56:52.400 want to buy from anybody else for whatever it is. 00:56:52.400 --> 00:56:54.240 I want to shop in the same places. 00:56:54.240 --> 00:56:55.760 I want to buy the same stuff. 00:56:55.840 --> 00:56:58.320 Because once I find something that I like, I don't want to 00:56:58.320 --> 00:56:59.040 shop around. 00:56:59.040 --> 00:57:01.040 I want the thing that I like that I know I can 00:57:01.040 --> 00:57:02.720 trust and that's it. 00:57:02.720 --> 00:57:04.880 I am very brand loyal. 00:57:04.880 --> 00:57:07.360 But at the same time, there's no moral duty. 00:57:07.360 --> 00:57:11.200 The moral duty and the use of the word colloquially to describe 00:57:11.200 --> 00:57:14.000 affinity are completely separable. 00:57:14.000 --> 00:57:17.680 And the hard part is that we as men, in these situations 00:57:17.680 --> 00:57:21.840 where tumult is arising because of false teaching, we have to understand 00:57:21.840 --> 00:57:24.800 that the affinity and the duty are separable. 00:57:24.800 --> 00:57:26.960 They're completely separable. 00:57:26.960 --> 00:57:29.280 If you have affinity for something, that's great. 00:57:29.280 --> 00:57:31.440 Stick with it as long as you can. 00:57:31.440 --> 00:57:34.960 But that is a subscription to something that only goes so far 00:57:34.960 --> 00:57:37.920 as it's actually a valid thing. 00:57:37.920 --> 00:57:41.600 When you're betrayed, because God is betrayed, you know, it's not about 00:57:41.600 --> 00:57:45.200 personal betrayal, when you believe that someone was a sound teacher and 00:57:45.200 --> 00:57:48.480 it turns out that he's not, whatever duty you thought that you 00:57:48.480 --> 00:57:52.240 had has ended, because your loyalty was only a matter of affinity 00:57:52.240 --> 00:57:55.520 for the proper teaching to which you actually have duty. 00:57:55.520 --> 00:57:59.040 Again, your duty is always rooted to God in these matters. 00:57:59.040 --> 00:58:01.760 Everything else is best effort. 00:58:01.760 --> 00:58:04.000 Everything else is what is the best case. 00:58:04.000 --> 00:58:07.600 And And that's the blessing of having good teachers who continue to 00:58:07.600 --> 00:58:09.200 deliver their entire lives. 00:58:09.200 --> 00:58:12.880 It's incredibly rare because it's incredibly difficult. 00:58:12.880 --> 00:58:15.680 Most men will fall short in all sorts of ways. 00:58:15.680 --> 00:58:19.360 And seemingly the further some men go along, the worse they get 00:58:19.520 --> 00:58:24.160 because the greater the popularity or influence or whatever, their additional pressures 00:58:24.320 --> 00:58:26.640 that weren't there when they were unknown. 00:58:26.640 --> 00:58:29.920 You as an individual, you as a husband, as a father, with 00:58:29.920 --> 00:58:33.120 a wife and children, with your household, you answer to God for 00:58:33.120 --> 00:58:37.200 that. You answer to God for when they're misled because you let 00:58:37.200 --> 00:58:40.000 unsound influences into their lives. 00:58:40.000 --> 00:58:43.680 So make sure that you're loyal in the right circumstances and make 00:58:43.680 --> 00:58:47.680 sure that you reserve affinity for the things that are morally optional. 00:58:47.680 --> 00:58:50.000 That's the sum total of this episode. 00:58:50.000 --> 00:58:53.200 You don't have a moral obligation to something that's just a matter 00:58:53.200 --> 00:58:54.640 of I like it. 00:58:54.640 --> 00:58:57.920 And when doctrine is involved, when right teaching is involved, that is 00:58:57.920 --> 00:59:00.240 a vertical relationship with God. 00:59:00.240 --> 00:59:03.520 And whoever is doing it the best, you give 'em your business. 00:59:03.520 --> 00:59:07.680 I'm not trying to be economically reductive about churches, but to some 00:59:07.680 --> 00:59:09.760 degree that's kind of where we are. 00:59:09.760 --> 00:59:13.680 We find churches coming and going, getting bits and pieces of things 00:59:13.680 --> 00:59:16.880 right here and there, and then getting other things wrong, in some 00:59:16.880 --> 00:59:18.400 cases horribly wrong. 00:59:18.400 --> 00:59:21.120 In some cases even the things that they used to get right, 00:59:21.120 --> 00:59:25.440 they then throw away for the sake of another modern gospel that's 00:59:25.440 --> 00:59:27.200 not from God. 00:59:27.200 --> 00:59:29.840 We have to be aware, we have to pay attention. 00:59:29.840 --> 00:59:33.040 We have to some degree be ruthless editors. 00:59:33.040 --> 00:59:36.480 We have to detect when the milk has gone bad. 00:59:36.480 --> 00:59:38.960 You know, when it's past the expiration date, it's probably fine to 00:59:38.960 --> 00:59:41.280 eat it and drink it for a few days, but you smell 00:59:41.280 --> 00:59:44.320 it. And the second you get a whiff of something that's sour, 00:59:44.320 --> 00:59:45.600 you pour it out. 00:59:45.600 --> 00:59:47.440 That's what we're saying here. 00:59:47.440 --> 00:59:51.120 Men shouldn't be going sour, but they do, and we must acknowledge 00:59:51.120 --> 00:59:53.840 it because we have a duty to God, to our families, to 00:59:53.840 --> 00:59:56.960 our communities, to be guardians in so far as we have been 00:59:56.960 --> 00:59:58.560 given the gifts to do so. 00:59:58.560 --> 01:00:02.800 And when men come along and change the tune, the There's no 01:00:02.800 --> 01:00:06.320 loyalty. There's an affinity for something that no longer exists. 01:00:06.320 --> 01:00:10.960 And we must recognize that the only honorable course of action is 01:00:10.960 --> 01:00:13.840 to seek those answers elsewhere.