WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.520 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:40.320 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:41.200 Mahler. 00:00:41.600 --> 00:00:44.800 And I'm still woe. 00:00:45.040 --> 00:00:49.120 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be talking about peace. 00:00:49.120 --> 00:00:54.240 Last week we discussed violence at some length, talked about the implications 00:00:55.040 --> 00:01:00.320 within politics and within our lives and the context in which violence 00:01:00.320 --> 00:01:02.880 is sometimes necessary when it's forbidden. 00:01:02.880 --> 00:01:07.360 Basically addressing the fact that part of the new global religion says 00:01:07.360 --> 00:01:11.600 that all violence is always and everywhere per se evil, which is 00:01:11.600 --> 00:01:13.280 plainly false scripturally. 00:01:13.280 --> 00:01:16.000 So we made the case that that's not always true. 00:01:16.000 --> 00:01:19.600 And yet at the same time, we also made very clear that 00:01:19.920 --> 00:01:24.560 saying that something is moral is not inciting it. 00:01:24.560 --> 00:01:27.120 You know, when we talked about slavery, we're not saying you should 00:01:27.120 --> 00:01:28.560 go out and get slaves. 00:01:28.560 --> 00:01:32.640 It's never license that is the reason behind discussing some of these 00:01:32.640 --> 00:01:36.880 subjects. And so after discussing violence last week is something that is 00:01:36.880 --> 00:01:39.120 in some places and times permissible. 00:01:39.120 --> 00:01:42.000 We want to talk this week specifically about peace. 00:01:42.240 --> 00:01:45.280 If we get into the main subject, just a brief note that 00:01:45.600 --> 00:01:49.680 Corey has another big batch of the challenge coins ready to go 00:01:49.680 --> 00:01:52.720 shortly, and he's hoping that by the end of next week he'll 00:01:52.720 --> 00:01:54.240 be able to get the rest of them out. 00:01:54.240 --> 00:01:57.200 So thank you to everyone for your patience and for your support. 00:01:57.200 --> 00:01:59.280 We'll let you know after they've all gone out. 00:01:59.280 --> 00:02:03.600 So for some reason after we give the all shipped signal, if 00:02:03.600 --> 00:02:05.440 you still haven't gotten one, you can reach out to us and 00:02:05.440 --> 00:02:06.720 we can get it sorted out. 00:02:06.720 --> 00:02:10.240 But he's very good at record keeping, so that's probably unlikely, but 00:02:10.240 --> 00:02:13.200 we we just want to acknowledge that when everything's out, you can 00:02:13.200 --> 00:02:14.000 let us know. 00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:17.760 And we of course ordered plenty, we'll have probably a couple years 00:02:17.920 --> 00:02:21.520 supply. So if you're waiting to for the backlog to get cleared, 00:02:21.520 --> 00:02:24.400 you're welcome to place an order and we'll we'd be happy to 00:02:24.400 --> 00:02:25.200 ship one out to you. 00:02:25.200 --> 00:02:27.520 And thank you again to everyone for your support. 00:02:27.520 --> 00:02:29.360 It's cool seeing them online. 00:02:29.360 --> 00:02:31.440 That's exciting that people are excited about it. 00:02:31.440 --> 00:02:32.480 I mean they're really cool. 00:02:32.480 --> 00:02:35.600 It's a a fun thing to have. 00:02:35.600 --> 00:02:39.760 Today as we're talking about peace, I want to frame it first 00:02:40.080 --> 00:02:44.560 in terms of the contrast, you know, violence and peace. 00:02:44.560 --> 00:02:47.280 You know, I think when we we think about these things, we 00:02:47.520 --> 00:02:51.200 often think of in terms of like yin and yang, where you 00:02:51.200 --> 00:02:55.600 have equal opposing forces or you know, th there's the meme where 00:02:55.600 --> 00:02:57.920 the guy's standing in front of the big board with two red 00:02:57.920 --> 00:02:59.840 buttons and which one does he push. 00:03:01.360 --> 00:03:04.720 The framing that I want to present for this topic, as with 00:03:04.720 --> 00:03:06.720 many of the others we've talked about in the past that are 00:03:06.720 --> 00:03:08.560 particularly controversial, is that 00:03:09.520 --> 00:03:14.320 violence and peace are related, they're correlated, and they're opposites in some 00:03:15.040 --> 00:03:20.240 senses, but they're not equal in opposing forces. 00:03:20.240 --> 00:03:23.360 So to give you just a couple other imperfect examples to kind 00:03:23.360 --> 00:03:25.520 of give you a sense of what we're gonna be talking about 00:03:25.600 --> 00:03:30.880 today. Heat and cold are obviously contrasting. 00:03:30.880 --> 00:03:32.960 One is the opposite of the other. 00:03:32.960 --> 00:03:36.160 And yet at the same time the definition of heat and the 00:03:36.160 --> 00:03:38.640 definition of cold are circular. 00:03:38.640 --> 00:03:42.560 So cold is the absence of heat, but you wouldn't really say 00:03:42.560 --> 00:03:44.800 the heat is the absence of cold. 00:03:44.800 --> 00:03:48.080 Heat itself is the motion of particles. 00:03:48.080 --> 00:03:52.080 And so whenever particles are moving, that's what we call heat. 00:03:52.080 --> 00:03:53.520 And of course all matter moves. 00:03:53.680 --> 00:03:55.920 There's no such thing as a motionless particle. 00:03:55.920 --> 00:03:57.600 It's theoretically possible. 00:03:57.600 --> 00:03:59.680 That's what's called absolute zero. 00:03:59.680 --> 00:04:02.800 It's the theoretical coldest possible thing. 00:04:02.800 --> 00:04:06.320 And yet our understanding of physics completely breaks down because the idea 00:04:06.320 --> 00:04:10.240 of matter not moving at all we can conceive of it is 00:04:10.240 --> 00:04:12.720 a hypothetical, but it doesn't exist in nature. 00:04:12.720 --> 00:04:16.720 And so it's technically possible, but at the same time it's an 00:04:16.720 --> 00:04:21.280 impossibility. Everything has some heat, no matter how cold it is, because 00:04:21.440 --> 00:04:23.440 all matter is in motion. 00:04:23.440 --> 00:04:26.480 And at the other end of the extreme scale of heat, you 00:04:26.480 --> 00:04:30.560 have things like the inside of stars or other stellar objects, where 00:04:30.560 --> 00:04:34.880 there's so much heat, there's so much energy, the the boundaries between 00:04:34.880 --> 00:04:37.040 molecules are just completely dissolved. 00:04:37.040 --> 00:04:40.960 And you just have a soup where everything is tightly packed due 00:04:40.960 --> 00:04:44.640 to gravity and everything is moving so quickly that it, you know, 00:04:44.640 --> 00:04:47.040 it's again it's almost inconceivable. 00:04:47.040 --> 00:04:49.680 In fact, the time that it takes a photon to get from 00:04:49.680 --> 00:04:53.280 the interior of a star to the exterior can be years and 00:04:53.280 --> 00:04:55.360 years because it bounces around. 00:04:55.360 --> 00:04:56.960 It's a random walk. 00:04:56.960 --> 00:05:00.080 Really weird things happen when things get super hot. 00:05:00.080 --> 00:05:04.480 And yet cold is just nothingness. 00:05:04.480 --> 00:05:07.360 Something similarly true with light. 00:05:07.360 --> 00:05:10.640 You can have a flashlight that projects light, you know, somewhere that 00:05:10.640 --> 00:05:12.240 you want to be, and it's a very valuable thing. 00:05:12.240 --> 00:05:13.120 It can keep you safe. 00:05:13.120 --> 00:05:15.360 It keeps you from feeling alarmed in the dark. 00:05:15.360 --> 00:05:18.160 You don't step over things, you don't hurt yourself. 00:05:18.160 --> 00:05:20.720 Yet there's no such thing as a dark ray. 00:05:20.720 --> 00:05:22.800 You can't shine darkness onto something. 00:05:22.800 --> 00:05:27.520 You cannot project dark because dark is simply the absence of light. 00:05:27.520 --> 00:05:31.600 The darker something is, the more absent light is. 00:05:31.600 --> 00:05:37.040 And complete blackness is simply no light whatsoever, zero photons, which is 00:05:37.040 --> 00:05:40.080 something that can be achieved in the physical world. 00:05:40.080 --> 00:05:44.800 So although light and dark are contrasting, one is definitionally the absence 00:05:44.800 --> 00:05:45.440 of the other. 00:05:45.440 --> 00:05:46.640 And that's what's really going on. 00:05:46.640 --> 00:05:48.720 It's not the equal and opposing forces. 00:05:48.880 --> 00:05:53.920 is just that when you have one, the other is necessarily absent. 00:05:53.920 --> 00:05:55.360 Same is true of color. 00:05:55.360 --> 00:05:59.760 You know, white is the reflection of every single color simultaneously. 00:05:59.760 --> 00:06:02.320 Black is in a sense not even a color. 00:06:02.320 --> 00:06:05.440 Black is the absence of any reflected light. 00:06:05.440 --> 00:06:09.120 If you have something that's completely black, there's nothing there. 00:06:09.120 --> 00:06:10.880 There's nothing being reflected. 00:06:10.880 --> 00:06:14.160 And when you have all the colors being reflected simultaneously, you have 00:06:14.160 --> 00:06:15.680 white light. 00:06:15.680 --> 00:06:19.920 And so black and white are I think the most common examples 00:06:19.920 --> 00:06:21.760 of complete polar opposites. 00:06:21.760 --> 00:06:26.000 And even then one is fundamentally the absence of the other. 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:29.760 And so as we're thinking about violence and about peace, they're not 00:06:29.760 --> 00:06:31.680 equal in opposing forces. 00:06:31.680 --> 00:06:35.120 Peace, I think a reasonable definition would be the complete absence of 00:06:35.120 --> 00:06:40.000 violence or strife or you know really kind of anything actively negative, 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:44.320 anything that's you know doing some harm to the environment around you. 00:06:44.320 --> 00:06:47.280 You know the primordial example of peace would be the Garden of 00:06:47.280 --> 00:06:48.240 Eden itself. 00:06:48.240 --> 00:06:52.080 And to this day, gardens are actually some of the most peaceful 00:06:52.080 --> 00:06:53.200 places you can be. 00:06:53.200 --> 00:06:55.920 It's very common for people who get into gardening in part because 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:57.280 how peaceful it is. 00:06:57.280 --> 00:07:01.360 And so a garden and peace, they're very closely connected in our 00:07:01.360 --> 00:07:05.600 minds. And yet unlike the Garden of Eden, where there was no 00:07:05.600 --> 00:07:09.760 violence, there was no enmity of any kind It also had no 00:07:09.760 --> 00:07:13.280 weeds. And then after the fall, the weeds became part of the 00:07:13.280 --> 00:07:16.720 curse. And so even in the modern garden today, when you're if 00:07:16.720 --> 00:07:21.360 you're a gardener, gardening necessarily one of the actions you have to 00:07:21.360 --> 00:07:23.280 engage in is weeding. 00:07:23.280 --> 00:07:26.560 You're basically doing a very small amount of violence in your garden 00:07:26.560 --> 00:07:29.360 to keep it idyllic, to keep it peaceful. 00:07:29.360 --> 00:07:34.560 That means uprooting weeds, killing these living plants so that the plants 00:07:34.560 --> 00:07:37.600 that are desirable are present. 00:07:37.600 --> 00:07:37.920 So 00:07:38.800 --> 00:07:41.200 peace is when there is no violence. 00:07:41.200 --> 00:07:44.080 And so back to you know last week's episode and the the 00:07:44.080 --> 00:07:48.960 general theme of these two episodes is that Obviously, peace is desirable. 00:07:48.960 --> 00:07:50.000 We all want peace. 00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:51.200 We want peaceful lives. 00:07:51.200 --> 00:07:53.680 We want peaceful communities, peaceful homes. 00:07:53.680 --> 00:07:56.560 It is the desirable ground state for everything. 00:07:56.560 --> 00:07:59.280 The absence of violence is the most one of the most desirable 00:07:59.280 --> 00:08:00.240 things possible. 00:08:00.240 --> 00:08:02.880 And yet at the same time as we made the case last 00:08:02.880 --> 00:08:06.560 week, it may arise that the only way for you to have 00:08:06.560 --> 00:08:08.880 peace is for violence to take place. 00:08:08.880 --> 00:08:12.160 Whether or not you're a personal participant, someone may have to do 00:08:12.160 --> 00:08:14.960 violence. In fact, that's you know the reason that we have a 00:08:14.960 --> 00:08:17.440 country today in the in the United States and any country in 00:08:17.440 --> 00:08:18.000 the world. 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:22.080 There was violence that established the borders, that established whatever government you 00:08:22.080 --> 00:08:23.120 have, good or bad. 00:08:23.120 --> 00:08:27.520 It was established through some process of violence, either active or the 00:08:27.520 --> 00:08:30.400 threat. Sometimes it's just enough for a strong man to show up 00:08:30.400 --> 00:08:32.320 and say, I'm in charge now. 00:08:32.320 --> 00:08:36.320 Historically, you know, sometimes that's how things play out. 00:08:36.320 --> 00:08:40.160 And then you have peace, either through violence, the threat of violence 00:08:40.240 --> 00:08:42.960 or the act of the violence itself. 00:08:42.960 --> 00:08:44.240 And then you have peace. 00:08:44.240 --> 00:08:47.760 And so as we're talking about peace today, we're gonna be talking 00:08:47.760 --> 00:08:51.600 about in scriptural terms and we're gonna talk about the home, about 00:08:51.600 --> 00:08:57.040 your community, about, you know, geopolitical, national political level, and then about 00:08:57.120 --> 00:08:58.240 the church. 00:08:58.240 --> 00:09:01.840 Because in each of those contexts we have different forms of peace. 00:09:01.840 --> 00:09:04.240 And then at the end we're gonna talk a little bit, just 00:09:04.320 --> 00:09:08.240 kind of briefly about the peace of God, which surpasses all human 00:09:08.240 --> 00:09:12.160 understanding, which of course is the most desirable of all peces, and 00:09:12.160 --> 00:09:16.320 it's one that as Christians God imparts to us, He imparts through 00:09:16.320 --> 00:09:19.920 faith and through knowledge of Scripture. 00:09:19.920 --> 00:09:23.600 And when we have that blessing of God's peace, it helps us 00:09:23.600 --> 00:09:26.800 to deal with all the other moments in life when things aren't 00:09:26.800 --> 00:09:30.080 peaceful. That's part of the blessing that God speaks of in Scripture. 00:09:30.080 --> 00:09:33.760 When you have God's peace, it's not that it doesn't matter how 00:09:33.760 --> 00:09:36.960 bad things are, it's that you can deal with it because you 00:09:36.960 --> 00:09:39.920 know that at some level, this is not your home. 00:09:39.920 --> 00:09:43.280 And that's one of those phrases that gets used to it's an 00:09:43.280 --> 00:09:48.480 emulsifier for civilization in the mouths of wicked false Christians because they 00:09:48.480 --> 00:09:51.040 will look at the violence and the evil that's happening in the 00:09:51.040 --> 00:09:53.360 world and say, Oh, we need to worry about not our problems. 00:09:53.360 --> 00:09:54.320 Our home is in heaven. 00:09:54.320 --> 00:09:56.080 Not Not at all what we're saying. 00:09:56.080 --> 00:09:59.920 We're saying that in the worst event where we lose in some 00:09:59.920 --> 00:10:02.000 temporal fashion, that's okay. 00:10:02.000 --> 00:10:05.280 We can be at peace with losing here because our reward is 00:10:05.280 --> 00:10:06.240 in heaven. 00:10:06.240 --> 00:10:08.000 And that's up to God. 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:10.640 And so there's a very clear distinction of things that are up 00:10:10.640 --> 00:10:13.120 to God and things that are up to us. 00:10:13.120 --> 00:10:16.320 But one of the things that's up to us is to make 00:10:16.320 --> 00:10:20.240 peace. And so as we talked today about the subject of peace 00:10:20.240 --> 00:10:23.920 and the absence of violence, just want to acknowledge at the outset. 00:10:23.920 --> 00:10:26.560 It's not that I want peace and therefore I will never be 00:10:26.560 --> 00:10:30.240 violent. It's that I want peace and therefore I acknowledge that sometimes 00:10:30.240 --> 00:10:34.560 violence is necessary to achieve peace, which is what God says, it's 00:10:34.560 --> 00:10:36.800 the only rational explanation. 00:10:36.800 --> 00:10:39.280 You don't need the Bible to explain that to you. 00:10:39.280 --> 00:10:43.360 If someone is losing his mind being violent, running around your neighborhood 00:10:43.360 --> 00:10:45.840 with a sword or a gun or something, it's very clear that 00:10:45.840 --> 00:10:49.200 there's only one thing that's going to stop that violence. 00:10:49.200 --> 00:10:52.400 The desire for peace, the absolute the prayer for peace that we 00:10:52.400 --> 00:10:58.320 should all have every day is always in the acknowledgement that sometimes 00:10:58.320 --> 00:10:59.760 the way we get to peace is 00:11:00.640 --> 00:11:03.040 by momentarily not having peace. 00:11:03.040 --> 00:11:04.560 And that's not contradictory. 00:11:04.560 --> 00:11:06.800 That's a crucial thing for me drawing this distinction here. 00:11:06.800 --> 00:11:09.760 It's not that I can either have violence or I can have 00:11:09.760 --> 00:11:11.440 peace. I desire peace. 00:11:11.440 --> 00:11:14.480 We should all desire peace and we must acknowledge that there are 00:11:14.480 --> 00:11:17.840 certain times and places when the only way to get that is 00:11:17.840 --> 00:11:19.280 through violence. 00:11:19.280 --> 00:11:21.760 So as we go through all this today, just keep in mind 00:11:21.760 --> 00:11:24.000 that it's not one or the other. 00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:25.680 That's a false dichotomy. 00:11:25.680 --> 00:11:27.760 The desire for peace is absolute. 00:11:27.760 --> 00:11:30.560 It's abnormal to desire violence. 00:11:30.560 --> 00:11:33.920 We should desire peace and we should pursue peace and to the 00:11:33.920 --> 00:11:36.800 best of our ability, and so far as it depends on us, 00:11:36.800 --> 00:11:38.960 we should try to achieve peace. 00:11:38.960 --> 00:11:42.000 And then the alternative when the other side gets a vote is 00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:44.160 that there may not be peace for a time. 00:11:44.160 --> 00:11:47.280 And that's not the first choice. 00:11:47.280 --> 00:11:49.680 But if that's what we have to deal with, then in order 00:11:49.680 --> 00:11:53.280 to get the peace that God desires for us, sometimes there's intermediary 00:11:53.360 --> 00:11:56.480 stuff that is itself not peaceful. 00:11:56.480 --> 00:12:01.600 And these things are simply not contradictory, they're entirely coherent because the 00:12:01.600 --> 00:12:06.640 ground state, the peaceful garden state of peace, sometimes requires defense that 00:12:06.640 --> 00:12:08.000 is less peaceful. 00:12:08.480 --> 00:12:08.560 So 00:12:08.640 --> 00:12:14.400 as Wo highlighted, peace is essentially a negative in the neutral sense 00:12:14.400 --> 00:12:19.440 of that term word, which is to say it denotes a state 00:12:19.440 --> 00:12:22.240 of the absence of certain things. 00:12:22.240 --> 00:12:25.200 Woe mentioned violence, of course, but I want to give you two 00:12:25.200 --> 00:12:29.040 terms to think of when thinking of what is absent when you 00:12:29.040 --> 00:12:31.760 have peace, a state of peace. 00:12:31.760 --> 00:12:35.760 And that would be that peace is the absence of suffering and 00:12:35.920 --> 00:12:39.040 strife. And of course suffering, we all know what that is. 00:12:39.040 --> 00:12:42.080 That's just pain or distress or hardship. 00:12:42.080 --> 00:12:43.600 But strife is 00:12:44.560 --> 00:12:51.360 Usually angry or bitter disagreement over something or some things fundamental. 00:12:51.360 --> 00:12:56.080 And so peace is the absence of those things. 00:12:56.080 --> 00:12:59.520 Naturally, it means that we are not always going to have peace 00:12:59.520 --> 00:13:00.320 in this life. 00:13:00.320 --> 00:13:04.080 In fact, we are never going to have perfect peace in this 00:13:04.080 --> 00:13:07.840 life with regard to temporal or earthly things. 00:13:07.840 --> 00:13:12.320 There's a difference there with eschatological peace versus earthly peace. 00:13:12.320 --> 00:13:14.560 I'll get into that in a minute here. 00:13:14.560 --> 00:13:19.280 But with regard to this life, we will always have suffering and 00:13:19.280 --> 00:13:20.960 to some degree strife. 00:13:20.960 --> 00:13:26.320 Now strife can vary depending on whether we're dealing with, as we'll 00:13:26.320 --> 00:13:32.160 mention, the home, society, politics, the church, and the times in which 00:13:32.160 --> 00:13:35.600 we live, because of course there's going to be more or less 00:13:35.600 --> 00:13:41.600 suffering and more or less strife, there will always be some degree 00:13:41.600 --> 00:13:43.360 of suffering. 00:13:43.360 --> 00:13:45.680 The reason for that, of course, is that we live in a 00:13:45.680 --> 00:13:50.640 fallen world, and so that will never be entirely absent from human 00:13:50.640 --> 00:13:56.720 life. And so we will always have some disruption with regard to 00:13:56.720 --> 00:14:00.480 peace. It doesn't mean you can't have peace, it just means the 00:14:00.480 --> 00:14:01.360 peace in this life 00:14:02.240 --> 00:14:04.000 will not be perfect. 00:14:04.000 --> 00:14:10.480 And so to distinguish these different kinds of peace, as it were, 00:14:10.480 --> 00:14:15.040 there is earthly peace and there is eschatological peace. 00:14:15.040 --> 00:14:17.680 Earthly peace is relative. 00:14:17.680 --> 00:14:20.640 Eschatological peace is absolute. 00:14:20.640 --> 00:14:25.840 And so to give an example to make that more concrete, earthly 00:14:25.840 --> 00:14:29.280 peace would be what you are experiencing when you're out in your 00:14:29.280 --> 00:14:32.560 garden, assuming you don't have too many weeds and insects and other 00:14:32.560 --> 00:14:35.360 things causing you strife and suffering. 00:14:35.360 --> 00:14:37.520 That's earthly peace. 00:14:37.520 --> 00:14:42.000 Eschatological peace is what you are going to have with regard to 00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:46.960 the certainty of your salvation because of God's promises. 00:14:46.960 --> 00:14:48.480 That's an absolute peace. 00:14:48.480 --> 00:14:51.600 That is a different sort of peace from the relative peace that 00:14:51.600 --> 00:14:57.440 we have here in this life with regard to earthly things. 00:14:57.440 --> 00:15:02.720 And so there's also in this life temporal and eternal peace. 00:15:02.720 --> 00:15:09.520 Again, temporal peace is relative and Eternal peace is absolute. 00:15:09.520 --> 00:15:16.080 It's important to understand the difference between and among these kinds of 00:15:16.080 --> 00:15:22.240 peace. Because this is where we start to see some sophistry and 00:15:22.240 --> 00:15:26.000 other things arise with regard to those as well mentioned who tell 00:15:26.000 --> 00:15:29.360 us simply to not care about the things of this life. 00:15:29.360 --> 00:15:33.520 Well, we have the eschatological piece, we have the promises of God 00:15:33.520 --> 00:15:35.920 with regard to these things in the next life. 00:15:35.920 --> 00:15:38.960 So it doesn't matter what happens in this life, and that's just 00:15:38.960 --> 00:15:40.960 absolutely not true. 00:15:40.960 --> 00:15:46.320 Because Scripture speaks in many places throughout Scripture to the things of 00:15:46.320 --> 00:15:51.680 this life, to life on this earth, yes, a fallen world that 00:15:51.680 --> 00:15:57.440 does have suffering and does have strife, but nonetheless we can work 00:15:57.440 --> 00:16:00.960 toward peace and we should do so. 00:16:00.960 --> 00:16:04.640 Scripture says blessed are the peacemakers. 00:16:04.640 --> 00:16:08.240 That doesn't just mean with regard to the things of the next 00:16:08.240 --> 00:16:10.560 life, it means with regard to the things of this life. 00:16:11.040 --> 00:16:15.680 And so Christians should be peacemakers, we should seek peace, as Wo 00:16:15.840 --> 00:16:17.040 mentioned already. 00:16:17.040 --> 00:16:21.280 That does mean that sometimes violence will be necessary as we went 00:16:21.280 --> 00:16:23.840 over in last week's episode. 00:16:23.840 --> 00:16:27.920 But it's not violence for the sake of violence, it is violence 00:16:27.920 --> 00:16:32.160 for the sake of maintaining or establishing peace. 00:16:32.160 --> 00:16:38.160 And that is not a contradiction, certainly not a contradiction in terms, 00:16:38.160 --> 00:16:43.600 because we all know that in order to maintain order, it has 00:16:43.600 --> 00:16:44.960 to be enforced. 00:16:44.960 --> 00:16:48.880 For instance, borders have to be protected, and that is the case 00:16:48.960 --> 00:16:51.600 whether we are speaking of the border that is the front door 00:16:51.600 --> 00:16:54.800 to your home or or the border that is the border of 00:16:54.800 --> 00:17:00.960 your nation, of your country, of whatever territory your country controls. 00:17:00.960 --> 00:17:07.280 Those things must be maintained with at least the threat of violence. 00:17:07.360 --> 00:17:12.080 And in fact, if you do not have that threat of violence 00:17:12.080 --> 00:17:16.400 to back up that border, to defend that border, then what you're 00:17:16.400 --> 00:17:21.040 actually doing is harming the odds of maintaining peace. 00:17:21.040 --> 00:17:25.840 Because if the threat is there, you are less likely to encounter 00:17:25.840 --> 00:17:29.760 those who would violate that peace, because they are going to recognize 00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:32.400 there is a cost to doing that. 00:17:32.400 --> 00:17:36.560 And so pacifism actually invites greater harm. 00:17:36.560 --> 00:17:40.640 It invites greater disturbances of earthly peace. 00:17:41.440 --> 00:17:45.680 Contrary to what some of those who advocate for pacifism and related 00:17:45.680 --> 00:17:49.120 things would claim, they will try to claim that they are simply 00:17:49.440 --> 00:17:54.000 against violence, they're against strife and suffering, they're against all these negative 00:17:54.000 --> 00:17:55.680 things, they're for peace peace. 00:17:55.680 --> 00:17:57.040 They're not for peace. 00:17:57.040 --> 00:17:59.040 They're liars, they're hypocrites. 00:17:59.040 --> 00:18:02.880 Because in order to have peace it must be maintained in this 00:18:02.880 --> 00:18:07.520 life. Again, this is the difference between this life and the next. 00:18:07.520 --> 00:18:11.280 In the next life we don't have to work to maintain peace. 00:18:11.280 --> 00:18:16.080 God will have established perfect permanent peace. 00:18:16.080 --> 00:18:19.760 There's no work for us in the next life with regard to 00:18:19.760 --> 00:18:23.120 peace. There's still work in the next life, because of course man 00:18:23.120 --> 00:18:24.400 was made for work. 00:18:24.400 --> 00:18:28.400 It's not labor, that's the distinction there, but that's a discussion for 00:18:28.400 --> 00:18:30.000 another time. 00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:33.120 The peace in this life must be maintained. 00:18:33.520 --> 00:18:37.680 It is something toward which we work, it is something for which 00:18:37.680 --> 00:18:38.880 we labor. 00:18:38.880 --> 00:18:40.960 Because it is something worth having. 00:18:40.960 --> 00:18:43.040 Because again, what is peace? 00:18:43.040 --> 00:18:47.440 It is the absence of these various negative things. 00:18:47.440 --> 00:18:52.160 And so when you work to eliminate suffering, you are working to 00:18:52.160 --> 00:18:53.760 establish peace. 00:18:53.760 --> 00:18:58.080 When you work to eliminate strife, you are working to establish peace 00:18:58.160 --> 00:18:59.120 or to maintain peace. 00:18:59.280 --> 00:19:03.280 Peace as the case may be. 00:19:03.280 --> 00:19:07.680 This is something that a Christian should most certainly do, because again, 00:19:07.680 --> 00:19:10.960 Christians are supposed to be peacemakers. 00:19:10.960 --> 00:19:14.640 That does not mean pacifists, that does not mean you're supposed to 00:19:14.640 --> 00:19:17.200 be a doormat or a rug. 00:19:17.200 --> 00:19:20.560 It means that you are supposed to have peace as one of 00:19:20.560 --> 00:19:23.520 your goals for your work in this life. 00:19:23.520 --> 00:19:29.200 And again you establish that by removing these things that are against 00:19:29.200 --> 00:19:33.120 peace. That doesn't mean that you simply yield, and we will get 00:19:33.120 --> 00:19:37.760 into that more later in this episode with regard particularly to to 00:19:37.840 --> 00:19:41.840 the state and the church, but to some degree society as well. 00:19:41.840 --> 00:19:47.680 How you approach different issues of suffering or strife and trying to 00:19:47.680 --> 00:19:51.440 eliminate them in order to live in a peaceful world in a 00:19:51.440 --> 00:19:56.800 peaceful environment, is going to vary depending on where 00:19:57.760 --> 00:19:59.360 and what. 00:19:59.360 --> 00:20:03.840 Which is to say that you are going to approach matter Matters 00:20:03.840 --> 00:20:07.520 of peace with regard to the home differently from how you would 00:20:07.520 --> 00:20:12.240 approach matters of peace with regard to the church or the state. 00:20:12.240 --> 00:20:16.240 Politics is a different beast from the home. 00:20:16.240 --> 00:20:20.240 You do not run your home as you would run a political 00:20:20.240 --> 00:20:23.920 party. You do not engage with those in your home as you 00:20:23.920 --> 00:20:25.840 would engage politically. 00:20:25.840 --> 00:20:28.160 That would be a horrible thing to do, and you will most 00:20:28.160 --> 00:20:32.160 certainly not have peace in your home if you pursue that. 00:20:32.160 --> 00:20:35.680 And so again, this is a matter of wisdom, as we keep 00:20:35.680 --> 00:20:41.040 having to say in episode after episode, but that is unavoidable. 00:20:41.040 --> 00:20:43.440 These matters are going to call for wisdom. 00:20:43.440 --> 00:20:43.840 You have to know 00:20:45.200 --> 00:20:51.120 how to pursue peace, what is appropriate, given the time and the 00:20:51.120 --> 00:20:53.360 place. Is it your home? 00:20:53.360 --> 00:20:54.320 Is it society? 00:20:54.320 --> 00:20:55.920 Is it a political political issue? 00:20:55.920 --> 00:20:57.280 Is it an issue in the church? 00:20:57.280 --> 00:20:59.200 Is it a matter of God's truth? 00:20:59.200 --> 00:21:03.520 Is it a minor matter that isn't a matter of a doctrine 00:21:03.760 --> 00:21:06.000 or some core part of the faith? 00:21:06.000 --> 00:21:08.880 You're going to have a different way of approaching things if you're 00:21:08.880 --> 00:21:12.800 fighting over the color of the paramets versus 00:21:13.920 --> 00:21:20.640 justification. You don't fight to the death over green versus purple. 00:21:21.440 --> 00:21:24.400 You may very well have to fight to the death over justification, 00:21:24.400 --> 00:21:28.160 and that has happened in the history of the church, because God's 00:21:28.160 --> 00:21:33.040 truth is worth defending in a much different way from something that 00:21:33.040 --> 00:21:34.880 is adiaphorum. 00:21:35.120 --> 00:21:38.720 It ultimately doesn't matter what color the candles are, or the parents, 00:21:38.720 --> 00:21:41.920 or the carpet, or anything like that. 00:21:41.920 --> 00:21:45.600 That's a matter of good order in the church, it's important, but 00:21:45.600 --> 00:21:49.360 it is not something that rises to the same level, and so 00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.000 disturbing the peace as it were, not in the criminal sense or 00:21:54.000 --> 00:21:58.800 in the civil sense, but in the sense that you may very 00:21:58.800 --> 00:22:02.560 well have as a duty a breach of the peace. 00:22:02.560 --> 00:22:05.200 You will be accused of that, of course, if you bring these 00:22:05.200 --> 00:22:06.400 things up. 00:22:06.400 --> 00:22:09.600 But if it is a matter of God's truth, or if it's 00:22:09.600 --> 00:22:12.320 in the political realm, and you're a man and have the duty 00:22:12.320 --> 00:22:18.480 to enact something or to say something, you may have to stand 00:22:18.480 --> 00:22:22.560 up and do something that will end a false piece. 00:22:22.560 --> 00:22:25.040 And that's a key here. 00:22:25.040 --> 00:22:30.400 If you are simply ignoring issues, if you are neglecting to address 00:22:30.400 --> 00:22:34.480 them, if you are just shoving them under the corner, shoving them 00:22:34.480 --> 00:22:39.280 under the rug, in order to maintain a certain peace, that piece 00:22:39.280 --> 00:22:39.920 is false. 00:22:40.880 --> 00:22:43.760 Because a peace that is built on a lie is no peace 00:22:43.760 --> 00:22:45.360 at all. 00:22:45.360 --> 00:22:49.520 Because peace must be built on the truth. 00:22:49.520 --> 00:22:51.840 The strife is still there. 00:22:51.840 --> 00:22:53.680 You're just ignoring it. 00:22:53.680 --> 00:22:58.240 In fact, you are only making it worse, because eventually it will 00:22:58.240 --> 00:22:59.920 come to a head at some point in the future. 00:22:59.920 --> 00:23:03.360 This happened in the history of the church with the Reformation. 00:23:03.360 --> 00:23:08.560 The things that were permitted to fester did so for centuries before 00:23:08.560 --> 00:23:11.120 the Reformation began. 00:23:11.120 --> 00:23:15.360 If they had been addressed earlier in the Church, they would have 00:23:15.360 --> 00:23:16.880 been more easily resolved. 00:23:16.880 --> 00:23:20.320 It would not have been so acrimonious, it would probably have not 00:23:20.320 --> 00:23:22.880 caused a split as it did. 00:23:22.880 --> 00:23:28.320 And yet because a false peace was maintained, sometimes with murder, of 00:23:28.320 --> 00:23:32.880 course, and the history of the church, unfortunately, but because that false 00:23:32.880 --> 00:23:36.160 peace was maintained, because no one wanted to stand up and be 00:23:36.160 --> 00:23:40.240 the man who broke the peace, who breached the peace, the man 00:23:40.240 --> 00:23:42.640 who unsettled the church. 00:23:42.640 --> 00:23:46.240 Because that is what was pursued, that is the path that was 00:23:46.240 --> 00:23:52.560 taken, we wound up with actual wars spanning virtually the entire continent 00:23:52.560 --> 00:23:56.160 of Europe, instead of what could have probably been resolved in a 00:23:56.160 --> 00:24:00.560 council. And so a false peace is no peace whatsoever. 00:24:00.560 --> 00:24:04.640 In fact, often what it is, is simply putting off the worst 00:24:04.640 --> 00:24:08.720 of the strife and the suffering to future generations. 00:24:08.960 --> 00:24:11.760 This is a quote that I believe I mentioned before in a 00:24:11.760 --> 00:24:14.880 fairly recent episode, but I want to reiterate it here because it's 00:24:14.880 --> 00:24:19.120 so important for discussing the subject of peace within the church. 00:24:19.120 --> 00:24:20.960 And we don't have a lot to say about that today. 00:24:20.960 --> 00:24:24.400 We've talked about it in other episodes, but it is crucial, as 00:24:24.400 --> 00:24:29.600 Corey was laying out, to distinguish between false peace and true peace. 00:24:29.600 --> 00:24:36.560 In the hypothetical perfect church denomination, where there was literally zero false 00:24:36.560 --> 00:24:41.280 doctrine, where no one ever committed any public sins, where they never 00:24:41.280 --> 00:24:45.040 committed any private sins against each other within the church, within their 00:24:45.040 --> 00:24:48.320 homes. Well, I mean I've already described heaven, haven't I? 00:24:48.320 --> 00:24:52.560 But in that perfect case, there would be peace within the church 00:24:52.800 --> 00:24:56.160 because everyone would be on God's page, not only on the same 00:24:56.160 --> 00:24:59.440 page, but on the page of the author of peace, who is 00:24:59.440 --> 00:25:00.720 God Almighty. 00:25:00.720 --> 00:25:04.800 And yet in this life, that is an impossibility. 00:25:04.800 --> 00:25:08.400 And so God makes very plain the heresies must arise among you 00:25:08.480 --> 00:25:11.360 so that the true may be known among everyone. 00:25:11.360 --> 00:25:14.800 When there's when there are divisions, you can look at the two 00:25:14.800 --> 00:25:19.040 sides and say this person is according with scripture and this person 00:25:19.040 --> 00:25:22.560 is set against God and that will be clear and it's always 00:25:22.560 --> 00:25:25.680 clear. Sometimes it takes work, sometimes it takes a lot of work 00:25:25.680 --> 00:25:28.480 to figure out who has made a mess? 00:25:28.480 --> 00:25:31.840 And when God blesses certain times and places with men who can 00:25:31.840 --> 00:25:36.240 clearly speak, men are actual theologians who can address the complex and 00:25:36.240 --> 00:25:40.960 make them simple, and narrowly define here's what's going on, and here's 00:25:40.960 --> 00:25:46.080 why this is an error, then the division itself, the heresy, will 00:25:46.080 --> 00:25:51.760 become something that forms greater understanding of the truth, which was already 00:25:51.920 --> 00:25:53.520 all always present in scripture. 00:25:53.520 --> 00:25:57.200 It's not that men who tackle these things are in creating things 00:25:57.200 --> 00:25:58.160 that are new. 00:25:58.160 --> 00:26:01.920 You know, as Protestants we would never say the new doctrines were 00:26:01.920 --> 00:26:03.760 created during the Reformation. 00:26:03.760 --> 00:26:06.240 We would say the things that were scriptural truths had to be 00:26:06.240 --> 00:26:08.560 clarified due to centuries of error. 00:26:08.960 --> 00:26:10.240 That's always a possibility. 00:26:10.240 --> 00:26:13.520 It's something that we see in the New Testament itself. 00:26:13.520 --> 00:26:18.160 What is the New Testament, if not the direct repudiation of the 00:26:18.160 --> 00:26:21.840 accretion of errors caused by the Sadducees and the Pharisees and others, 00:26:21.840 --> 00:26:26.080 the wickedness of the Jews corrupting the Christian faith prior to Christ's 00:26:26.080 --> 00:26:28.560 birth had to be corrected by the apostles. 00:26:28.560 --> 00:26:31.280 And they stood up and said, look, you know, they their arguments 00:26:31.280 --> 00:26:32.400 were from scripture. 00:26:32.400 --> 00:26:34.160 Their arguments were all from the Septuagint. 00:26:34.320 --> 00:26:36.960 They're saying, look, this is what God wrote, this is what God 00:26:36.960 --> 00:26:40.640 said. These men, these vipers, are lying to you. 00:26:40.640 --> 00:26:42.240 They're saying things that are false. 00:26:42.240 --> 00:26:43.280 Here's what's true. 00:26:43.280 --> 00:26:46.880 And then they reasoned from scripture, and in some cases, they also 00:26:47.200 --> 00:26:53.200 gave prophetic inspired arguments and things that were new, as God used 00:26:53.200 --> 00:26:53.840 them for. 00:26:53.840 --> 00:26:57.760 But in many cases, although what they said was inspired and it 00:26:57.760 --> 00:27:01.360 was infallible because God was speaking through them, it was also entirely 00:27:01.360 --> 00:27:03.200 simply an argument from scripture. 00:27:03.200 --> 00:27:06.560 Many of the apostles in their writings and their arguments, they weren't 00:27:06.480 --> 00:27:09.200 saying anything that if you had a perfect faithful understanding of the 00:27:09.200 --> 00:27:12.320 Old Testament, you wouldn't have arrived at the same conclusion. 00:27:12.320 --> 00:27:15.680 And so God blessed us with these men who laid bare and 00:27:15.680 --> 00:27:19.520 laid beyond any shadow of a doubt, here's what God says. 00:27:19.520 --> 00:27:23.760 But they didn't have to have God speaking through them directly. 00:27:23.760 --> 00:27:26.800 It wasn't direct revelation, it was God ensuring that that which had 00:27:26.800 --> 00:27:29.840 previously been revealed was held faithfully. 00:27:29.840 --> 00:27:33.120 And so this quote from Luther that I used recently that I 00:27:33.120 --> 00:27:37.200 want to reiterate here, he said, faith and love are two different 00:27:37.200 --> 00:27:44.400 things. Faith tolerates nothing, love tolerates everything, faith curses, love blesses, faith 00:27:44.560 --> 00:27:48.720 seeks revenge and punishment, love seeks to spare and to forgive. 00:27:48.720 --> 00:27:51.920 Therefore, when faith and God's word are involved, there can be no 00:27:51.920 --> 00:27:56.640 more loving or being patient, but only anger, zeal, and scolding. 00:27:56.640 --> 00:27:59.920 All prophets also acted in this way that in matters of faith 00:27:59.920 --> 00:28:02.640 they showed no patience or mercy. 00:28:03.200 --> 00:28:06.880 Now when I used that quote before, it sounds kinda heartless. 00:28:06.880 --> 00:28:10.320 It sounds like Luther wants to come in just storming and raving 00:28:10.480 --> 00:28:13.840 and hating people and bringing an end to peace. 00:28:13.840 --> 00:28:16.880 But when you understand that the context is the defense of the 00:28:16.880 --> 00:28:20.720 faith, the disturbance of the peace, as Corey was laying out, is 00:28:20.720 --> 00:28:23.920 not that someone has said, hey, there's a liar in our midst. 00:28:23.920 --> 00:28:28.000 The disturbance of the peace is when the false doctrine is introduced. 00:28:28.000 --> 00:28:32.880 So So the church is a narrow specific case where obviously within 00:28:32.880 --> 00:28:35.680 the church, violence should not be used. 00:28:35.680 --> 00:28:40.240 Actual physical violence doesn't have a place in theological discussions. 00:28:40.240 --> 00:28:41.680 I don't think anyone disagrees that. 00:28:41.680 --> 00:28:45.360 And what Corey was saying before was basically amounted to between nation 00:28:45.360 --> 00:28:47.040 states where there were 00:28:48.320 --> 00:28:54.560 diametrically opposed true and false representations of Christianity, there were cases where 00:28:54.560 --> 00:28:56.480 princes went to war. 00:28:56.480 --> 00:29:01.120 But that was not within the church, that was warring church factions, 00:29:01.120 --> 00:29:03.680 which is sort of the worst case of the passage talking about 00:29:03.680 --> 00:29:04.960 divisions among you. 00:29:04.960 --> 00:29:08.160 And again, it's not desirable that those things should happen. 00:29:08.160 --> 00:29:10.640 We shouldn't say that those is a license for us to have 00:29:10.720 --> 00:29:13.600 you know more Protestant versus Catholic wars. 00:29:13.600 --> 00:29:14.400 How foolish. 00:29:14.400 --> 00:29:16.000 Like that's destructive. 00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:20.000 It's evil to think hey that's a great idea. 00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:23.760 But it's not necessarily good to say, well, everything that they did 00:29:23.760 --> 00:29:26.560 must have necessarily been bad because violence is involved. 00:29:26.560 --> 00:29:29.120 And we don't get much into history because I find it tedious 00:29:29.200 --> 00:29:31.440 and I think it usually misinforms people. 00:29:31.440 --> 00:29:35.280 But it's important not to just go back and blanket condemn the 00:29:35.280 --> 00:29:39.840 entire centuries of Christians, of men that we sort of say, well, 00:29:39.840 --> 00:29:42.400 yeah, they're in heaven, but look at all these sins that they 00:29:42.400 --> 00:29:43.440 didn't repent of. 00:29:43.600 --> 00:29:46.240 We really get ourselves into a pickle when we start condemning men 00:29:46.800 --> 00:29:49.840 of sins that they didn't see as sins when we weren't on 00:29:49.840 --> 00:29:53.120 the ground, we didn't know what they knew, and when we're importing 00:29:53.120 --> 00:29:58.080 modern sensibilities, we m are every bit at risk of being in 00:29:58.080 --> 00:29:59.920 heirs they were. 00:29:59.920 --> 00:30:04.480 Within the church, it's crucial the defense of the faith be loving 00:30:04.480 --> 00:30:10.240 and to pursue peace, but the pursuit of peace sometimes involves disturbing 00:30:10.240 --> 00:30:13.440 it. As I was looking at some of the words involved here, 00:30:13.440 --> 00:30:16.960 I as I I've said a couple times, I've started using Claude 00:30:17.120 --> 00:30:21.440 AI to kind of grope through some of the historical documents because 00:30:21.600 --> 00:30:24.880 it's basically an incredibly powerful search engine that will spit out a 00:30:24.880 --> 00:30:26.160 whole bunch of correlations. 00:30:26.160 --> 00:30:28.080 It would take me a long time to dig up. 00:30:28.080 --> 00:30:31.280 And so I asked it a couple questions about peace and when 00:30:31.280 --> 00:30:34.560 it started talking about the old testament, it wanted to tell me 00:30:34.560 --> 00:30:37.200 about shalom, which is the Hebrew for peace. 00:30:37.440 --> 00:30:39.760 Hey you're shalom, shalom, shalom everywhere. 00:30:39.760 --> 00:30:43.680 And the AI bot, which was just spitting out, which what thousands 00:30:43.680 --> 00:30:47.040 of men have written, basically was like shalom is so rich and 00:30:47.040 --> 00:30:50.640 and bountiful and it's got such a broad lexical scope, it's a 00:30:50.640 --> 00:30:55.280 much more useful word than some of these other Greek words, which 00:30:55.280 --> 00:30:58.320 is really kind of begging the question that Hebrew is not just 00:30:58.320 --> 00:31:00.240 an incredibly primitive language. 00:31:00.240 --> 00:31:03.680 They had one word for like 38 different concepts. 00:31:03.680 --> 00:31:07.920 And so I had to tell it to shut up about Hebrew 00:31:07.920 --> 00:31:10.240 and tell me what the original Septuagint said. 00:31:10.240 --> 00:31:13.120 And what I found was the a word that I actually knew, 00:31:13.120 --> 00:31:15.040 but I didn't realize I knew. 00:31:15.040 --> 00:31:17.120 I'll probably to butcher the pronunciation. 00:31:17.120 --> 00:31:17.680 I apologize. 00:31:17.680 --> 00:31:18.880 I'm not a Greek guy. 00:31:19.120 --> 00:31:22.000 Never gonna be, so if you're fluent in Greek, please don't let 00:31:22.000 --> 00:31:23.760 this cause your ears to bleed. 00:31:23.760 --> 00:31:28.800 Irene. The rue word for irenic, which I think we most of 00:31:28.800 --> 00:31:32.160 us probably know that word, there are certain scholars or theologians who 00:31:32.160 --> 00:31:36.400 are described as irenic, which is in contrast to polemic. 00:31:36.400 --> 00:31:41.600 And so for example, in the Lutheran sphere, melanchthan is often described 00:31:41.600 --> 00:31:44.640 as the more ironic of the early church fathers in in the 00:31:44.640 --> 00:31:46.400 Lutheran tradition. 00:31:46.400 --> 00:31:49.840 And then Luther is seen as more polemical. 00:31:49.840 --> 00:31:53.040 He was more combative, he was the one who would who would 00:31:53.040 --> 00:31:56.400 swing the war mall and not try to be as gentle and 00:31:56.400 --> 00:31:58.320 peaceful as Melanchthon. 00:31:58.320 --> 00:32:01.680 And this got Melanchthon into a lot of trouble after Luther died 00:32:01.840 --> 00:32:05.360 because the ironic nature of Melanchthon caused him to continue to try 00:32:05.360 --> 00:32:08.640 to make peace with Calvinists and even Rome to the point that 00:32:08.640 --> 00:32:09.360 he compromised 00:32:10.320 --> 00:32:13.840 Lutheran positions on doctrine to try to have peace. 00:32:13.840 --> 00:32:17.600 He basically took the things that Lutherans had settled on and continued 00:32:17.600 --> 00:32:21.360 to permute them, to dilute them, so that others could agree with 00:32:21.360 --> 00:32:26.240 the words, even though the actual statements themselves became false, because it 00:32:26.240 --> 00:32:27.040 was a false piece. 00:32:27.040 --> 00:32:30.720 It was a creating a piece where suddenly Calvinists and Lutherans and 00:32:30.880 --> 00:32:34.880 Pope all agreed on justification for various aspects. 00:32:34.880 --> 00:32:35.760 It was nonsense. 00:32:35.760 --> 00:32:37.440 There was no possible agreement. 00:32:37.760 --> 00:32:39.840 Where word games were played. 00:32:39.840 --> 00:32:44.000 There's always a danger when someone is only capable of being ironic, 00:32:44.000 --> 00:32:48.880 of of being peace m peaceful, being a peacemaker by concession, by 00:32:48.880 --> 00:32:54.240 being conciliatory, that you end up compromising on the faith, which is 00:32:54.240 --> 00:32:56.880 what many argue Melanchthon did. 00:32:56.880 --> 00:32:57.600 I agree with that. 00:32:57.600 --> 00:32:59.920 There's some who claim he wasn't actually compromising. 00:32:59.920 --> 00:33:01.440 That's an inter Lutheran fight. 00:33:01.440 --> 00:33:03.680 You guys don't care about that. 00:33:03.680 --> 00:33:08.480 I think that it's important to distinguish between those approaches because both 00:33:08.480 --> 00:33:09.600 are valuable approaches. 00:33:09.600 --> 00:33:12.160 You know, they're I don't know that Cory and I are we're 00:33:12.080 --> 00:33:15.280 certainly not ironic by nature, and yet at the same time I 00:33:15.280 --> 00:33:18.240 will absolutely try to be ironic with someone 00:33:19.120 --> 00:33:22.960 when I'm meeting them, finding out where there's mutual agreement, figuring out, 00:33:22.960 --> 00:33:25.520 okay, what where the difference is between us. 00:33:25.520 --> 00:33:28.640 I'm not going to just go after somebody to because if if 00:33:28.640 --> 00:33:31.120 I actually want to be persuasive, you know, as we talked about 00:33:31.120 --> 00:33:34.960 some in the persuasion episode, in order to persuade someone, you can't 00:33:34.960 --> 00:33:35.920 just attack them. 00:33:35.920 --> 00:33:39.600 That's not going to be persuasive to the object of your wrath. 00:33:39.600 --> 00:33:42.640 If you're bringing wrath to the discussion, you're probably not going to 00:33:42.640 --> 00:33:43.920 win hearts and minds. 00:33:43.920 --> 00:33:46.080 Now maybe observers will respond to that. 00:33:46.080 --> 00:33:50.480 And sometimes when you become polemical against someone who is spreading false 00:33:50.480 --> 00:33:53.760 doctrine, the purpose is not even the object of that wrath. 00:33:53.760 --> 00:33:57.600 They serve as a warning to others by saying this man, this 00:33:57.600 --> 00:34:00.720 liar, just as Jesus said and Paul said and others in the 00:34:00.720 --> 00:34:03.600 New Testament said, these men are vipers. 00:34:03.600 --> 00:34:05.280 Look what they're saying, they're lying. 00:34:05.280 --> 00:34:07.680 You know, as Corey and I were discussing this before we began 00:34:07.680 --> 00:34:11.920 recording, I I realized that when Jesus called the the Pharisees and 00:34:11.920 --> 00:34:18.160 Sadducees a brutal liars and called them sons of Satan and murderers, 00:34:18.160 --> 00:34:20.000 he wasn't simply calling them names. 00:34:20.320 --> 00:34:22.480 He wasn't simply being polemical. 00:34:22.480 --> 00:34:25.600 He was also undermining them in front of their congregations. 00:34:25.600 --> 00:34:28.960 Because these Pharisees and Sadducees, these teachers of the law, the rabbis 00:34:28.960 --> 00:34:33.120 who were following Jesus around along with everyone else, they were envious. 00:34:33.440 --> 00:34:37.120 They were envious of the authority with which he taught, and they 00:34:37.120 --> 00:34:42.000 despised the fact that the crowds were listening to this man instead 00:34:42.000 --> 00:34:43.360 of to their lies. 00:34:43.360 --> 00:34:46.640 And so Jesus undermined their authority. 00:34:46.640 --> 00:34:50.320 Their authority, which for the sake of argument, we could say had 00:34:50.320 --> 00:34:55.360 been granted to them by God as rabbis of their congregations, they 00:34:55.360 --> 00:34:58.880 were defying the authority God had given them by lying to their 00:34:58.880 --> 00:35:02.720 people. And And so when Jesus attacked them facially, he wasn't just 00:35:02.720 --> 00:35:04.000 calling them out. 00:35:04.000 --> 00:35:06.960 He was destroying them in front of their own congregation, saying, Look 00:35:06.960 --> 00:35:08.320 at this wicked viper. 00:35:08.320 --> 00:35:09.600 These men are liars. 00:35:09.600 --> 00:35:11.520 They're gonna try to destroy your soul. 00:35:11.520 --> 00:35:15.440 That was exactly the function that it had, which is why Christianity 00:35:15.440 --> 00:35:19.440 we perceive as having emerged as a new religion in that moment. 00:35:19.680 --> 00:35:20.720 That wasn't true. 00:35:20.720 --> 00:35:22.880 Christianity always existed. 00:35:22.880 --> 00:35:26.960 The problem was the the Jews, the rabbis, had corrupted it and 00:35:26.960 --> 00:35:28.800 turned it into a false religion. 00:35:28.800 --> 00:35:32.960 And so the people who were hearing the scripture, they're hearing it 00:35:32.960 --> 00:35:36.400 preached daily, weekly, they were hearing the rabbis teach some things that 00:35:36.400 --> 00:35:40.160 were true, some things that were subtly twisted, and some things were 00:35:40.160 --> 00:35:41.600 blatantly false. 00:35:41.600 --> 00:35:45.600 When Jesus came along and clearly taught from Scripture, the scripture that 00:35:45.600 --> 00:35:48.160 they already believed was the basis for them saying, Yes, this is 00:35:48.160 --> 00:35:49.280 what I believe, I'm a Christian. 00:35:50.080 --> 00:35:51.360 They were already Christians. 00:35:51.360 --> 00:35:54.000 They already had faith even before Jesus arrived. 00:35:54.000 --> 00:35:56.480 That was how they received that truth. 00:35:56.480 --> 00:35:59.360 And so Jesus was not ironic. 00:35:59.760 --> 00:36:02.240 I mean, there there are times when he certainly was, but Jesus 00:36:02.240 --> 00:36:03.520 is very often polemical. 00:36:03.840 --> 00:36:05.920 He went hard at people. 00:36:05.920 --> 00:36:09.200 And you know, to point this out is not licensed for being 00:36:09.200 --> 00:36:10.720 a jerk on the internet. 00:36:10.720 --> 00:36:13.600 Yeah, I think the the approach that Corey and I typically take, 00:36:13.600 --> 00:36:16.240 certainly on Stone Choir, is is didactic. 00:36:16.240 --> 00:36:17.760 It's kind of splitting the difference. 00:36:17.760 --> 00:36:22.160 We're not being soft, but we're not being hyper-aggressive. 00:36:22.160 --> 00:36:23.680 We generally try not to be. 00:36:23.680 --> 00:36:25.360 It's didactic, it's teaching. 00:36:25.360 --> 00:36:28.320 It's like, look, this is a true version of something, this is 00:36:28.320 --> 00:36:29.120 a false version. 00:36:29.120 --> 00:36:31.120 Here's why the false version doesn't work. 00:36:31.120 --> 00:36:32.240 It doesn't hold up. 00:36:32.240 --> 00:36:33.760 Here's why the true version does work. 00:36:33.760 --> 00:36:35.280 And here's why it's important. 00:36:35.280 --> 00:36:39.440 And so to draw those clear distinctions, you can do that polemically, 00:36:39.440 --> 00:36:40.960 but you can also do it didactically. 00:36:40.960 --> 00:36:43.280 You can just be like, look, here it is. 00:36:43.280 --> 00:36:45.040 And personally, that's the approach I prefer. 00:36:45.040 --> 00:36:46.640 I don't want to fight and scream. 00:36:46.640 --> 00:36:49.440 Like it's I can do it if I have to, but at 00:36:49.440 --> 00:36:52.320 some point you're losing ground that maybe you can make up if 00:36:52.320 --> 00:36:56.080 you take a slightly less aggressive approach. 00:36:56.080 --> 00:36:59.360 So in the context of peacemaking in the church, it's just important 00:36:59.360 --> 00:37:04.000 to acknowledge that there's not a blanket prohibition against any of these 00:37:04.000 --> 00:37:06.400 things. Being ironic is desirable. 00:37:06.400 --> 00:37:09.280 You know, one of the early church fathers his name was Irenaeus. 00:37:09.280 --> 00:37:10.720 That's the same root word. 00:37:10.960 --> 00:37:13.920 His name was basically the peaceful one. 00:37:13.920 --> 00:37:15.440 That's certainly a desirable thing. 00:37:15.760 --> 00:37:19.280 Corey's joking, if if one of us had been named Irenaeus, it 00:37:19.280 --> 00:37:20.480 would have been ironic. 00:37:20.480 --> 00:37:21.680 We would not have lived up to that because 00:37:22.880 --> 00:37:27.440 we are not men who seek peace certainly at the expense of 00:37:27.440 --> 00:37:31.280 truth. I will sacrifice for truth even if it makes anyone angry 00:37:31.440 --> 00:37:34.560 because there are times and places when someone's got to do that. 00:37:34.560 --> 00:37:37.760 And when enough men start doing that, suddenly you can have peace 00:37:38.000 --> 00:37:41.760 because when you root out the false teachings, you get back to 00:37:41.760 --> 00:37:45.840 an idyllic garden like state where okay, we're on the same page. 00:37:45.840 --> 00:37:49.440 And that's one of the blessings of having things like church denominations, 00:37:49.440 --> 00:37:52.480 assuming that one of them would get their doctrine right, is that 00:37:52.480 --> 00:37:57.280 within the four walls of that denomination, you don't have these fights. 00:37:57.280 --> 00:38:00.560 And at the same time, it's important to acknowledge that as human 00:38:00.560 --> 00:38:06.320 beings, as fallen sinful creatures, we're always kind of looking for a 00:38:06.320 --> 00:38:08.640 fight. We're always looking for that next thing. 00:38:08.640 --> 00:38:12.080 And there are some denominations I think that are certainly more vulnerable 00:38:12.560 --> 00:38:15.760 to this than others just by their nature of there's the notion 00:38:15.760 --> 00:38:20.080 in some of the reformed of Sempre Reformanda always reforming. 00:38:20.080 --> 00:38:20.720 And I 00:38:21.920 --> 00:38:24.640 in general I think that's a really bad idea because it basically 00:38:25.440 --> 00:38:28.000 kind of invites corrosion to the party. 00:38:28.000 --> 00:38:33.040 It's saying we're never gonna stop fighting amongst ourselves, which is crucially 00:38:33.040 --> 00:38:35.600 different than we're never gonna stop fighting for the faith. 00:38:35.600 --> 00:38:37.280 We're called to fight for the faith. 00:38:37.280 --> 00:38:39.120 We're called to fight for God's things. 00:38:39.520 --> 00:38:42.320 But when God's things aren't under attack, we don't need to be 00:38:42.320 --> 00:38:46.240 an overactive immune system that goes looking for fights when there aren't 00:38:46.160 --> 00:38:49.520 none. You know, it's entirely possible for you to get Christian doctrine 00:38:49.520 --> 00:38:51.280 to the point that they're small things. 00:38:51.280 --> 00:38:53.920 You know, Corey gave the examples of things like the color of 00:38:53.920 --> 00:38:55.200 candles and carpeting. 00:38:55.200 --> 00:38:56.880 Don't ever fight over that stuff. 00:38:56.880 --> 00:38:58.240 Don't pick the fight. 00:38:58.240 --> 00:39:02.640 And if possible, be the peacemakers like we're we're gonna let this 00:39:02.640 --> 00:39:04.000 slide. But 00:39:04.880 --> 00:39:08.240 the There's a distinction between things that are core to the faith 00:39:08.240 --> 00:39:09.760 and things that are ancillary. 00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:13.040 And those are not simply matters of wisdom, those are matters of 00:39:13.040 --> 00:39:16.400 discernment, which are related but different things. 00:39:16.400 --> 00:39:20.720 You must correctly discern those things that are vital to the faith 00:39:20.880 --> 00:39:23.040 and those things that you can do without. 00:39:23.040 --> 00:39:26.160 And plainly there are things like carpeting and candles. 00:39:26.160 --> 00:39:30.320 To say that the form of a thing is necessarily salvific becomes 00:39:30.320 --> 00:39:34.400 idolatrous, which is when those things cease to be a diaphragm, when 00:39:34.560 --> 00:39:36.880 when someone says you must do it like this. 00:39:36.880 --> 00:39:38.400 Well, then they pick the fight. 00:39:38.400 --> 00:39:41.360 And that very thing, the color of the candles that didn't matter, 00:39:41.360 --> 00:39:45.680 if someone says you have to use pink versus purple or whatever. 00:39:46.000 --> 00:39:47.680 You have to do the opposite. 00:39:47.680 --> 00:39:48.880 You have to say no. 00:39:48.880 --> 00:39:51.600 As a matter of Christian freedom, I'm gonna do the exact opposite 00:39:51.600 --> 00:39:55.680 of what you're trying to bind my conscience with, because that is 00:39:55.680 --> 00:39:57.120 a false teaching. 00:39:57.120 --> 00:40:02.000 And so the peace that we will pursue within the church is 00:40:02.000 --> 00:40:06.880 not in distinction to violence, but it is in distinction to strife. 00:40:06.880 --> 00:40:10.000 There are times when there's strife within the church and it's undesirable, 00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:13.760 but again, the measure must always be not who's pulling the fire 00:40:13.760 --> 00:40:16.080 alarm, who is calling BS. 00:40:16.080 --> 00:40:19.680 The measure must be who's being faithful to scripture. 00:40:19.680 --> 00:40:22.480 And when one man points to scripture and another man refuses to 00:40:22.480 --> 00:40:26.560 acknowledge it, that's generally a put pretty good indication of what the 00:40:26.560 --> 00:40:27.680 two sides are. 00:40:27.680 --> 00:40:30.000 Sometimes that's how it plays out, sometimes it isn't. 00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:32.880 Sometimes both men are pointing a scripture and then it's it gets 00:40:32.880 --> 00:40:36.000 harder for someone who's, you know, judging as as a jurist, as 00:40:36.000 --> 00:40:38.560 a finder of fact, like, well, I I need you to make 00:40:38.560 --> 00:40:40.880 a clear case for me from scripture. 00:40:40.880 --> 00:40:44.080 But in the end, you know, certainly as Protestants, and this is 00:40:44.080 --> 00:40:48.480 something, sorry, papists who are listening, scripture's not only the tiebreaker, scripture 00:40:48.480 --> 00:40:51.600 is the source, is the root of all of this. 00:40:51.600 --> 00:40:55.600 And so wherever scripture is being adhered to, there should be peace. 00:40:55.600 --> 00:40:59.120 And where scripture comes under attack, there will not be peace as 00:40:59.120 --> 00:41:00.640 long as scripture is under attack. 00:41:00.640 --> 00:41:03.920 Again. Again, not a question of violence, but it is a question 00:41:03.920 --> 00:41:05.040 of strife. 00:41:05.040 --> 00:41:11.680 Spiritual, auditory, you know, polemical barbs going back and forth in letters 00:41:11.680 --> 00:41:13.440 and on the internet or whatever. 00:41:13.440 --> 00:41:16.240 There's a time and a place where it's necessary to defend the 00:41:16.240 --> 00:41:19.920 faith out loud and where people's feelings are gonna get hurt because 00:41:19.920 --> 00:41:22.480 they hitched their wagon to false teaching. 00:41:22.480 --> 00:41:26.560 So you can't let someone being upset act as an indication that 00:41:26.560 --> 00:41:27.760 something has gone wrong. 00:41:27.760 --> 00:41:30.720 You need to understand is it coming from scripture or is it 00:41:30.720 --> 00:41:32.560 just coming from a misunderstanding? 00:41:32.560 --> 00:41:35.920 And if it's just a misunderstanding, then absolutely be ironic. 00:41:35.920 --> 00:41:38.400 Try to dial things back as quickly as possible. 00:41:38.400 --> 00:41:42.000 So the accumulation of sins doesn't make a situation even worse. 00:41:42.000 --> 00:41:44.960 That's always that's part of what being a peacemaker is. 00:41:44.960 --> 00:41:47.520 Yeah, that word peacemaker, as far as I could tell, is the 00:41:47.520 --> 00:41:50.320 first time in the Bible was the first time that that word 00:41:50.320 --> 00:41:51.840 was conjoined. 00:41:51.840 --> 00:41:55.360 And it's important not only to focus on the peace, but on 00:41:55.360 --> 00:41:56.320 the maker. 00:41:56.320 --> 00:41:59.280 To make peace is an active thing. 00:41:59.280 --> 00:42:00.960 It's not being b passive. 00:42:00.960 --> 00:42:03.760 It's not God commanding us to be whitewashed tombs. 00:42:03.760 --> 00:42:06.080 You know, whitewashed tomb is very peaceful. 00:42:06.080 --> 00:42:06.400 But 00:42:07.360 --> 00:42:10.000 making peace is a fundamentally different thing. 00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:12.640 Sometimes when you make peace it's loud. 00:42:13.360 --> 00:42:13.520 At 00:42:13.520 --> 00:42:17.760 least with regard to Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon, their names were 00:42:17.760 --> 00:42:23.360 appropriate because of course Martin comes from Mars, the god of war, 00:42:23.360 --> 00:42:27.360 and Philip has Philos in it, friendship or loving. 00:42:27.360 --> 00:42:31.360 Although I guess there's some historical irony in that Philippic is also 00:42:31.360 --> 00:42:34.480 in there, but that's just historical irony. 00:42:34.480 --> 00:42:40.240 But to return to the different locations, as it were, the places 00:42:40.240 --> 00:42:42.800 where peace is relevant. 00:42:42.800 --> 00:42:46.160 Of course peace is relevant everywhere, but it's relevant in different ways 00:42:46.240 --> 00:42:48.800 in different places. 00:42:48.800 --> 00:42:53.280 The four on which we really want to focus are again the 00:42:53.280 --> 00:42:59.600 home, society or the culture, politics, or the state, and the church. 00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:05.680 And just to give sort of a very brief outline of 00:43:07.120 --> 00:43:11.200 the different way in which peace is pursued and which and when 00:43:11.200 --> 00:43:15.440 there should be peace in these different places. 00:43:15.440 --> 00:43:20.000 With regard to the home, the goal should be to always have 00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:23.840 peace. Now, of course, that isn't going to be possible in this 00:43:23.840 --> 00:43:28.720 life. There will always be some strife to some degree, some disagreements, 00:43:28.720 --> 00:43:32.720 but the goal should be to always have peace in the home. 00:43:32.720 --> 00:43:35.840 With regard to society or the culture, it should be a matter 00:43:35.840 --> 00:43:40.880 of generally or usually having peace. 00:43:40.880 --> 00:43:46.720 The reason it is important to highlight these is partly just because 00:43:46.720 --> 00:43:51.920 it's important to note when there should be peace, but secondarily to 00:43:51.920 --> 00:43:56.160 contrast them with the state in the church. 00:43:56.160 --> 00:44:00.480 As we've gone over before in other episodes and linked to particularly 00:44:00.480 --> 00:44:06.160 the Marquart essay, With regard to politics or the state and the 00:44:06.160 --> 00:44:10.480 church, you should have peace when possible. 00:44:10.480 --> 00:44:13.360 It's not that there should always be peace, it's not that there 00:44:13.360 --> 00:44:16.800 should generally be peace, it's that you should have peace when it 00:44:16.800 --> 00:44:19.680 is possible to have peace. 00:44:19.680 --> 00:44:25.120 And that's because, of course, with regard to politics, politics is just 00:44:25.280 --> 00:44:28.560 one of those areas where there is always going to be strife. 00:44:28.560 --> 00:44:30.720 That is the nature of politics. 00:44:30.720 --> 00:44:36.000 And so you should not pursue peace at the expense of truth. 00:44:36.000 --> 00:44:39.760 You should not pursue peace at the expense of security. 00:44:39.760 --> 00:44:44.960 There are other considerations that are higher that are greater considerations when 00:44:44.960 --> 00:44:46.960 it comes to the political sphere. 00:44:46.960 --> 00:44:49.440 The same is true in the church. 00:44:49.440 --> 00:44:53.920 There's slightly different considerations, but of course truth is overlapping. 00:44:53.920 --> 00:44:54.640 With regard to 00:44:55.520 --> 00:45:00.400 truth, you should not yield in order to preserve or to create 00:45:00.400 --> 00:45:04.000 peace, because again that would be a false peace, and so it 00:45:04.000 --> 00:45:08.320 is peace when possible. 00:45:08.720 --> 00:45:11.680 With regard to the things of God. 00:45:11.680 --> 00:45:15.840 If someone is teaching falsely, and there seems to be perfect peace, 00:45:15.840 --> 00:45:19.680 there's a cord, no one is causing a disturbance. 00:45:19.680 --> 00:45:24.320 That is a false peace, that is not real peace, because that 00:45:24.320 --> 00:45:29.440 peace, supposed peace, that false peace, should be disturbed, because it is 00:45:29.440 --> 00:45:33.200 not a real thing, because it is the truth that matters, it 00:45:33.200 --> 00:45:35.920 is the things of God that matter. 00:45:35.920 --> 00:45:39.680 And so those should be defended, even if you will be accused 00:45:39.680 --> 00:45:44.960 of breaching the peace, or being someone who disturbs others, or quarrelsome, 00:45:44.960 --> 00:45:49.120 or whatever it happens to be lovelessness is another accusation that gets 00:45:49.120 --> 00:45:54.000 thrown at those who bring up these issues. 00:45:54.000 --> 00:46:00.000 But fundamentally speaking, with regard to both the state and the church, 00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:05.680 peace should be pursued only when possible, which is to say when 00:46:05.680 --> 00:46:10.240 it does not come at the expense of higher or of greater 00:46:10.240 --> 00:46:15.280 considerations. And of course The primary one with regard to the church 00:46:15.280 --> 00:46:16.240 is truth. 00:46:16.240 --> 00:46:20.480 The primary one with regard to the state is probably security, because 00:46:20.480 --> 00:46:24.320 that is one of the highest duties of the state, the maintenance 00:46:24.320 --> 00:46:27.040 of the territory entrusted to its care. 00:46:27.040 --> 00:46:33.120 Security, defense, those things, that is a higher concern than peace. 00:46:33.120 --> 00:46:38.160 If for instance you have a neighboring country that is preparing for 00:46:38.160 --> 00:46:43.680 war, and you decide to pursue peace, you're just going to disband 00:46:43.680 --> 00:46:44.480 your military. 00:46:44.480 --> 00:46:48.240 You're not going to build fortifications on your border. 00:46:48.240 --> 00:46:52.560 You're going to pursue peace and ignore all these other considerations. 00:46:52.560 --> 00:46:55.200 Are you likely to end up with peace? 00:46:55.360 --> 00:46:57.520 The answer, of course, is no. 00:46:57.520 --> 00:47:01.040 The same thing is true in the church, if you abandon the 00:47:01.040 --> 00:47:06.320 truth, because again you are just seeding chaos and suffering and misery 00:47:06.320 --> 00:47:10.000 for future generations it will be far worse than if you had 00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:14.240 just dealt with the problem when it first arose. 00:47:14.240 --> 00:47:18.720 But to return to the home, the home is supposed to be 00:47:19.120 --> 00:47:20.800 a sanctuary. 00:47:20.800 --> 00:47:24.080 That is the nature of the home. 00:47:24.080 --> 00:47:27.040 It is supposed to be somewhere that you can be safe from 00:47:27.360 --> 00:47:31.280 the strife, some of the suffering, some of the problems of the 00:47:31.280 --> 00:47:36.080 world. You can get away from those when you are at home. 00:47:36.080 --> 00:47:38.960 When you go home, you can leave some of those things out 00:47:38.960 --> 00:47:43.520 in the world and not have to deal with them anymore Incidentally, 00:47:43.520 --> 00:47:46.080 that does mean that you should try not to bring them home 00:47:46.080 --> 00:47:46.880 with you. 00:47:46.880 --> 00:47:48.480 Leave them at the door. 00:47:48.480 --> 00:47:52.880 That is a recommendation that some perhaps need to hear, particularly with 00:47:52.880 --> 00:47:55.440 regard to politics and things like that. 00:47:55.440 --> 00:47:58.560 Don't cause strife in your home over those things if you can 00:47:58.560 --> 00:48:01.200 possibly avoid it. 00:48:01.200 --> 00:48:05.440 This is again one of those differences between men and women. 00:48:05.440 --> 00:48:08.800 And so for many of these things we are discussing, they are 00:48:08.800 --> 00:48:13.200 going to pertain primarily primarily or even exclusively to men, because of 00:48:13.200 --> 00:48:16.880 course one of the major considerations of the state is war. 00:48:16.880 --> 00:48:20.160 And women should not be involved in war. 00:48:20.160 --> 00:48:23.280 Not actively, at least, not on the front lines, not as soldiers, 00:48:23.280 --> 00:48:27.440 not as decision makers, that is an enterprise for men. 00:48:27.440 --> 00:48:32.000 But with regard to the home, that is primarily an enterprise for 00:48:32.000 --> 00:48:33.440 the woman. 00:48:33.440 --> 00:48:37.200 And God has constituted men and women differently. 00:48:37.200 --> 00:48:41.600 Women are more inclined to seek consensus and to be peacemakers in 00:48:41.600 --> 00:48:44.640 this particular way than are men. 00:48:44.640 --> 00:48:49.360 Because men are designed, are constituted such that they can engage in 00:48:49.360 --> 00:48:54.640 the political sphere, which is acrimonious, which is just going to involve 00:48:54.640 --> 00:48:59.040 strife from the beginning of human history to the very end, when 00:48:59.040 --> 00:49:04.480 God establishes permanent peace on the earth, the new earth. 00:49:04.480 --> 00:49:08.480 Men are constituted for those sorts of conflicts, and so that is 00:49:08.480 --> 00:49:12.320 always going to be part of the nature of men. 00:49:12.320 --> 00:49:15.200 That is not part of the nature of woman. 00:49:15.200 --> 00:49:19.120 God made woman to be a helper, to be a keeper of 00:49:19.120 --> 00:49:25.440 the home, to be a peacemaker, and so women seek consensus whereas 00:49:25.440 --> 00:49:29.360 men are more constituted to seek truth. 00:49:29.360 --> 00:49:33.840 Truth is what matters if you're having a fight in the church. 00:49:33.840 --> 00:49:38.240 Truth matters if you're having a fight in the realm of the 00:49:38.240 --> 00:49:40.400 political, in the state. 00:49:40.400 --> 00:49:43.440 Now, truth matters in the home as well, of course, if you're 00:49:43.440 --> 00:49:48.240 dealing with, say, the things of the church, because obviously the husband 00:49:48.240 --> 00:49:50.960 is supposed to teach the faith to his wife and his children, 00:49:50.960 --> 00:49:51.760 and so the truth matters 00:49:52.640 --> 00:49:59.200 there. But you can let more things slide that aren't related to 00:49:59.200 --> 00:50:02.000 the matters of the church, aren't related to the things of God. 00:50:02.000 --> 00:50:06.960 You can let things slide in the home, in order to maintain 00:50:06.960 --> 00:50:10.320 peace. You can let things slide that you would not let slide 00:50:10.480 --> 00:50:13.600 elsewhere, that you could not let slide in the church, that you 00:50:13.600 --> 00:50:16.800 would not let slide in politics. 00:50:16.800 --> 00:50:19.440 You can cover over them. 00:50:19.440 --> 00:50:21.600 Love covers a multitude of offenses. 00:50:21.600 --> 00:50:24.800 You can cover over some of these things in the home in 00:50:24.800 --> 00:50:26.480 order to maintain peace. 00:50:26.480 --> 00:50:29.280 Because again, when should there be peace in the home? 00:50:29.280 --> 00:50:32.320 Always. That is what is preferable in the home. 00:50:32.320 --> 00:50:33.920 That is the goal for the home. 00:50:33.920 --> 00:50:37.600 It's not really the goal for the state or the church. 00:50:37.600 --> 00:50:40.560 Because there are going to be times where you will have to 00:50:40.560 --> 00:50:43.440 have fights in the state or in the church. 00:50:43.440 --> 00:50:46.560 You don't You don't necessarily have to have these fights in the 00:50:46.560 --> 00:50:51.360 home. And so the goal should be to maintain that peace. 00:50:51.360 --> 00:50:53.600 In the home, these are your family members. 00:50:53.600 --> 00:50:57.280 You are supposed to deal with them differently from how you deal 00:50:57.280 --> 00:51:01.520 with others out in the world, with how you deal with strangers, 00:51:01.520 --> 00:51:06.800 particularly if you're dealing at the level of politics, international politics, things 00:51:06.800 --> 00:51:08.320 like that. 00:51:08.320 --> 00:51:13.680 In the home you seek peace, and you let more things slide 00:51:13.680 --> 00:51:15.200 than you would otherwise. 00:51:15.200 --> 00:51:19.600 And so again, this is the woman's realm in a very concrete 00:51:19.600 --> 00:51:21.120 and real way. 00:51:21.120 --> 00:51:26.080 And so for the men in the audience, don't bring home that 00:51:26.080 --> 00:51:30.480 same mindset where you're going to have a knockdown, drag out fight 00:51:30.480 --> 00:51:33.200 for the truth in the public sphere. 00:51:33.200 --> 00:51:35.040 Don't bring that into the home. 00:51:35.040 --> 00:51:37.920 It is a different thing in the home that's going to be 00:51:37.920 --> 00:51:42.720 difficult for some to hear, perhaps even difficult for some who are 00:51:42.720 --> 00:51:48.000 hosting the podcast, because we may have the inclination to argue in 00:51:48.000 --> 00:51:49.040 a certain fashion. 00:51:49.280 --> 00:51:53.600 And you have to mitigate that or alter that when dealing with 00:51:53.600 --> 00:51:55.120 different places. 00:51:55.120 --> 00:51:59.440 Because what is appropriate when you are arguing in the political sphere 00:51:59.680 --> 00:52:03.280 is not necessarily going to be appropriate when you're arguing in the 00:52:03.280 --> 00:52:06.800 home. And the same is true for the church versus the state 00:52:07.040 --> 00:52:11.680 or just in the culture generally versus in politics. 00:52:11.680 --> 00:52:16.640 Where you are does change how you should behave to a certain 00:52:16.640 --> 00:52:21.200 degree, and with whom you are interacting, with whom you are engaging, 00:52:21.200 --> 00:52:23.920 should change how you engage. 00:52:23.920 --> 00:52:27.280 You are not going to argue with your wife the same way 00:52:27.280 --> 00:52:29.440 you would argue with a political opponent. 00:52:29.440 --> 00:52:33.040 Hopefully, if you do that you probably will not remain married. 00:52:33.040 --> 00:52:35.840 So don't do that. 00:52:35.840 --> 00:52:40.560 The goal with your wife is not just to win an argument. 00:52:40.560 --> 00:52:43.120 There are different considerations there. 00:52:43.120 --> 00:52:46.320 That's a marriage, that's a relationship, that's something on which you have 00:52:46.320 --> 00:52:49.760 to work, something you have to maintain. 00:52:49.760 --> 00:52:53.280 If you are dealing in the political sphere, the goal is to 00:52:53.280 --> 00:52:59.200 win. The goal isn't to maintain a relationship with your political opponent, 00:52:59.200 --> 00:53:02.080 so there are very different considerations. 00:53:02.080 --> 00:53:04.160 These are matters of wisdom. 00:53:04.160 --> 00:53:09.120 You have to know how to behave in certain places with certain 00:53:09.120 --> 00:53:14.160 people. And so in the home, that is where you should try 00:53:14.400 --> 00:53:19.680 above and beyond everywhere else to be a peacemaker, to maintain peace, 00:53:19.680 --> 00:53:24.960 and that does mean engaging differently and letting more things slide than 00:53:24.960 --> 00:53:28.240 you would anywhere else. 00:53:28.400 --> 00:53:31.520 Much of the reason that the home is so important is that 00:53:31.520 --> 00:53:33.840 it is in contrast to the other realms. 00:53:34.080 --> 00:53:38.400 You know, the home is it's the smallest of all concentric circles 00:53:38.400 --> 00:53:39.440 in your life. 00:53:39.440 --> 00:53:43.200 And so as Corey's saying, it must be a refuge. 00:53:43.200 --> 00:53:47.040 And there's some in the audience, I'm certain, and there are certainly 00:53:47.040 --> 00:53:50.320 many in the world who grew up in homes that were not 00:53:50.320 --> 00:53:54.560 refuges. They grew up in homes where there was actual violence or 00:53:54.560 --> 00:53:56.320 the threat of violence. 00:53:56.320 --> 00:54:01.840 And that sort of perpetual threat of of harm that shouldn't exist 00:54:01.840 --> 00:54:05.920 inside the home when the home should be a safe place, that 00:54:06.080 --> 00:54:10.400 leaves a permanent mark on someone, especially if they're young, that it 00:54:10.400 --> 00:54:13.360 it changes someone who's grown up in that environment in a way 00:54:13.360 --> 00:54:17.120 that they come out a different type of adult than someone who 00:54:17.120 --> 00:54:19.200 didn't. I didn't experience that. 00:54:19.200 --> 00:54:20.720 I had a good, peaceful home. 00:54:20.720 --> 00:54:22.000 I was never subject to that. 00:54:22.000 --> 00:54:23.600 I was never familiar with it. 00:54:23.600 --> 00:54:26.560 And yet as an adult, I've talked to those who were subjected 00:54:26.560 --> 00:54:31.360 to, you know, violent alcoholism or whatever to horrible situations. 00:54:31.360 --> 00:54:33.280 Some of the worst things that could happen. 00:54:33.280 --> 00:54:36.560 And part of why they're bad is not simply that adults were 00:54:36.560 --> 00:54:39.840 derelict in their duty towards their own children. 00:54:39.840 --> 00:54:43.840 But that the home itself, that one place where everyone should have 00:54:43.840 --> 00:54:46.240 been safe, they weren't. 00:54:46.240 --> 00:54:50.240 And I think as much as the duty of care that that 00:54:50.240 --> 00:54:53.360 is failed by the adults in those situations. 00:54:53.360 --> 00:54:56.800 There's a mark that's left on a child who's raised in those 00:54:56.800 --> 00:55:00.880 situations that they're never quite able to feel safe in the same 00:55:00.880 --> 00:55:02.960 way as they would have as I do. 00:55:02.960 --> 00:55:07.360 Like I don't have any sort of reaction to situations or to 00:55:07.360 --> 00:55:10.480 ideas. And you know, to even bring it up I'm sure probably 00:55:10.640 --> 00:55:12.000 bothers some people a little bit. 00:55:12.000 --> 00:55:15.200 I apologize for that, but it's reality. 00:55:15.200 --> 00:55:18.400 And it's important for those of you who are looking at forming 00:55:18.400 --> 00:55:21.600 homes. I don't think there's a lot of violent alcoholism probably in 00:55:21.600 --> 00:55:25.920 our audience, but anything like that, like just the very notion that 00:55:25.920 --> 00:55:29.600 those things could exist in the home that was should be a 00:55:29.600 --> 00:55:31.360 safe refuge. 00:55:31.360 --> 00:55:35.280 Anything contrary to that is destructive in a way that even if 00:55:35.280 --> 00:55:40.240 your home is peaceful and your society is in trouble, you can 00:55:40.240 --> 00:55:40.960 be okay. 00:55:40.960 --> 00:55:42.320 Maybe not long term. 00:55:42.320 --> 00:55:46.480 Maybe eventually you're gonna face reality when, you know, the things that 00:55:46.480 --> 00:55:49.520 are happening at your borders come to your home. 00:55:49.520 --> 00:55:53.120 But the reason that the home is is a crucial example here 00:55:53.280 --> 00:55:56.800 is that if you were to say in the hypothetical scenario, have 00:55:56.960 --> 00:56:02.160 a completely peaceful society where the nation was just com totally idyllic 00:56:02.400 --> 00:56:06.640 and then the home itself were a nightmare of violence and threats 00:56:06.720 --> 00:56:09.440 of violence and abuse and terror. 00:56:09.440 --> 00:56:10.960 All is lost. 00:56:10.960 --> 00:56:12.640 That's no society at all. 00:56:12.640 --> 00:56:17.200 If you have the appearance of peace outside and then every home 00:56:17.200 --> 00:56:20.000 is filled with terrors, that's hell. 00:56:20.320 --> 00:56:24.400 It's a veneer of falsehood that's far worse than if the home 00:56:24.400 --> 00:56:27.920 is peaceful and it's a nightmare outside the walls of the home. 00:56:27.920 --> 00:56:30.400 And so this is one of those cases where 00:56:31.280 --> 00:56:34.160 not only politically is it challenging for us, For us, because as 00:56:34.160 --> 00:56:38.240 Corey was saying, and I want to reiterate very starkly, the home 00:56:38.240 --> 00:56:40.880 is in a sense very much the domain of the woman. 00:56:40.880 --> 00:56:45.120 I'm not talking about being longhoused, I'm not talking about husbands abdicating 00:56:45.120 --> 00:56:46.480 their responsibility. 00:56:46.480 --> 00:56:49.120 But for example, you know, lady of the house. 00:56:49.120 --> 00:56:52.720 Lady is a title that is the feminine version of Lord. 00:56:52.720 --> 00:56:55.920 To call her a lady is to say that she's in charge. 00:56:55.920 --> 00:56:59.920 She's second in charge, but she is the steward of that household 00:57:00.080 --> 00:57:02.240 where the husband is, you know, the king. 00:57:02.240 --> 00:57:06.000 He rules the realm, but while he is gone, the lady has 00:57:06.000 --> 00:57:07.760 the stewardship of that place. 00:57:07.760 --> 00:57:09.760 And that is very much her domain. 00:57:10.160 --> 00:57:12.880 The same is true with master of the house and mistress. 00:57:13.200 --> 00:57:16.560 Today we think of mistress as being you know, something that has 00:57:16.560 --> 00:57:20.400 to do with inappropriate behavior, but properly understood mistress is the feminine 00:57:20.400 --> 00:57:21.600 version of master. 00:57:21.600 --> 00:57:25.840 The master of the house is the man, dominus and domina, the 00:57:25.840 --> 00:57:28.640 male and female form of the same thing, lord is Latin for 00:57:28.640 --> 00:57:31.120 Lord, Lord and Lady. 00:57:31.120 --> 00:57:36.560 Within the home, the woman, the wife, the mother, does act as 00:57:36.560 --> 00:57:37.440 the steward. 00:57:37.440 --> 00:57:41.440 And so in a very, very concrete sense, and in this narrow 00:57:41.440 --> 00:57:45.840 domain, I think that wives and mothers are perhaps the most perfect 00:57:45.840 --> 00:57:47.840 peacemakers that we have in the world. 00:57:47.840 --> 00:57:50.080 You know, if you're a mother and you've had more than one 00:57:50.080 --> 00:57:54.560 child at a time, you have certainly dealt with situations where there's 00:57:54.560 --> 00:57:58.880 strife. You have little kids, somebody picks a fight, somebody steals something, 00:57:58.880 --> 00:58:02.720 pokes, there's screaming from the other room, you go in there, and 00:58:02.720 --> 00:58:04.480 you have to be a peacemaker. 00:58:04.480 --> 00:58:08.320 You have to settle whatever differences occurred in a way that gets 00:58:08.320 --> 00:58:11.840 everything not only back to an even keel, but straightens everyone out 00:58:11.840 --> 00:58:15.760 so that they're properly aligned with the rules of the household, which 00:58:15.760 --> 00:58:17.920 the husband sets and you enforce. 00:58:17.920 --> 00:58:21.760 And when everything works properly, you know, in an ideal situation, kids 00:58:21.760 --> 00:58:23.040 wouldn't be fighting, but they're kids. 00:58:23.040 --> 00:58:24.000 They gotta be taught. 00:58:24.000 --> 00:58:25.680 Adults have to be taught too. 00:58:25.680 --> 00:58:29.200 But outside the home, the way adults are taught is very different 00:58:29.200 --> 00:58:31.040 in some ways than how kids are taught. 00:58:31.040 --> 00:58:34.800 And so the wife and the mother can be the perfect peacemaker 00:58:34.960 --> 00:58:37.200 in a way that doesn't exist anywhere else. 00:58:37.200 --> 00:58:39.680 Because the things that a mother as a steward of a home 00:58:40.000 --> 00:58:42.800 is the lady or the mistress of the household has a right 00:58:42.800 --> 00:58:47.840 and responsibility to do things and to manage the household in particular 00:58:47.840 --> 00:58:50.800 ways that just don't apply in other domains. 00:58:50.800 --> 00:58:54.960 And that thing which is a tremendous blessing within the home becomes 00:58:54.960 --> 00:58:58.480 the single greatest liability that we have politically as soon as that 00:58:58.480 --> 00:59:00.960 mentality leaves the four walls of the home. 00:59:00.960 --> 00:59:05.680 And this is why girls voting, girls participating in politics have been 00:59:05.680 --> 00:59:10.400 so disastrous in the last century everywhere in Christendom, is that that 00:59:10.400 --> 00:59:13.680 thing which women are perfectly designed by God to do. 00:59:13.680 --> 00:59:17.120 They're imbued with the grace and the patience and the love and 00:59:17.120 --> 00:59:21.280 the wisdom to deal with that sort of bickering and fighting and 00:59:21.520 --> 00:59:24.880 sorting things out in a way that sometimes they do it better 00:59:24.880 --> 00:59:25.440 than men. 00:59:25.440 --> 00:59:28.560 There are things that women are better at in the home sometimes 00:59:28.560 --> 00:59:31.520 than men, because God has given them that special gift. 00:59:31.520 --> 00:59:35.920 And the beauty of having a strong husband And a strong father 00:59:36.000 --> 00:59:38.240 is that you know, this is how I grew up. 00:59:38.240 --> 00:59:40.400 If I stepped out of line, my mom would say, you know, 00:59:40.400 --> 00:59:41.760 wait till your dad gets home. 00:59:41.760 --> 00:59:43.600 That was the worst thing I could possibly hear. 00:59:43.600 --> 00:59:45.840 Not that he was mean or he was a tyrant, but he 00:59:45.840 --> 00:59:46.800 had a belt. 00:59:46.800 --> 00:59:50.640 And the understanding was if I didn't settle things with my mom, 00:59:50.640 --> 00:59:53.680 if I didn't submit to her, when dad got home, it's gonna 00:59:53.680 --> 00:59:55.360 be a much simpler conversation. 00:59:55.360 --> 00:59:57.440 He didn't need to get up to speed and hear a bunch 00:59:57.440 --> 00:59:58.320 of arguments. 00:59:58.320 --> 00:59:59.680 I might catch the belt. 00:59:59.760 --> 01:00:00.800 It very rarely happened. 01:00:01.120 --> 01:00:04.880 I was mostly a good kid, but that reinforcement was there. 01:00:04.880 --> 01:00:07.280 And that's I think probably pretty much gone away today. 01:00:07.280 --> 01:00:09.440 And I think we I think we see the results of that 01:00:09.440 --> 01:00:10.480 in society. 01:00:10.480 --> 01:00:15.040 But the manner in which husbands and fathers deal with things Is 01:00:15.200 --> 01:00:18.000 in some ways the way it works outside politically. 01:00:18.000 --> 01:00:21.680 And the way the mothers can deal with things, while it's ideally 01:00:21.680 --> 01:00:24.480 suited for the home, it's suicidal everywhere else. 01:00:24.480 --> 01:00:29.120 It's suicidal to bring a mother's understanding of how to resolve problems. 01:00:29.120 --> 01:00:35.120 political situations anywhere outside of the home because society is not your 01:00:35.120 --> 01:00:41.200 kids. You know, you cannot extrapolate the principles that work perfectly under 01:00:41.200 --> 01:00:43.120 your roof anywhere else. 01:00:43.440 --> 01:00:47.280 And so the reason that we're sort of sequestering the household here 01:00:47.520 --> 01:00:51.280 is it is the one unique place where women have not only 01:00:51.440 --> 01:00:54.640 the right, but they have an absolute responsibility to be acting in 01:00:54.640 --> 01:00:55.280 these ways. 01:00:55.280 --> 01:00:57.440 You know, if a woman fails, if a mother fails to do 01:00:57.440 --> 01:00:59.600 those things, her house is going to be chaos. 01:00:59.600 --> 01:01:01.200 It's going to be complete disaster. 01:01:01.440 --> 01:01:04.000 We've all seen examples of mothers who are checked out and let 01:01:04.000 --> 01:01:05.120 their kids do whatever. 01:01:05.120 --> 01:01:06.880 Those kids are monsters. 01:01:06.880 --> 01:01:08.560 They're sociopaths. 01:01:08.560 --> 01:01:12.240 They're absolute nightmare human beings because their mother didn't show up to 01:01:12.240 --> 01:01:16.000 be a steward, to be responsible for the home in the stead 01:01:16.000 --> 01:01:18.480 of her husband, who often didn't exist anyway. 01:01:18.480 --> 01:01:22.160 So like all these things that are breaking down civilizationally, they do 01:01:22.160 --> 01:01:23.200 begin in the home. 01:01:23.200 --> 01:01:27.440 And it's why part of the discussion about political things also has 01:01:27.440 --> 01:01:28.560 to include the home. 01:01:28.560 --> 01:01:30.320 We have to fix all these problems at once. 01:01:30.320 --> 01:01:33.440 This is one of those many situations where we gotta get about 01:01:33.440 --> 01:01:36.160 thirty things right all at the same time or we don't have 01:01:36.160 --> 01:01:37.040 a fix. 01:01:37.040 --> 01:01:40.960 I can't fix society and leave a home in shambles, 'cause it's 01:01:40.880 --> 01:01:45.040 going to be producing broken, terrified children, or monstrous children with no 01:01:45.040 --> 01:01:47.440 sense of right and wrong, and they're gonna go out and burn 01:01:47.440 --> 01:01:48.240 down society. 01:01:48.240 --> 01:01:50.160 You gotta get all this stuff right at the same time. 01:01:50.160 --> 01:01:52.080 So it's a huge challenge. 01:01:52.080 --> 01:01:56.240 But the reason for highlighting it within the context of peace is 01:01:56.240 --> 01:01:59.840 that when a mother and a wife is a peacemaker, it's a 01:01:59.840 --> 01:02:00.720 blessing for the children. 01:02:00.720 --> 01:02:03.360 It's also a blessing, incidentally, for the husband. 01:02:03.360 --> 01:02:09.440 When your husband is out all day working, slaving, laboring under God's 01:02:09.440 --> 01:02:13.680 curse, that his labor is going to be hard and it's gonna 01:02:13.680 --> 01:02:16.480 beat him up and it's gonna kill him earlier than it kills 01:02:16.480 --> 01:02:20.000 women. Women live longer than men because of the curse from the 01:02:20.000 --> 01:02:23.840 garden. Men's bodies are used up, our minds are used up, our 01:02:23.920 --> 01:02:27.920 sanity, our hearts, we're chewed up by life in a way that 01:02:27.920 --> 01:02:29.200 shouldn't be happening to women. 01:02:29.200 --> 01:02:32.240 So yeah, women live longer, and that's why there's a sense in 01:02:32.240 --> 01:02:37.440 which men are physically consumed by the hardship in the world. 01:02:37.520 --> 01:02:41.120 And so the peace in the home is crucial because it should 01:02:41.120 --> 01:02:42.720 be our refuge as well. 01:02:42.720 --> 01:02:45.680 When a husband comes home and a father comes home, he should 01:02:45.680 --> 01:02:47.520 come home to a peaceful household. 01:02:47.520 --> 01:02:51.440 He shouldn't have 500 more problems to deal with on top of 01:02:51.440 --> 01:02:52.640 everything in the world. 01:02:52.640 --> 01:02:55.920 You know, for guys who are tied up worrying about geopolitics and 01:02:55.920 --> 01:03:00.960 national borders and local strife and whatever's going on in their business, 01:03:00.960 --> 01:03:04.960 whatever's going on with their employer, whatever's going on with the neighbors. 01:03:04.960 --> 01:03:08.400 When they then come inside, if they have that many more problems 01:03:08.400 --> 01:03:12.640 that they can't escape, that's corrosive to husbands and fathers too. 01:03:12.640 --> 01:03:16.800 That is the one place where a man should feel like he's 01:03:16.800 --> 01:03:18.160 gonna catch a break. 01:03:18.160 --> 01:03:20.960 If every time he walks in the door, it's even worse than 01:03:20.960 --> 01:03:25.200 outside, that's also civilizationally corrosive. 01:03:25.200 --> 01:03:28.320 So one of the duties of wives and mothers is to preserve 01:03:28.880 --> 01:03:32.080 the home so that her husband and the father of her children 01:03:32.320 --> 01:03:34.400 has a place where he is safe. 01:03:34.400 --> 01:03:36.480 She's keeping a safe space for him. 01:03:36.480 --> 01:03:39.600 Yeah, it's turned into a joke, but it's a very real thing. 01:03:39.600 --> 01:03:43.040 When someone feels like they have no place to rest their head, 01:03:43.040 --> 01:03:46.400 no place where they're ever gonna have a moment of peace, you 01:03:46.400 --> 01:03:48.240 can't live like that for long. 01:03:48.240 --> 01:03:51.120 We see in in warfare you see examples of men who are 01:03:51.200 --> 01:03:53.200 you know used to be called shell-shocked. 01:03:53.200 --> 01:03:56.480 You can see a guy who goes into warfare at eighteen, young 01:03:56.480 --> 01:03:58.480 and bright eyed and bushy tailed. 01:03:58.480 --> 01:04:02.320 One year later, after a year in the trenches, assuming he's lived, 01:04:02.320 --> 01:04:04.160 he's a changed man. 01:04:04.160 --> 01:04:07.600 One year after all that combat with the continuous explosion and the 01:04:07.600 --> 01:04:10.800 constant fear of death, not fear in the sense of, oh no, 01:04:10.800 --> 01:04:13.520 I'm afraid I'm gonna die, but just you could die at any 01:04:13.520 --> 01:04:14.960 moment in combat. 01:04:14.960 --> 01:04:19.760 That absence of peace, even the, you know, both theoretical and in 01:04:20.080 --> 01:04:24.160 actual practical absence of peace, it destroys men. 01:04:24.160 --> 01:04:25.680 It absolutely destroys men. 01:04:25.680 --> 01:04:28.240 And most men are not equipped to deal with that. 01:04:28.240 --> 01:04:32.080 And usually the men who come out okay, they certainly all come 01:04:32.080 --> 01:04:32.560 out different. 01:04:32.640 --> 01:04:35.840 They come out hardened in a way that they didn't go in. 01:04:35.840 --> 01:04:37.920 And you know, you can you can cope and you can be 01:04:37.920 --> 01:04:41.760 fine, you can be perfectly functional, but you've gone through something that 01:04:41.920 --> 01:04:44.400 in an ideal word you wouldn't have gone through. 01:04:44.400 --> 01:04:47.120 You wouldn't have been in a situation that wasn't peaceful. 01:04:47.120 --> 01:04:49.840 It's a blessing to have men who are willing to do that, 01:04:49.840 --> 01:04:57.440 to willing to sacrifice strife and danger and death and hardship, sacrificing 01:04:57.440 --> 01:05:01.040 the sort of peace that most of us enjoy every day because 01:05:01.360 --> 01:05:04.400 the lack of that does tremendous harm. 01:05:04.400 --> 01:05:07.280 And so just keep in mind that the very things that are 01:05:07.360 --> 01:05:13.120 benefit in the home become destructive civilizationally when the female, the wifely, 01:05:13.120 --> 01:05:16.240 motherly attitude is brought anywhere else. 01:05:16.240 --> 01:05:17.200 And yet 01:05:18.320 --> 01:05:25.520 after generations of having women suffrage and this political interference from a 01:05:25.520 --> 01:05:29.120 population group that never incidentally wanted it in the first place. 01:05:29.120 --> 01:05:30.240 I've mentioned this before. 01:05:30.240 --> 01:05:31.680 You can look at the stats. 01:05:31.680 --> 01:05:34.400 If women had been able to vote when the nineteenth Amendment was 01:05:34.400 --> 01:05:36.160 ratified, they would have voted against it. 01:05:36.160 --> 01:05:38.320 Women did not want to be able to vote. 01:05:38.320 --> 01:05:40.960 The majority would have preferred to be kept out of it because 01:05:40.960 --> 01:05:41.920 they knew better. 01:05:41.920 --> 01:05:42.880 They were correct. 01:05:42.880 --> 01:05:46.000 The majority of women were correct that they did not want to 01:05:46.000 --> 01:05:50.000 be involved in this crap because it was beyond their expertise. 01:05:50.000 --> 01:05:52.880 It was beyond their domain of responsibilities. 01:05:52.880 --> 01:05:55.360 And it's nasty and brutish business. 01:05:55.360 --> 01:05:59.280 It's something that a lady shouldn't want to be involved in. 01:05:59.280 --> 01:06:02.160 And so I don't say these things to condemn anyone who's listening 01:06:02.240 --> 01:06:06.240 who's a girl who has political opinion or is politically active, it's 01:06:06.240 --> 01:06:08.400 not my place to tell you to stop. 01:06:08.400 --> 01:06:11.280 But it is my place to say that I want to see 01:06:11.280 --> 01:06:14.160 a world where you don't have that problem anymore, where you can 01:06:14.160 --> 01:06:17.680 go home and maintain a home in a way that you're perfectly 01:06:17.680 --> 01:06:21.920 suited for, where all of your sensibilities are dialed in exactly the 01:06:21.920 --> 01:06:23.840 way God wants things. 01:06:23.840 --> 01:06:27.200 But you know, the purpose for doing the episode last week on 01:06:27.200 --> 01:06:31.280 violence, where you know violence doesn't belong belong in the home. 01:06:31.280 --> 01:06:33.200 I was hit with a belt a few times. 01:06:33.200 --> 01:06:35.120 I don't consider that violence. 01:06:35.120 --> 01:06:36.160 It's percussive. 01:06:36.160 --> 01:06:38.240 It's percussive correction. 01:06:38.240 --> 01:06:41.440 But I I would never in a million years feel like I 01:06:41.440 --> 01:06:42.960 was abused in the slightest. 01:06:43.120 --> 01:06:43.920 That's not cope. 01:06:43.920 --> 01:06:48.160 That's understanding that when you fool around, you find out. 01:06:48.160 --> 01:06:51.040 And that's one of the best lessons that anyone can ever learn. 01:06:51.040 --> 01:06:53.520 Even if someone's never been in a fight or anything else, if 01:06:53.520 --> 01:06:57.680 you understand, if you keep going, it's gonna hurt, that draws a 01:06:57.680 --> 01:07:01.520 line that will stick with a man for his entire life. 01:07:01.520 --> 01:07:03.360 That's something that men deliver. 01:07:03.360 --> 01:07:07.200 It's something that women shouldn't have to be involved in at all. 01:07:07.200 --> 01:07:10.960 As we go to these further domains outside of the home, there's 01:07:10.960 --> 01:07:12.560 an exclusion zone there. 01:07:12.560 --> 01:07:15.600 I don't want to see girls going beyond the boundaries of their 01:07:15.600 --> 01:07:16.880 dwelling place. 01:07:16.880 --> 01:07:20.720 The place where you are a domina, a mistress, a lady, where 01:07:20.720 --> 01:07:23.680 you have all of the abilities to do these things well, you 01:07:23.680 --> 01:07:25.600 lose the ability to do them well as soon as you go 01:07:25.600 --> 01:07:26.400 outside your home. 01:07:26.400 --> 01:07:28.000 Because you have one tool. 01:07:28.000 --> 01:07:31.520 Men have multiple tools, and some of them include violence or the 01:07:31.520 --> 01:07:32.720 threat of violence. 01:07:32.720 --> 01:07:37.520 And so a lot of what dictates our understanding of politics today. 01:07:37.680 --> 01:07:41.200 We moved to talking about, you know, neighborhood and society and then 01:07:41.680 --> 01:07:46.480 national politics and beyond, violence and the threat of violence should be 01:07:46.480 --> 01:07:48.880 exclusively a masculine domain. 01:07:48.880 --> 01:07:53.360 And therefore, whenever feminine voices and feminine minds and ideas show up, 01:07:53.360 --> 01:07:55.440 they're going to try to do the thing that's exactly the right 01:07:55.440 --> 01:07:57.600 thing to do in the home, but it's the wrong thing to 01:07:57.600 --> 01:07:58.720 do everywhere else. 01:07:58.720 --> 01:08:01.440 And the reason that we had to tackle that for two hours 01:08:01.440 --> 01:08:05.360 last week is that the feminized world that we live in now 01:08:05.440 --> 01:08:06.960 doesn't make any distinction. 01:08:06.960 --> 01:08:10.080 When it says that men and women are completely interchangeable and your 01:08:10.080 --> 01:08:12.480 political views as a woman are just as good as mine as 01:08:12.480 --> 01:08:14.800 a man and you know, it's just opinions, man. 01:08:14.800 --> 01:08:16.800 You can think whatever you want and you can be right. 01:08:16.800 --> 01:08:17.920 That's nonsense. 01:08:17.920 --> 01:08:20.160 Men are equipped to do things that women aren't just as women 01:08:20.160 --> 01:08:22.160 are equipped to do things that men aren't. 01:08:22.160 --> 01:08:25.520 And to respect how God has created us, to s respect that 01:08:25.520 --> 01:08:28.480 order, is to preserve it wherever possible. 01:08:28.480 --> 01:08:33.120 So moving on to society and beyond, we have to draw a 01:08:33.120 --> 01:08:35.520 line that women should not be going beyond the boundaries of their 01:08:35.520 --> 01:08:38.480 household because they'll cease to be good at the very thing that 01:08:38.480 --> 01:08:40.000 they're so good at inside the 01:08:40.000 --> 01:08:41.440 home. For 01:08:41.440 --> 01:08:48.320 the purposes of this episode, society is the next concentric circle, and 01:08:48.320 --> 01:08:52.480 essentially it goes all the way from the home up to the 01:08:52.480 --> 01:08:55.040 level of the state, which of course is implied by the fact 01:08:55.040 --> 01:08:57.520 that there are essentially three levels here. 01:08:57.520 --> 01:09:03.120 The church is not a fourth level, the church is something separate. 01:09:03.120 --> 01:09:08.400 Really, we're dealing with three different things because the home is its 01:09:08.400 --> 01:09:12.640 own sphere, society and the political are another sphere, and then the 01:09:12.640 --> 01:09:14.720 church is a sphere. 01:09:14.720 --> 01:09:17.920 But there is sort of a hierarchy, as Will was saying, from 01:09:17.920 --> 01:09:21.360 the home up to the state, and then the church is the 01:09:21.360 --> 01:09:24.080 right hand kingdom, it's a separate matter. 01:09:24.080 --> 01:09:29.120 But for society, of course, that starts off with you and your 01:09:29.120 --> 01:09:33.040 neighbor. From there it scales up to the state, but you are 01:09:33.040 --> 01:09:39.920 going to interact differently with your immediate neighbor, your actual neighbor. 01:09:39.920 --> 01:09:43.520 Perhaps literally in some cases for some of you listening, because it 01:09:43.520 --> 01:09:49.360 means literally the farmer farmer next door, the next farmer over, you 01:09:49.360 --> 01:09:53.680 are going to interact differently with that man and with his family 01:09:54.000 --> 01:09:58.560 than someone on the other end of the country or someone in 01:09:58.560 --> 01:10:01.200 another country country. 01:10:01.200 --> 01:10:07.120 Because there are different considerations with regard to proximity, with regard to 01:10:07.120 --> 01:10:11.520 how closely related you are you're going to if things are organized 01:10:11.520 --> 01:10:14.400 correctly, if they are ordered properly, you are going to be more 01:10:14.400 --> 01:10:17.760 closely related to those who are near you, and so that is 01:10:17.760 --> 01:10:18.640 a consideration. 01:10:18.640 --> 01:10:22.560 You will treat your cousins differently from how you would treat a 01:10:22.560 --> 01:10:24.800 complete stranger or an alien. 01:10:24.800 --> 01:10:28.080 It's not to say that you abuse the stranger or the alien, 01:10:28.080 --> 01:10:32.000 but you have different duties, different considerations with regard to your own 01:10:32.000 --> 01:10:35.680 blood. Because they are family, they are extended family, but they are 01:10:35.680 --> 01:10:36.960 still family. 01:10:38.400 --> 01:10:44.240 But again, you are going to let more slide with regard to 01:10:44.240 --> 01:10:49.040 your immediate neighbor than someone who is more distant, just as you 01:10:49.040 --> 01:10:51.440 are going to let the most slide 01:10:52.320 --> 01:10:56.320 with regard to the home and the least with regard to the 01:10:56.320 --> 01:11:02.480 state. So for instance, with regard to the state in matters of 01:11:02.480 --> 01:11:06.240 truth, and this of course is for men, because this is politics, 01:11:06.240 --> 01:11:09.200 this is not a sphere for women. 01:11:09.200 --> 01:11:14.320 But with regard to matters of the truth, there are times where 01:11:14.320 --> 01:11:17.680 you cannot let anything slide. 01:11:17.680 --> 01:11:22.320 Because if you engage in falsity, if you ignore the truth, it 01:11:22.320 --> 01:11:25.040 can have disastrous consequences. 01:11:25.040 --> 01:11:29.440 And so, for instance, if you neglect the fact that the United 01:11:29.440 --> 01:11:35.440 States is currently being invaded and has been for many years. 01:11:35.440 --> 01:11:40.080 And we are quite frankly largely, we, I mean, as a body 01:11:40.080 --> 01:11:45.840 politic, ignoring that fact, the country and the nation will cease to 01:11:45.840 --> 01:11:49.520 exist. That is the ultimate consequence of that. 01:11:49.520 --> 01:11:52.400 And so you cannot let that slide. 01:11:52.400 --> 01:11:56.160 You cannot ignore that for the sake of peace. 01:11:56.160 --> 01:12:00.000 At the other end, with regard to your immediate neighbor, if your 01:12:00.000 --> 01:12:04.640 neighbor's a little weird, you can ignore that. 01:12:04.640 --> 01:12:08.960 Maybe he mows the lawn wearing nothing but Bermuda shorts and working 01:12:08.960 --> 01:12:11.040 boots. Fine. 01:12:11.040 --> 01:12:14.080 You can ignore your neighbor being a little bit weird. 01:12:14.080 --> 01:12:17.520 You can ignore some of the quirks of your neighbor. 01:12:17.520 --> 01:12:21.360 These are things that you let slide that you ignore for the 01:12:21.360 --> 01:12:22.720 sake of peace. 01:12:22.720 --> 01:12:27.200 Because ultimately these aren't things that should disturb peace. 01:12:27.200 --> 01:12:30.800 They aren't things that you should let disturb the peace, because peace 01:12:30.800 --> 01:12:34.480 is more important than than your neighbor's choice of a tire while 01:12:34.480 --> 01:12:36.080 mowing his lawn. 01:12:36.080 --> 01:12:39.520 Or whatever it happens to be. 01:12:39.520 --> 01:12:43.840 You have quirks, your neighbor has quirks, everyone is going to have 01:12:43.840 --> 01:12:46.640 some behavior that someone else is going to find a little Mind 01:12:46.640 --> 01:12:50.000 a little grating or a little obnoxious or a little weird. 01:12:50.000 --> 01:12:54.880 We let these things slide in order to maintain the peace in 01:12:54.880 --> 01:12:59.600 society. And that is why there should generally or usually be peace 01:12:59.600 --> 01:13:03.600 with regard to this level or this circle as it were. 01:13:03.600 --> 01:13:06.400 Because there are things that you just ignore for the sake of 01:13:06.400 --> 01:13:07.360 peace here. 01:13:07.360 --> 01:13:11.360 You don't have a knockdown, drag out fight over everything. 01:13:11.360 --> 01:13:14.080 You're not Your neighbor mows his lawn one way, you mow a 01:13:14.080 --> 01:13:16.240 different way, you don't like how he does it because you think 01:13:16.240 --> 01:13:17.600 it's wrong. 01:13:17.600 --> 01:13:19.120 You don't have to fight over that. 01:13:19.120 --> 01:13:22.000 You can have a friendly discussion over it if you're so inclined, 01:13:22.000 --> 01:13:23.280 but you don't fight over it. 01:13:23.280 --> 01:13:27.200 It's not something over which it is worth breaching the peace, worth 01:13:27.200 --> 01:13:29.920 disturbing the peace. 01:13:29.920 --> 01:13:34.400 Because this is sort of a sliding scale. 01:13:34.400 --> 01:13:37.520 You are going to let more slide, you are going to let 01:13:37.520 --> 01:13:37.760 more 01:13:38.640 --> 01:13:41.680 just pass you by and ignore it for the sake of the 01:13:41.680 --> 01:13:46.640 peace with regard to your immediate neighbor and then less and less 01:13:46.640 --> 01:13:49.120 as you get farther away. 01:13:49.120 --> 01:13:52.720 Of course, farther away it's going to concern you less, so it 01:13:52.720 --> 01:13:55.520 may be that it's just entirely irrelevant. 01:13:55.520 --> 01:13:59.280 To stick with the example of mowing the lawn, perhaps it's on 01:13:59.280 --> 01:14:02.640 my mind because this time of year the grass grows very quickly, 01:14:02.640 --> 01:14:05.280 at least here in the south. 01:14:05.280 --> 01:14:09.520 But someone, say, two thousand miles away, for those of you in 01:14:09.520 --> 01:14:12.320 Europe, another country, but for those of us in the United States, 01:14:12.320 --> 01:14:18.400 still the United States perhaps Canada, you don't really care how that 01:14:18.400 --> 01:14:20.080 man takes care of his lawn. 01:14:20.080 --> 01:14:22.480 That's going to be completely irrelevant to you. 01:14:22.480 --> 01:14:25.680 And so some of these things are going to matter only because 01:14:25.680 --> 01:14:30.640 of proximity, and you ignore them for the sake of peace. 01:14:30.640 --> 01:14:35.360 But there are things that will still be relevant from that immediate 01:14:35.360 --> 01:14:38.880 level of your next door neighbor, your literal neighbor, all the way 01:14:38.880 --> 01:14:42.480 up to any other member of your society, and you're going to 01:14:42.480 --> 01:14:46.400 tolerate more from the neighbor because you have a higher duty to 01:14:46.400 --> 01:14:49.840 maintain that peace locally. 01:14:49.840 --> 01:14:52.720 This is actually still a level at which 01:14:53.680 --> 01:14:57.840 the intuition and the abilities of women can be relevant because, of 01:14:57.840 --> 01:15:03.680 course, maintaining peace between neighbors and households in the immediate vicinity is 01:15:03.680 --> 01:15:06.960 going to be something in which women are actively engaged. 01:15:06.960 --> 01:15:11.280 Because one woman is going to interact with the woman next door. 01:15:11.280 --> 01:15:13.760 And if you happen to have children who are the same age, 01:15:13.760 --> 01:15:16.080 your children are going to get along and you'll have to mediate 01:15:16.080 --> 01:15:17.840 disputes and things like that. 01:15:17.840 --> 01:15:22.240 This is still a level on this end of the scale, at 01:15:22.240 --> 01:15:26.720 which women can be involved, at which women should be involved, because 01:15:26.720 --> 01:15:30.880 God has created women for this sort of thing, this maintenance of 01:15:30.880 --> 01:15:34.960 this network that forms the bedrock of society. 01:15:34.960 --> 01:15:39.920 This is vitally important to having a peaceful and functional society, and 01:15:39.920 --> 01:15:43.120 women are of course involved in this. 01:15:43.120 --> 01:15:49.360 The stark line, the black and white line, is politics because once 01:15:49.360 --> 01:15:56.560 things transition over into concerns of the state running the state, that 01:15:56.560 --> 01:15:59.440 is no longer the domain for women, that is a domain for 01:15:59.440 --> 01:16:03.840 men. And there is sort of a gray area here 01:16:04.720 --> 01:16:10.160 between the immediate neighbor or your neighborhood, the small scale, and the 01:16:10.160 --> 01:16:13.840 other end where we're dealing with, say, local government. 01:16:13.840 --> 01:16:17.760 That's starting to edge into politics or the state. 01:16:17.760 --> 01:16:21.600 But you have things that are lower than that that aren't necessarily 01:16:21.600 --> 01:16:23.920 quite politics proper yet. 01:16:23.920 --> 01:16:29.280 So you may have a neighborhood council, something like that, that's still 01:16:29.280 --> 01:16:32.480 going to be a domain for men. 01:16:32.480 --> 01:16:34.800 That is going to be something that is 01:16:35.920 --> 01:16:39.520 sort of a small sort of politics, but you are going to 01:16:39.520 --> 01:16:44.480 have a different way of engaging with that than you would have, 01:16:44.480 --> 01:16:47.040 say, just you to your neighbor. 01:16:47.040 --> 01:16:50.160 Because you to your neighbor the goal should just be the maintenance 01:16:50.160 --> 01:16:50.640 of peace. 01:16:50.640 --> 01:16:51.680 Again, that is the goal. 01:16:51.680 --> 01:16:54.480 You want to maintain that peace You want to get along with 01:16:54.480 --> 01:16:55.440 your neighbor. 01:16:55.440 --> 01:16:59.200 You don't want to have needless fights with those who live right 01:16:59.200 --> 01:17:00.800 next door. 01:17:00.800 --> 01:17:03.440 But if you're getting up to the level where it's starting to 01:17:03.440 --> 01:17:07.680 deal with regulations or dictating what others may or may not 01:17:08.560 --> 01:17:13.680 do, now you have a very real possibility, and not just a 01:17:13.680 --> 01:17:18.560 possibility, but a likelihood, or even inevitability, of strife. 01:17:18.560 --> 01:17:21.600 You are going to have conflict as soon as that is on 01:17:21.600 --> 01:17:22.640 the table. 01:17:22.640 --> 01:17:27.360 Because as soon as one man has power over another, you have 01:17:27.360 --> 01:17:32.480 the very real risk, the very real possibility of conflict, that is 01:17:32.480 --> 01:17:36.080 simply how things work in this world. 01:17:36.080 --> 01:17:40.320 It doesn't mean that we'll always devolve into conflict, thankfully it does 01:17:40.320 --> 01:17:43.600 not, but it does mean that it is there, and that does 01:17:43.600 --> 01:17:47.360 mean that it is a domain for men, because men have been 01:17:47.360 --> 01:17:53.920 equipped with the necessary abilities, the disposition, etc., to deal with that 01:17:53.920 --> 01:17:57.920 sort of thing, to deal with those potential conflicts, and to deal 01:17:57.920 --> 01:18:00.720 with them when they become actual conflicts. 01:18:00.720 --> 01:18:04.320 And again, as Woe was saying, women are going to have the 01:18:04.320 --> 01:18:09.040 wrong intuition, the wrong approach with regard to those things. 01:18:09.040 --> 01:18:14.160 Because the peacemaking that works in the home and even works perhaps 01:18:14.160 --> 01:18:18.160 in your immediate local neighborhood is not going to work at the 01:18:18.160 --> 01:18:19.760 level of society. 01:18:19.760 --> 01:18:22.560 It's not going to work at the level of your city, of 01:18:22.560 --> 01:18:26.080 your state, certainly not the level of your nation, and most certainly 01:18:26.320 --> 01:18:28.800 not at the international level. 01:18:28.800 --> 01:18:34.720 Once we get up into politics, into politics proper, even most men 01:18:34.720 --> 01:18:36.400 are not suited for politics. 01:18:36.400 --> 01:18:40.880 It takes a particular kind of man, with a particular mindset and 01:18:40.880 --> 01:18:44.800 set of abilities, to be good at politics, to even be suited 01:18:44.800 --> 01:18:49.280 to politics whatsoever, which is one of the unfortunate things about the 01:18:49.280 --> 01:18:53.840 current system that we have, because it really involves everyone in politics, 01:18:53.840 --> 01:18:57.120 which on the one hand makes everyone guilty of what is done 01:18:57.120 --> 01:19:01.520 politically, what is done by the state, but on the other hand, 01:19:01.520 --> 01:19:06.240 it places a burden on those who should not have that burden. 01:19:06.240 --> 01:19:10.640 A properly ordered society will not place burdens on those who cannot 01:19:10.640 --> 01:19:12.320 bear those burdens. 01:19:12.320 --> 01:19:14.560 That's obviously disordered. 01:19:15.200 --> 01:19:18.720 You don't tell your five year old to go to the store 01:19:18.720 --> 01:19:20.960 to pick something up for you. 01:19:20.960 --> 01:19:23.360 Driving your vehicle, obviously. 01:19:23.360 --> 01:19:24.640 You don't do that. 01:19:24.640 --> 01:19:25.840 That's disordered. 01:19:25.840 --> 01:19:28.720 That's not how you are supposed to run things. 01:19:28.720 --> 01:19:33.440 That is an improper delegation of not just authority but duty in 01:19:33.440 --> 01:19:36.000 that case, I guess. 01:19:36.000 --> 01:19:40.560 If you do that, it is an abuse of if you are 01:19:40.560 --> 01:19:44.160 the husband, the father, that's an abuse of your authority. 01:19:44.160 --> 01:19:46.720 You are not maintaining right order. 01:19:46.720 --> 01:19:51.440 The same thing is true with regard to society. 01:19:51.440 --> 01:19:55.280 If you have the wrong people who have been given a duty 01:19:55.280 --> 01:19:58.320 to know what is going on at a certain level and to 01:19:58.320 --> 01:20:02.000 know what should be done, and you've given that to people who 01:20:02.000 --> 01:20:05.760 don't have the capacity to do it, or just simply should not 01:20:06.240 --> 01:20:07.840 be burdened with it. 01:20:07.840 --> 01:20:11.440 You have a fundamentally disordered society, and you are going to have 01:20:11.440 --> 01:20:14.560 worse outcomes because of it. 01:20:14.560 --> 01:20:17.360 That is what we currently have. 01:20:17.360 --> 01:20:22.000 Because currently we have a universal franchise. 01:20:22.000 --> 01:20:26.480 Which essentially what that says is that every single person over a 01:20:26.480 --> 01:20:33.680 certain age is equally skilled, equally capable of making decisions up to 01:20:33.680 --> 01:20:39.040 and including when and where to go to war. 01:20:39.040 --> 01:20:43.920 When you phrase it that way, when you point out the reality 01:20:43.920 --> 01:20:44.640 of what our system 01:20:45.520 --> 01:20:50.880 contends, when you point out the foundational claims of our system, no 01:20:50.880 --> 01:20:53.200 man can think that is rational. 01:20:53.200 --> 01:20:55.760 It is obviously insane. 01:20:55.760 --> 01:20:58.880 It is wicked as well, but it is insane. 01:20:58.720 --> 01:21:02.080 One of the examples I like to give is that you would 01:21:02.080 --> 01:21:07.360 never go into a random restaurant or a truck stop or just 01:21:07.360 --> 01:21:10.560 some place with a crowd and take a poll of whether or 01:21:10.560 --> 01:21:12.640 not you should have heart surgery. 01:21:12.800 --> 01:21:16.800 No one would do that because that is a fundamentally insane thing 01:21:16.800 --> 01:21:17.840 to do. 01:21:17.840 --> 01:21:22.000 And yet that is exactly what we do with our politics, with 01:21:22.000 --> 01:21:23.200 our society. 01:21:23.200 --> 01:21:25.280 That's how we run things. 01:21:25.280 --> 01:21:26.240 That's evil. 01:21:26.240 --> 01:21:28.400 That is a wicked way of doing things. 01:21:28.400 --> 01:21:32.880 It is ignoring the fact that God has given different men different 01:21:32.880 --> 01:21:38.640 abilities to do different things, and it is a rebellion against hierarchy 01:21:38.640 --> 01:21:39.360 and order. 01:21:39.360 --> 01:21:42.400 And again, God is a God of order. 01:21:42.400 --> 01:21:47.760 When you have a system that creates disorder as a natural consequence, 01:21:47.760 --> 01:21:52.880 you have a very real problem that needs to be addressed. 01:21:52.880 --> 01:21:57.200 But the fundamental point here is that we have this hierarchy of 01:21:57.200 --> 01:22:00.000 home, society, and the state. 01:22:00.000 --> 01:22:04.960 And when it comes to peace, maintaining peace, attempting to keep the 01:22:04.960 --> 01:22:09.440 peace, you are going to let more slide at the home end 01:22:09.440 --> 01:22:12.960 of this spectrum, as it were, and less slide at the state 01:22:12.960 --> 01:22:18.160 end. Because that is the necessity of the thing, because the harms 01:22:18.320 --> 01:22:20.240 are sort of inverted. 01:22:20.240 --> 01:22:25.920 Maintaining peace in the home runs minimal risk of harm because you're 01:22:25.920 --> 01:22:28.480 letting things slide to maintain that peace. 01:22:28.720 --> 01:22:32.720 Breaching the peace causes immense harm in the home. 01:22:32.720 --> 01:22:37.360 At the other end, in politics, maintaining the peace by letting things 01:22:37.360 --> 01:22:40.640 slide is how you lose your nation, it's how you lose your 01:22:40.640 --> 01:22:44.880 state, it's how you wind up being destroyed as a people. 01:22:44.880 --> 01:22:48.640 If on the other hand, you breach the peace, as it were, 01:22:48.640 --> 01:22:52.640 in order to defend, say, the truth, or to state an unpleasant 01:22:52.640 --> 01:22:55.760 reality, to say that no we actually need a military, we actually 01:22:55.760 --> 01:22:58.480 need to defend our border. 01:22:58.480 --> 01:23:03.280 Then what you've done is actually gained something greater than the peace 01:23:03.280 --> 01:23:04.720 that you lost. 01:23:04.720 --> 01:23:06.960 Because there is a higher concern there. 01:23:06.960 --> 01:23:11.280 There is a greater concern, with regard to things of the State, 01:23:11.280 --> 01:23:14.160 or things of society, than peace. 01:23:14.160 --> 01:23:17.040 Peace is going to be one of the highest concerns in the 01:23:17.040 --> 01:23:22.640 home. It is not the highest concern for society or the State. 01:23:22.720 --> 01:23:26.000 One of the passages in scripture that often comes up in this 01:23:26.000 --> 01:23:31.040 context is from Romans twelve, where Paul writes, If possible, so far 01:23:31.040 --> 01:23:34.800 as it depends on you, live at peace with all people. 01:23:36.480 --> 01:23:38.880 I love this passage for a few reasons. 01:23:38.880 --> 01:23:44.160 One, when it addresses this to Christians and says live at peace 01:23:44.160 --> 01:23:48.400 with all people, it's a universal dictum. 01:23:48.400 --> 01:23:49.040 It's not saying 01:23:50.160 --> 01:23:51.120 just Christians. 01:23:51.120 --> 01:23:52.720 It's not just within the church. 01:23:52.720 --> 01:23:56.160 We are to live at peace with everyone. 01:23:56.160 --> 01:23:58.800 That's important because that means that it's also political. 01:23:58.800 --> 01:24:02.240 We're not talking about this this is covering the whole spectrum from 01:24:02.640 --> 01:24:07.680 home, church, neighborhood, state, planet, all human beings everywhere. 01:24:07.680 --> 01:24:11.200 So far as it depends on you, lives at peace with them. 01:24:11.200 --> 01:24:14.560 And yet it also acknowledges that the enemy gets a vote. 01:24:14.560 --> 01:24:18.320 It may well be that the man with which you live to 01:24:18.320 --> 01:24:21.520 live in peace doesn't want to live in peace with you. 01:24:21.520 --> 01:24:25.120 If that's the case, then you proceed on to the next steps 01:24:25.200 --> 01:24:28.560 and you proceed onto those next steps as a man. 01:24:28.560 --> 01:24:34.080 This is a place where there's no female voice at all because 01:24:34.720 --> 01:24:37.920 what the woman is going to say is, no, you know, let's 01:24:37.920 --> 01:24:40.640 stay in the car, let's not get out, it's dangerous out there, 01:24:40.640 --> 01:24:43.120 let's not get into trouble. 01:24:43.120 --> 01:24:45.840 The men know that sometimes it's go time and you have to 01:24:45.840 --> 01:24:48.720 go do something that you don't want to do, but the alternative 01:24:48.720 --> 01:24:50.160 is worse. 01:24:50.160 --> 01:24:54.080 And so God makes clear that we are to try to live 01:24:54.080 --> 01:24:58.640 at peace, but we are not bound to do so. 01:24:58.640 --> 01:25:01.920 So this is why one of the many reasons why pacifism itself 01:25:01.920 --> 01:25:03.200 is apostate. 01:25:03.200 --> 01:25:07.760 You cannot be a pacifist Christian, because to the extent that you 01:25:07.760 --> 01:25:09.600 can live in peace, you should. 01:25:09.600 --> 01:25:12.640 To the extent that you cannot, you don't. 01:25:12.640 --> 01:25:16.320 And as we frequently say, this is not violence. 01:25:16.320 --> 01:25:19.600 It's not like everyone should be on a hair trigger just waiting 01:25:19.600 --> 01:25:23.280 for that moment where they can say, Okay, we tried peace, now 01:25:23.280 --> 01:25:24.960 we're gonna do a whole bunch of violence. 01:25:24.960 --> 01:25:25.760 That's not 01:25:25.760 --> 01:25:29.920 desirable. it's destructive as we talked about last week. 01:25:29.920 --> 01:25:34.960 Violence destroys peace, which is desirable, it destroys property, it destroys human 01:25:34.960 --> 01:25:38.480 lives, which at least at some point had potential. 01:25:38.480 --> 01:25:41.680 And yet when it comes to the point that 01:25:42.640 --> 01:25:46.400 violence is the only way to resolve something, we have to acknowledge 01:25:46.400 --> 01:25:50.240 that the hypothetical potential that may have existed at some point is 01:25:50.240 --> 01:25:51.680 no longer what matters. 01:25:51.680 --> 01:25:54.240 What matters is now what's right in front of us. 01:25:54.240 --> 01:25:57.520 And so at a civilizational level, sometimes at a civic level, 01:25:58.560 --> 01:26:01.440 a man has to understand that what's right in front of him 01:26:01.440 --> 01:26:04.400 means that the enemy has gotten a vote and he still has 01:26:04.400 --> 01:26:05.840 a duty to do. 01:26:05.840 --> 01:26:08.880 And so while though it's always in the pursuit of peace, the 01:26:09.120 --> 01:26:12.720 It's with the acknowledgement that we live in a fallen world where 01:26:12.720 --> 01:26:17.600 peace will not come until we die or until God comes back. 01:26:17.600 --> 01:26:21.040 That's the only way that we get perfect peace. 01:26:21.040 --> 01:26:24.960 And so we'll end in scripture talking about God's peace, but just 01:26:24.960 --> 01:26:30.400 to to briefly wrap up the political, we have to acknowledge that 01:26:30.400 --> 01:26:34.880 we live in both kingdoms simultaneously is one of the huge problems 01:26:34.880 --> 01:26:39.760 that we have, especially online, with clerics who have no business interfering 01:26:39.760 --> 01:26:43.520 in politics, wading into these things where they are trying to take 01:26:43.520 --> 01:26:48.960 an approach that's suitable for the church for matters of church polity 01:26:49.200 --> 01:26:54.400 and trying to superimpose them on state matters where the men are 01:26:54.400 --> 01:26:59.520 themselves unsuited, where their office forbids them from acting in such a 01:26:59.520 --> 01:27:02.320 fashion, and where the things that they say are plainly contrary to 01:27:02.320 --> 01:27:03.920 scripture itself. 01:27:03.920 --> 01:27:08.320 And so this is destructive not only because they're liars, but because 01:27:08.320 --> 01:27:11.840 they're binding consciences by virtue of the collars that they're wearing, or 01:27:11.840 --> 01:27:14.480 the offices that they hold, the titles they have. 01:27:14.640 --> 01:27:18.320 When such men come along and they say things that are contrary 01:27:18.320 --> 01:27:22.080 to what scripture says, it puts everybody in a bind. 01:27:22.080 --> 01:27:24.880 Because suddenly you have the man who's supposed to be the voice 01:27:24.880 --> 01:27:28.160 of God in your midst telling you to do something that's gonna 01:27:28.160 --> 01:27:29.760 get you and your family killed. 01:27:29.760 --> 01:27:32.160 And he's saying, Oh, but don't worry, I got some Bible verses 01:27:32.160 --> 01:27:33.520 that make it okay. 01:27:33.520 --> 01:27:35.120 And then what do you do? 01:27:35.120 --> 01:27:38.160 The you know, this is the same problem that we've described in 01:27:38.160 --> 01:27:39.520 the Reformation episode. 01:27:39.520 --> 01:27:43.840 We said, I would rather that a man remain in Rome than 01:27:44.160 --> 01:27:49.520 leave Rome in most cases because specifically within the Roman Catholic Church, 01:27:49.520 --> 01:27:52.880 when they leave they have been taught that if I'm not Roman 01:27:52.880 --> 01:27:54.880 Catholic, I go to hell. 01:27:54.880 --> 01:27:58.480 And so their only choice then is basically I choose hell. 01:27:58.480 --> 01:27:59.600 And many do. 01:27:59.600 --> 01:28:04.320 When someone falls away from the Roman church, they almost always cease 01:28:04.320 --> 01:28:05.760 to be Christian entirely. 01:28:05.760 --> 01:28:08.960 I would rather they stay with the bad theology where at least 01:28:08.960 --> 01:28:12.400 they're hearing the Bible occasionally than have them say, you know what, 01:28:12.400 --> 01:28:13.920 I would rather have hell. 01:28:13.920 --> 01:28:16.000 We have the same situation here. 01:28:16.000 --> 01:28:19.360 You can't set up these false dichotomies where someone's saying, I'm speaking 01:28:19.360 --> 01:28:21.680 in the name of the Lord, and I'm telling you that's a 01:28:21.680 --> 01:28:25.760 good thing that your crops are being devoured and your communities are 01:28:25.760 --> 01:28:30.400 being destroyed by foreigners and your daughters are being harmed and everything 01:28:30.400 --> 01:28:31.760 is burning around you. 01:28:31.760 --> 01:28:33.600 Look at all the gospel opportunities. 01:28:33.840 --> 01:28:36.080 Pastors are saying that with a straight face. 01:28:36.080 --> 01:28:38.720 They're saying that because Satan is telling them to say that. 01:28:38.720 --> 01:28:40.800 And so, you know, back to earlier when we were talking about 01:28:40.800 --> 01:28:43.840 confronting lies in the church, there's gonna be a lot of noise 01:28:43.840 --> 01:28:47.280 when that stuff goes on, because they have breached the peace by 01:28:47.280 --> 01:28:50.560 lying in God's name in a way that's gonna get people killed. 01:28:50.560 --> 01:28:54.080 We've gone beyond the spiritual where they're going to damn souls with 01:28:54.080 --> 01:28:54.960 their lies. 01:28:54.960 --> 01:28:59.200 They're gonna get actual human bodies killed with their lies. 01:28:59.200 --> 01:29:01.600 And that's the purpose that they serve. 01:29:01.600 --> 01:29:02.160 And so 01:29:03.520 --> 01:29:06.160 it's a tough position for all of us to be in because 01:29:06.160 --> 01:29:10.000 the very men who are responsible for telling these things truthfully are 01:29:10.080 --> 01:29:13.760 in many many cases not only abdicating that responsibility, but they're going 01:29:13.760 --> 01:29:15.760 in the opposite direction. 01:29:15.760 --> 01:29:20.720 So familiarity with scripture, taking it seriously, understanding how all these pieces 01:29:20.720 --> 01:29:24.240 work together is vital for a Christian man because you may be 01:29:24.240 --> 01:29:27.600 faced with a situation just as they were in the days of 01:29:27.600 --> 01:29:30.880 the Reformation where the men who are supposed to be teaching faithfully 01:29:30.880 --> 01:29:33.200 in God's name, it turns out they're not. 01:29:33.200 --> 01:29:35.680 And even if somebody was right about something five or ten years 01:29:35.680 --> 01:29:38.320 ago, if he starts telling new things that turn out to be 01:29:38.320 --> 01:29:41.200 lies, you have to turn your back on him. 01:29:41.200 --> 01:29:44.160 Because just as Jesus pointed to the Pharisees and said, You brood 01:29:44.160 --> 01:29:46.960 of vipers, we have to be ready to say that who's to 01:29:46.960 --> 01:29:48.800 someone who actually is. 01:29:48.800 --> 01:29:53.120 Now, again, this is not licensed to just be mean to people 01:29:53.120 --> 01:29:54.080 in the church. 01:29:54.080 --> 01:29:57.600 The first instinct and the first desire should be to hope that 01:29:57.600 --> 01:30:01.360 they're actually Christian and they're simply an error, and that's often the 01:30:01.360 --> 01:30:05.280 case, although less and less so as the days get shorter. 01:30:05.280 --> 01:30:08.320 And yet at the same time, we have to fully acknowledge out 01:30:08.320 --> 01:30:11.120 loud that what they are saying is evil. 01:30:11.120 --> 01:30:14.400 And it's harming people, it's harming souls, it's harming bodies, it's harming 01:30:14.400 --> 01:30:17.520 communities. It's a political matter, not only a church matter. 01:30:17.680 --> 01:30:22.640 And so when these clerics wade into those things doing destruction in 01:30:22.640 --> 01:30:26.400 Satan's name, pretending to be in God's name, we have to deal 01:30:26.400 --> 01:30:29.360 with them as the type of enemy that they are. 01:30:29.680 --> 01:30:32.400 Corey was talking a little bit a minute ago about order, and 01:30:32.400 --> 01:30:36.240 that should bring to mind another passage from 1 Corinthians 14, where 01:30:36.240 --> 01:30:39.200 it says, For God is not a God of disorder, but of 01:30:39.200 --> 01:30:44.960 peace. And so Scripture plainly sets disorder and peace as two more 01:30:44.960 --> 01:30:49.120 antonyms. And so I took a look at where the word used 01:30:49.120 --> 01:30:51.600 for disorder there was used throughout Scripture. 01:30:51.600 --> 01:30:56.640 It's the Greek word akastasia, which literally means not standing down or 01:30:56.640 --> 01:30:57.760 not settling down. 01:30:57.760 --> 01:31:01.840 So you have disorder, not settling down, or you have peace. 01:31:01.840 --> 01:31:05.280 And the disorder, the way that's translated, and it's used in various 01:31:05.280 --> 01:31:08.880 parts of the New Testament, in uh Luke 21, it's talked about 01:31:09.120 --> 01:31:14.000 wars and tumults, basically wars and rumors of wars, as disorder, war 01:31:14.240 --> 01:31:15.200 or peace. 01:31:15.200 --> 01:31:17.040 That's a pretty obvious one. 01:31:17.040 --> 01:31:20.480 Second Corinthians in chapter six and chapter twelve it talks about tumults 01:31:20.560 --> 01:31:22.000 and it talks about disorder. 01:31:22.000 --> 01:31:25.760 And then in James 316, it also talks about disorder in every 01:31:25.760 --> 01:31:27.200 evil practice. 01:31:27.440 --> 01:31:31.840 So these are all examples where evil things, things that are, you 01:31:31.840 --> 01:31:36.160 know, whether it's a war or it's some calamity, some disordered behavior 01:31:36.880 --> 01:31:38.880 is in opposition to peace. 01:31:38.880 --> 01:31:42.960 But it's not simply loud noises versus quiet noises or maybe no 01:31:42.960 --> 01:31:44.160 noises at all. 01:31:44.160 --> 01:31:48.560 It's that disorder is contrary to God's eternal will. 01:31:48.560 --> 01:31:50.560 Peace is God's eternal will. 01:31:50.560 --> 01:31:53.920 And yet God is coming with the sword on judgment day to 01:31:53.920 --> 01:31:57.280 kill everybody, and to cast those who have defied him and who 01:31:57.280 --> 01:32:01.040 did not accept Christ's sacrifice on the cross into hell where they're 01:32:00.960 --> 01:32:02.400 tormented eternally. 01:32:02.400 --> 01:32:05.760 They will never get a break from the violence that's going to 01:32:05.760 --> 01:32:07.120 be poured out against them. 01:32:07.120 --> 01:32:09.120 And that's God's perfect will. 01:32:09.120 --> 01:32:11.920 And as creatures we can't even reconcile that. 01:32:11.920 --> 01:32:13.680 It seems contradictory. 01:32:14.080 --> 01:32:17.680 It's one of the cases where when we're dealing with God's things, 01:32:17.680 --> 01:32:22.240 if you plainly have two statements that seem contradictory, and there's no 01:32:22.240 --> 01:32:26.000 possible way to finesse them, you say, okay, they're both true, and 01:32:26.000 --> 01:32:27.280 I don't understand. 01:32:27.280 --> 01:32:28.480 God is God. 01:32:28.480 --> 01:32:30.800 I trust him to do what he's gonna do, and it's I 01:32:30.800 --> 01:32:32.320 trust it's gonna be perfect. 01:32:32.320 --> 01:32:34.160 That's very much what we have here. 01:32:34.160 --> 01:32:37.840 We can't understand how eternal peace for us is going to be 01:32:37.840 --> 01:32:40.960 eternal torment for those who are opposed to God's peace. 01:32:40.960 --> 01:32:44.480 But we're told that's what's going to happen, and it's true. 01:32:44.480 --> 01:32:46.000 That is our God. 01:32:46.000 --> 01:32:48.800 And that's another part of reason for you know talking about peace 01:32:48.960 --> 01:32:53.040 in distinction to violence and the absence of violence is that God 01:32:53.600 --> 01:32:55.920 wants and uses both. 01:32:55.920 --> 01:32:59.760 He does not want violence in the sense that it was ever 01:32:59.760 --> 01:33:03.840 supposed to exist, and yet it is the solution to God's problems 01:33:03.680 --> 01:33:07.280 problems. And there are cases in the human life when it's also 01:33:07.280 --> 01:33:09.280 the solution to man's problems. 01:33:09.280 --> 01:33:10.400 It's not a license. 01:33:10.400 --> 01:33:12.320 It's not something to be happy about. 01:33:12.320 --> 01:33:17.280 It's a sorrowful recognition that in this fallen world sometimes more bad 01:33:17.280 --> 01:33:21.520 things have to happen to stop worse things from happening. 01:33:21.520 --> 01:33:24.560 And so that's the political sphere in a nutshell. 01:33:24.880 --> 01:33:28.000 As much as possible we try to live peacefully, and certainly the 01:33:28.000 --> 01:33:31.600 closer you get to home, the more urgency there is for that. 01:33:31.600 --> 01:33:34.880 And yet at the same time, when you have things that are 01:33:35.040 --> 01:33:40.880 civilizational threats, that are physical threats, peace may end for a time. 01:33:40.880 --> 01:33:45.760 And you we did the episode last year about normalcy bias in 01:33:45.760 --> 01:33:48.960 a sense to try to warn people about things were coming. 01:33:48.960 --> 01:33:52.240 It's going to get to the point, I believe in our lifetimes, 01:33:52.240 --> 01:33:54.560 where things will get a whole lot worse than they are today, 01:33:54.560 --> 01:33:56.240 where they will get more violent. 01:33:56.240 --> 01:34:00.080 The time of peace that we have enjoyed, where you can sleep 01:34:00.080 --> 01:34:04.640 every night in your own bed without being shell-shocked, I believe that 01:34:04.640 --> 01:34:07.360 that's going to come to an end for most of us. 01:34:07.520 --> 01:34:08.880 I'd like to be wrong. 01:34:08.880 --> 01:34:10.320 I don't want that. 01:34:10.320 --> 01:34:12.320 It's not something I desire. 01:34:12.320 --> 01:34:16.560 But looking at the trajectory of things, I don't see another possibility. 01:34:16.560 --> 01:34:17.760 That's my personal view. 01:34:17.760 --> 01:34:18.480 Maybe I'm wrong. 01:34:18.480 --> 01:34:23.680 It's not you should shouldn't take anything from that other than hey, 01:34:23.680 --> 01:34:26.000 maybe I should fear and love God and make sure I have 01:34:26.000 --> 01:34:29.680 my spiritual ducks in an order and have my physical ducks in 01:34:29.680 --> 01:34:30.160 a row. 01:34:30.160 --> 01:34:32.720 I want to make sure that the things of God and the 01:34:32.720 --> 01:34:35.840 things that I have a duty to deal with are in alignment 01:34:36.080 --> 01:34:38.160 and that's gonna radiate outward. 01:34:38.160 --> 01:34:40.720 If you realize that there's things about your life that have been 01:34:40.880 --> 01:34:44.080 ungodly, you don't worry about geopolitics. 01:34:44.080 --> 01:34:46.720 You worry about what's under your own roof first and you sort 01:34:46.720 --> 01:34:47.920 out the rest later. 01:34:48.400 --> 01:34:48.720 So 01:34:49.680 --> 01:34:54.880 when we're peacemakers, when we're setting things according to God's will, there's 01:34:54.880 --> 01:34:58.960 always a sense of urgency and the immediate comes before the distant. 01:34:58.960 --> 01:35:01.520 That's why the neighbor distinction is so crucial. 01:35:01.520 --> 01:35:03.760 Most people on the planet are not your neighbor. 01:35:03.760 --> 01:35:06.320 In a very real sense, they are not your problem. 01:35:06.320 --> 01:35:09.440 What's happening six thousand miles away is not your problem. 01:35:09.440 --> 01:35:11.920 It's not that your heart shouldn't go out to them, it's that 01:35:11.920 --> 01:35:15.440 to the extent that you care about someone six thousand miles away, 01:35:15.440 --> 01:35:18.720 you should have exponentially greater care for the man who lives down 01:35:18.720 --> 01:35:19.440 the road. 01:35:19.440 --> 01:35:23.040 And what we find is that the way our society, the way 01:35:23.040 --> 01:35:26.400 our churches, the way our teaching is structured, that never happens. 01:35:26.400 --> 01:35:30.720 You will never have more sympathy for your neighbor, your actual neighbor, 01:35:30.720 --> 01:35:35.520 than for the distant person who's completely alien to you that's put 01:35:35.520 --> 01:35:38.160 on the TV in order to say, Hey, care about this guy. 01:35:38.160 --> 01:35:41.200 Don't care about the guy you can actually do some good for. 01:35:41.200 --> 01:35:44.480 If you want to be a peacemaker, you begin at home. 01:35:44.480 --> 01:35:46.240 You begin with what's nearby. 01:35:46.240 --> 01:35:49.280 And so it's a good thing that's I'm very happy to see 01:35:49.280 --> 01:35:52.560 emerging throughout the right is okay, what can I do now? 01:35:52.560 --> 01:35:56.640 Well actual material changes can I make in my community, in my 01:35:56.640 --> 01:35:58.240 church, in my home? 01:35:58.240 --> 01:36:01.840 How can I do more good things where I actually have control? 01:36:01.840 --> 01:36:05.280 Fretting all the time about geopolitics doesn't help anybody. 01:36:05.280 --> 01:36:06.080 It really doesn't. 01:36:06.080 --> 01:36:07.840 As Corey said and he's absolutely right. 01:36:07.840 --> 01:36:10.080 Most men are not suited for that at all. 01:36:10.080 --> 01:36:12.400 Not only temperamentally, but intellectually. 01:36:12.400 --> 01:36:14.480 You're not going to understand it and you're not going to get 01:36:14.480 --> 01:36:14.880 it right. 01:36:14.880 --> 01:36:17.360 That applies to almost everyone listening. 01:36:17.360 --> 01:36:20.720 And yet we're in a situation today where like we're all on 01:36:20.720 --> 01:36:23.360 the hook, it doesn't matter if you know about it, it can 01:36:23.360 --> 01:36:24.080 hurt you. 01:36:24.080 --> 01:36:26.400 But the things that you can actually control, the things where you 01:36:26.400 --> 01:36:30.080 can try to preserve peace, that is where your immediate duty is. 01:36:30.080 --> 01:36:35.120 And so as you're thinking about these concentric circles, don't let yourself 01:36:35.120 --> 01:36:37.760 get tunnel vision on the distant. 01:36:37.760 --> 01:36:40.960 But at the same time, don't exclude it entirely until we can 01:36:40.960 --> 01:36:43.920 get to the point where the men who should actually be worrying 01:36:43.920 --> 01:36:47.600 about the dust of matters are, it is everybody's problem to some 01:36:47.600 --> 01:36:50.480 extent. But where we can make peace is going to be in 01:36:50.480 --> 01:36:53.040 a home and it's going to radiate out from there. 01:36:53.040 --> 01:36:57.440 And what God says applies within the church and without in somewhat 01:36:57.440 --> 01:36:59.760 different contexts, but the principle's always the same. 01:36:59.760 --> 01:37:01.360 Let's try to get along. 01:37:01.360 --> 01:37:04.800 Reginald Denny said that in the wake of the OJ riots. 01:37:04.800 --> 01:37:06.400 Can't we all just get along? 01:37:06.400 --> 01:37:08.720 And he was mocked for it and it was, you know, it 01:37:08.720 --> 01:37:12.560 that was that was kind of the beginning of racial propaganda in 01:37:12.720 --> 01:37:16.400 the last generation. 01:37:16.400 --> 01:37:20.160 It's a good sentiment, but Romans 12 also applies. 01:37:20.160 --> 01:37:22.400 He got hit in the head with a thing with brick. 01:37:22.400 --> 01:37:26.080 And so it was it was completely racially motivated. 01:37:26.080 --> 01:37:30.400 And the Fed sent out their basically PR SWAT team. 01:37:30.400 --> 01:37:34.880 Anytime there's any racial violence against white people by blacks, the Fed 01:37:34.880 --> 01:37:38.640 send a SWAT team out to contact those people, not a armored 01:37:38.640 --> 01:37:41.520 SWAT team, but a PR SWAT team, to make sure that they 01:37:41.520 --> 01:37:43.920 say exactly what Reginald Denny said. 01:37:43.920 --> 01:37:48.640 Because if if people understood the threat to peace that is presented 01:37:48.640 --> 01:37:52.080 by these sorts of acts, there would not be peace. 01:37:52.080 --> 01:37:54.800 And while it's not desirable, I think the fact that the feds 01:37:54.800 --> 01:37:58.240 are performing those sorts of cover ups, that's a subject for another 01:37:58.240 --> 01:38:03.120 day, but it's also a matter of us understanding the score. 01:38:03.120 --> 01:38:05.200 God is not a god of disorder. 01:38:05.200 --> 01:38:08.880 Wherever you see disorder, you are seeing Satan on the march. 01:38:08.880 --> 01:38:11.520 And that's most of what we see in the world today. 01:38:11.520 --> 01:38:14.400 Anywhere you look, near and far, we see disorder. 01:38:14.400 --> 01:38:18.800 You must always know that where you see disorder, it is anti-God, 01:38:18.800 --> 01:38:20.400 it is anti-Christ. 01:38:20.400 --> 01:38:24.240 You will never see disorder where God reigns. 01:38:24.240 --> 01:38:27.840 Back to the beginning point, that doesn't mean that the person pulling 01:38:27.840 --> 01:38:31.920 the fire alarm and saying, hey, this is bad, that's not the 01:38:31.920 --> 01:38:33.200 source of disorder. 01:38:33.200 --> 01:38:36.000 The source of disorder is who created it. 01:38:36.000 --> 01:38:39.680 It's not that they're somalis six thousand miles from where they belong, 01:38:39.680 --> 01:38:43.040 and then someone points and says, Why are there Somalis six thousand 01:38:43.040 --> 01:38:44.320 miles from where they belong? 01:38:44.320 --> 01:38:46.000 That's not the creation of disorder. 01:38:46.000 --> 01:38:48.880 It's the people who put them on a plane to ship them 01:38:48.880 --> 01:38:50.400 someplace they don't belong. 01:38:50.400 --> 01:38:52.640 That was the beginning of the creation of disorder. 01:38:52.640 --> 01:38:55.520 That's contrary to peace, it's contrary to God. 01:38:55.520 --> 01:39:00.320 And that thing, which is a geopolitical issue, then becomes a very 01:39:00.320 --> 01:39:02.000 local issue for many of us. 01:39:02.000 --> 01:39:05.120 There are people who are fleeing states that have been destroyed by 01:39:05.120 --> 01:39:08.000 that sort of deliberate political subversion. 01:39:08.000 --> 01:39:13.360 It's deliberate destruction of communities, of the very nearest the very nearest 01:39:13.360 --> 01:39:15.120 circle in our lives. 01:39:15.120 --> 01:39:18.320 And it's part of the reason why everyone's saying, you know, violence 01:39:18.320 --> 01:39:20.880 is never a solution and we must always have peace. 01:39:20.880 --> 01:39:24.640 Well, they're crying peace, peace where there is no peace. 01:39:24.640 --> 01:39:27.920 Things that are anti God, things that are anti order, that are 01:39:27.920 --> 01:39:32.800 disordered and violent are being artificially placed in our midst, and then 01:39:32.800 --> 01:39:35.120 we're told to calm down and say, Well this is a wonderful 01:39:35.120 --> 01:39:36.720 gospel opportunity. 01:39:36.720 --> 01:39:39.360 No. It's a threat to your family, it's a threat to your 01:39:39.360 --> 01:39:43.360 community. And the duties that we have to try to act peacefully, 01:39:43.360 --> 01:39:48.400 to behave peacefully, to behave in accord with God, the enemy gets 01:39:48.400 --> 01:39:48.960 a vote. 01:39:48.960 --> 01:39:51.840 And we still have duties when that time comes. 01:39:53.360 --> 01:39:56.320 So to wrap up, we're just going to talk briefly about the 01:39:56.960 --> 01:40:00.160 direct spiritual connotations of God's peace. 01:40:00.160 --> 01:40:04.400 As Corey said at the beginning, there's an eschatological nature to the 01:40:04.400 --> 01:40:09.440 peace of God, which is different from what we experience in this 01:40:09.440 --> 01:40:13.920 life. The important distinction there is that we can experience the peace 01:40:13.920 --> 01:40:15.040 of God as Christians. 01:40:15.040 --> 01:40:17.120 It's not entirely alien to us. 01:40:17.120 --> 01:40:22.080 It's just that we don't fully and completely and exclusively enjoy it. 01:40:22.080 --> 01:40:24.560 So, you know, last year in the Fear of the Lord episode 01:40:24.720 --> 01:40:27.360 I mentioned at the end that I described one of the times 01:40:27.360 --> 01:40:28.720 when I had a stroke. 01:40:28.720 --> 01:40:31.520 And I mentioned that, you know, it was that was fine. 01:40:31.520 --> 01:40:32.960 It was a severe stroke. 01:40:32.960 --> 01:40:35.280 It was a very serious medical emergency. 01:40:35.280 --> 01:40:36.720 Could have crippled me for life. 01:40:36.720 --> 01:40:38.320 And I wasn't worried about it. 01:40:38.320 --> 01:40:42.960 And the specific point of of recounting that story was that it's 01:40:42.960 --> 01:40:46.480 an illustration of the peace of God that's given by faith. 01:40:46.480 --> 01:40:49.520 And the only reason I shared it is to share the peace 01:40:49.520 --> 01:40:52.240 of God with others, to point out that when you take these 01:40:52.240 --> 01:40:56.560 things seriously, when you believe the theoretical, when you believe, you know, 01:40:56.560 --> 01:41:02.080 the principles, the lofty goals, concretely in your mind and in your 01:41:02.080 --> 01:41:05.760 heart, but not when push comes to shove, then in those sorts 01:41:05.760 --> 01:41:09.120 of moments where you maybe are facing something that's like threatening or 01:41:09.120 --> 01:41:14.080 an immediate medical emergency, family crisis, something bad is gonna happen to 01:41:14.080 --> 01:41:14.960 you at some point. 01:41:14.960 --> 01:41:16.400 Spoiler alert. 01:41:16.400 --> 01:41:19.120 People are gonna be hurt, people are gonna die, you're gonna get 01:41:19.120 --> 01:41:20.640 sick, you're gonna die. 01:41:20.640 --> 01:41:22.320 It's gonna be a hardship. 01:41:22.320 --> 01:41:26.240 And when those moments come, God's peace needs to be with us 01:41:26.320 --> 01:41:28.720 even when there's no other peace in this life. 01:41:28.720 --> 01:41:32.720 Maybe the only peace that we have left is God's peace. 01:41:32.720 --> 01:41:36.960 And so we went here in scripture specifically focusing on that because 01:41:37.600 --> 01:41:41.280 all the things that matter in politics and even in the home, 01:41:41.280 --> 01:41:45.040 all the things that we have under our control to some extent, 01:41:45.040 --> 01:41:50.800 we're still mortal creatures, we are not omnipotent, we can't fix anything. 01:41:50.800 --> 01:41:53.920 We can do the best that we can, we can obey God, 01:41:53.920 --> 01:41:57.440 and we trust the rest in his hands, and he'll take care 01:41:57.440 --> 01:41:59.120 of it as he sees fit. 01:41:59.120 --> 01:42:03.840 And so when your day comes, when my day comes, we should 01:42:03.840 --> 01:42:07.680 have the peace of God which passes all understanding. 01:42:07.680 --> 01:42:10.960 So a couple passages I want to just read briefly just to 01:42:11.200 --> 01:42:15.520 reiterate what scripture says so we don't like neglect God's word. 01:42:15.520 --> 01:42:19.280 In John fourteen, Jesus says, These things I have spoken to you 01:42:19.280 --> 01:42:21.760 while I'm with you, but the helper, the Holy Ghost, whom the 01:42:21.760 --> 01:42:24.960 Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things 01:42:24.960 --> 01:42:27.760 and bring you to remembrance all that I have said to you. 01:42:27.760 --> 01:42:31.040 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. 01:42:31.040 --> 01:42:33.520 Not as the world gives do I give to you. 01:42:33.520 --> 01:42:37.600 Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. 01:42:37.600 --> 01:42:42.000 And two chapters later Jesus also says, Do you now believe? 01:42:42.000 --> 01:42:45.440 Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will 01:42:45.440 --> 01:42:48.320 be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. 01:42:48.480 --> 01:42:50.960 Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. 01:42:50.960 --> 01:42:53.600 I have said these things to you, that in me you may 01:42:53.600 --> 01:42:54.560 have peace. 01:42:54.560 --> 01:42:57.840 In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have 01:42:57.840 --> 01:42:59.520 overcome the world. 01:43:00.000 --> 01:43:04.400 So this is important for Christians to understand where we're anchoring our 01:43:04.400 --> 01:43:09.040 peace. If you anchor it in your personal philosophy, or you anchor 01:43:09.040 --> 01:43:13.520 it in your physical fitness, or your diet, or your great political 01:43:13.520 --> 01:43:17.440 opinions, all those things are going to come up short. 01:43:17.440 --> 01:43:19.840 They will absolutely come up short. 01:43:19.840 --> 01:43:23.840 When you anchor your belief and your confidence in God in the 01:43:24.000 --> 01:43:27.600 receiving His peace through the gift of the Holy Spirit that God 01:43:27.600 --> 01:43:31.920 promises. Through faith you will have eternal peace, and you'll also have 01:43:31.920 --> 01:43:34.320 a measure of it in this life. 01:43:34.320 --> 01:43:38.560 You know, it's when we did the episode on Normalcy Bias, talked 01:43:38.560 --> 01:43:40.880 at some length about Admiral Stockdale. 01:43:40.880 --> 01:43:44.640 James Stockdale, when he was a POW, he was at peace because 01:43:44.640 --> 01:43:45.760 he was a Christian. 01:43:45.760 --> 01:43:49.280 He was able to be an anchor for the men around him 01:43:49.440 --> 01:43:52.880 by having unwavering faith in God no matter what. 01:43:53.040 --> 01:43:57.440 He knew that no matter how bad things got, God was still 01:43:57.440 --> 01:44:00.240 with them, and he didn't know how it was gonna end, but 01:44:00.240 --> 01:44:02.800 he knew what his duties were to his men, and to his 01:44:02.880 --> 01:44:06.000 wife at home, and to his country, and he never wavered from 01:44:06.000 --> 01:44:08.960 that because of his faith in God. 01:44:08.960 --> 01:44:12.960 That sort of resolute faith can only come externally. 01:44:12.960 --> 01:44:14.960 That's not simply a matter of character. 01:44:14.960 --> 01:44:17.040 And it's not simply a matter of training. 01:44:17.040 --> 01:44:19.040 It has to be a gift that we receive and then we 01:44:19.040 --> 01:44:22.800 cultivate. And you cultivate it by thinking about it, by meditating on 01:44:22.800 --> 01:44:25.440 it, by studying God's Word, by praying for it. 01:44:25.440 --> 01:44:27.840 If you lack in that, pray for more. 01:44:27.840 --> 01:44:29.760 God will give it to you. 01:44:29.760 --> 01:44:32.960 Don't waste your time thinking about things that aren't doing you any 01:44:32.960 --> 01:44:36.960 good. Think about the things that God has promised to bless you. 01:44:36.960 --> 01:44:38.720 And these are chief among them. 01:44:38.720 --> 01:44:41.120 You know, there are a lot of young guys listening. 01:44:41.120 --> 01:44:44.240 There are those among you who may never get wives as screwed 01:44:44.320 --> 01:44:49.040 up as this world is, everyone is facing some manner of hardship. 01:44:49.040 --> 01:44:50.800 I don't say that to be blackpilling. 01:44:50.800 --> 01:44:53.440 I pray for every one of you to get what he wants 01:44:53.440 --> 01:44:56.320 in his life. 01:44:56.320 --> 01:44:59.440 And yet at the same time, our confidence and our peace has 01:44:59.440 --> 01:45:00.640 to come from God. 01:45:00.640 --> 01:45:03.040 It can be, well, if I get the thing that makes me 01:45:03.040 --> 01:45:04.800 happy, then I'm gonna be okay. 01:45:04.800 --> 01:45:08.000 You will never get enough things to make you as happy as 01:45:08.000 --> 01:45:10.080 God's peace will make you. 01:45:11.120 --> 01:45:14.400 that external sense of peace, a very real one. 01:45:14.400 --> 01:45:17.600 It's not just some woo-woo spiritual thing. 01:45:17.600 --> 01:45:22.480 The absolute confidence in God as God transcends everything else. 01:45:22.480 --> 01:45:25.600 And it makes dealing with things like the family and the community 01:45:26.000 --> 01:45:30.160 and the nation and geopolitics a whole lot easier. 01:45:30.160 --> 01:45:33.360 Because what you have in front of you then is simply duty. 01:45:33.360 --> 01:45:35.600 I know God, I know what he wants from me, I'm gonna 01:45:35.600 --> 01:45:38.000 do my best, and he's gonna take care of the rest. 01:45:38.000 --> 01:45:40.160 It's very simple to say. 01:45:40.160 --> 01:45:43.440 It's a lot harder to get there spiritually and intellectually. 01:45:43.440 --> 01:45:47.600 And so you know the discussion of violence and the context for 01:45:47.600 --> 01:45:52.960 all these things, it is ultimately an encouragement and an exhortation to 01:45:52.960 --> 01:45:57.440 seek and to desire God's peace in this life and most importantly 01:45:57.440 --> 01:45:59.360 in eternity. 01:45:59.600 --> 01:46:02.320 Leave you with one last passage from uh first Peter three where 01:46:02.320 --> 01:46:04.400 he quotes Psalm thirty four. 01:46:04.400 --> 01:46:10.160 Peter writes Finally all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly 01:46:10.160 --> 01:46:12.480 love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. 01:46:12.480 --> 01:46:16.480 Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on 01:46:16.480 --> 01:46:19.600 the contrary, bless, for it is you who are called, that you 01:46:19.600 --> 01:46:21.280 may obtain a blessing. 01:46:21.280 --> 01:46:24.880 For whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him 01:46:24.880 --> 01:46:28.560 keep his tongue from evil, and his lips from speaking deceit. 01:46:28.560 --> 01:46:31.680 Let him turn away from evil and do good, let him seek 01:46:31.680 --> 01:46:33.360 peace and pursue it. 01:46:33.360 --> 01:46:35.840 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his 01:46:35.920 --> 01:46:38.800 ears are open to their prayer, but the face of the Lord 01:46:38.800 --> 01:46:40.720 is against those who do evil 01:46:42.960 --> 01:46:47.760 To the scripture that Wo just read, I will add four brief 01:46:47.760 --> 01:46:53.520 selections from Proverbs, and they essentially go in reverse order, as it 01:46:53.520 --> 01:46:58.160 were, of the locations or spheres that we covered in this episode 01:46:58.240 --> 01:47:00.720 starting then with the church. 01:47:00.720 --> 01:47:04.960 My son do not forget my teachings, but keep my commands in 01:47:04.960 --> 01:47:08.560 your heart, for they will prolong your life many years, and bring 01:47:08.640 --> 01:47:12.640 you peace and prosperity. 01:47:12.640 --> 01:47:16.560 Deceit is in the hearts of those who plot evil, but those 01:47:16.560 --> 01:47:19.680 who promote peace have joy. 01:47:19.680 --> 01:47:23.520 When the Lord takes pleasure in any one's way, he causes their 01:47:23.520 --> 01:47:26.400 enemies to make peace with them. 01:47:26.400 --> 01:47:30.160 Better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full 01:47:30.160 --> 01:47:34.160 of feasting with strife. 01:47:34.480 --> 01:47:38.880 And so I want to return to where we started this episode 01:47:38.960 --> 01:47:45.920 really, distinguishing between the temporal and the eternal, between the relative and 01:47:45.920 --> 01:47:47.760 the absolute. 01:47:47.920 --> 01:47:51.920 With regard to the things of this life, and they are important, 01:47:51.920 --> 01:47:55.200 so do not listen to the false teachers who say that we 01:47:55.200 --> 01:47:59.520 can simply ignore the problems in the world, ignore the things that 01:47:59.520 --> 01:48:04.240 go wrong in life, because we have a better future, we have 01:48:04.240 --> 01:48:09.520 a celestial city, we have paradise to which to look forward. 01:48:09.520 --> 01:48:13.440 While that is true, it does not negate the fact that we 01:48:13.440 --> 01:48:17.120 live in this world, we live here and now, and we have 01:48:17.120 --> 01:48:22.320 certain duties in this life given us by God, made abundantly clear 01:48:22.320 --> 01:48:29.440 in His Word, and also in his creation, in some cases. 01:48:29.440 --> 01:48:33.920 But temporal peace, earthly peace, is always going to be relative, because 01:48:33.920 --> 01:48:37.680 it will not be perfect, it cannot be perfect, in a fallen 01:48:37.680 --> 01:48:41.920 world. And so you can have a peaceful home, you can have 01:48:41.920 --> 01:48:46.560 a peaceful society, you can even have a peaceful state, or even 01:48:47.120 --> 01:48:50.800 peaceful international relations at some points in history. 01:48:50.800 --> 01:48:52.800 But it will never be perfect. 01:48:52.800 --> 01:48:56.560 There will always be some strife and there will always be suffering 01:48:56.880 --> 01:49:00.080 because we live in a fallen world. 01:49:00.080 --> 01:49:04.560 Every man listening to this podcast will one day die, and yes, 01:49:04.480 --> 01:49:05.440 every woman as well 01:49:07.200 --> 01:49:12.160 because we are all mortal, because we are fallen. 01:49:12.160 --> 01:49:16.960 And so the peace of this life, in this life, with regard 01:49:16.960 --> 01:49:20.480 to earthly things, is relative. 01:49:20.480 --> 01:49:24.720 But the peace with regard to eschatological things, with regard the things 01:49:24.720 --> 01:49:27.600 of God, is absolute. 01:49:27.600 --> 01:49:32.640 That peace is eternal, because that peace deals with the promises of 01:49:32.640 --> 01:49:36.960 God with regard not just to the life to come, but with 01:49:36.960 --> 01:49:40.880 regard to what he will do for us in this life, because 01:49:40.880 --> 01:49:43.200 he promises to be with us. 01:49:43.200 --> 01:49:47.200 He promises that His peace will be with us in this life. 01:49:47.200 --> 01:49:50.880 These are promises on which we can count, because they come from 01:49:50.880 --> 01:49:54.000 God and God cannot and does not lie. 01:49:54.000 --> 01:49:58.480 We can believe every single word that God has spoken, that God 01:49:58.480 --> 01:50:04.000 has relayed to us, all of his promises inevitably come true. 01:50:04.000 --> 01:50:08.240 And so that sort of peace is absolute. 01:50:08.240 --> 01:50:12.240 Because the promises of God are absolute. 01:50:12.240 --> 01:50:15.360 Because God is perfect, God does not lie. 01:50:15.360 --> 01:50:19.520 These are the things on which we can rely, regardless of what 01:50:19.520 --> 01:50:23.600 may come in this life, regardless of what strife or suffering we 01:50:23.600 --> 01:50:27.760 may experience, regardless of what may happen to our nation, our society, 01:50:27.760 --> 01:50:32.320 even our homes, we can always rely on these promises of God. 01:50:32.320 --> 01:50:34.960 And so that is the right way to frame this. 01:50:34.960 --> 01:50:39.440 Rely on those promises of God, with regard not just to the 01:50:39.440 --> 01:50:45.440 next life, but also this life, even when there is still suffering 01:50:45.440 --> 01:50:50.560 and strife, even when earthly peace is disrupted. 01:50:50.560 --> 01:50:57.040 You can have peace, a sort of eternal peace, that absolute peace 01:50:57.040 --> 01:51:00.720 that is founded upon, that rests on the things of God, even 01:51:00.800 --> 01:51:07.600 even when there is no peace with regard to this temporal life. 01:51:07.600 --> 01:51:11.200 That is what it means to have trust in God. 01:51:11.200 --> 01:51:14.720 That is what it means to have a Christian faith. 01:51:14.720 --> 01:51:18.480 You trust in God, you believe the things that God has said, 01:51:18.480 --> 01:51:21.520 and so come what may. 01:51:21.520 --> 01:51:23.360 To the Christian, does it matter? 01:51:23.360 --> 01:51:25.280 Yes, because you still live in this world. 01:51:25.280 --> 01:51:29.440 But in another sense no, because you know that God will see 01:51:29.440 --> 01:51:34.160 you through it, because God has promised that everything will work together 01:51:34.160 --> 01:51:37.600 for the good, for those who love him, and of course you 01:51:37.600 --> 01:51:40.080 can only love God if He has given you that free gift 01:51:40.640 --> 01:51:41.360 of faith. 01:51:41.360 --> 01:51:44.720 And so it's not a work, it's not that if you love 01:51:44.720 --> 01:51:48.000 God enough, God will do these things for you. 01:51:48.000 --> 01:51:52.160 No, what that verse is saying is that God has given you 01:51:52.160 --> 01:51:55.600 faith, and because he has given you faith, and because he first 01:51:55.600 --> 01:52:00.000 loved you, you can love him, and therefore he has promised that 01:52:00.000 --> 01:52:04.240 he will see you through whatever comes in this life. 01:52:04.240 --> 01:52:08.720 That is an absolute sense of peace that we can have, regardless 01:52:08.720 --> 01:52:12.640 of what may come, regardless if the days continue to get worse, 01:52:12.640 --> 01:52:16.160 or perhaps God will turn them around and we will see better 01:52:16.160 --> 01:52:20.960 days. As that verse in proverb said, When the Lord takes pleasure 01:52:20.960 --> 01:52:25.120 in anyone's way, he causes their enemies to make peace with them. 01:52:25.120 --> 01:52:29.280 There is still the possibility that God can turn things around, that 01:52:29.280 --> 01:52:31.440 there could be better days ahead. 01:52:31.520 --> 01:52:35.360 That doesn't mean that we're Pollyanna, we're pang loss, that we think 01:52:35.360 --> 01:52:37.920 that, well, everything will just turn out well. 01:52:37.920 --> 01:52:42.080 No, as Christians and particularly as Christian men, we have duties in 01:52:42.080 --> 01:52:47.360 this life to work toward God's peace in this world. 01:52:47.360 --> 01:52:51.040 That is the temporal peace, that is the relative peace. 01:52:51.040 --> 01:52:54.560 Because again we live in a fallen world, but at the same 01:52:54.560 --> 01:52:59.680 time we have, we already have, we have possession of that absolute 01:52:59.680 --> 01:53:05.120 peace, because God has promised it to us as his adopted children. 01:53:05.120 --> 01:53:09.360 And we can rely on that, in life and death, in strife 01:53:09.360 --> 01:53:14.480 and suffering, regardless of whether the days are good or evil, we 01:53:14.480 --> 01:53:18.400 can rely on the promises of God, because God does not lie, 01:53:18.400 --> 01:53:20.640 and he has never failed. 01:53:21.760 --> 01:53:25.760 And so we will leave you in this episode with perhaps the 01:53:25.760 --> 01:53:30.160 most famous blessing, the most well known blessing, certainly to those who 01:53:30.160 --> 01:53:36.240 attend liturgical services, but the most well known blessing in Scripture. 01:53:36.560 --> 01:53:39.920 The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face 01:53:39.920 --> 01:53:43.520 to shine upon you and be gracious unto you, the Lord lift 01:53:43.520 --> 01:53:47.600 up his countenance upon you, and give you peace. 01:53:47.600 --> 01:53:48.720 Amen.