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 --> 00:00:43.520 And I'm still Woe. 00:00:45.200 --> 00:00:48.400 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be doing another sort of 00:00:48.400 --> 00:00:52.080 meta episode where we talk about how it is that we select 00:00:52.080 --> 00:00:54.560 the topics for Stone Choir? 00:00:54.560 --> 00:00:58.160 And more generally, how is it that we choose to pick some 00:00:58.160 --> 00:00:59.760 of the fights that we pick? 00:00:59.760 --> 00:01:01.520 Why are we picking fights? 00:01:01.520 --> 00:01:03.440 Why do we want to fight at all? 00:01:03.440 --> 00:01:04.960 And it's a turn off to some people. 00:01:04.960 --> 00:01:08.400 Why do a couple guys want to argue about stuff that frankly 00:01:08.560 --> 00:01:10.320 most people aren't arguing about? 00:01:10.320 --> 00:01:12.720 And in the world, when you look at some of the people 00:01:12.720 --> 00:01:16.640 talking about the things that we've done entire episodes and series on, 00:01:16.640 --> 00:01:18.320 some of the people are pretty awful. 00:01:18.480 --> 00:01:20.720 They're from the opposite side politically. 00:01:20.720 --> 00:01:23.920 They're trying to make an issue of something that most Christians have 00:01:23.920 --> 00:01:24.800 never thought about. 00:01:24.800 --> 00:01:27.840 And today we're going to talk about sort of at a meta-level, 00:01:27.840 --> 00:01:29.760 why are we looking at this stuff? 00:01:29.760 --> 00:01:30.960 Why do we want you to care? 00:01:30.960 --> 00:01:34.960 Why would we spend all this time saying, hey, look over here, 00:01:34.960 --> 00:01:37.600 this thing that's annoying that you don't want to deal with at 00:01:37.600 --> 00:01:39.520 all is actually really crucial. 00:01:39.520 --> 00:01:43.520 We're going to talk about the thought process behind how that happens. 00:01:43.520 --> 00:01:46.240 And although we're going to use a bunch of stuff about Stone 00:01:46.240 --> 00:01:49.200 Choir as an example, this is fundamentally about trying to teach our 00:01:49.200 --> 00:01:51.840 audience how to think, how to think generally. 00:01:51.840 --> 00:01:54.400 Because as you're looking out in the world, you're seeing the same 00:01:54.320 --> 00:01:58.000 The same thing we're seeing, you're seeing things we don't see maybe. 00:01:58.000 --> 00:02:02.400 The general applicability of the thought process is going to serve you 00:02:02.400 --> 00:02:03.280 in the future. 00:02:03.280 --> 00:02:05.360 And so we're going to explain why we do what we do, 00:02:05.360 --> 00:02:10.240 because it's a context that we share to help understand where men 00:02:10.240 --> 00:02:13.120 are doing things well and where some of us are doing things 00:02:13.120 --> 00:02:16.080 really poorly as we're engaging with the world. 00:02:16.080 --> 00:02:21.040 Uh just very brief housekeeping: the Stone Choir Challenge coins finally arrived. 00:02:21.040 --> 00:02:22.720 Corey has begun shipping them out. 00:02:22.960 --> 00:02:24.880 A few of you have already received them. 00:02:24.880 --> 00:02:26.800 It's gonna take a few weeks to get them all out because 00:02:26.880 --> 00:02:28.400 we had a whole bunch of pre-orders. 00:02:28.400 --> 00:02:31.520 Unfortunately, I can't help ship them, so he's got to do everything 00:02:31.680 --> 00:02:33.920 and he's writing handwritten notes to everybody. 00:02:33.920 --> 00:02:35.520 So it's gonna take a little while. 00:02:35.520 --> 00:02:37.440 Thank you for your continued patience. 00:02:37.440 --> 00:02:40.000 Thank you for your low time preference on this. 00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:42.720 And especially thank for you for your support for what we do 00:02:42.720 --> 00:02:46.560 here. Your support helps make it possible for us to actually spend 00:02:46.560 --> 00:02:49.040 all the time that we do this. 00:02:49.040 --> 00:02:53.680 As we look at target selection and how we deal with stuff 00:02:53.680 --> 00:02:57.120 in the world, I want to begin by giving you an example 00:02:57.120 --> 00:02:59.600 from computers that most of you are not familiar with. 00:02:59.600 --> 00:03:01.920 I'm not trying to teach you about computers, I'm trying to give 00:03:01.840 --> 00:03:05.120 you an example that most of you know nothing about just because 00:03:05.120 --> 00:03:07.120 the fact that you don't know anything about it means you don't 00:03:07.040 --> 00:03:09.600 have any baggage because when I compare it to things you are 00:03:09.600 --> 00:03:12.000 familiar with you're gonna see that the things you do know have 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:15.760 baggage and so I'm giving you a new word for something that 00:03:15.920 --> 00:03:19.760 is going to be neutral as we apply it throughout this episode. 00:03:19.760 --> 00:03:22.560 And for those of you who are familiar, I apologize for the 00:03:22.560 --> 00:03:23.920 things I'm gonna gloss over. 00:03:23.920 --> 00:03:25.920 This is not an autistic definition of the thing. 00:03:25.920 --> 00:03:28.960 It's simplified just for the sake of making the point today. 00:03:29.520 --> 00:03:32.720 In computers, there's something known as an interrupt. 00:03:32.720 --> 00:03:36.480 Basically at a very low level, in fact at the hardware level, 00:03:36.480 --> 00:03:39.920 there can be something called an interrupt that gets thrown when certain 00:03:39.920 --> 00:03:41.040 events occur. 00:03:41.040 --> 00:03:45.440 And when that happens, the software sitting above it will have policies 00:03:45.440 --> 00:03:48.960 about what do I do when a certain type of interrupt is 00:03:48.960 --> 00:03:52.720 thrown. And there's a special type of interrupt that's called a non-maskable 00:03:52.720 --> 00:03:55.920 interrupt that the policy can't ignore it. 00:03:55.920 --> 00:04:00.480 So whenever a non-maskable interrupt occurs, no matter what, the system basically 00:04:00.480 --> 00:04:03.200 has to stop whatever it's doing, which is why it's called an 00:04:03.200 --> 00:04:05.680 interrupt, and handle that event. 00:04:05.680 --> 00:04:08.880 And you know, computers have gotten fast enough and sophisticated enough and 00:04:08.880 --> 00:04:13.840 software can do all sorts of things effectively simultaneously that it doesn't 00:04:13.840 --> 00:04:16.800 completely halt the system like it did you know 30, 40 years 00:04:16.800 --> 00:04:21.040 ago. But the useful thing about the concept of an interrupt is 00:04:21.040 --> 00:04:24.480 that although in the software there's a policy to say if I 00:04:24.480 --> 00:04:26.880 see this sort of thing, I'm gonna handle it in a certain 00:04:26.880 --> 00:04:29.200 way, the software doesn't know when it's coming. 00:04:29.200 --> 00:04:33.200 It's some external event that triggers the interrupt and that's just got 00:04:33.200 --> 00:04:34.160 to deal with it. 00:04:34.160 --> 00:04:37.440 So your phone or your computer is just plugging along doing its 00:04:37.440 --> 00:04:40.480 stuff. And then say for example on a computer, one thing that 00:04:40.480 --> 00:04:42.960 might trigger a type of interrupt would be if you plug in 00:04:43.200 --> 00:04:44.560 a USB device. 00:04:44.560 --> 00:04:46.960 There's going to be an interrupt at the hardware level to say, 00:04:46.960 --> 00:04:48.320 hey, something new has happened. 00:04:48.320 --> 00:04:51.120 We need to handle this right away, even if you're doing other 00:04:51.120 --> 00:04:53.840 stuff. And of course the software has to make sure that it 00:04:53.840 --> 00:04:57.120 doesn't cause glitches and hangs and anything that would disrupt the rest 00:04:57.120 --> 00:05:00.160 of the work you're doing, but has to immediately handle the fact 00:05:00.160 --> 00:05:01.280 that you plug something in. 00:05:01.280 --> 00:05:03.840 It can't just wait five minutes and then later on notice. 00:05:03.840 --> 00:05:07.040 That's before interrupts they had what was called polling where it would 00:05:07.040 --> 00:05:09.040 check periodically, but that's expensive. 00:05:09.040 --> 00:05:12.320 So with an interrupt, it can just say, hey, something just happened, 00:05:12.320 --> 00:05:14.320 let's deal with it. 00:05:14.320 --> 00:05:17.120 An example that you are familiar with would be something like a 00:05:17.120 --> 00:05:18.000 fire drill. 00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:21.920 And when I worked at Apple, we have fire drills annually. 00:05:21.920 --> 00:05:27.760 And the enunciators, the alarms for those fire drills were deafeningly loud. 00:05:27.760 --> 00:05:30.800 I would stick my fingers inside my ears and it was still 00:05:30.800 --> 00:05:34.080 deafening. They were so loud that even if you were completely deaf, 00:05:34.080 --> 00:05:35.600 you could still feel it in your chest. 00:05:35.600 --> 00:05:38.880 So when there was a fire drill, you knew you had to 00:05:38.880 --> 00:05:41.680 leave. The entire building became inhospitable. 00:05:41.680 --> 00:05:43.360 You weren't getting anything else done. 00:05:43.360 --> 00:05:46.640 That's an example of an interrupt because when the fire drill or 00:05:46.640 --> 00:05:49.840 an actual fire occurs, whatever you're doing in your day, you know, 00:05:49.840 --> 00:05:54.400 in your workplace, same thing, the fire alarm goes off, you're doing 00:05:54.400 --> 00:05:56.000 work. It doesn't matter what you're doing. 00:05:56.080 --> 00:05:58.480 Doesn't matter what your plans were for the next five minutes or 00:05:58.480 --> 00:06:01.280 hour. You have to get up and leave the building. 00:06:01.280 --> 00:06:05.120 You know, ideally go to wherever you're pre-arranged evacuation zone was and 00:06:05.200 --> 00:06:07.440 you know get your head count and everything. 00:06:07.440 --> 00:06:10.640 You can't do what you're doing because the alarm went off. 00:06:10.640 --> 00:06:14.560 Now the reason for introducing the concept of an interrupt is that 00:06:14.640 --> 00:06:17.920 the fire drill or an actual fire is what we consider to 00:06:17.920 --> 00:06:19.360 be an emergency. 00:06:19.360 --> 00:06:21.920 And emergencies are sort of emotionally fraught. 00:06:21.920 --> 00:06:24.880 You know, it's like when the fire alarm goes off, it's the 00:06:24.880 --> 00:06:26.800 visceral assault on the senses. 00:06:26.800 --> 00:06:29.280 If there's an actual fire where if you don't know there's a 00:06:29.280 --> 00:06:33.040 fire, there's the additional potential anxiety of you know, am I in 00:06:33.040 --> 00:06:35.360 danger? You know, you're smelling for smoke. 00:06:35.360 --> 00:06:39.600 If there's an actual fire, you're potentially gonna be panicky. 00:06:39.600 --> 00:06:40.640 You might be scared. 00:06:40.640 --> 00:06:42.480 And so that's part of the reason for the rehearsal of a 00:06:42.480 --> 00:06:46.640 fire drill is so that you're used to going through the emergency 00:06:46.640 --> 00:06:49.040 process of something you don't normally do. 00:06:49.040 --> 00:06:51.600 But when the event comes up, you have to be ready for 00:06:51.600 --> 00:06:53.520 it. What we face in the world today 00:06:54.480 --> 00:06:56.400 is a type of this. 00:06:56.400 --> 00:07:00.480 We see in politics and in the church and just in general 00:07:00.480 --> 00:07:04.800 discourse that periodically there are these things that pop up that cause 00:07:04.800 --> 00:07:05.680 a stink. 00:07:05.680 --> 00:07:08.240 You know, race as an example. 00:07:08.240 --> 00:07:10.240 Long time ago nobody talked about race. 00:07:10.240 --> 00:07:12.880 Like it really wasn't much of a discussion. 00:07:12.880 --> 00:07:15.280 And today when we look back, we think, oh, well, there was 00:07:15.280 --> 00:07:17.040 no racist back then. 00:07:17.040 --> 00:07:19.920 Realistically, when you look at why no one was really talking much 00:07:19.920 --> 00:07:24.320 about race, it's all the races were effectively kept separate. 00:07:24.320 --> 00:07:27.520 God separated the races and they pretty much stayed separate. 00:07:27.520 --> 00:07:30.880 The exceptions to that would be in you know coastal cities or 00:07:30.880 --> 00:07:34.720 in major cities where there's some commerce, there would be some interchange 00:07:34.720 --> 00:07:39.040 of different races coming to one place where you would have coexistence 00:07:39.040 --> 00:07:40.800 of cultures. 00:07:40.800 --> 00:07:45.520 It's always happened historically, but apart from that, races were always separate. 00:07:45.520 --> 00:07:47.600 So there wasn't a lot of talk about it, because why would 00:07:47.600 --> 00:07:50.080 you talk about something that wasn't an issue? 00:07:50.080 --> 00:07:53.280 As more and more in the last century and a half, races 00:07:53.280 --> 00:07:56.560 have been mashed together in the West, where all of our canon 00:07:56.560 --> 00:07:59.200 comes from, suddenly people start talking about it. 00:07:59.200 --> 00:08:01.920 And so if you look back at kind of the the history 00:08:01.920 --> 00:08:05.200 of discussion, you would think, well, there was no race and then 00:08:05.200 --> 00:08:08.720 somebody invented race and now everybody's fighting about it. 00:08:08.720 --> 00:08:12.720 And so the natural tendency of most people, of most of you 00:08:12.720 --> 00:08:17.120 in the audience, probably, because you're normal people, like our audience is 00:08:17.120 --> 00:08:20.960 not some weird wild-eyed racist audience. 00:08:20.960 --> 00:08:23.680 You're just normal people, most of your church going. 00:08:23.680 --> 00:08:25.920 For those of you who aren't, I hope you'll start. 00:08:25.920 --> 00:08:29.040 It's certainly part of the why we're here, to tell people you 00:08:29.040 --> 00:08:33.520 can be Christian and not be stupid about this stuff. 00:08:33.520 --> 00:08:36.160 You don't want to have fights about stuff like race. 00:08:36.160 --> 00:08:39.040 You don't want to hear about it, 'cause like I said earlier, 00:08:39.040 --> 00:08:41.280 most of the people talking about it are annoying. 00:08:41.280 --> 00:08:44.400 Some of them are actively evil, terrible people. 00:08:44.400 --> 00:08:47.360 And so as soon as the subject comes up, it's kinda like 00:08:47.360 --> 00:08:48.960 a fire alarm going off. 00:08:48.960 --> 00:08:53.200 It's maybe somebody else's emergency, but your natural response is well this 00:08:53.280 --> 00:08:54.400 isn't my emergency. 00:08:54.400 --> 00:08:55.440 This isn't my fight. 00:08:55.440 --> 00:08:58.080 I don't want anything to do with it. 00:08:58.080 --> 00:09:00.800 And so the reason I want to introduce the concept of the 00:09:00.800 --> 00:09:04.640 interrupt is that if instead of treating it as an emergency is 00:09:04.640 --> 00:09:09.200 something that you've gotta have some strongly held opinion about, it's just 00:09:09.200 --> 00:09:13.440 an example of us all going along with our lives and then 00:09:13.440 --> 00:09:17.360 there's some new information in the world that's gotta be dealt with. 00:09:17.360 --> 00:09:19.760 And maybe you don't personally have to deal with it, but that 00:09:19.760 --> 00:09:21.280 doesn't mean that nobody does. 00:09:21.280 --> 00:09:23.440 And so one of the things we're going to talk about today, 00:09:23.440 --> 00:09:26.480 probably near the end, is that there's some men who are equipped 00:09:26.480 --> 00:09:30.640 to actually fight these fights, to notice these things and to deal 00:09:31.040 --> 00:09:35.440 with these interrupts and these emergencies, there are other people who aren't, 00:09:35.440 --> 00:09:40.240 particularly women pretty much excluded from fighting in emergencies and like all 00:09:40.240 --> 00:09:40.880 that crap. 00:09:40.880 --> 00:09:44.960 Not that girls are not capable, not that they're not intelligent enough, 00:09:44.960 --> 00:09:46.320 but it's not their duty. 00:09:46.320 --> 00:09:47.760 It's not their problem. 00:09:47.760 --> 00:09:52.000 And so when we have women involved in politics and things, it's 00:09:52.000 --> 00:09:54.960 natural they're going to be interested because a girl can die by 00:09:54.960 --> 00:09:56.560 the sword just as easily as a man. 00:09:56.560 --> 00:10:00.720 And girls are going to fare in some ways worse in conditions 00:10:00.720 --> 00:10:03.840 of warfare because they're usually not just going to be killed, other 00:10:03.920 --> 00:10:04.880 things are going to be done to them. 00:10:04.880 --> 00:10:06.640 They're in some ways worse. 00:10:06.640 --> 00:10:10.560 So everyone has a vested interest in when there are real world 00:10:10.560 --> 00:10:13.040 fights and wars, which is part of this. 00:10:13.040 --> 00:10:16.640 You know, we're going to use a lot of examples from different 00:10:16.640 --> 00:10:18.720 aspects of warfare. 00:10:18.720 --> 00:10:20.880 And it's not tough talk. 00:10:20.880 --> 00:10:23.120 It's some of them are analogues. 00:10:23.280 --> 00:10:25.520 It's analogous to things in warfare. 00:10:25.520 --> 00:10:28.800 But I think whether or not you've ever been in war, whether 00:10:28.800 --> 00:10:31.760 or not you've actually killed someone, I haven't done either. 00:10:31.760 --> 00:10:33.760 I hope I never will have to. 00:10:33.760 --> 00:10:34.240 But But 00:10:36.800 --> 00:10:40.080 someone who has gone to war, someone who's been a war fighter, 00:10:40.080 --> 00:10:43.120 before they actually went and did the thing, they were trained to 00:10:43.120 --> 00:10:43.520 do it. 00:10:43.520 --> 00:10:48.000 So the the their introduction to warfare as a professional soldier, was 00:10:48.000 --> 00:10:51.920 training, was thinking about what they're going to do, and then going 00:10:51.920 --> 00:10:56.160 and doing it to learn the concepts, the techniques, the strategies, whatever 00:10:56.160 --> 00:11:00.320 specifics were necessary for doing their job as a soldier. 00:11:00.720 --> 00:11:02.720 First began with thought. 00:11:02.720 --> 00:11:06.400 And so today as we're talking, we're just thinking about things. 00:11:06.400 --> 00:11:09.200 And not specifically physical warfare. 00:11:09.200 --> 00:11:12.160 But that's another one of the points to be made today is 00:11:12.160 --> 00:11:17.040 that when we talk about fights and battles and wars, sometimes it's 00:11:17.040 --> 00:11:22.320 actual literal warfare, like Genghis Khan killing a lot of people in 00:11:22.320 --> 00:11:24.480 warfare, actually happened. 00:11:24.480 --> 00:11:30.080 But conceptually, similar things happen in other aspects of life. 00:11:30.080 --> 00:11:34.080 My dad played college football and so from a young age he 00:11:34.080 --> 00:11:35.440 taught me to really love football. 00:11:35.440 --> 00:11:36.720 I used to really like it. 00:11:36.720 --> 00:11:38.240 I understood football really well. 00:11:38.240 --> 00:11:40.800 You know, I could watch a play evolve, know it was gonna 00:11:40.800 --> 00:11:44.080 happen. If a flag was thrown before the refs anything, I knew 00:11:44.080 --> 00:11:45.920 what the call was gonna be. 00:11:45.920 --> 00:11:50.640 Football is fundamentally modeled after a maneuver warfare. 00:11:50.640 --> 00:11:52.160 It's kind of a microcosm. 00:11:52.160 --> 00:11:54.800 Every play is kind of a set piece of a different aspect 00:11:54.800 --> 00:11:56.400 of maneuver warfare. 00:11:56.400 --> 00:11:59.280 And so, you know, like it's fun for its own sake, but 00:11:59.280 --> 00:12:04.000 there are clear correlations between the strategy in a football game and 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:05.840 the strategy in an actual war. 00:12:05.840 --> 00:12:08.720 Now it's not a direct correlation, but it's typological. 00:12:08.720 --> 00:12:10.400 They're aspects that are similar. 00:12:10.400 --> 00:12:14.080 And so it's interesting because you can understand bits and pieces of 00:12:14.080 --> 00:12:16.400 one and it will apply to the other. 00:12:16.400 --> 00:12:19.600 And so as we talk about these concepts, we're trying to give 00:12:19.600 --> 00:12:23.840 bits and pieces of ideas, not to suggest that anyone should go 00:12:23.840 --> 00:12:27.600 to war physically hurting, fighting, killing, but that to say that when 00:12:27.600 --> 00:12:32.480 we're dealing with fights, whether they're rhetorical fights or their spiritual or 00:12:32.480 --> 00:12:37.600 cultural fights, there are aspects of warfare that apply just as much 00:12:37.600 --> 00:12:40.800 in the rhetorical sphere as they do in the physical sphere. 00:12:40.800 --> 00:12:42.560 Now they manifest differently, obviously. 00:12:42.560 --> 00:12:46.400 the the pen and the sword will harm in different ways or 00:12:46.400 --> 00:12:50.720 will solve problems in different ways, but some of the strategies with 00:12:50.720 --> 00:12:52.640 which they're employed are very similar. 00:12:52.640 --> 00:12:55.600 So we're not trying to talk tough or be jerks about talking 00:12:56.000 --> 00:12:57.360 about something we don't know about. 00:12:57.360 --> 00:12:59.280 We're trying to give examples that 00:13:00.160 --> 00:13:04.400 all of us are in a dangerous situation in current year just 00:13:04.400 --> 00:13:05.920 because of the state of the world. 00:13:05.920 --> 00:13:08.320 You know, that's that's kind of an evergreen tweet. 00:13:08.320 --> 00:13:10.880 You know, there will always be wars and rumors of wars. 00:13:10.880 --> 00:13:13.760 And that's a reminder to us from God that the end is 00:13:13.760 --> 00:13:16.480 near. The end has always been near from the moment that Christ 00:13:16.480 --> 00:13:17.840 ascended into heaven. 00:13:17.840 --> 00:13:22.720 And so we should anticipate with hope and joy, the resurrection of 00:13:22.720 --> 00:13:26.320 the dead and the return of God. 00:13:26.320 --> 00:13:29.600 Whether things are good or bad on a particular day, part of 00:13:29.600 --> 00:13:32.640 our task is dealing with what's in front of us, and part 00:13:32.640 --> 00:13:34.560 of it is also focusing on God. 00:13:34.800 --> 00:13:36.320 Never one or the other. 00:13:36.320 --> 00:13:38.480 If you're only focused on what's in front of you, you're basically 00:13:38.480 --> 00:13:39.280 a pagan. 00:13:39.280 --> 00:13:43.040 And if you're only ever focused on God to the exclusion and 00:13:43.040 --> 00:13:45.920 at the expense of your actual duties right in front of you, 00:13:45.920 --> 00:13:47.360 you're not a Christian either. 00:13:47.360 --> 00:13:50.960 If you don't tend to the specific duties God has given you 00:13:50.960 --> 00:13:55.840 in this life for material aspects of our interaction, you're not a 00:13:55.840 --> 00:13:57.680 Christian. You're not obeying God. 00:13:57.680 --> 00:14:00.080 Because just looking heavenward and say, God, I'm ready. 00:14:00.080 --> 00:14:02.320 I love you, that's crying out, Lord, Lord. 00:14:02.720 --> 00:14:05.120 He's going to come down and say, I never knew you. 00:14:05.120 --> 00:14:08.480 Because the only way to truly cry out, Lord, Lord, is to 00:14:08.480 --> 00:14:10.880 tend to the things that God has given us to do. 00:14:10.880 --> 00:14:14.800 And so when these fights come in the world, when these emergencies 00:14:14.800 --> 00:14:18.880 emerge, when the world throws an interrupt, when suddenly something you never 00:14:18.880 --> 00:14:22.320 thought about you didn't want to deal with pops up, you suddenly 00:14:22.320 --> 00:14:23.680 have to deal with it. 00:14:23.680 --> 00:14:26.640 And another aspect of what we're going to talk about today is 00:14:26.640 --> 00:14:31.200 that some men are just dispositionally not equipped for that, certainly not 00:14:31.200 --> 00:14:37.280 anymore. In some aspects, men are racially better equipped for being disagreeable, 00:14:37.280 --> 00:14:40.160 and some races are are less disagreeable. 00:14:40.160 --> 00:14:45.600 You know, the approach of a German versus a Norwegian versus a 00:14:45.600 --> 00:14:49.280 Scotsman are gonna be pretty different, fundamentally. 00:14:49.280 --> 00:14:52.800 And so I'm not saying that every man needs to have the 00:14:52.800 --> 00:14:56.480 same attitudes that Corey or I have towards these things. 00:14:56.480 --> 00:14:59.600 But one of the conclusions we want to draw today is that 00:14:59.840 --> 00:15:03.120 when these fights are coming, if there are men who can say, 00:15:03.120 --> 00:15:06.320 hey, there's an interrupt that's been thrown, there's an There's an emergency 00:15:06.320 --> 00:15:10.080 here. If you're not equipped to join the battle, you should be 00:15:10.080 --> 00:15:14.000 equipped with the foreknowledge that that guy's actually on my side. 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:16.960 He's actually fighting a battle that maybe I don't feel like I 00:15:16.960 --> 00:15:19.120 can fight, but I'm not going to shoot him in the back. 00:15:19.120 --> 00:15:20.720 I'm not gonna stab him in the back. 00:15:20.720 --> 00:15:21.920 I'm not gonna betray him. 00:15:21.920 --> 00:15:24.720 I'm gonna help him or at least leave him alone. 00:15:24.720 --> 00:15:27.120 Because a lot of what happens today is that when these fights 00:15:27.120 --> 00:15:30.160 get picked not by us, when the fights get picked by the 00:15:30.160 --> 00:15:34.320 world, when the interrupt is thrown by Satan, we have to respond. 00:15:34.320 --> 00:15:37.760 And when those responses occur, different men are equipped in different ways 00:15:37.760 --> 00:15:38.960 to deal with them. 00:15:38.960 --> 00:15:43.280 And we want to help illustrate just kind of again at a 00:15:43.280 --> 00:15:46.800 meta level, as this stuff is going on, just realize that there 00:15:46.800 --> 00:15:49.600 are going to be men who see things that you don't see 00:15:49.760 --> 00:15:52.480 who have a better understanding of things that maybe you haven't thought 00:15:52.480 --> 00:15:55.200 about before and just try to get your bearings. 00:15:55.200 --> 00:15:58.160 You know, if you've never had a fire drill before, you're gonna 00:15:58.160 --> 00:15:59.280 have to follow the crowd. 00:15:59.280 --> 00:16:01.360 You're not gonna know where to go or what to do. 00:16:01.360 --> 00:16:03.280 Maybe you haven't been trained or whatever. 00:16:03.280 --> 00:16:05.840 If you follow the crowd, you're gonna get to the right place 00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:08.000 because somebody's gonna know where they're going. 00:16:08.000 --> 00:16:12.640 And so we as groups don't need everyone to understand everything. 00:16:12.640 --> 00:16:14.800 We just need to know that somebody has a plan and that 00:16:14.800 --> 00:16:18.320 as that plan plays out, you follow it, you don't fight, you 00:16:18.320 --> 00:16:21.760 don't like if the fire alarm goes off at work and you're 00:16:21.760 --> 00:16:24.400 in a meeting, you don't start yelling at everybody and say, Hey, 00:16:24.400 --> 00:16:24.880 where are you going? 00:16:24.880 --> 00:16:26.000 We're in the middle of a meeting. 00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:29.600 The interrupt has been thrown, the alarm is going off, everybody leaves. 00:16:29.600 --> 00:16:30.880 You have to leave too. 00:16:30.880 --> 00:16:34.320 And the plans that you had before don't matter. 00:16:34.320 --> 00:16:34.560 As 00:16:34.560 --> 00:16:38.960 we were preparing for this episode, a lot of my prior reading 00:16:38.960 --> 00:16:42.640 of authors like Klauswitz and Sun Tzu came to mind. 00:16:42.640 --> 00:16:48.000 Some of the quotes are very relevant, because as Woe mentioned, warfare 00:16:48.000 --> 00:16:54.960 and what we are discussing today are distinct and yet very similar, 00:16:54.960 --> 00:16:57.200 because this is spiritual warfare. 00:16:57.200 --> 00:17:01.040 And I think that is something that as modern Christians we've forgotten 00:17:01.040 --> 00:17:04.720 over the last Over the last century or so, we need to 00:17:04.720 --> 00:17:08.880 go back to thinking of ourselves as the church militant in several 00:17:08.880 --> 00:17:13.280 senses of the word militant, including military, because 00:17:14.240 --> 00:17:20.560 man's life on this earth is war, to paraphrase Job. 00:17:20.560 --> 00:17:25.520 Not in the sense that everything everywhere at all times must necessarily 00:17:25.520 --> 00:17:28.640 be physical conflict, but in the sense that even if you are 00:17:28.640 --> 00:17:31.760 at physical peace, if you are not at war with your neighbors, 00:17:31.760 --> 00:17:34.960 you're not being invaded, you don't have the enemy already within your 00:17:34.960 --> 00:17:39.760 gates, even without those problems, if those are absent, we still have 00:17:39.760 --> 00:17:43.680 our struggle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. 00:17:43.680 --> 00:17:46.880 That will always be part of life in this fallen world. 00:17:46.880 --> 00:17:52.000 Those things do not go away until the next life, until we 00:17:52.000 --> 00:17:54.640 die. And so we have to bear that in mind. 00:17:54.640 --> 00:17:57.840 We will always be at war with those things. 00:17:57.840 --> 00:18:01.840 And so many of those quotes from men who were writing about 00:18:01.840 --> 00:18:07.840 physical warfare are applicable to what we are dealing with here, because 00:18:07.840 --> 00:18:12.000 the same sort of mechanisms, the same ideas are in play. 00:18:12.000 --> 00:18:15.040 And one in particular, of course, that comes to mind is that 00:18:15.040 --> 00:18:19.920 all warfare is based on deception, which is something we should recognize 00:18:19.920 --> 00:18:22.320 with regard to Satan. 00:18:22.320 --> 00:18:27.440 Everything he is doing at any given time is meant to deceive. 00:18:27.440 --> 00:18:29.520 That is his main line of attack. 00:18:29.520 --> 00:18:32.240 He is always attempting to deceive. 00:18:32.240 --> 00:18:36.560 And so if we're strong in one place, he will attack somewhere 00:18:36.560 --> 00:18:39.200 else, or he'll faint and then attack somewhere else. 00:18:39.200 --> 00:18:42.640 His goal is to deceive you, to get you to drop your 00:18:42.640 --> 00:18:46.240 guard, or to engage in behavior that, oh well, this isn't that 00:18:46.240 --> 00:18:49.200 detrimental, or maybe it's not detrimental. 00:18:49.200 --> 00:18:52.480 But five, six, seven steps down the line, or maybe a century 00:18:52.480 --> 00:18:56.560 in the future, he has laid a trap and he wants maybe 00:18:56.560 --> 00:18:59.920 not you, but maybe your descendants to walk into it. 00:18:59.920 --> 00:19:03.200 And so that's one of the reasons that we select some of 00:19:03.200 --> 00:19:07.360 the topics we select, because Satan has already laid a trap, perhaps 00:19:07.360 --> 00:19:10.960 he's already sprung the trap in many cases, when we talk about, 00:19:10.960 --> 00:19:13.120 for instance, biological sex. 00:19:13.120 --> 00:19:16.640 That's something that's currently being debated in our society because we are 00:19:16.640 --> 00:19:21.760 a society of insane people, also evil and wicked, but insane. 00:19:21.760 --> 00:19:24.800 Because we have men and women who can't define what it means 00:19:24.800 --> 00:19:28.080 to be a man or a woman, even biologically, let alone what 00:19:28.080 --> 00:19:32.160 it means to be beyond that psychologically, dispositionally, all of these other 00:19:32.160 --> 00:19:35.760 things that will be relevant for this episode, as Woe mentioned already, 00:19:35.760 --> 00:19:38.640 the difference, say, between Scots and Norwegians. 00:19:38.640 --> 00:19:42.560 Being part Scottish and German, I recognize the difference there. 00:19:42.560 --> 00:19:45.840 And we had a little bit of that fight even in Lutheranism 00:19:45.920 --> 00:19:51.520 historically, because we had some squabbles over election in American Lutheranism, and 00:19:51.520 --> 00:19:55.440 it was largely a division between the Scandinavians on one side and 00:19:55.440 --> 00:20:00.240 the Germans on the other, and disposition played into that. 00:20:00.240 --> 00:20:03.600 But when it comes to conflicts and fights. 00:20:03.600 --> 00:20:05.840 There are really two different kinds. 00:20:05.840 --> 00:20:07.200 We can have two categories. 00:20:07.200 --> 00:20:10.320 There is the foreseeable and the unforeseeable. 00:20:10.320 --> 00:20:13.200 Now for the foreseeable of course we can plan for those and 00:20:13.200 --> 00:20:17.200 you can have sort of a subcategory here because there are fights 00:20:17.200 --> 00:20:20.880 that are foreseeable that have not yet come to pass. 00:20:20.880 --> 00:20:24.320 And so some of the episodes, some of the topics that we 00:20:24.320 --> 00:20:28.720 choose are things that Satan has not quite yet subverted. 00:20:28.720 --> 00:20:32.640 And so we're defending against an attack that we see coming. 00:20:32.640 --> 00:20:37.520 We see what he is planning, because it's foreseeable, and so we 00:20:37.520 --> 00:20:40.640 plan for that attack ahead of time. 00:20:40.640 --> 00:20:41.760 Same thing in warfare. 00:20:42.080 --> 00:20:45.200 Sometimes you know that your enemy is going to attack a certain 00:20:45.200 --> 00:20:47.040 point, and so you fortify it. 00:20:47.040 --> 00:20:51.120 You are preparing for that incoming attack because you see it ahead 00:20:51.120 --> 00:20:53.040 of time. 00:20:53.040 --> 00:20:57.280 But other times it is unforeseeable, and you can't really prepare for 00:20:57.280 --> 00:21:00.960 the unforeseeable attack except to be generally ready. 00:21:00.960 --> 00:21:04.640 And so that is partly what we're doing when you just study 00:21:04.640 --> 00:21:07.760 scripture generally, when you read through scripture, when you are engaged in 00:21:08.320 --> 00:21:11.840 prayer, when you are doing the things that constitute that part of 00:21:11.840 --> 00:21:16.240 the Christian life, you are preparing for the attacks of Satan. 00:21:16.240 --> 00:21:20.080 Because for instance, if you are attacked by Satan with certain doubts, 00:21:20.080 --> 00:21:24.240 if you have spent time in Scripture, that will come to mind. 00:21:24.240 --> 00:21:27.280 God will bring that to mind so you can defend yourself against 00:21:27.280 --> 00:21:29.680 those arrows in that moment. 00:21:29.680 --> 00:21:34.240 And so you're preparing for those unforeseeable, those unforeseen attacks at some 00:21:34.240 --> 00:21:37.840 point in the future, should they come, perhaps they won't, perhaps they 00:21:37.840 --> 00:21:40.880 will, you don't know. 00:21:40.880 --> 00:21:44.880 But the other kind, and what we are most often addressing in 00:21:44.880 --> 00:21:48.800 our episodes, are things that, whether they were foreseeable or not, 00:21:49.760 --> 00:21:51.040 they are already here. 00:21:51.040 --> 00:21:53.600 Satan is actively attacking them. 00:21:53.600 --> 00:21:56.960 And this is in line with what has been done historically by 00:21:56.960 --> 00:21:57.600 the church. 00:21:57.600 --> 00:22:00.320 We've mentioned this before, but I'll mention it again here. 00:22:00.320 --> 00:22:04.480 If you look at the creeds, the creeds were created by the 00:22:04.480 --> 00:22:05.920 church from scripture. 00:22:05.920 --> 00:22:09.600 We've linked that before, all the references to scripture in the creeds, 00:22:09.600 --> 00:22:14.560 but the creeds were created by Christendom in order to defend against 00:22:14.560 --> 00:22:18.400 something Satan was actively attacking at that time. 00:22:18.400 --> 00:22:21.920 We would not have the creeds if Satan were not attacking the 00:22:21.920 --> 00:22:24.080 things defended in the creeds. 00:22:24.080 --> 00:22:28.560 They were made to defend against what he was doing at that 00:22:28.560 --> 00:22:32.960 time against those people in that place. 00:22:32.960 --> 00:22:37.360 What Satan is doing today, what he is attacking today, is different 00:22:37.440 --> 00:22:40.720 not just in degree, but in kind from what he has attacked 00:22:40.720 --> 00:22:41.920 in the past. 00:22:41.920 --> 00:22:46.800 Many of the things contained in the creed are directly addressed in 00:22:46.800 --> 00:22:49.360 scripture. And that's why you can look at the creeds and you 00:22:49.360 --> 00:22:52.080 can point out that's from this verse, that's from this verse, that's 00:22:52.080 --> 00:22:56.400 from this verse, and you can practically cite each and every word 00:22:56.400 --> 00:23:01.040 of the creeds to somewhere in scripture, because they are just rearrangements 00:23:01.040 --> 00:23:03.840 of the words of scripture in order to make something that is 00:23:03.840 --> 00:23:10.480 easily memorized and recited against the various heresies and attacks of Satan. 00:23:10.480 --> 00:23:14.160 That is not what Satan is attacking today, as we've mentioned before. 00:23:14.160 --> 00:23:16.480 Today he is attacking creation itself. 00:23:16.480 --> 00:23:20.400 He is attacking God as creator And so some of the issues 00:23:20.400 --> 00:23:24.400 that we address may not be explicitly addressed in Scripture. 00:23:24.400 --> 00:23:29.120 They are often tangentially addressed in Scripture, but you have to appeal 00:23:29.120 --> 00:23:33.120 to creation in order to address some of these issues, because Satan 00:23:33.120 --> 00:23:35.920 is not attacking scripture itself. 00:23:35.920 --> 00:23:39.440 Of course he still does that and we still have disagreements and 00:23:39.440 --> 00:23:43.680 arguments and all of these other problems between and among various traditions, 00:23:43.680 --> 00:23:49.200 denominations, but by and large what he is attacking most successfully today 00:23:49.200 --> 00:23:50.960 is creation itself. 00:23:50.960 --> 00:23:54.960 And that's what he is attacking when he attacks the idea of 00:23:55.280 --> 00:23:58.720 gender roles, which by the way, gender roles and the term gender 00:23:58.800 --> 00:24:01.120 are fine, they're a real thing. 00:24:01.120 --> 00:24:05.440 Satan seeks to subvert them and turn them into something perverse, because 00:24:05.440 --> 00:24:10.720 he seeks to unmoor them from biological sex, from God's created order, 00:24:10.720 --> 00:24:18.000 because properly understood, a man biologically male, is masculine in terms of 00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:22.160 gender. And of course a woman is feminine. 00:24:22.160 --> 00:24:23.040 A female. 00:24:23.040 --> 00:24:27.440 These terms all apply to sort of a sphere of related concepts 00:24:27.440 --> 00:24:30.800 and ideas, something that is a totality, it's a gestalt, it is 00:24:30.800 --> 00:24:32.560 greater than the sum of its parts. 00:24:32.560 --> 00:24:34.560 Satan is attacking and subverting that. 00:24:34.560 --> 00:24:37.760 He's doing the same thing with regard to race. 00:24:37.760 --> 00:24:41.600 It comes straight from the pit of hell when someone argues that 00:24:41.600 --> 00:24:43.040 all races are the same. 00:24:43.040 --> 00:24:45.920 There's one race, the human race, is the phrase they always love 00:24:45.920 --> 00:24:46.640 to use. 00:24:46.640 --> 00:24:50.480 Which of course is absolutely insane, and everyone knows it, because it's 00:24:50.400 --> 00:24:54.080 the same as saying there's one plant, the plant plant. 00:24:54.080 --> 00:24:55.680 Well, that's not true. 00:24:55.680 --> 00:24:58.240 Go ahead, try to eat lettuce and then eat hemlock. 00:24:58.240 --> 00:25:00.960 Don't do that, by the way, it's poisonous, it will kill you 00:25:01.360 --> 00:25:04.000 can't do that because there are distinctions. 00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:09.520 The same thing is true for every different created grouping, whether it's 00:25:09.440 --> 00:25:12.000 a species or a family, whatever it happens to be. 00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:15.520 There are different plants, there are different animals, there are different races 00:25:16.080 --> 00:25:16.880 of men. 00:25:16.880 --> 00:25:20.720 That's another thing that Satan is seeking to subvert, and so we 00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:26.640 address topics related to race, related to racialism, racism, related to these 00:25:26.640 --> 00:25:32.800 matters, because Satan is actively attacking them in an attempt to subvert. 00:25:32.800 --> 00:25:37.360 One of his overarching goals, as is always the case with Satan, 00:25:37.360 --> 00:25:40.080 is the destruction of hierarchy and order. 00:25:40.080 --> 00:25:44.720 And so he's already managed to destroy quite a bit of the 00:25:44.720 --> 00:25:48.800 natural hierarchy and right order that we have had historically, not just 00:25:48.800 --> 00:25:52.080 in Christendom, but generally in humanity. 00:25:52.080 --> 00:25:56.000 Because even among the pagans, you had hierarchy and order. 00:25:56.000 --> 00:25:58.480 The Roman state was not anarchic. 00:25:58.480 --> 00:26:02.720 The Roman state had a very strict hierarchy, it had classes, it 00:26:02.720 --> 00:26:06.560 had different roles in society, it had order, it had fairly good 00:26:07.280 --> 00:26:10.720 laws for the time, probably better than our laws today in many 00:26:10.720 --> 00:26:15.680 ways. These are the things that Satan has already effectively subverted. 00:26:15.680 --> 00:26:19.040 We no longer have, for instance, an aristocracy. 00:26:19.040 --> 00:26:20.640 We don't have monarchs anymore. 00:26:20.640 --> 00:26:23.360 We don't really have right hierarchy. 00:26:23.360 --> 00:26:29.200 Because a democracy, a representative, so-called government, isn't hierarchy. 00:26:29.200 --> 00:26:30.480 It's not right order. 00:26:30.480 --> 00:26:33.600 We've addressed this before, and we'll undoubtedly address it again. 00:26:33.600 --> 00:26:38.800 But in subverting that, one of the things that Satan accomplished was 00:26:38.800 --> 00:26:44.960 the destruction to some degree of the organization of the church militant. 00:26:44.960 --> 00:26:48.160 Because one of the roles of a godly prince 00:26:49.040 --> 00:26:53.360 is to defend the church, not just to defend the church physically 00:26:53.360 --> 00:26:57.600 from those who would attack her, her buildings, her members, but also 00:26:57.600 --> 00:27:01.040 to defend the church from false teachers, from wolves. 00:27:01.040 --> 00:27:04.560 Now that will make some uncomfortable when they hear that. 00:27:04.560 --> 00:27:07.920 There are some traditions that really do not like that idea, but 00:27:07.920 --> 00:27:10.480 that has always been the position of the church. 00:27:10.480 --> 00:27:14.160 It is in most of the confessions of the various bodies within 00:27:14.160 --> 00:27:18.880 Christendom. It is one of the duties of the Christian prince to 00:27:18.880 --> 00:27:21.600 defend the church from false teachers. 00:27:21.600 --> 00:27:27.200 Because the Christian prince essentially is a commander, is a general in 00:27:27.200 --> 00:27:29.680 this sort of warfare, in this spiritual warfare. 00:27:29.680 --> 00:27:34.240 Now, of course, he also has the sword, the physical sword, with 00:27:34.240 --> 00:27:37.760 regard to the left-hand kingdom, with regard to punishing the wicked. 00:27:37.760 --> 00:27:40.960 And it and it is his duty to defend the church against 00:27:40.960 --> 00:27:43.200 those who would physically harm her. 00:27:43.200 --> 00:27:46.640 As we record this today, it is of course the twenty fifth 00:27:46.640 --> 00:27:50.160 of June we record one day in advance. 00:27:50.160 --> 00:27:55.920 It is the anniversary of the presentation of the Augsburg Confession. 00:27:55.920 --> 00:28:00.000 And for those who try to argue against, you know, Christian nationalism 00:28:00.080 --> 00:28:04.800 or having a godly prince or having a Christian nation, whatever term 00:28:04.800 --> 00:28:08.640 happens to be used and the thing against which they're arguing, for 00:28:08.640 --> 00:28:13.120 Lutherans certainly and for many others, you cannot defend it confessionally, you 00:28:13.120 --> 00:28:16.480 certainly can't defend it from scripture or rationally. 00:28:16.480 --> 00:28:22.240 But the Augsburg Confession was presented to Charles V, presented to the 00:28:22.240 --> 00:28:25.600 Emperor, and I just want to read the first four paragraphs of 00:28:25.600 --> 00:28:29.680 it because it mentions a couple of key things for this episode 00:28:29.840 --> 00:28:34.560 and just generally for Christians, some things we've forgotten in this modern 00:28:34.560 --> 00:28:40.800 era. Most invincible emperor Caesar Augustus, most clemant lord, inasmuch as your 00:28:40.880 --> 00:28:44.640 Imperial Majesty has summoned a diet of the Empire here at Augsburg 00:28:44.720 --> 00:28:49.680 to deliberate concerning measures against the Turk, that most atrocious, hereditary, and 00:28:49.680 --> 00:28:53.360 ancient enemy of the Christian name and religion, in what way namely 00:28:53.440 --> 00:28:57.440 effectually to withstand the withstand his fur and assaults by strong and 00:28:57.440 --> 00:29:02.240 lasting military provision, and then also concerning dissensions in the matter of 00:29:02.240 --> 00:29:06.080 our holy religion and Christian faith, that in this matter of religion 00:29:06.160 --> 00:29:08.880 the opinions and judgments of the parties might be heard in each 00:29:08.960 --> 00:29:13.040 other in each other's presence, and considered and weighed, among ourselves in 00:29:13.040 --> 00:29:17.840 mutual charity, leniency and kindness, in order that, after the removal and 00:29:17.840 --> 00:29:21.280 correction of such things, as had been treated and understood in a 00:29:21.280 --> 00:29:25.200 different manner, in the writings of either side, these matters may be 00:29:25.200 --> 00:29:29.600 settled and brought back to one simple truth and Christian concord, that 00:29:29.600 --> 00:29:33.120 for the future one pure and true religion may be embraced and 00:29:33.120 --> 00:29:37.120 maintained by us, that as we all are under one Christ, and 00:29:37.120 --> 00:29:40.480 do battle under him, so we may also be able to live 00:29:40.480 --> 00:29:44.800 in unity and concord in the one Christian church, and inasmuch as 00:29:44.800 --> 00:29:48.240 we, the under signed Elector and Princes, with others joined joined. 00:29:48.240 --> 00:29:50.960 I'll leave it off there because we don't need to read the 00:29:50.960 --> 00:29:54.480 political niceties as it were from the era. 00:29:54.480 --> 00:29:58.560 But we can see clearly here part of the understanding of these 00:29:58.800 --> 00:30:03.520 godly men presenting this confession to the emperor was that one of 00:30:03.520 --> 00:30:09.520 the Christian duties of the Christian prince is to defend against wicked 00:30:09.520 --> 00:30:13.520 foreigners, in this case Muslims, that's what is meant by Turk, yes, 00:30:13.520 --> 00:30:17.360 literally Turks, but also Muslims more generally, and that part of the 00:30:17.360 --> 00:30:21.840 Christian life is literally doing battle against the wicked when we have 00:30:21.840 --> 00:30:24.080 a Christian prince to lead us. 00:30:24.080 --> 00:30:28.560 In this episode we're mostly speaking about spiritual warfare because right now 00:30:28.560 --> 00:30:30.880 we don't have a Christian prince. 00:30:30.880 --> 00:30:33.600 If God should happen to bless us with a Christian prince, then 00:30:33.600 --> 00:30:34.800 it would be a different matter. 00:30:34.800 --> 00:30:37.600 There would be more things to discuss. 00:30:37.600 --> 00:30:43.280 But as Christian men, particularly as Christian men, we cannot forget that 00:30:43.280 --> 00:30:46.640 we are part of the church militant here on earth, and we 00:30:46.640 --> 00:30:51.520 will always have to do battle with the flesh, against the devil, 00:30:51.520 --> 00:30:54.160 and against the wicked world, all of these things that want to 00:30:54.160 --> 00:30:56.400 lead us into sin. 00:30:56.400 --> 00:30:59.440 That is part of the Christian life, and you cannot just ignore 00:30:59.440 --> 00:31:03.920 it, you cannot turn yourself into a recluse and hide away from 00:31:03.920 --> 00:31:07.280 the world because that is not what Christian men are called to 00:31:07.280 --> 00:31:11.120 do. As Woe said, some of us have a more, if you 00:31:11.120 --> 00:31:15.040 want to call it cantankerous or disagreeable, not in the negative sense, 00:31:15.040 --> 00:31:18.080 but in the sense of simply not agreeing to get along, as 00:31:18.080 --> 00:31:20.960 it were, to go along to get along. 00:31:20.960 --> 00:31:24.960 Some of us have more of that just by nature, because as 00:31:24.960 --> 00:31:29.120 we've mentioned in previous episodes, including our series on race, there are 00:31:29.120 --> 00:31:34.160 things that are distinct to certain races, and some races are more 00:31:34.160 --> 00:31:37.920 disagreeable. We'll keep using the example because it's such an obvious one, 00:31:37.920 --> 00:31:40.720 but the Scots are a relatively disagreeable race. 00:31:40.720 --> 00:31:45.200 Being about 13% Scottish, I am perfectly justified in saying that. 00:31:45.200 --> 00:31:47.280 It's probably part of the reason I'm disagreeable. 00:31:47.280 --> 00:31:51.600 Not that the German side is particularly agreeable either, but these distinctions 00:31:51.600 --> 00:31:55.520 exist between and among the races of men. 00:31:55.520 --> 00:31:59.440 Now living in the society in which we live, we have to 00:31:59.440 --> 00:32:00.560 get along to some degree. 00:32:00.560 --> 00:32:04.000 And as well mentioned, those who are more agreeable have a duty 00:32:04.000 --> 00:32:06.640 simply to shut up. 00:32:06.640 --> 00:32:09.200 Yes, you can speak your peace. 00:32:09.200 --> 00:32:12.560 Yes, if you are willing to stand up and be disagreeable, by 00:32:12.560 --> 00:32:15.120 all means do that at the correct time and place. 00:32:15.120 --> 00:32:19.600 But don't backbite and don't backstab and don't say that well these 00:32:19.600 --> 00:32:22.320 men are being too disagreeable or they're doing this in a way 00:32:22.320 --> 00:32:23.840 that I don't like. 00:32:24.640 --> 00:32:27.760 That is not how you should be engaged. 00:32:27.760 --> 00:32:31.920 You have to think of this as warfare. 00:32:31.920 --> 00:32:35.760 And in a war, the foot soldier does not stand up and 00:32:35.760 --> 00:32:37.600 tell the general you're wrong. 00:32:37.600 --> 00:32:39.600 That's not how this works. 00:32:39.600 --> 00:32:43.760 God has given different men of different abilities to the church to 00:32:43.760 --> 00:32:48.000 fulfill these roles in this life, because he knows what we need. 00:32:48.000 --> 00:32:49.840 He knows what He knows our opponent. 00:32:49.840 --> 00:32:54.880 He knows the battles we have currently ongoing and the battles ahead. 00:32:54.880 --> 00:32:57.440 For those who have been given the ability by God to lead, 00:32:57.440 --> 00:33:00.240 it is incumbent on them to do so, and for others, it 00:33:00.240 --> 00:33:03.200 is incumbent to follow and to support those leaders. 00:33:03.200 --> 00:33:06.480 Because the life of man on earth is war. 00:33:07.200 --> 00:33:11.680 As Cory said earlier, Satan is a deceiver. 00:33:11.680 --> 00:33:13.520 That's one of his names. 00:33:13.520 --> 00:33:18.400 And And Satan isn't standing up in the world physically deceiving. 00:33:18.400 --> 00:33:20.320 He's sending men to do it. 00:33:20.320 --> 00:33:24.400 The teachings of demons are on the lips of other men. 00:33:24.400 --> 00:33:28.800 And so a crucial aspect of us as Christians and just as 00:33:28.800 --> 00:33:35.040 decent men, as we're being disagreeable appropriately, is the willingness to call 00:33:35.040 --> 00:33:38.640 someone a liar, or at least the willingness to acknowledge there are 00:33:38.640 --> 00:33:40.160 men who are liars. 00:33:40.160 --> 00:33:44.640 Because while superficially everyone sort of knows that that's true, there are 00:33:44.720 --> 00:33:49.040 a lot of men who are constitutionally averse, if not incapable, of 00:33:49.040 --> 00:33:52.000 saying that guy's a liar. 00:33:52.000 --> 00:33:54.480 That is a failure to be disagreeable. 00:33:54.480 --> 00:33:56.960 As Corey said, that's not per se a bad thing. 00:33:56.960 --> 00:34:00.800 Corey and I are both very disagreeable, but we're both very good 00:34:00.800 --> 00:34:03.840 company. We actually were tend to be gregarious in person. 00:34:03.840 --> 00:34:05.840 We're easy to get along with. 00:34:05.840 --> 00:34:08.320 The disagreeableness comes in that 00:34:09.200 --> 00:34:13.120 as I've said before, my first pass filter for anything that's coming 00:34:13.120 --> 00:34:16.880 in when anyone's talking to me or anything that I'm reading, my 00:34:16.880 --> 00:34:19.840 first pass is that every single thing that's being said to me 00:34:19.840 --> 00:34:20.880 is an error. 00:34:20.880 --> 00:34:22.960 And then I try to disprove that. 00:34:22.960 --> 00:34:26.720 And so that's kind of my default nature of disagreeableness. 00:34:26.720 --> 00:34:30.960 I don't want to let anything through that's not true because my 00:34:30.960 --> 00:34:34.880 ability to figure out what is true, that's how I keep my 00:34:34.880 --> 00:34:36.080 bearings in the world. 00:34:36.080 --> 00:34:38.960 And so when someone's talking to me, I don't think they're a 00:34:38.960 --> 00:34:41.280 liar. You know, if I'm talking to you online or whatever, I 00:34:41.280 --> 00:34:44.720 don't think you're a liar, but I don't assume that every single 00:34:44.720 --> 00:34:46.400 thing that you're saying is true. 00:34:46.400 --> 00:34:48.560 In fact, I don't assume that any of it's true. 00:34:48.560 --> 00:34:51.680 Everything that you say to me gets filtered. 00:34:51.760 --> 00:34:52.800 Right, is that true? 00:34:52.800 --> 00:34:53.680 Is that true? 00:34:53.680 --> 00:34:54.640 All the time. 00:34:54.640 --> 00:34:55.520 Without thinking. 00:34:55.520 --> 00:34:57.360 It's not a conscious process on my part. 00:34:57.360 --> 00:35:00.480 I don't know to what extent that's personality and to what extent 00:35:00.480 --> 00:35:04.080 I've developed it over time, but it is what I'm always doing. 00:35:04.080 --> 00:35:07.760 And therefore, it's nothing for me to say, well, you're wrong about 00:35:07.760 --> 00:35:10.080 that. And I think one of the problems that we have today 00:35:10.080 --> 00:35:14.080 in our today in our feminized society is that as we said 00:35:14.080 --> 00:35:18.160 earlier girls are by nature for things to work well they have 00:35:18.160 --> 00:35:21.200 to be agreeable your home is only going to function when your 00:35:21.200 --> 00:35:24.800 wife is agreeable if you have a disagreeable wife, you're cursed. 00:35:24.800 --> 00:35:27.280 It's one of the worst things that can happen to a man. 00:35:27.280 --> 00:35:32.560 Because a disagreeable wife disrupts the one environment where a man should 00:35:32.560 --> 00:35:34.640 have peace and quiet. 00:35:34.640 --> 00:35:36.560 And that doesn't mean you agree about everything. 00:35:36.560 --> 00:35:38.720 It's not asking for a yes woman. 00:35:38.720 --> 00:35:42.080 It's just that she should be generally congenial. 00:35:42.080 --> 00:35:45.600 And as I sort of like Corey and I are generally congenial 00:35:45.600 --> 00:35:46.560 in person. 00:35:46.560 --> 00:35:51.120 But when errors arise, we're not shy about saying this is wrong. 00:35:51.120 --> 00:35:54.720 And the problem where the feminization comes in with men interacting with 00:35:54.720 --> 00:35:58.320 each other is that for me to say you're wrong isn't a 00:35:58.320 --> 00:35:59.200 personal attack. 00:35:59.200 --> 00:36:02.240 I'm not saying you're stupid or you're bad. 00:36:02.240 --> 00:36:06.160 I'm saying this one thing that you just said for whatever reason, 00:36:06.160 --> 00:36:07.600 I don't think it's correct. 00:36:07.600 --> 00:36:10.560 So let's work on the thing that we disagree about, because in 00:36:10.560 --> 00:36:13.360 virtually all cases, you're gonna be wrong and I'm gonna be right. 00:36:13.360 --> 00:36:15.680 I'm not gonna call you stupid, I'm gonna try to work through 00:36:15.680 --> 00:36:18.960 it. And maybe, you know, one out of a thousand times I'm 00:36:18.960 --> 00:36:21.360 wrong, and you're right, and I'm gonna learn something. 00:36:21.360 --> 00:36:23.040 And that always makes me happy. 00:36:23.040 --> 00:36:26.640 Whenever I'm proven wrong, I'm like, oh no, someone humiliated me. 00:36:26.640 --> 00:36:29.680 When someone proves me wrong, that means I leveled up. 00:36:29.680 --> 00:36:32.160 I mean there's one less thing in the world that I'm wrong 00:36:32.160 --> 00:36:34.960 about. So I'm excited when somebody proves me wrong. 00:36:34.960 --> 00:36:38.160 I consider it an honor to know someone who could hey say, 00:36:38.160 --> 00:36:40.080 Hey dude, if you mess this one up. 00:36:40.400 --> 00:36:41.200 I learned something. 00:36:41.200 --> 00:36:41.920 That's exciting. 00:36:41.920 --> 00:36:45.680 Because I rarely learn thing from other men technically. 00:36:45.680 --> 00:36:48.880 I usually learn from their mistakes, but not from them directly. 00:36:48.880 --> 00:36:51.920 So I always have that attitude towards others. 00:36:51.920 --> 00:36:54.400 So let's just learn together, let's figure this out. 00:36:54.400 --> 00:36:57.520 And most of the time, you know, if we're not in agreement, 00:36:57.520 --> 00:37:00.160 usually I'm the one that's sort of helping to sort things out. 00:37:00.160 --> 00:37:02.080 I'm happy to do that for free. 00:37:02.080 --> 00:37:04.400 And some guys think that's incredibly arrogant. 00:37:04.400 --> 00:37:05.360 Fine. Whatever. 00:37:05.360 --> 00:37:06.160 It's free. 00:37:06.160 --> 00:37:07.200 Take it or leave it. 00:37:07.200 --> 00:37:09.040 Don't bug me about it. 00:37:09.040 --> 00:37:12.160 But in the world, if you're not able to say, well, I 00:37:12.160 --> 00:37:14.960 think this guy's wrong, or I think this guy's a liar, which 00:37:14.960 --> 00:37:18.480 are two different things, but they're vitally related in some cases, as 00:37:18.560 --> 00:37:22.960 I said, there are men who are active liars, active deceivers, because 00:37:23.040 --> 00:37:27.520 Satan has his children in the world and they're teaching the teachings 00:37:27.520 --> 00:37:30.080 of demons to other men, and many of them are doing in 00:37:30.080 --> 00:37:31.360 the name of God. 00:37:31.360 --> 00:37:34.560 And so one of the examples that we have from earlier this 00:37:34.560 --> 00:37:38.400 year, the entire episode that we did on Galatians three twenty eight. 00:37:38.560 --> 00:37:40.480 At the very beginning of the year we did a five part 00:37:40.480 --> 00:37:42.960 series on errors in the church. 00:37:42.960 --> 00:37:45.360 If you haven't listened to a recently, I'd I'd recommend going back 00:37:45.440 --> 00:37:49.360 and listening to the first five episodes that we did, uh, beginning 00:37:49.360 --> 00:37:53.200 with true religion through Galatians 3:28. 00:37:53.200 --> 00:37:56.720 The reason that we did an entire episode on one verse, on 00:37:56.880 --> 00:38:00.480 26 words in the English language, think 23 in Greek, was that 00:38:00.400 --> 00:38:04.400 Was that Galatians three twenty eight's never been a particularly important verse 00:38:04.400 --> 00:38:06.080 in Christian history? 00:38:06.080 --> 00:38:09.840 It's part of Galatians, which is an important book. 00:38:09.840 --> 00:38:13.680 But that particular passage was not super important. 00:38:13.680 --> 00:38:16.160 There wasn't a lot of ink spilled about it in the past, 00:38:16.160 --> 00:38:19.280 and yet today Galatians three hundred twenty eight turns up in the 00:38:19.280 --> 00:38:20.640 church all the time. 00:38:20.640 --> 00:38:23.200 And it's for all the reasons that Corey just mentioned a few 00:38:23.200 --> 00:38:24.000 minutes ago. 00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:28.000 It deals with race, it deals with sex, it deals with class. 00:38:28.000 --> 00:38:32.400 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, 00:38:32.400 --> 00:38:35.760 there is no male and female, for all are one in Christ 00:38:35.760 --> 00:38:36.880 Jesus. 00:38:38.080 --> 00:38:44.720 Satan is attacking the world by inverting that verse piece by piece. 00:38:44.720 --> 00:38:48.800 And so one of the reasons that it's important for you to 00:38:48.800 --> 00:38:53.040 be amenable to disagreeableness is that they're going to be cases where 00:38:53.040 --> 00:38:57.200 you find Christians, some true Christians and just in error, and some 00:38:57.200 --> 00:39:01.360 false Christians who are actively wicked, who will use scripture itself to 00:39:01.360 --> 00:39:02.480 try to deceive. 00:39:02.480 --> 00:39:03.440 Because of course they will. 00:39:03.680 --> 00:39:04.880 Satan himself did it. 00:39:04.880 --> 00:39:06.960 Satan did it to Jesus' face. 00:39:06.960 --> 00:39:12.160 He used Scripture to try to trick God of whom Scripture originated. 00:39:12.320 --> 00:39:14.080 The word became flesh. 00:39:14.080 --> 00:39:16.480 And then Satan's gonna try to quote the word back to the 00:39:16.480 --> 00:39:17.680 word. Are you kidding me? 00:39:17.680 --> 00:39:18.480 But he tried. 00:39:18.560 --> 00:39:19.520 That's all he can do. 00:39:19.520 --> 00:39:20.800 He's a deceiver. 00:39:20.800 --> 00:39:25.440 Of course, Satan is going to lie to Christians with Christianity. 00:39:25.440 --> 00:39:29.360 And so for us in the church, it's crucial to be able 00:39:29.360 --> 00:39:32.960 to say this guy's a liar or this guy's an error. 00:39:32.960 --> 00:39:35.600 You know, your first pass shouldn't you're a liar. 00:39:35.600 --> 00:39:39.200 Your first pass should be that's not consistent with scripture, and therefore 00:39:39.280 --> 00:39:40.160 you're in error. 00:39:40.160 --> 00:39:43.680 And if someone persists in their error, then you have to secondarily 00:39:43.680 --> 00:39:47.600 diagnose why is this person actively doing something evil? 00:39:47.600 --> 00:39:48.720 Are they foolish? 00:39:48.720 --> 00:39:52.000 In which case they're simply dangerous, or are they actively wicked? 00:39:52.000 --> 00:39:54.480 And in many cases, you're gonna find that they're not actually Christian 00:39:54.480 --> 00:39:55.040 at all. 00:39:55.040 --> 00:39:58.080 When you scratch a lot of these guys to twist things like 00:39:58.080 --> 00:40:02.400 Galatians three twenty-eight, you'll find that they turn into brazen heretics in 00:40:02.400 --> 00:40:04.400 defense of the false teaching. 00:40:04.400 --> 00:40:09.440 So an entire two hour episode about twenty six words was an 00:40:09.440 --> 00:40:09.760 example 00:40:10.720 --> 00:40:15.600 of one of these cases where disagreeableness is absolutely necessary to defend 00:40:15.600 --> 00:40:16.560 the faith. 00:40:16.560 --> 00:40:21.520 And see, when a Christian comes along, or anyone comes along, someone 00:40:21.520 --> 00:40:24.960 claiming to be Christian, and say, hey, I have this proof text 00:40:24.960 --> 00:40:28.000 that says their race isn't real, that says that the sexes are 00:40:28.000 --> 00:40:30.320 equal, that says that slavery is wrong. 00:40:30.320 --> 00:40:32.080 And here it is, Galatians 3.20. 00:40:32.080 --> 00:40:32.640 Look at it. 00:40:32.640 --> 00:40:34.880 Part of the purpose of that episode to say, look, when you 00:40:34.880 --> 00:40:38.720 look at Galatians in context, every single claim they're making is a 00:40:38.720 --> 00:40:44.560 brazen lie, just wildly fabricated, which is why there's no historical Christian 00:40:44.560 --> 00:40:47.840 record on anyone arguing the things that they're arguing today. 00:40:47.840 --> 00:40:51.120 And yet today, people who call themselves Christians will make those arguments 00:40:51.120 --> 00:40:54.240 to your face and they'll argue until they're blue in the face. 00:40:54.240 --> 00:40:57.920 And they'll call you a heretic if you disagree with their completely 00:40:58.240 --> 00:41:03.120 inverted interpretation of a passage that cannot possibly mean what they say 00:41:03.120 --> 00:41:03.680 it is. 00:41:03.680 --> 00:41:06.960 You have to be disagreeable to withstand that attack. 00:41:06.960 --> 00:41:10.960 Because Satan's a liar and he sends people who tell lies. 00:41:10.960 --> 00:41:16.240 If you can't be disagreeable when someone's twisting scripture, you're lost. 00:41:16.240 --> 00:41:18.160 You're absolutely lost. 00:41:18.160 --> 00:41:21.440 Just as in the left hand kingdom, if there's a man who 00:41:21.440 --> 00:41:25.520 comes to you and advocates some political policy that's going to cause 00:41:25.520 --> 00:41:28.400 your children not to be able to get a job, not to 00:41:28.400 --> 00:41:31.120 be able to marry, not to be able to have kids, if 00:41:31.120 --> 00:41:35.440 you're going to lose your property and your community to wicked foreigners 00:41:35.440 --> 00:41:38.000 who are coming to devour what is ours. 00:41:38.000 --> 00:41:39.920 And people are telling you, Oh, you need to go along with 00:41:39.920 --> 00:41:41.680 it. Jesus said you should do that. 00:41:41.680 --> 00:41:45.680 If you don't withstand that by whatever means necessary and appropriate for 00:41:45.680 --> 00:41:51.360 the circumstances, you've been deceived, you've failed to be disagreeable, and you're 00:41:51.280 --> 00:41:52.160 gonna be wiped out. 00:41:52.160 --> 00:41:54.080 Your kids are gonna be wiped out. 00:41:54.080 --> 00:41:56.480 And that's what we're facing in the world today. 00:41:56.480 --> 00:41:58.560 That's why we're talking about things in terms of warfare. 00:41:58.560 --> 00:42:03.680 Is that all the stuff is happening simultaneously, all these prongs of 00:42:03.680 --> 00:42:06.960 warfare? You know, if you picture most of you have probably seen 00:42:07.360 --> 00:42:11.760 maps of warfare at a very, very broad macro scale, where you 00:42:11.760 --> 00:42:14.640 have you know a red front and a blue front, and then 00:42:14.640 --> 00:42:18.400 the red front has different arrows kind of divided as the troops 00:42:18.400 --> 00:42:21.840 maneuver. Same as a most football plays. 00:42:21.840 --> 00:42:25.520 You have the line of scrimmage and then linemen will move in 00:42:25.520 --> 00:42:28.080 different directions to try to create a hole for the man with 00:42:28.080 --> 00:42:30.640 the ball to move through and and advance the ball. 00:42:31.040 --> 00:42:34.320 Warfare, football, they work the same way when it comes to that. 00:42:34.320 --> 00:42:38.400 You're trying to pick up yardage, you're trying to gain territory. 00:42:38.400 --> 00:42:42.400 As those maneuvers are occurring, you have to be paying attention to 00:42:42.400 --> 00:42:46.720 what's happening because the other side is a participant in whatever's going 00:42:46.720 --> 00:42:50.800 on. And as it stands today, we are the other side against 00:42:50.800 --> 00:42:54.320 whom these maneuvers are being employed. 00:42:54.320 --> 00:42:58.000 They're being employed in the church where we have to be disagreeable 00:42:58.000 --> 00:42:58.880 about scripture. 00:42:58.880 --> 00:42:59.760 And that's tough for people. 00:43:00.080 --> 00:43:02.000 How do you disagree about scripture? 00:43:02.000 --> 00:43:03.200 Everybody wants to get along. 00:43:03.200 --> 00:43:04.160 We're all Christians here. 00:43:04.160 --> 00:43:05.200 We want to be peaceful. 00:43:05.200 --> 00:43:08.720 And as I said, like we've said in the episode we talked 00:43:08.720 --> 00:43:12.080 about being convincing and about persuasiveness. 00:43:12.080 --> 00:43:13.840 Sometimes you just keep your mouth shut. 00:43:14.080 --> 00:43:16.560 Sometimes there are errors and you just let them go. 00:43:16.560 --> 00:43:19.440 And it takes wisdom to understand, well, that's not a fight that 00:43:19.440 --> 00:43:21.120 I'm gonna pick today. 00:43:21.120 --> 00:43:23.760 But there are other times where the fight gets picked 00:43:24.720 --> 00:43:28.800 against your will, where the claxon goes off, where you have to 00:43:28.800 --> 00:43:31.680 move, where the interrupt is thrown and you gotta service it. 00:43:31.680 --> 00:43:36.480 Something's come up, you didn't anticipate it in the sense that you 00:43:36.480 --> 00:43:38.080 were expecting it on a given day. 00:43:38.080 --> 00:43:41.200 But when the interrupt is thrown, you got to deal with it 00:43:41.200 --> 00:43:43.120 now. And that's what a lot of these issues are. 00:43:43.120 --> 00:43:45.760 It's why we did the episode on Galatians 3.28. 00:43:45.760 --> 00:43:48.880 You know, everyone in the church who's talking about that passage is 00:43:49.120 --> 00:43:51.600 is saying the opposite of what scripture says. 00:43:51.600 --> 00:43:55.520 And nobody's fighting them because it fits with the world religion. 00:43:55.520 --> 00:44:01.200 That hermeneutic of taking the worldly views of things and then inserting 00:44:01.200 --> 00:44:03.600 it into Christianity is the deception. 00:44:04.080 --> 00:44:07.760 And only by Christians being disagreeable can we have any hope of 00:44:07.760 --> 00:44:09.360 defending Scripture. 00:44:09.360 --> 00:44:12.640 And that is what God has equipped some men more than others 00:44:12.720 --> 00:44:13.280 to do. 00:44:13.280 --> 00:44:16.880 And other men are simply not equipped to fight. 00:44:16.880 --> 00:44:17.360 And And 00:44:18.320 --> 00:44:22.880 I don't want to throw shade at anyone who is not constitutionally 00:44:22.880 --> 00:44:24.640 apt to do this stuff. 00:44:24.640 --> 00:44:27.120 There's some men I like and respect very much. 00:44:27.120 --> 00:44:29.360 They're just not cut out for fights. 00:44:29.360 --> 00:44:30.320 I get it. 00:44:30.320 --> 00:44:33.680 As Corey said and as I said at the beginning, our sole 00:44:33.680 --> 00:44:37.520 encouragement to someone who is not apt to stand up and say 00:44:37.600 --> 00:44:41.600 you're a liar, don't say anything. 00:44:41.600 --> 00:44:46.000 Don't backstab someone who's fighting in the name of God in a 00:44:46.000 --> 00:44:47.520 way that's consistent with God. 00:44:47.520 --> 00:44:50.080 And this is part of why knowledge of scripture is so crucial, 00:44:50.080 --> 00:44:53.680 is that when we're specifically dealing with scriptural issues, you have to 00:44:53.680 --> 00:44:54.320 know the Bible. 00:44:54.720 --> 00:44:58.240 As Corey said earlier, you have to already know the basics and 00:44:58.240 --> 00:45:02.000 the specifics before the thing comes up, because when the interrupt gets 00:45:02.000 --> 00:45:05.440 thrown, when the alarm goes off and suddenly there's a fight that's 00:45:05.440 --> 00:45:09.920 been picked that you had never anticipated, you're starting kind of from 00:45:09.920 --> 00:45:15.200 scratch. It's another essential part of this entire problem is that most 00:45:15.440 --> 00:45:20.240 of what the church today relies on doctrinally was written three, four 00:45:20.240 --> 00:45:22.240 hundred years ago or longer. 00:45:22.240 --> 00:45:27.120 There are some things like the ecumenical creeds were settled 15, 1800 00:45:27.120 --> 00:45:27.840 years ago. 00:45:27.840 --> 00:45:30.400 There are other things that were settled four or five hundred years 00:45:30.400 --> 00:45:32.480 ago. As far as we're concerned, they were settled. 00:45:32.800 --> 00:45:36.320 If you're Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, you don't consider those matters 00:45:36.320 --> 00:45:37.280 settled at all. 00:45:37.280 --> 00:45:40.320 But for most of us, when we're going to the shelf, picking 00:45:40.320 --> 00:45:45.040 up existing answers to fights that people will see arise in the 00:45:45.040 --> 00:45:47.200 world. You already have an answer in a book. 00:45:47.200 --> 00:45:48.960 So you don't really have to think about it. 00:45:48.960 --> 00:45:51.600 You just have to know I'm a Calvinist, I'm a Lutheran, I'm 00:45:51.600 --> 00:45:54.880 a whatever, I'm gonna go to that particular shelf, I'm gonna find 00:45:54.880 --> 00:45:57.840 what those guys said about this argument, and I'm gonna make it 00:45:57.840 --> 00:45:59.760 to you, and that's gonna be my argument. 00:46:00.320 --> 00:46:01.680 That's not thinking. 00:46:01.680 --> 00:46:03.040 That's not thought at all. 00:46:03.040 --> 00:46:06.000 That's just sitting on a chair and watching someone else think. 00:46:06.000 --> 00:46:07.280 And it's fine. 00:46:07.680 --> 00:46:10.160 that's what most people are only capable of doing. 00:46:10.160 --> 00:46:13.760 They're not capable of thinking the way Luther and Calvin and those 00:46:13.760 --> 00:46:14.720 other men were thinking. 00:46:14.720 --> 00:46:18.480 Because whether they got things right or wrong, they were tackling novel 00:46:18.480 --> 00:46:21.760 problems and they were trying to deal with them scripturally. 00:46:21.760 --> 00:46:25.760 And this is another chief challenges that we have today is that 00:46:25.760 --> 00:46:32.080 the new attacks from Satan, from the deceiver, don't attack the existing 00:46:32.320 --> 00:46:38.400 confessions. They attack scripture and they attack creation, but Satan is smart 00:46:38.400 --> 00:46:42.320 enough to drive right around all the defensive bulwarks that have been 00:46:42.320 --> 00:46:45.120 created by you know most of our churches in the past. 00:46:45.120 --> 00:46:48.880 If you're Lutheran, you have the Book of Concord, various other denominations 00:46:49.040 --> 00:46:53.200 have their own unique confessions that are arguments from Scripture as best 00:46:53.200 --> 00:46:56.400 they can, whether or not we have disagreements, even assuming for the 00:46:56.400 --> 00:47:01.280 sake of argument that your church's confession is a hundred percent true, 00:47:01.280 --> 00:47:02.640 it is incomplete. 00:47:02.640 --> 00:47:05.600 It is necessarily incomplete because it's not scripture. 00:47:05.600 --> 00:47:08.800 It might be consistent with scripture, again for the sake of argument, 00:47:08.800 --> 00:47:10.880 but it is not scripture itself. 00:47:10.880 --> 00:47:13.200 And that doesn't mean that it's wrong, but it means that it's 00:47:13.200 --> 00:47:14.960 not going to address everything. 00:47:14.960 --> 00:47:17.920 And even scripture doesn't address everything. 00:47:17.920 --> 00:47:20.960 Scripture addresses that which is necessary for salvation. 00:47:20.960 --> 00:47:22.720 It doesn't tell us about the world. 00:47:22.720 --> 00:47:24.960 It doesn't tell us what's inside an Adam. 00:47:24.960 --> 00:47:28.320 It doesn't tell us the names of all the races or how 00:47:28.320 --> 00:47:28.880 they work. 00:47:28.880 --> 00:47:32.960 They're things that literally didn't exist when scripture was written. 00:47:32.960 --> 00:47:35.360 There were no chihuahuas on the ark. 00:47:35.360 --> 00:47:37.600 There were no chihuahuas in Jesus' day. 00:47:37.600 --> 00:47:40.480 That doesn't mean there's no such thing as a chihuahua. 00:47:40.480 --> 00:47:42.720 And so the impulse of a someone, if I come to you 00:47:42.720 --> 00:47:45.680 and say, hey, look at this chihuahua, they're guys who actually say, 00:47:45.680 --> 00:47:48.000 Show me where that is in the Bible, to which I can 00:47:48.000 --> 00:47:51.200 only scratch my head if I'm going to be polite, because it's 00:47:51.200 --> 00:47:52.880 such a stupid question. 00:47:52.880 --> 00:47:55.840 And it's not that where's that in a Bible is a bad 00:47:55.840 --> 00:47:57.120 question per se? 00:47:57.120 --> 00:48:00.000 It's that it only applies when you're dealing with things that are 00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:01.120 themselves scriptural. 00:48:01.120 --> 00:48:02.880 And so that's going to be about salvation. 00:48:02.880 --> 00:48:05.600 It's going to be things about God and his interaction with us 00:48:05.760 --> 00:48:08.560 and about the history of creation. 00:48:08.560 --> 00:48:10.640 But even that history is limited. 00:48:10.640 --> 00:48:14.240 And so for someone to ask the question, where's that in the 00:48:14.240 --> 00:48:18.640 Bible, or maybe even worse, where's that in in my confessions, my 00:48:18.640 --> 00:48:24.400 denominations confessions, it's an irrelevant question if it wasn't a live issue 00:48:24.400 --> 00:48:25.120 at the time. 00:48:25.120 --> 00:48:28.400 Things like the races, you know, the boundaries of our dwelling places 00:48:28.480 --> 00:48:31.280 and the fact that there are different races of men, it's mentioned 00:48:31.280 --> 00:48:34.880 as an aside in scripture, but there are not books dedicated to 00:48:34.880 --> 00:48:36.560 it because there was no need. 00:48:36.560 --> 00:48:38.160 It was simply a fate accomplish. 00:48:38.160 --> 00:48:39.760 It was just sitting there. 00:48:39.760 --> 00:48:41.360 And it's evolved over time. 00:48:41.360 --> 00:48:46.160 Yes, actually evolved, microevolution, but you know, there are races that exist 00:48:46.160 --> 00:48:49.120 today that didn't exist in the same form at the time. 00:48:49.120 --> 00:48:50.160 That's fine. 00:48:50.160 --> 00:48:53.200 That's how things work in creation. 00:48:53.200 --> 00:48:56.000 You can't look to your confessions or your to your Bible to 00:48:56.000 --> 00:48:58.960 say, well, I don't think this exists because I can't find a 00:48:58.960 --> 00:49:00.640 verse for it. 00:49:00.640 --> 00:49:04.320 In a case of confessions, they're basically imaginal line. 00:49:04.320 --> 00:49:08.960 It's a bulwark of defense for particular doctrines in particular fights in 00:49:08.960 --> 00:49:10.400 a particular century. 00:49:10.400 --> 00:49:13.600 And the problem with the Maginoline is that the solution was to 00:49:13.600 --> 00:49:14.480 go around it. 00:49:14.480 --> 00:49:17.440 And in three-dimensional space, you can also go over it or you 00:49:17.440 --> 00:49:18.880 can go under it. 00:49:18.880 --> 00:49:24.560 When we're dealing with the Majinot line of these various confessional documents, 00:49:24.560 --> 00:49:27.840 they only protect what they protect, because they're only talking about certain 00:49:27.840 --> 00:49:30.400 controversies. So what does Satan do? 00:49:30.400 --> 00:49:32.000 He ignores those controversies. 00:49:32.000 --> 00:49:33.680 He ignores them completely. 00:49:33.680 --> 00:49:35.840 Satan's picking new fights. 00:49:35.840 --> 00:49:39.840 And when the new fights are picked, we need men making new 00:49:39.840 --> 00:49:43.840 arguments. And when the man makes a new argument, it's very dangerous 00:49:43.840 --> 00:49:47.680 territory because you don't necessarily have a bunch of stuff to go 00:49:47.680 --> 00:49:51.440 to. Particularly, you know, when nothing in the confessions say anything about 00:49:51.440 --> 00:49:54.160 it because these weren't sixteenth century fights. 00:49:54.160 --> 00:49:57.760 And in a lot of cases, there's not anything in scripture that 00:49:57.760 --> 00:49:59.120 says much about it. 00:49:59.120 --> 00:50:02.640 There are illusions and they're bits and pieces, but you can't necessarily 00:50:02.640 --> 00:50:06.080 make the full case for a lot of scientific creative matters that 00:50:06.080 --> 00:50:09.280 are very material today from scripture. 00:50:09.280 --> 00:50:12.160 And the foolish Christian will say, Well, if it's not in the 00:50:12.160 --> 00:50:13.440 Bible, I don't believe it. 00:50:13.440 --> 00:50:15.840 Okay, so do you get up in the morning when your alarm 00:50:15.840 --> 00:50:16.640 clock goes off? 00:50:16.640 --> 00:50:17.360 Why would you do that? 00:50:17.360 --> 00:50:18.880 There are no alarm clocks in the Bible. 00:50:18.880 --> 00:50:21.760 You know, it gets absurd when you start trying to make that 00:50:21.760 --> 00:50:22.720 sort of argument. 00:50:22.720 --> 00:50:24.640 And it's not a sincere argument. 00:50:24.640 --> 00:50:27.360 When those arguments are made, it's simply an excuse. 00:50:27.360 --> 00:50:30.400 It's men who are looking for license to say, I'm gonna believe 00:50:30.400 --> 00:50:33.520 whatever's easier, unless you can meet this impossible 00:50:34.480 --> 00:50:38.320 barrier of proof, I'm just going to ignore you. 00:50:38.320 --> 00:50:43.280 When the proof is plain from reason, plain from creation, a man 00:50:43.280 --> 00:50:46.240 is obligated to listen to that, or at least not to argue. 00:50:46.800 --> 00:50:50.080 And so if you're gonna be disagreeable, at least be disagreeable against 00:50:50.080 --> 00:50:51.280 things that are false. 00:50:51.280 --> 00:50:55.360 But don't simply be disagreeable against things that simply aren't in the 00:50:55.360 --> 00:50:59.600 Bible, because that's not always the threshold, even for Christians, especially for 00:50:59.600 --> 00:51:02.320 Christians. There's a matter of wisdom, no. 00:51:02.320 --> 00:51:05.600 There are things that the Bible doesn't talk about, and that's where 00:51:05.600 --> 00:51:07.760 Satan is attacking today. 00:51:08.320 --> 00:51:08.560 I 00:51:08.560 --> 00:51:12.720 already mentioned a handful of ways that you can divide up these 00:51:12.720 --> 00:51:16.720 issues that we are discussing in this episode, but I want to 00:51:16.720 --> 00:51:21.600 give you a threefold division that I think is particularly useful when 00:51:22.080 --> 00:51:27.120 categorizing these sorts of problems we confront today and the church has 00:51:27.120 --> 00:51:30.560 confronted in the past or may confront in the future, and that 00:51:30.560 --> 00:51:32.880 essentially is the division there. 00:51:32.880 --> 00:51:36.080 You have past, active, and potential. 00:51:36.080 --> 00:51:41.440 The creeds and confessions largely address past issues. 00:51:41.440 --> 00:51:44.960 Things that have arisen in the history of the church have been 00:51:44.960 --> 00:51:49.680 addressed because God raised up theologians, raised up men to write these 00:51:49.680 --> 00:51:52.320 documents to address these problems. 00:51:52.320 --> 00:51:53.840 So they've been addressed. 00:51:53.840 --> 00:51:55.920 We have the answers, as it were. 00:51:55.920 --> 00:51:58.480 Yes, of course, if we've mentioned a number of times in this 00:51:58.480 --> 00:52:03.040 episode, we still have disagreements on certain doctrines, election comes to mind. 00:52:03.040 --> 00:52:05.680 I'll return to that one in a moment here. 00:52:05.680 --> 00:52:10.080 But by and large, we've addressed these issues in the past because 00:52:10.080 --> 00:52:13.920 God gave the church men to do that in that time. 00:52:14.400 --> 00:52:18.240 The second category would be the active issues, the ones that we 00:52:18.240 --> 00:52:23.440 have as a live problem today, things that Satan is attacking right 00:52:23.760 --> 00:52:28.000 now, in fact, literally right now as we're recording this episode, as 00:52:28.000 --> 00:52:31.280 you are listening to it, Satan Satan is attacking these things in 00:52:31.280 --> 00:52:35.280 our society, in our culture, tearing down our civilization and trying to 00:52:35.280 --> 00:52:37.760 tear down Christendom. 00:52:37.760 --> 00:52:39.600 Those are the active issues. 00:52:39.600 --> 00:52:42.800 Those are the ones that we have to address today. 00:52:42.800 --> 00:52:46.720 That is the duty of first and foremost theologians. 00:52:46.720 --> 00:52:51.040 Those are the men to whom God grants the ability to write 00:52:51.040 --> 00:52:55.760 these sorts of confessional documents, the sort of men who can generate 00:52:55.760 --> 00:52:57.440 something like a creed. 00:52:58.160 --> 00:53:02.240 God does not give many of those men to the church, but 00:53:02.240 --> 00:53:05.920 God always ensures the church has enough of those men around to 00:53:05.920 --> 00:53:11.040 fight these battles, to address these issues, to see that Satan is 00:53:11.040 --> 00:53:14.880 repulsed for those men who have ears to hear and who actually 00:53:14.880 --> 00:53:18.400 believe the truth of Scripture and the things that are written in 00:53:18.400 --> 00:53:20.640 accord with Scripture. 00:53:20.640 --> 00:53:24.800 And then the third category would be those potential issues, the future 00:53:24.800 --> 00:53:29.600 things, the things Satan could attack and probably will attack at some 00:53:29.600 --> 00:53:31.760 point in the future. 00:53:31.760 --> 00:53:38.240 God gives the church some small, some tiny number of theologians who 00:53:38.240 --> 00:53:42.720 are capable of identifying those sorts of issues and addressing them before 00:53:42.720 --> 00:53:45.520 they become live. 00:53:45.520 --> 00:53:51.440 To return to the military example, this is very similar to you 00:53:51.440 --> 00:53:55.280 have strategists, you have other men who are skilled in your military 00:53:55.440 --> 00:53:58.480 to plan ahead of time how you will defend if you're attacked 00:53:58.480 --> 00:54:02.960 in this way, how you'll defend if you're attacked in that way. 00:54:02.960 --> 00:54:07.600 Some of those attacks, those potential routes of attack are obvious, and 00:54:07.600 --> 00:54:10.560 so there's a certain subset of men who can plan for that. 00:54:10.560 --> 00:54:12.720 Some of them are much less obvious. 00:54:12.720 --> 00:54:17.520 The men who can plan for the much less obvious are rarer, 00:54:17.520 --> 00:54:22.400 and they're indispensable, both in terms of military preparations and in terms 00:54:22.400 --> 00:54:23.920 of defending the church. 00:54:23.920 --> 00:54:27.920 Because certainly if Satan is going to attack some area that most 00:54:28.160 --> 00:54:31.600 men don't notice is a potential avenue of attack, but someone stands 00:54:31.600 --> 00:54:36.160 up and says, Satan could potentially, and here's how we'll defend, that 00:54:36.160 --> 00:54:40.640 is invaluable because now you don't have that weak point. 00:54:40.640 --> 00:54:44.720 Historically, there are a number of things that our forefathers in the 00:54:44.720 --> 00:54:48.640 faith did not address because they were inconceivable that they would become 00:54:48.640 --> 00:54:52.240 an issue, and yet in our day they have become an issue. 00:54:52.240 --> 00:54:56.480 And so we have to address them here and now because they 00:54:56.480 --> 00:55:01.200 were not addressed then, because they were those potential issues that were 00:55:01.200 --> 00:55:05.280 difficult to spot, admittedly, it would have been very challenging for most 00:55:05.280 --> 00:55:09.280 men to notice the things Satan was going to attack five hundred 00:55:09.280 --> 00:55:10.640 years in the future. 00:55:10.640 --> 00:55:13.520 Some of them are addressed, most of them are not. 00:55:13.520 --> 00:55:16.720 I said I would return to election briefly and the reason for 00:55:16.720 --> 00:55:21.200 that is that Article eleven of the Solid Declaration of the Formula 00:55:21.200 --> 00:55:26.240 of Concord deals with election, but why it is notable, particularly in 00:55:26.240 --> 00:55:28.480 this context, is that it starts with these words 00:55:29.360 --> 00:55:33.600 although among the theologians of the Augsburg Confession there has not occurred 00:55:33.680 --> 00:55:38.240 as yet any public dissension whatever concerning the eternal election of the 00:55:38.240 --> 00:55:41.440 children of God that has caused offence and then it continues from 00:55:41.440 --> 00:55:48.080 there. This article, essentially unique in the Book of Concord, addresses a 00:55:48.080 --> 00:55:50.800 matter that was not a live issue at the time, not for 00:55:50.800 --> 00:55:57.040 Lutherans anyway, and the Solid Declaration was meant for unification of Lutherans, 00:55:57.040 --> 00:56:00.400 clarification of some theological matters. 00:56:00.400 --> 00:56:05.840 There was no fight over this, and yet these men, undoubtedly guided 00:56:05.840 --> 00:56:12.000 by God, very gifted, intelligent, skilled, knowledgeable men drafting this part of 00:56:12.000 --> 00:56:17.440 the Book of Concord addressed the issue of election in advance. 00:56:17.440 --> 00:56:24.400 And that actually did become unbelievably helpful, essential practically, when dealing with 00:56:24.400 --> 00:56:30.400 the Gnadenvalstreit, the election controversy here in the American context, as I 00:56:30.400 --> 00:56:36.880 mentioned earlier, there was some contention, there was a debate fairly acrimonious 00:56:36.880 --> 00:56:40.960 at times, but there was a debate within American Lutheranism about the 00:56:40.960 --> 00:56:44.080 exact nature, the contours of election. 00:56:44.080 --> 00:56:47.600 We went over that in our episode on election to some degree 00:56:48.880 --> 00:56:52.320 But this article addressed it ahead of time, and it did help 00:56:52.320 --> 00:56:54.400 resolve that controversy. 00:56:54.400 --> 00:57:00.720 So these men, 500 years ago, almost 500 years ago, were addressing 00:57:00.720 --> 00:57:05.680 a potential issue, a potential avenue of attack, somewhere that Satan could 00:57:05.680 --> 00:57:09.760 sow dissension even though he had not already done so. 00:57:09.760 --> 00:57:14.320 Now, of course, to some degree that potential issue was an actual 00:57:14.320 --> 00:57:18.960 live issue because there's the disagreement between the Reformed and Lutherans certainly, 00:57:18.960 --> 00:57:22.640 and also Arminians and others. 00:57:22.640 --> 00:57:26.000 But it was not a live issue within the church for which 00:57:26.000 --> 00:57:29.120 this document was written. 00:57:29.120 --> 00:57:33.840 And so some issues, like we've mentioned in this episode, are things 00:57:33.840 --> 00:57:37.840 that Satan is not attacking yet, and we may address them in 00:57:37.840 --> 00:57:42.080 order to shore up your defenses and thereby the defenses of the 00:57:42.080 --> 00:57:46.480 church, so that if Satan does attack them in the future, we 00:57:46.480 --> 00:57:49.520 are ready for that attack, because obviously it is better to be 00:57:49.520 --> 00:57:53.520 prepared for an attack than to scramble to respond when Satan is 00:57:53.520 --> 00:57:55.600 already attacking the thing. 00:57:55.600 --> 00:57:59.040 Which is the problem we have with the active issues today. 00:57:59.040 --> 00:58:02.160 As Woe has mentioned, as I've mentioned, as we mentioned in previous 00:58:02.160 --> 00:58:07.760 episodes, these matters that are being attacked today by Satan are matters 00:58:07.760 --> 00:58:12.960 that are lightly, if at all, addressed in most of the church 00:58:12.960 --> 00:58:17.360 fathers, in most of the historic writings of the various traditions. 00:58:17.360 --> 00:58:20.320 Because Satan was not attacking them back then. 00:58:20.320 --> 00:58:24.880 It was, as I've said, inconceivable to most of the men writing 00:58:24.880 --> 00:58:28.800 these confessions that Satan would attack these things. 00:58:28.800 --> 00:58:35.120 In some cases that's understandable, because the idea of transgenderism, so called, 00:58:35.120 --> 00:58:40.560 was largely inconceivable to those living in the Middle Ages in Europe. 00:58:40.960 --> 00:58:44.800 Some of the issues perhaps they should have foreseen because there are 00:58:45.120 --> 00:58:51.280 not exact versions of the same problems, but tangentially or perhaps more 00:58:51.280 --> 00:58:56.800 closely than tangentially related versions of them in pagan societies in the 00:58:56.800 --> 00:59:00.160 past, and so they could have looked to those and then addressed 00:59:00.160 --> 00:59:03.120 it as something that Satan has attacked this in the past, perhaps 00:59:03.120 --> 00:59:05.600 we should plan for it in the future. 00:59:05.600 --> 00:59:07.600 But they failed to do so. 00:59:07.600 --> 00:59:11.280 It's not necessarily to condemn those men for failing to do so, 00:59:11.280 --> 00:59:13.840 it's just to recognize the reality of it. 00:59:13.840 --> 00:59:17.040 Just like we said, there is a difference between saying someone is 00:59:17.040 --> 00:59:21.520 wrong and calling someone a liar, recognizing that someone failed to do 00:59:21.520 --> 00:59:26.160 something is not necessarily a condemnation, it is just a statement of 00:59:26.160 --> 00:59:30.080 the state of affairs, that is how things are as we find 00:59:30.080 --> 00:59:34.560 them. Our forefathers in the faith did not address these issues that 00:59:34.560 --> 00:59:37.520 we have to address today Today. 00:59:37.520 --> 00:59:40.080 And so yes, it does fall to us. 00:59:40.080 --> 00:59:44.880 There will probably need to be some sort of confessional document, whether 00:59:44.880 --> 00:59:48.880 it is one on which we can agree across denominational and traditional 00:59:48.880 --> 00:59:52.000 lines lines, or if we will each need our own version of 00:59:52.000 --> 00:59:54.080 it, we are going to need 00:59:55.280 --> 01:00:00.480 formulaic, not in the negative sense, but in the positive sense, formalized 01:00:00.800 --> 01:00:07.840 written documents, arguments, refutations, specific things addressing exactly 01:00:07.840 --> 01:00:12.400 the issues that we see Satan attacking today that are not addressed 01:00:12.400 --> 01:00:15.440 in our historic confessions or creeds. 01:00:15.440 --> 01:00:19.280 Because we need to have that one so that we can defend 01:00:19.280 --> 01:00:25.200 against Satan's attacks today, and two, so that our children, grandchildren, great 01:00:25.280 --> 01:00:28.400 grandchildren, however far off in the future, perhaps it's five hundred years 01:00:28.400 --> 01:00:31.120 in the future, so that they have that to look back and 01:00:31.120 --> 01:00:33.120 say, Satan already did this. 01:00:33.120 --> 01:00:34.400 Here's the answer. 01:00:34.400 --> 01:00:37.200 We have the exact answer to what he's doing. 01:00:37.200 --> 01:00:41.920 But I want to return just briefly to the matter of past 01:00:42.080 --> 01:00:47.840 issues. I don't want to condemn too harshly and I don't want 01:00:47.840 --> 01:00:50.400 to sound like that's what I'm doing, so I'll preface it by 01:00:50.400 --> 01:00:53.200 saying that's not what I'm doing. 01:00:53.200 --> 01:00:57.440 But there is a very real tendency, very much so on the 01:00:57.440 --> 01:01:02.000 political right, and largely amongst those who are trying to return to 01:01:02.000 --> 01:01:09.120 a traditional Christianity, to squabble over historic issues, to 01:01:09.120 --> 01:01:16.000 squabble over things that were major problems in the church's past. 01:01:16.000 --> 01:01:19.280 This is harmful under present conditions. 01:01:19.280 --> 01:01:22.480 I'm not saying you cannot do that, I'm not saying there's no 01:01:22.480 --> 01:01:25.680 place for it, because of course there is a fundamental difference between 01:01:25.680 --> 01:01:31.440 discussing theological issues over beers and turning something into a knockdown drag 01:01:31.440 --> 01:01:33.040 out fight in public. 01:01:33.040 --> 01:01:35.760 The latter, we need not to be doing that. 01:01:35.760 --> 01:01:37.360 We need to avoid that. 01:01:37.360 --> 01:01:43.760 We have very real active issues that are destroying the churches today. 01:01:43.760 --> 01:01:45.840 Those are the battles we need to fight. 01:01:45.840 --> 01:01:47.760 We don't need to relitigate past issues. 01:01:48.560 --> 01:01:52.160 I'm not saying that the Reformed and Lutherans should stop arguing about 01:01:52.160 --> 01:01:56.480 election. We're probably going to do that until the day Christ returns. 01:01:56.480 --> 01:02:02.160 Fine. Do that in written exchanges over beers in its appropriate time 01:02:02.160 --> 01:02:04.080 and place. 01:02:04.080 --> 01:02:07.360 Do not let it rise to the level of an issue that 01:02:07.360 --> 01:02:12.320 starts to undermine efforts to address what Satan is attacking today. 01:02:12.320 --> 01:02:16.080 Satan, by and large, is not attacking the issue of election. 01:02:16.080 --> 01:02:20.240 Regardless of whether you think the Lutherans are correct or the Reformed 01:02:20.240 --> 01:02:23.680 are correct, or the Arminians are correct, if you want to distinguish 01:02:23.680 --> 01:02:27.280 Pelagians and semi Pelagians and all the other groups, regardless of which 01:02:27.280 --> 01:02:31.600 group, which formulation you think is exactly right, Satan is not attacking 01:02:31.600 --> 01:02:33.600 it today. 01:02:33.600 --> 01:02:36.800 Satan is not using that as a wedge. 01:02:36.800 --> 01:02:39.520 He's not using it as a front in his war. 01:02:39.520 --> 01:02:42.320 He used it historically, he may use it again. 01:02:42.320 --> 01:02:43.920 He's not doing it today. 01:02:43.920 --> 01:02:47.280 Today we need to address the issues we need to address the 01:02:47.280 --> 01:02:54.400 fronts Satan is actively attacking instead of relitigating these sometimes nitpicky 01:02:55.040 --> 01:02:58.640 squabbles in the past of the church, in the history of the 01:02:58.640 --> 01:03:03.600 church. Because when we fight over those, we are distracting ourselves from 01:03:04.080 --> 01:03:05.840 the real battle. 01:03:05.840 --> 01:03:11.280 If you are standing in the back line, fighting over which council 01:03:11.280 --> 01:03:15.040 said what in what year and whether or not it contradicts some 01:03:15.040 --> 01:03:19.040 other council in some other year, and well, this Pope said that, 01:03:19.040 --> 01:03:21.200 but this theologian said that. 01:03:21.200 --> 01:03:24.080 What you're not doing is standing on the front line and doing 01:03:24.080 --> 01:03:26.640 your actual duty. 01:03:26.640 --> 01:03:32.320 The soldier who is faithful will be where the enemy is attacking. 01:03:32.320 --> 01:03:34.560 That is where you need to be. 01:03:34.560 --> 01:03:38.160 Where Satan is attacking, that is where the church has to shore 01:03:38.160 --> 01:03:38.960 up her defenses. 01:03:38.960 --> 01:03:42.640 That is where theologians need to be writing defenses of right doctrine, 01:03:42.640 --> 01:03:46.800 formulating new arguments, because some of these issues, as we mentioned, are 01:03:46.800 --> 01:03:50.240 novel to a certain degree, not novel in an absolute sense, but 01:03:50.240 --> 01:03:53.440 in the sense that Satan has chosen to attack them here and 01:03:53.440 --> 01:03:57.840 now, whether these are the end times or not, Satan is attacking 01:03:57.840 --> 01:03:58.880 the created order. 01:03:58.880 --> 01:04:00.080 He is attacking creation. 01:04:00.080 --> 01:04:02.320 He is attacking the creator himself. 01:04:02.320 --> 01:04:06.880 So theologians need to be addressing those issues, and individual Christian men 01:04:06.880 --> 01:04:09.840 need to be aware of what Satan is attacking and be willing 01:04:09.840 --> 01:04:11.840 to stand up and speak the truth. 01:04:11.840 --> 01:04:16.160 As Woe said, if you are dispositionally disinclined to stand up and 01:04:16.160 --> 01:04:20.480 do that because you don't like to be disagreeable, then be glad 01:04:20.480 --> 01:04:23.920 that God has given other men to the church who have that 01:04:23.920 --> 01:04:26.960 disposition. Support them as best you can. 01:04:26.960 --> 01:04:28.400 Don't undermine them. 01:04:28.400 --> 01:04:31.360 Don't say they're wrong because they're doing something you don't like their 01:04:31.360 --> 01:04:34.160 tactics. You don't like their optics, you don't like the way they 01:04:34.160 --> 01:04:36.160 sound, they're being mean. 01:04:36.160 --> 01:04:37.600 Don't be that person. 01:04:37.600 --> 01:04:40.400 I won't even call it a man because it's not. 01:04:40.400 --> 01:04:45.440 Because there's a fundamental distinction here between how I won't even say 01:04:45.440 --> 01:04:46.800 it's necessarily men and women. 01:04:47.280 --> 01:04:50.000 On the one hand, yes, it's men and women are going to 01:04:50.000 --> 01:04:53.120 be different because men are more disagreeable just by nature. 01:04:53.120 --> 01:04:56.160 That's how God has made us, because He has made men to 01:04:56.160 --> 01:05:00.000 act to be in a certain sphere in which women are not 01:05:00.000 --> 01:05:03.760 present, because women should certainly not be present in the political sphere, 01:05:03.760 --> 01:05:07.840 and disagreeableness is certainly part of that, women are designed to be 01:05:07.840 --> 01:05:11.200 more agreeable because their sphere is the home, and part of the 01:05:11.200 --> 01:05:14.880 duty in the home is to quell dissent, is to quell the 01:05:14.880 --> 01:05:19.760 rebellions and the disagreements, to smooth over things, to help the various 01:05:19.760 --> 01:05:22.880 members of the family get along with one another, because the home 01:05:22.880 --> 01:05:25.600 is supposed to be somewhere that is safe. 01:05:25.600 --> 01:05:28.880 The home is supposed to be somewhere that is comfortable, that is 01:05:28.880 --> 01:05:32.960 relaxing. It's not supposed to be filled with acrimony and debate and 01:05:32.960 --> 01:05:36.400 disagreement and dissension and tension and all of that. 01:05:36.400 --> 01:05:39.840 It is supposed to be a refuge from the world. 01:05:40.400 --> 01:05:43.440 And so one of the roles of women in the home, one 01:05:43.440 --> 01:05:50.080 of the most vital roles, is aiding in that agreeableness, helping others 01:05:50.080 --> 01:05:52.000 to get along in the home. 01:05:52.000 --> 01:05:53.840 And so there's that distinction. 01:05:53.840 --> 01:05:57.120 But there is another, there's a difference between men who are willing 01:05:57.120 --> 01:06:01.680 to be disagreeable and the men who try to be agreeable instead. 01:06:01.680 --> 01:06:04.480 Sometimes we call them yes men, call them a lick spittle, a 01:06:04.480 --> 01:06:07.040 bootlicker, whatever you happen to call them. 01:06:07.040 --> 01:06:10.400 Everyone finds those men vile. 01:06:10.400 --> 01:06:12.880 Because those men are not acting like men. 01:06:12.880 --> 01:06:14.960 They're not even acting like women. 01:06:14.960 --> 01:06:18.480 If we use feminine in a negative sense, which I would not 01:06:18.480 --> 01:06:21.040 use when applied to women because for women it is a good 01:06:21.040 --> 01:06:25.520 thing, but of a man it is abhorrent, it is repulsive. 01:06:25.520 --> 01:06:28.640 Scripture says that men and women shouldn't even wear the clothing of 01:06:28.640 --> 01:06:29.440 the other sex. 01:06:29.440 --> 01:06:32.720 So To behave as if you are the other sex is absolutely 01:06:32.720 --> 01:06:37.920 reprehensible. And so men who are doing that need to amend their 01:06:37.920 --> 01:06:41.280 behavior, need to change how they are doing things, need to change 01:06:41.280 --> 01:06:43.680 how they are going about dealing with these issues. 01:06:43.680 --> 01:06:46.160 As I said and as Woe has said, it doesn't mean that 01:06:46.160 --> 01:06:50.640 you necessarily have to be a cantankerous German. 01:06:50.640 --> 01:06:56.880 You can still be more agreeable without going into the negative sense 01:06:56.880 --> 01:07:00.640 of being feminine or being womanly, which is something a man should 01:07:00.640 --> 01:07:01.680 not be. 01:07:01.680 --> 01:07:06.720 And incidentally, on a tangentially related note, another matter that we see 01:07:07.200 --> 01:07:11.760 in our circles on the right, in traditional Christian circles. 01:07:11.760 --> 01:07:16.160 Don't go home and try to turn your wife into an inferior 01:07:16.160 --> 01:07:21.440 man. Don't go home and try to get her to be argumentative 01:07:21.440 --> 01:07:24.080 and engage in these debates and argue with you. 01:07:24.080 --> 01:07:26.240 That is not the place of a woman, and all you are 01:07:26.240 --> 01:07:30.000 doing is creating future misery for yourself and present misery for her. 01:07:30.000 --> 01:07:31.760 So don't do that. 01:07:31.760 --> 01:07:34.320 That is not how women are supposed to behave and it's not 01:07:34.640 --> 01:07:38.000 how a man is supposed to behave with regard to women, particularly 01:07:38.000 --> 01:07:40.000 with regard to his wife. 01:07:40.000 --> 01:07:43.040 So the men in our circles need to tone that down a 01:07:43.040 --> 01:07:43.440 little bit. 01:07:43.440 --> 01:07:44.560 There's a tendency to do that. 01:07:44.560 --> 01:07:45.600 Argue with other men. 01:07:45.600 --> 01:07:48.080 It's not that hard to find someone in our circles with whom 01:07:48.080 --> 01:07:48.960 you can argue. 01:07:48.960 --> 01:07:50.560 Don't put that on your wife. 01:07:51.040 --> 01:07:56.400 So there's a significant aspect of this that is proactive, but there's 01:07:56.400 --> 01:08:00.240 an even greater aspect and greater proportion of what is reactive 01:08:01.200 --> 01:08:04.880 And I think is is clear most of the episodes that we 01:08:04.880 --> 01:08:06.480 do are reactive. 01:08:06.480 --> 01:08:11.840 We identify existing issues, existing patterns that are very clearly a problem. 01:08:11.840 --> 01:08:13.520 We react to them. 01:08:13.520 --> 01:08:13.840 And 01:08:15.440 --> 01:08:20.400 It's an important part of warfare to pay attention, to listen, and 01:08:20.400 --> 01:08:22.640 to react to the enemy. 01:08:22.640 --> 01:08:25.360 You know, if you've been in combat before, you can tell the 01:08:25.360 --> 01:08:28.720 difference between your small arms and the other side's small arms. 01:08:28.720 --> 01:08:34.160 You know the difference between uh AK47 and a 556. 01:08:34.160 --> 01:08:37.680 You can also tell the difference between a 556 and the 308 01:08:37.760 --> 01:08:38.720 or the 50. 01:08:38.720 --> 01:08:41.760 If somebody's on the 50, you know that something more serious is 01:08:41.760 --> 01:08:45.680 going on than if you hear small arms fire in the distance. 01:08:45.680 --> 01:08:48.880 And if you hear high explosives go off, you can tell the 01:08:48.880 --> 01:08:54.080 difference between high explosives and you know maybe a gasoline tank blowing 01:08:54.080 --> 01:08:55.120 up or something. 01:08:55.120 --> 01:08:58.400 And so each of those sounds in the distance, however near or 01:08:58.400 --> 01:09:01.920 far, are gonna generate a different amount of response from the soldier. 01:09:01.920 --> 01:09:04.400 Because they're gonna tell him things about what's going on. 01:09:04.400 --> 01:09:06.080 To what does he need to react? 01:09:06.080 --> 01:09:07.840 Is there a threat to react to? 01:09:08.000 --> 01:09:10.000 And reactivity doesn't mean fear. 01:09:10.000 --> 01:09:11.600 It doesn't mean oh I'm terrified. 01:09:11.600 --> 01:09:13.120 I'm I gotta run and hide. 01:09:13.120 --> 01:09:17.440 Yeah, there's some great videos I've seen recently of some infantry guys 01:09:17.440 --> 01:09:21.440 with you know, high explosives going off nearby and they just keep 01:09:21.440 --> 01:09:23.440 eating. Like, okay, that's bad news. 01:09:23.440 --> 01:09:24.720 We gotta go deal with that. 01:09:24.880 --> 01:09:28.320 That's the attitude of someone who's been through it before. 01:09:28.320 --> 01:09:32.640 It's okay to be reactive without being panicky. 01:09:32.720 --> 01:09:34.400 I think reactive gets a bad name. 01:09:34.400 --> 01:09:38.800 When you say someone's being reactive, usually it's in a negative context. 01:09:39.760 --> 01:09:42.960 The better view of it I think is something that you know 01:09:43.040 --> 01:09:45.520 some of you been online for a while listening or reading about 01:09:45.520 --> 01:09:49.680 this stuff about the military, you probably heard of John Boyd, 42nd 01:09:49.840 --> 01:09:52.160 Boyd, in the OODA loop. 01:09:52.160 --> 01:09:55.440 It's a concept that a man came up with in the, I 01:09:55.440 --> 01:10:00.000 think, the 50s, basically, in 50s and 60s, basically to deal with 01:10:00.560 --> 01:10:06.400 the fact that despite the superiority of American fighter jets, we were 01:10:06.400 --> 01:10:08.240 not doing well in our wars. 01:10:08.240 --> 01:10:12.160 And so John Boyd created the concept of the OODA loop, the 01:10:12.160 --> 01:10:15.920 it's O O D A for Observe, Orient, Decide Act. 01:10:15.920 --> 01:10:20.560 And the premise was for any given tactical situation, you know, if 01:10:20.560 --> 01:10:24.400 it's two fighters in the air, two men on the battlefield, whatever, 01:10:24.400 --> 01:10:26.560 two guys arguing over something. 01:10:26.560 --> 01:10:30.400 The first step is you observe, you see the position of the 01:10:30.400 --> 01:10:32.480 other man on the battlefield. 01:10:32.480 --> 01:10:37.280 You then orient yourself towards that man, both offensively and defensively, you 01:10:37.280 --> 01:10:40.240 want to optimize your ability to make your next move. 01:10:40.240 --> 01:10:42.720 You then decide what your new move is going to be, and 01:10:42.720 --> 01:10:44.240 then you then act. 01:10:44.240 --> 01:10:46.880 Which all sounds pretty obvious. 01:10:46.880 --> 01:10:50.880 The innovation that John Boyd introduced was the idea of a loop, 01:10:50.880 --> 01:10:54.240 where you don't just do that once and then have the battle 01:10:54.240 --> 01:10:55.120 play out. 01:10:55.120 --> 01:11:03.200 He recognized that you're actually doing that observation orientation decision action continuously. 01:11:03.200 --> 01:11:07.520 And his insight was that the tighter that loop is, the faster 01:11:07.520 --> 01:11:12.800 one man in a battle is observing, orienting, deciding, and acting than 01:11:12.800 --> 01:11:15.440 the other, the greater the advantage he has. 01:11:15.440 --> 01:11:18.640 Without regard to the actual abilities of the guy on the other 01:11:18.640 --> 01:11:22.880 side, it was enough to be faster in responding to what the 01:11:22.880 --> 01:11:24.240 other side was doing. 01:11:24.240 --> 01:11:26.960 And so his challenge with the reason he was called 40 second 01:11:27.120 --> 01:11:30.720 boyd is that the the story is that he had a challenge 01:11:30.720 --> 01:11:32.960 up to any fire jock in I think it was the Las 01:11:32.960 --> 01:11:33.920 Vegas area. 01:11:33.920 --> 01:11:37.520 He go up with them in fighter combat, two men against each 01:11:37.440 --> 01:11:40.720 other, obviously not shooting, but he said you can start from any 01:11:40.720 --> 01:11:44.000 position and in forty seconds I'm gonna be behind you in a 01:11:44.000 --> 01:11:46.640 position where if it were a gunfight, I could kill you. 01:11:46.640 --> 01:11:48.080 And he could always deliver. 01:11:48.080 --> 01:11:51.360 And it wasn't that he was a superman, it was that his 01:11:51.360 --> 01:11:55.840 thought process had been honed in terms of making that loop of 01:11:55.840 --> 01:12:00.240 observation to action as tight as possible and repeating it over and 01:12:00.240 --> 01:12:01.360 over again. 01:12:01.360 --> 01:12:07.280 So that insight is important because it means that reactivity doesn't turn 01:12:07.280 --> 01:12:08.480 into a liability. 01:12:08.480 --> 01:12:10.240 Like, oh, the other guy had the first move. 01:12:10.240 --> 01:12:12.880 I guess he gets to pick the battlefield and it's over. 01:12:12.880 --> 01:12:17.040 No. You observe, you orient, you decide you act, and you keep 01:12:17.040 --> 01:12:20.160 doing it, and you if you do it fast enough, you can 01:12:20.160 --> 01:12:21.280 move like magic. 01:12:21.280 --> 01:12:25.680 You can be making decisions so quickly that the other guy can't 01:12:25.680 --> 01:12:27.360 respond to what you're doing. 01:12:27.360 --> 01:12:30.240 And it was called getting inside the other guy's loop because if 01:12:30.240 --> 01:12:33.440 you're reacting fast enough to what the other guy was doing, you 01:12:33.440 --> 01:12:36.160 could effectively be inside his decision loop. 01:12:36.160 --> 01:12:40.400 So that before he had acted on his last observation and decision, 01:12:40.400 --> 01:12:41.920 you'd already made the next move. 01:12:41.920 --> 01:12:45.600 So he was responding to things that you had done several moves 01:12:45.600 --> 01:12:47.760 behind. Again, this is ab abstracted. 01:12:47.760 --> 01:12:50.480 It could be warfare, it could be chess, it could be a 01:12:50.480 --> 01:12:54.160 debate. If you see what the other guy's doing before he realizes 01:12:54.160 --> 01:12:56.560 you're doing it, you can win. 01:12:56.560 --> 01:13:00.640 And this is crucial for us because as we're looking at things 01:13:00.640 --> 01:13:03.680 happening in the world, as we're looking at these fights being picked, 01:13:03.680 --> 01:13:09.360 and these alarms going off, at these interrupts being thrown, it's okay 01:13:09.360 --> 01:13:14.000 to be reactive to the enemy, as long as you're willing to 01:13:14.000 --> 01:13:15.840 keep your bearings. 01:13:15.840 --> 01:13:18.960 It's not panicking and just running out of the building as soon 01:13:18.960 --> 01:13:20.240 as you hear a sound. 01:13:20.240 --> 01:13:23.040 It's saying, okay, something's going on. 01:13:23.040 --> 01:13:25.600 And so I think one of the key strengths that Corey and 01:13:25.600 --> 01:13:28.800 I have brought to a lot of the discussions is that we 01:13:28.800 --> 01:13:30.400 listen to the other side. 01:13:30.400 --> 01:13:32.480 We listen to the enemy. 01:13:32.480 --> 01:13:34.320 We listen when they're talking. 01:13:34.320 --> 01:13:36.480 We listen when they're screaming. 01:13:36.480 --> 01:13:40.160 There's nothing that makes me happier than hearing the enemy scream. 01:13:40.160 --> 01:13:43.440 That fills me with joy, because I know that we've got them. 01:13:43.440 --> 01:13:46.400 Because for whatever reason they can't lie about that. 01:13:46.400 --> 01:13:47.920 It sounds like a setup. 01:13:47.920 --> 01:13:50.160 It sounds like, oh well if you just listen to the enemy 01:13:50.160 --> 01:13:53.040 and then you capitalize on what he's giving you, he's going to 01:13:53.040 --> 01:13:54.480 give you false information. 01:13:54.480 --> 01:13:56.560 That's certainly true in some cases. 01:13:56.560 --> 01:13:59.600 But when it comes to pushing some of these buttons that we 01:13:59.600 --> 01:14:05.680 push, like race, like sex, like headship, when the enemy screams, they 01:14:05.520 --> 01:14:07.280 can't help it. 01:14:07.280 --> 01:14:11.760 For whatever reason, Satan's forces can't lie about this stuff. 01:14:11.760 --> 01:14:14.000 I'm not saying it's absolutely impervious. 01:14:14.000 --> 01:14:15.600 I'm saying I've never seen it happen. 01:14:15.600 --> 01:14:18.480 When we push one of these buttons, they start screaming their heads 01:14:18.480 --> 01:14:21.440 off. They show us where their pain point is. 01:14:21.440 --> 01:14:24.720 And so the reaction is to hurt them even harder, to go 01:14:24.720 --> 01:14:25.600 even harder. 01:14:25.600 --> 01:14:28.960 And what's crucial about understanding that you have to listen to the 01:14:28.960 --> 01:14:31.280 enemy when you're acting is that 01:14:32.160 --> 01:14:35.360 they're telling you what the roadmap is, and it's probably not what 01:14:35.360 --> 01:14:36.560 you had in mind. 01:14:36.560 --> 01:14:40.080 One of the very earliest episodes that we did was on neglected 01:14:40.080 --> 01:14:43.200 matters in scripture, and one of the five examples we gave was 01:14:43.200 --> 01:14:46.400 on head coverings, and we pointed out that for nineteen hundred and 01:14:46.400 --> 01:14:50.560 sixty years in the Western Church, women covered their heads in church. 01:14:50.560 --> 01:14:54.240 It was a general practice to the point of being nearly universal 01:14:54.240 --> 01:14:56.000 in most times and places. 01:14:56.000 --> 01:14:59.120 And then in the nineteen sixties a Jew said, hey, the church 01:14:59.680 --> 01:15:00.960 needs to stop doing that. 01:15:00.960 --> 01:15:04.400 It was the same Jew that helped to legalize the murder of 01:15:04.400 --> 01:15:06.720 infants and sacrificing them to Satan. 01:15:06.720 --> 01:15:09.840 She accomplished most of those things within a year of each other, 01:15:09.840 --> 01:15:13.760 getting rid of head coverings in churches and legalizing murdering children and 01:15:13.760 --> 01:15:15.520 sacrificing them to Satan. 01:15:15.520 --> 01:15:18.800 And the church followed the lead of this Jew, and here we 01:15:18.800 --> 01:15:19.600 are today. 01:15:19.600 --> 01:15:25.280 And so veiling, which was the near universal practice, almost overnight it 01:15:25.280 --> 01:15:29.520 vanished. And to the point that today, if you see someone veiling, 01:15:29.520 --> 01:15:30.720 it's really weird. 01:15:30.720 --> 01:15:33.360 It seems like it's out of left field and somebody's acting w 01:15:33.520 --> 01:15:35.200 strange like are they Amish? 01:15:35.200 --> 01:15:36.240 Why are they being weird? 01:15:36.240 --> 01:15:37.680 Why are you being weird in church? 01:15:37.680 --> 01:15:38.400 Don't do that. 01:15:38.400 --> 01:15:40.960 Don't do anything different than anyone else is doing. 01:15:40.960 --> 01:15:43.920 When the reality is that getting rid of the veils was not 01:15:43.920 --> 01:15:48.800 only the weird thing in the nineteen sixties, but it was disobedience 01:15:49.360 --> 01:15:50.320 to God. 01:15:50.320 --> 01:15:54.960 And so this is an example of our reactivity, of our listening 01:15:54.960 --> 01:15:58.720 to the enemy being a vital tactic that you should all employ 01:15:58.800 --> 01:16:01.680 to. And you should understand why we're doing and why you should 01:16:01.680 --> 01:16:05.040 all be doing similar things. 01:16:05.440 --> 01:16:07.920 This was a year and a half ago, going on two years 01:16:07.920 --> 01:16:10.640 ago, that we we first mentioned veiling. 01:16:10.640 --> 01:16:13.040 And at the time it was already happening in bits and pieces 01:16:13.120 --> 01:16:17.280 of a few conservative churches, it's become more common sense then. 01:16:17.280 --> 01:16:22.240 And the reaction inside these conservative churches, not talking about liberal churches, 01:16:22.240 --> 01:16:26.640 talking about the very most conservative denominations in the United States, when 01:16:26.640 --> 01:16:28.560 girls begin veiling in a congregation 01:16:29.600 --> 01:16:33.200 without saying a word, these are girls who are respectful, they're godly, 01:16:33.200 --> 01:16:37.120 they're trying to obey God, they're trying to be submissive to God. 01:16:37.120 --> 01:16:40.080 And so when they do this without saying a word, without calling 01:16:40.080 --> 01:16:44.080 anyone else any names, without accusing anyone of sin, it makes everyone 01:16:44.080 --> 01:16:45.680 incredibly uncomfortable. 01:16:45.680 --> 01:16:49.440 And so at the highest levels of the LCMS, the wicked demons 01:16:49.440 --> 01:16:49.920 in St. 01:16:49.920 --> 01:16:54.400 Louis and in Fort Wayne, who are operating the machinery of this 01:16:54.400 --> 01:16:59.280 synod, when they saw girls veiling, they were viscerally threatened. 01:16:59.280 --> 01:17:02.960 They were actively angry and seek to root it out. 01:17:02.960 --> 01:17:05.040 Why? Because it's something bad? 01:17:05.280 --> 01:17:09.200 No, because it's obedience to God that illustrates their rebellion. 01:17:09.200 --> 01:17:14.400 Because fundamentally the veil, the head veiling for a girl shows that 01:17:14.400 --> 01:17:17.040 she has a head, that she is not her own head, that 01:17:17.040 --> 01:17:19.680 her husband is her head, and that God is her head, her 01:17:19.680 --> 01:17:22.960 husband or her father, and then God. 01:17:22.960 --> 01:17:26.320 For her to submit by wearing a veil and saying that my 01:17:26.320 --> 01:17:30.880 father or my husband is my head is a stab in the 01:17:30.880 --> 01:17:35.360 face, a wicked man operating these conservative denominations. 01:17:35.360 --> 01:17:40.720 Because the demons who are running the conservative denominations don't want women 01:17:41.040 --> 01:17:42.320 obeying their husbands. 01:17:42.400 --> 01:17:44.480 They don't want them obeying their fathers. 01:17:44.480 --> 01:17:46.640 They want them to be girl bosses. 01:17:46.640 --> 01:17:49.760 They're actively encouraging girl boss behavior. 01:17:49.760 --> 01:17:53.040 And so for a girl to veil is to say, I'm not 01:17:53.040 --> 01:17:54.240 gonna be a girl boss. 01:17:54.240 --> 01:17:56.400 I'm not going to be a rebel 01:17:58.000 --> 01:18:01.360 What happened in the aftermath of this beginning in some of the 01:18:01.360 --> 01:18:04.240 churches was that there was huge pushback. 01:18:04.240 --> 01:18:10.000 There was active disavowal and disapproval of the the girls doing this 01:18:10.080 --> 01:18:12.800 and of their husbands or fathers, whoever, you know, told them to 01:18:12.800 --> 01:18:14.400 do it, or whoever gave them the idea. 01:18:14.400 --> 01:18:16.480 It was clearly a problem to be solved. 01:18:16.480 --> 01:18:19.440 When we did the episode on neglected matters, like, you know, it's 01:18:19.440 --> 01:18:20.080 in the Bible. 01:18:20.080 --> 01:18:20.720 We should do it. 01:18:20.720 --> 01:18:23.600 It's it was not only traditional, but it was scriptural. 01:18:23.600 --> 01:18:26.320 We didn't have a strongly held opinion at the time. 01:18:26.320 --> 01:18:28.000 It was just it's scriptural. 01:18:28.000 --> 01:18:29.440 Why do we stop doing it? 01:18:29.440 --> 01:18:31.440 And at the time we were just trying to illustrate that there 01:18:31.440 --> 01:18:34.640 are various aspects in scripture that the church has abandoned. 01:18:34.640 --> 01:18:36.480 We just don't do what God said anymore. 01:18:36.640 --> 01:18:38.320 And we pretend it never happened. 01:18:38.320 --> 01:18:41.840 We act like it was just this weird anachronism. 01:18:41.840 --> 01:18:47.520 And whenever someone says in current year girls should veil, all the 01:18:47.520 --> 01:18:48.880 pastors want to run to the Bible. 01:18:48.880 --> 01:18:51.520 They want to say, well, what does scripture say about this? 01:18:51.520 --> 01:18:55.440 And as we've talked about in a couple episodes, that is actively 01:18:55.600 --> 01:19:00.320 malicious denial of God because it ignores the entirety of church history, 01:19:00.320 --> 01:19:03.600 which as Lutherans, we're the first to say tradition doesn't prove something's 01:19:03.600 --> 01:19:04.720 right or wrong. 01:19:04.720 --> 01:19:08.640 But when you ignore that for nearly two thousand years virtually every 01:19:08.640 --> 01:19:11.520 Christian woman covered her head and say, well let's see what the 01:19:11.520 --> 01:19:13.040 context was in Paul's day. 01:19:13.040 --> 01:19:14.640 That's the only way to understand it. 01:19:14.640 --> 01:19:15.680 They're liars. 01:19:15.680 --> 01:19:17.040 They're absolute liars. 01:19:17.040 --> 01:19:19.760 Because they're never trying to find what God actually said. 01:19:19.760 --> 01:19:21.760 They're trying to make the girl stop doing it. 01:19:21.760 --> 01:19:22.400 Don't do that. 01:19:22.400 --> 01:19:23.120 Don't cover your head. 01:19:23.120 --> 01:19:24.080 That makes me uncomfortable. 01:19:24.080 --> 01:19:25.600 It makes me really nervous. 01:19:25.600 --> 01:19:28.000 So it's great that more of that is happening. 01:19:28.000 --> 01:19:30.400 And as we've said in a subsequent episode and we brought it 01:19:30.400 --> 01:19:33.680 up and I'll reiterate here, we're not trying to bind someone's conscious. 01:19:33.680 --> 01:19:36.800 If you're a girl, you must wear head covering, you're evil. 01:19:36.800 --> 01:19:40.000 Scripture says that women should cover their heads. 01:19:40.400 --> 01:19:41.440 It's doctrinal. 01:19:41.440 --> 01:19:42.720 It's a smallest matter. 01:19:42.880 --> 01:19:45.680 That's part of the reason why we sequestered it in the neglected 01:19:45.680 --> 01:19:46.720 matters doctrine. 01:19:46.720 --> 01:19:49.840 Clearly, veiling is not the heart of the Christian faith. 01:19:49.840 --> 01:19:52.320 And yet when veiling comes up, what do you see? 01:19:52.320 --> 01:19:53.920 You hear the enemy scream. 01:19:53.920 --> 01:19:56.160 You hear the enemy screaming. 01:19:56.160 --> 01:19:59.120 They're just livid at the idea that someone would do it was 01:19:59.120 --> 01:20:00.240 in the Bible. 01:20:00.240 --> 01:20:03.840 That is the signal to us as Christian men that there's something 01:20:03.840 --> 01:20:05.360 to be disagreeable about. 01:20:05.680 --> 01:20:07.040 Maybe you just stumble over it. 01:20:07.040 --> 01:20:08.560 Maybe you say, Hey, what about this? 01:20:08.560 --> 01:20:12.080 There's something in the Bible that God says to do, that Christians 01:20:12.080 --> 01:20:14.080 did for a long time, and then we just quit and we 01:20:14.080 --> 01:20:15.680 pretend it never happened again. 01:20:15.680 --> 01:20:17.200 Maybe we should do that again. 01:20:17.200 --> 01:20:20.480 When evil men start screaming and say, Don't do that, don't that 01:20:20.640 --> 01:20:22.560 that one thing you're not allowed to do. 01:20:22.560 --> 01:20:27.360 That is an indication to the Christian disagreeable man that you found 01:20:27.360 --> 01:20:29.360 one of the enemy's weak points. 01:20:29.360 --> 01:20:32.480 As I said, how can a girl be rebellious with her head 01:20:32.480 --> 01:20:34.240 covered? It's a lot harder. 01:20:34.240 --> 01:20:37.040 It was one of the episodes maybe on young men, where we 01:20:37.040 --> 01:20:39.760 talked about you know, it's just if a girl were covering her 01:20:39.760 --> 01:20:43.440 head, she's not going to be doing obscene things on TikTok, unless 01:20:43.440 --> 01:20:45.200 it's intended to be blasphemous. 01:20:45.200 --> 01:20:48.400 But the sort of girl who's going to behave in one area 01:20:48.560 --> 01:20:50.000 is gonna behave in others. 01:20:50.000 --> 01:20:53.840 And that's why all these Christian matters, these Christian behaviors, they're self 01:20:53.920 --> 01:20:57.840 reinforcing. God gave these things to us for our benefit. 01:20:57.920 --> 01:21:00.400 It's not that obedience to God is salvific. 01:21:00.400 --> 01:21:04.240 It's that when you're doing godly things, you know, God has many 01:21:04.240 --> 01:21:05.680 admonitions to men as well. 01:21:05.760 --> 01:21:09.360 We're admonished not to cover our heads, but we're given other admonitions 01:21:09.360 --> 01:21:14.080 that equally reinforce good Christian behavior for us, when we stick to 01:21:14.080 --> 01:21:17.200 those things, it's a lot harder to get off the path. 01:21:17.200 --> 01:21:20.000 And so we're not saving ourselves by doing these things. 01:21:20.000 --> 01:21:21.760 We're just doing what God says. 01:21:21.760 --> 01:21:25.600 And when wicked men freak out about someone saying obey God, that 01:21:25.600 --> 01:21:27.040 is when you take notice. 01:21:27.040 --> 01:21:29.360 That's when it's crucial to take notice. 01:21:29.360 --> 01:21:33.760 Incidentally, someone sent me a link to a website where someone's making 01:21:33.760 --> 01:21:36.400 some veils and selling them, and there's a nice explanation of the 01:21:36.400 --> 01:21:37.440 history of it. 01:21:37.440 --> 01:21:39.760 We'll put that in the show notes if anyone's interested. 01:21:39.760 --> 01:21:40.880 It's a good practice. 01:21:40.880 --> 01:21:42.480 It's something that's salutary. 01:21:42.480 --> 01:21:44.000 I think it should be done. 01:21:44.000 --> 01:21:47.360 But again, we're not we're not beating the war drum and saying 01:21:47.520 --> 01:21:49.520 kick out all the girls who don't cover their heads. 01:21:49.520 --> 01:21:52.320 We're saying God said to do it, Christians used to do it, 01:21:52.320 --> 01:21:53.280 and then they stopped. 01:21:53.280 --> 01:21:55.360 And when we say, hey, maybe we should do it again, and 01:21:55.360 --> 01:21:58.960 when some girls start covering their heads, as scripture says, and as 01:21:58.960 --> 01:22:02.640 Christians have always done, the wicked men start howling. 01:22:02.640 --> 01:22:05.360 I'm not excited about girls covering their heads. 01:22:05.360 --> 01:22:08.160 I'm excited about the suffering of wicked men. 01:22:08.160 --> 01:22:11.120 That is when I know that we are over target. 01:22:11.120 --> 01:22:14.320 And not every man is cut out for that constitutionally. 01:22:14.320 --> 01:22:16.560 Many of you are listening, like you don't want to pick a 01:22:16.560 --> 01:22:18.960 fight. If there is a fight, you don't want to be in 01:22:18.960 --> 01:22:22.720 it. If you hear people screaming, you just want to leave. 01:22:22.720 --> 01:22:25.520 Some men when they hear the explosion, they hear the high explosion, 01:22:25.520 --> 01:22:28.160 when they hear the modus going off, when they hear the screaming 01:22:28.160 --> 01:22:30.400 of the enemy, they run towards it. 01:22:30.400 --> 01:22:31.760 Help those men. 01:22:31.760 --> 01:22:35.200 Help men who can identify where the enemy is and help them 01:22:35.200 --> 01:22:39.760 to prosecute the attack, because it's ultimately all rooted in obedience to 01:22:39.760 --> 01:22:43.120 God. These men are wicked when they're fighting what God says. 01:22:43.120 --> 01:22:44.720 And sometimes they just tell you. 01:22:44.720 --> 01:22:46.640 They can't help themselves. 01:22:46.640 --> 01:22:49.360 So when some of the things that we say to do are 01:22:49.520 --> 01:22:52.720 reactive, as I said, I know some people think that oh that's 01:22:52.640 --> 01:22:53.520 a that's a setup. 01:22:53.520 --> 01:22:55.440 They can they can trick you into doing anything. 01:22:55.440 --> 01:22:58.160 They can you opposite day, they're gonna say to do one thing 01:22:58.160 --> 01:22:59.840 to trick you into doing the opposite. 01:22:59.840 --> 01:23:01.920 No. It doesn't happen in practice. 01:23:01.920 --> 01:23:03.520 There's no example of it. 01:23:03.520 --> 01:23:07.760 And you should certainly pay enough attention that you can't be deceived 01:23:07.840 --> 01:23:10.880 if the enemy starts screaming about you know, don't throw me into 01:23:10.880 --> 01:23:11.840 the briar patch. 01:23:11.840 --> 01:23:13.200 Like is that kind of setup? 01:23:13.200 --> 01:23:15.040 No, that's not what we're talking about. 01:23:15.040 --> 01:23:19.040 When we say obey God and these men start howling and coming 01:23:19.040 --> 01:23:22.160 after us, I got doxxed for telling people to do this stuff. 01:23:22.160 --> 01:23:24.240 That's how much they hate these things. 01:23:24.240 --> 01:23:25.600 And it's not about us. 01:23:25.600 --> 01:23:29.200 It's just about pay attention to what makes people angry. 01:23:29.200 --> 01:23:32.400 That was the first episode we did this year on true religion. 01:23:32.400 --> 01:23:33.840 That was one of the hallmarks. 01:23:33.840 --> 01:23:35.440 What will a man fight for? 01:23:35.440 --> 01:23:36.960 What will he kill for? 01:23:36.960 --> 01:23:39.280 What will he go to the map for? 01:23:39.280 --> 01:23:41.680 Because it's not going to be Jesus for these guys. 01:23:41.680 --> 01:23:43.600 It's not going to be the real gospel. 01:23:43.600 --> 01:23:45.680 It's going to be disobedience to God. 01:23:45.680 --> 01:23:47.200 That's where they draw the line. 01:23:47.440 --> 01:23:50.880 They will not permit us to be obedient to God because it 01:23:50.880 --> 01:23:54.240 terrifies them, because it terrifies their master. 01:23:54.240 --> 01:23:57.600 So part of the reactivity that is important is in the terms 01:23:57.600 --> 01:24:00.160 of an oodaloop of saying, I'm just going to observe what the 01:24:00.320 --> 01:24:03.840 enemy's doing, gonna orient towards it, gonna decide what to do after 01:24:03.840 --> 01:24:06.160 that. And sometimes the decision is do nothing. 01:24:06.160 --> 01:24:09.920 You in the episode on persuasiveness I said and reiterated here and 01:24:09.920 --> 01:24:12.480 again, sometimes you just keep your mouth shut. 01:24:12.480 --> 01:24:14.800 You don't always pick every fight. 01:24:14.800 --> 01:24:19.440 And that's part of you know disagreeableness again is not being crazy. 01:24:19.440 --> 01:24:22.160 It's not being a wild man, but it is knowing that when 01:24:22.160 --> 01:24:25.440 the enemy's screaming, you're probably doing something right. 01:24:25.440 --> 01:24:26.880 Maybe you should double down. 01:24:26.880 --> 01:24:29.120 You should at least understand why he's screaming. 01:24:29.120 --> 01:24:30.720 Because sometimes you don't understand. 01:24:30.720 --> 01:24:34.320 Yeah, there'd episodes that we've done that, you know, we could tell 01:24:34.320 --> 01:24:39.280 they were important, but we didn't until afterwards when the screaming started. 01:24:39.280 --> 01:24:41.040 That's been the case with some of the things that have come 01:24:41.040 --> 01:24:42.400 out of the Missouri Senate. 01:24:42.400 --> 01:24:44.880 The false prophet Matt Harrison, some of the things that he was 01:24:44.880 --> 01:24:49.040 screaming about, we have since realized were far more important than we 01:24:49.040 --> 01:24:50.240 realized at the time. 01:24:50.240 --> 01:24:53.840 We didn't know how important some of those subjects were until he 01:24:53.840 --> 01:24:57.200 began howling at how terrified he was of them. 01:24:57.200 --> 01:25:00.320 When a demon is terrified of something, that's the thing that you 01:25:00.320 --> 01:25:03.840 pursue. That's a Christian duty, to at least pay attention. 01:25:03.840 --> 01:25:07.360 Even if you don't want to be disagreeable enough to prosecute the 01:25:07.360 --> 01:25:10.320 fight, you at least need to be disagreeable enough to know that 01:25:10.320 --> 01:25:13.440 this is a liar, this is an evil man, this is Satan 01:25:13.440 --> 01:25:17.280 speaking. I'm gonna make sure that the opposite whatever he wants is 01:25:17.280 --> 01:25:18.640 what I support. 01:25:19.280 --> 01:25:19.520 To 01:25:19.520 --> 01:25:24.240 emphasize one of the points that Wo just made, one of the 01:25:24.240 --> 01:25:30.720 core reasons that we both so vehemently, so viscerally oppose the modern 01:25:30.720 --> 01:25:35.920 conceptions of liberty, freedom, related matters, you can put them in quotes 01:25:35.920 --> 01:25:40.640 if you're so inclined, is that they all give the wrong answer 01:25:41.760 --> 01:25:44.640 to Kane's question. 01:25:44.720 --> 01:25:49.840 When confronted by God, Cain says, Am I my brother's keeper? 01:25:49.840 --> 01:25:54.000 The answer is yes, you are your brother's keeper. 01:25:54.000 --> 01:25:58.480 And historically in Christendom, we recognize that, and so we put certain 01:25:58.480 --> 01:26:05.120 safeguards, certain guardrails in place in order to protect not necessarily the 01:26:05.120 --> 01:26:10.240 strongest of Christians, those who don't have trouble with certain temptations who 01:26:10.240 --> 01:26:14.320 have a very strong walk with God, but to protect the weaker 01:26:14.320 --> 01:26:17.840 brother, one of the things that we are enjoined to do in 01:26:17.840 --> 01:26:22.800 Scripture, and so modesty codes existed not because of the man who 01:26:23.360 --> 01:26:26.880 doesn't have trouble with that temptation, although that is very rare of 01:26:26.880 --> 01:26:30.880 course for men, but because of the weaker brother who does, and 01:26:30.880 --> 01:26:35.120 because of the woman who without them will walk down that pathway 01:26:35.120 --> 01:26:38.000 that leads to hell to hell. 01:26:38.000 --> 01:26:43.280 There are certain restrictions that are part of the Christian life. 01:26:43.280 --> 01:26:47.360 And it's not because the restrictions are restricting your freedom or your 01:26:47.360 --> 01:26:52.240 liberty, because properly conceived, both of those terms can be taken in 01:26:52.240 --> 01:26:57.680 a fully positive sense, and insofar as they are fully positive, they 01:26:57.680 --> 01:27:02.320 must be oriented toward a good end, the telos must be in 01:27:02.320 --> 01:27:07.280 line with something God has commanded or something of which God approves. 01:27:07.280 --> 01:27:09.360 That is not the modern conception. 01:27:09.360 --> 01:27:13.360 The modern conception is a libertarian conception. 01:27:13.360 --> 01:27:17.280 It is the conception that says I can walk around outside naked 01:27:17.280 --> 01:27:18.720 if I am so inclined. 01:27:18.720 --> 01:27:21.200 I can hold a so-called pride parade. 01:27:21.200 --> 01:27:24.880 I can smoke marijuana in my backyard, I can do X, Y, 01:27:24.960 --> 01:27:29.200 and Z, all of these wicked things that a Christian should never 01:27:29.200 --> 01:27:33.440 do, and that will tempt or otherwise harm your neighbour will harm 01:27:33.440 --> 01:27:35.040 your brother. 01:27:35.040 --> 01:27:38.560 Because of course Scripture says temptations must come, that's part of this 01:27:38.560 --> 01:27:40.880 fallen life, but what does it say after that? 01:27:40.880 --> 01:27:44.080 But woe to him by whom they come. 01:27:44.080 --> 01:27:49.040 If you are the occasion for causing sin in a brother, you 01:27:49.040 --> 01:27:53.360 yourself have sinned, you have in fact engaged in a particularly heinous 01:27:53.360 --> 01:27:54.720 form of sin. 01:27:54.720 --> 01:27:57.520 You have caused the little one to stumble. 01:27:57.520 --> 01:28:00.000 You have done the thing where Christ says it would be better 01:28:00.000 --> 01:28:02.000 for you to be drowned. 01:28:02.000 --> 01:28:05.840 And yet we have so many who defend that sort of wickedness 01:28:05.840 --> 01:28:13.440 today. A related matter would be the removal of those safeguards, 01:28:13.440 --> 01:28:16.000 which we see so often today. 01:28:16.000 --> 01:28:19.440 We'll be told that, oh well, that is an antiquated practice, or 01:28:19.440 --> 01:28:22.640 that's just something that they used to do in ancient times, they 01:28:22.720 --> 01:28:24.640 were less enlightened. 01:28:24.640 --> 01:28:28.720 You should think of Chesterton's fence, and I'll also quote from Proverbs, 01:28:28.720 --> 01:28:31.120 many of you will already immediately know it. 01:28:31.120 --> 01:28:34.960 But a parable that Chesterton used in order to illustrate this point 01:28:35.360 --> 01:28:38.400 has been used by many others, but his is probably the most 01:28:38.400 --> 01:28:43.200 famous. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law, 01:28:43.200 --> 01:28:46.240 let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate 01:28:46.240 --> 01:28:48.320 erected across a road. 01:28:48.320 --> 01:28:51.360 The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and 01:28:51.360 --> 01:28:54.240 says, I don't see the use of this, let us clear it 01:28:54.240 --> 01:28:57.360 away. To which the more intelligent type of reformer would do well 01:28:57.360 --> 01:28:58.720 to answer Well to answer. 01:28:58.720 --> 01:29:01.760 If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let 01:29:01.760 --> 01:29:03.120 you clear it away. 01:29:03.120 --> 01:29:06.560 Go away and think, then when you come back and tell me 01:29:06.560 --> 01:29:09.120 what you do see the use of it, I may allow you 01:29:09.120 --> 01:29:10.720 to destroy it. 01:29:11.520 --> 01:29:16.960 If you don't know why your forefathers in the faith created a 01:29:16.960 --> 01:29:22.960 certain safeguard, why they set up a certain guardrail, don't remove it. 01:29:22.960 --> 01:29:26.080 Because if you remove it, most likely what you are doing is 01:29:26.080 --> 01:29:31.040 letting back in an evil against which they had erected a barrier. 01:29:31.040 --> 01:29:33.920 And this is tied in to, as I said, Proverbs Do not 01:29:33.920 --> 01:29:35.840 move the ancient landmark. 01:29:35.840 --> 01:29:38.080 That has two senses. 01:29:38.080 --> 01:29:42.480 You can use that in the obvious literal sense of do not 01:29:42.480 --> 01:29:45.920 move the boundaries of others, which of course ties into borders and 01:29:45.920 --> 01:29:50.480 other matters, nations and things, but it can also be used metaphorically 01:29:50.720 --> 01:29:52.800 or allegorically. 01:29:52.800 --> 01:29:58.000 Do not remove safeguards that were set in place by your fathers, 01:29:58.000 --> 01:30:01.360 unless you know why it was set in place and have a 01:30:01.360 --> 01:30:04.400 very good reason for moving it. 01:30:04.400 --> 01:30:08.400 Because you will probably be introducing evil. 01:30:08.400 --> 01:30:12.640 We are to set up a society that aids our brothers and 01:30:12.640 --> 01:30:18.240 sisters in the faith in their walk with Christ, in their Christian 01:30:18.240 --> 01:30:22.640 life, that aids them in engaging in this world in the way 01:30:22.640 --> 01:30:26.240 that God wants them to do so, and so helps them to 01:30:26.240 --> 01:30:28.720 maintain their faith, to persevere in the faith. 01:30:29.040 --> 01:30:32.400 And to reach the end goal of all Christians, which of course 01:30:32.400 --> 01:30:34.800 is paradise. 01:30:34.800 --> 01:30:39.840 The point of this life is not to maximize your so-called freedom 01:30:39.840 --> 01:30:43.120 or liberty, to do whatever you please. 01:30:43.360 --> 01:30:47.680 It is to do the things that please God, and to attain 01:30:47.760 --> 01:30:51.120 the gifts that He has in store for us in the next 01:30:51.120 --> 01:30:54.400 life. And of course, we know there are rewards for the good 01:30:54.400 --> 01:30:56.080 works you do in this life. 01:30:56.080 --> 01:31:00.960 Scripture is abundantly clear on that. 01:31:00.960 --> 01:31:04.720 We should want to set up our societies in such a way 01:31:05.040 --> 01:31:10.000 that they aid others in being Christian, not in such a way 01:31:10.000 --> 01:31:13.520 that it's every man for himself, it's back to some sort of 01:31:13.520 --> 01:31:15.280 state of nature. 01:31:15.280 --> 01:31:16.960 That isn't Christian. 01:31:16.960 --> 01:31:19.600 And that's certainly not what you want to pass down to your 01:31:19.600 --> 01:31:20.880 children and your grandchildren. 01:31:20.880 --> 01:31:23.680 And if you were given something better than that and you squandered 01:31:24.160 --> 01:31:28.720 it and you pass on basically chaos every man for himself to 01:31:28.720 --> 01:31:32.240 your children, what you have done is incomprehensibly wicked. 01:31:32.240 --> 01:31:36.080 It is something that not even pagans or animals would do. 01:31:36.080 --> 01:31:40.080 And yet that is the reality of what we see today. 01:31:40.080 --> 01:31:44.240 And so we have all of these places where Satan is attacking 01:31:44.240 --> 01:31:45.520 the church. 01:31:45.520 --> 01:31:48.800 Some of them are obvious, some of them are less obvious. 01:31:48.800 --> 01:31:52.320 But as Christian men, it is incumbent on us to defend the 01:31:52.320 --> 01:31:54.880 church where she is being attacked. 01:31:54.880 --> 01:32:00.400 And this ties into what we've discussed in other episodes, most obviously 01:32:00.480 --> 01:32:06.320 the episode episode fourteen on the enemy's playbook, so Elinskyite tactics. 01:32:06.320 --> 01:32:09.520 But there is a distinction between tactics and strategy. 01:32:09.520 --> 01:32:12.880 Now I won't say that it is a black and white distinction 01:32:12.960 --> 01:32:15.840 because it's more of a spectrum, they sort of bleed one into 01:32:15.840 --> 01:32:19.520 the other in the middle there. 01:32:19.520 --> 01:32:24.320 But tactics, I could actually just quote from some men who you 01:32:24.320 --> 01:32:26.080 will know, I won't give the names because you can look them 01:32:26.080 --> 01:32:28.000 up if you're so inclined. 01:32:28.240 --> 01:32:32.320 But strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. 01:32:32.320 --> 01:32:37.200 Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. 01:32:37.200 --> 01:32:40.400 Tactics is the art of using troops in battle. 01:32:40.400 --> 01:32:44.080 Strategy is the art of using battles to win the war. 01:32:44.400 --> 01:32:47.840 And so if you step back and take, you know, the 30,000-foot 01:32:48.000 --> 01:32:52.960 view of it, tactics are the more immediate on the ground tools 01:32:52.960 --> 01:32:56.640 that you are using to achieve a specific end at a specific 01:32:56.640 --> 01:33:01.760 time. Strategy is the overall, the overarching plan. 01:33:01.760 --> 01:33:05.920 If you want to return to Alinsky for this, a riot, a 01:33:05.920 --> 01:33:08.640 specific riot, is a tactic. 01:33:08.640 --> 01:33:11.440 Where you riot is a strategy. 01:33:11.440 --> 01:33:16.320 That is how the radical Marxist left in the United States achieved 01:33:16.800 --> 01:33:21.760 so much in primarily the sixties but also decades since then. 01:33:21.760 --> 01:33:26.960 With regard to individual Christians and with regard to spiritual warfare, both 01:33:26.960 --> 01:33:32.160 of these are relevant, because for the individual man, the individual Christian 01:33:32.160 --> 01:33:36.080 soldier, and it is appropriate to think of yourself in those terms, 01:33:36.080 --> 01:33:39.040 tactics are going to be the primary concern. 01:33:39.040 --> 01:33:42.480 What do I do when confronted with X, Y, or Z? 01:33:42.640 --> 01:33:44.080 How do I respond? 01:33:44.080 --> 01:33:46.880 What is the right thing to do in this specific situation? 01:33:46.880 --> 01:33:48.640 Those are tactics. 01:33:48.640 --> 01:33:50.400 We discuss those frequently. 01:33:50.400 --> 01:33:53.440 We discuss specifics in many of the episodes. 01:33:53.440 --> 01:33:56.480 Many of them are, in essence, tactical. 01:33:56.480 --> 01:33:58.800 But there's also a strategy to it. 01:33:58.800 --> 01:34:03.680 Strategy is largely for theologians and others, but it is also a 01:34:03.680 --> 01:34:08.320 matter with which the individual Christian should concern himself to some degree. 01:34:08.320 --> 01:34:11.760 Because strategy is how you choose where to engage, when to engage, 01:34:11.760 --> 01:34:14.640 when not to engage. 01:34:14.640 --> 01:34:20.640 So the theologian provides the strategy, but also provides the tactics. 01:34:20.640 --> 01:34:25.120 The strategy is the overarching plan, deciding when and where to defend 01:34:25.280 --> 01:34:29.440 and how, and when and where to attack and how, and then 01:34:29.440 --> 01:34:34.480 arming individual Christians with the tactics in order to execute those plans. 01:34:34.480 --> 01:34:38.880 The same thing is true in warfare, because of course you have 01:34:38.880 --> 01:34:42.160 the generals who are devising strategy, and then you have on down 01:34:42.160 --> 01:34:46.160 the ranks until you're at the individual soldier who is executing tactics 01:34:46.160 --> 01:34:51.280 in his specific theater at a specific time in a specific battle. 01:34:51.280 --> 01:34:54.720 You can't have a breakdown anywhere in that chain and have the 01:34:54.720 --> 01:34:57.520 machine run as effectively. 01:34:57.520 --> 01:35:00.720 If you don't have strategy, you will lose. 01:35:00.720 --> 01:35:04.480 If you have bad tactics, there's a good chance you'll still lose. 01:35:04.480 --> 01:35:07.600 You may win, but it's going to be a very costly victory, 01:35:07.600 --> 01:35:11.280 as opposed to if you have both tactics and strategy in place. 01:35:11.280 --> 01:35:15.680 And so that is why we discuss both of those in this 01:35:16.000 --> 01:35:19.600 podcast generally and across most of the episodes. 01:35:19.600 --> 01:35:21.680 Because the tactics are important. 01:35:21.680 --> 01:35:25.120 You have to know what to do in a specific moment. 01:35:25.120 --> 01:35:28.080 But the overall strategy is also important. 01:35:28.080 --> 01:35:29.520 And that plays into 01:35:30.400 --> 01:35:35.360 what we are discussing specifically in this episode because Satan is very 01:35:35.360 --> 01:35:36.800 concerned with strategy. 01:35:36.800 --> 01:35:40.960 Yes, he also cares about tactics because he wants individual Christians to 01:35:40.960 --> 01:35:42.800 sin, individual Christians to fall. 01:35:42.800 --> 01:35:45.920 If he can get you to apostatize all the better. 01:35:45.920 --> 01:35:49.920 And so he does care about tactics, but strategy is the major 01:35:49.920 --> 01:35:51.040 part of this. 01:35:51.040 --> 01:35:54.240 Because he has shifted his strategy over time. 01:35:54.240 --> 01:35:58.080 He went from attacking core tenets of the faith, core parts of 01:35:58.080 --> 01:36:04.160 doctrine, things that are abundantly clear from scripture, to attacking creation. 01:36:04.160 --> 01:36:09.600 He has changed his strategy because the church responded to his earlier 01:36:09.600 --> 01:36:13.200 strategy, responded to his earlier line of attack. 01:36:13.200 --> 01:36:15.760 We repulsed him on those issues. 01:36:15.760 --> 01:36:17.920 So he is attacking something else. 01:36:17.920 --> 01:36:18.960 We cannot keep defending 01:36:20.320 --> 01:36:22.720 where he is no longer really attacking. 01:36:22.720 --> 01:36:26.800 It may be that there's some small amount of action as it 01:36:26.800 --> 01:36:30.640 were still going on there because you don't completely abandon a front. 01:36:30.640 --> 01:36:32.640 But it is not where the bulk of his forces are. 01:36:33.200 --> 01:36:36.240 It's not where he is focusing his effort. 01:36:36.240 --> 01:36:40.400 And so we as Christians have to focus our efforts in repulsing 01:36:40.400 --> 01:36:42.800 Satan where he is attacking the church. 01:36:42.800 --> 01:36:46.000 And by and large, that has not been happening for about a 01:36:46.000 --> 01:36:47.920 century now. 01:36:47.920 --> 01:36:50.080 That is why we discuss these matters. 01:36:50.080 --> 01:36:52.800 That is how we select these topics. 01:36:52.800 --> 01:36:56.560 To some degree, as Will mentioned, as I've previously mentioned, we look 01:36:56.560 --> 01:37:00.720 at where Satan is attacking and it is reactive. 01:37:00.720 --> 01:37:04.880 We are reacting to his attack, but sometimes it is also proactive. 01:37:04.880 --> 01:37:09.520 Sometimes we are looking around at our defenses, figuring out where our 01:37:09.520 --> 01:37:13.360 defenses are weak, or where Satan could potentially infiltrate, where he could 01:37:13.360 --> 01:37:18.000 subvert, where he can attack, and shoring up those places as well. 01:37:18.000 --> 01:37:20.960 Because as I have said twice before in the episode already, the 01:37:20.960 --> 01:37:23.840 life of mankind on this earth is warfare. 01:37:24.160 --> 01:37:27.040 To some degree that's true in the left hand kingdom, but it 01:37:27.040 --> 01:37:29.760 is always true in the right hand kingdom. 01:37:29.760 --> 01:37:32.880 That's not a cause for despair, it's not a cause for thinking 01:37:32.880 --> 01:37:37.840 that all is lost because we can't possibly overcome Satan. 01:37:37.840 --> 01:37:41.840 We can't overcome Satan, but Christ already has. 01:37:41.840 --> 01:37:45.040 And ultimately he is the one fighting the battle. 01:37:45.040 --> 01:37:48.720 We have to do our duty in this life, but Christ is 01:37:48.720 --> 01:37:49.680 there for us and he promises 01:37:50.640 --> 01:37:53.840 that he will not lose us out of his hands, and so 01:37:53.840 --> 01:37:57.520 all that remains for us to do is our duty. 01:37:57.520 --> 01:38:02.560 For theologians, for the commanders, it is deciding the strategy, it is 01:38:02.560 --> 01:38:04.480 deciding out the arguments. 01:38:04.480 --> 01:38:06.080 It is drafting the documents. 01:38:06.080 --> 01:38:10.240 It is figuring out those grand movements that are necessary to win 01:38:10.240 --> 01:38:11.440 the war. 01:38:11.440 --> 01:38:15.120 But for the individual Christian it is a matter of tactics. 01:38:15.120 --> 01:38:18.400 And as I mentioned before, you have to know your scripture, because 01:38:18.400 --> 01:38:22.720 in the moment that will be recalled, that will come back to 01:38:22.720 --> 01:38:25.680 you. Trust me on that, it is absolutely true. 01:38:25.680 --> 01:38:28.000 If you know even just the Psalms, you will constantly 01:38:28.960 --> 01:38:32.480 remember snippets of the Psalms at key moments in your life. 01:38:32.480 --> 01:38:36.880 And so that is why, particularly as Protestants, we are so insistent 01:38:36.880 --> 01:38:39.360 that you need to spend time in Scripture. 01:38:39.360 --> 01:38:42.560 It's not even necessarily that you have to figure out everything in 01:38:42.560 --> 01:38:44.240 scripture for yourself. 01:38:44.240 --> 01:38:49.040 Because what you're doing is providing yourself with the raw material that 01:38:49.040 --> 01:38:51.840 God can use later in your life. 01:38:51.840 --> 01:38:55.520 Because as Christians we have the Holy Spirit, and He guides us 01:38:55.520 --> 01:38:56.480 into truth. 01:38:56.480 --> 01:38:59.360 But the way that He guides us into truth is with the 01:38:59.360 --> 01:39:02.000 Word that God has given us, and so we have to spend 01:39:02.000 --> 01:39:03.040 time in it. 01:39:03.040 --> 01:39:06.960 Just as a soldier trains with his weapon, so a Christian must 01:39:06.960 --> 01:39:10.240 train with his weapon, which is the Word of God. 01:39:10.240 --> 01:39:13.920 And yes, it is also the writings of faithful theologians who have 01:39:13.920 --> 01:39:19.120 drafted, designed arguments in order to repulse Satan on certain topics, and 01:39:19.120 --> 01:39:20.800 in certain ways. 01:39:20.800 --> 01:39:23.280 This is part of the Christian life. 01:39:23.280 --> 01:39:26.560 And quite frankly it should be a cause for celebration because God 01:39:26.560 --> 01:39:31.200 has given us the weapons we need for victory. 01:39:31.200 --> 01:39:34.560 We will not escape temptation in this life, because that is part 01:39:34.560 --> 01:39:36.080 of the fallen world. 01:39:36.080 --> 01:39:40.320 But just because we cannot escape temptation again is not cause for 01:39:40.320 --> 01:39:44.800 despair. Because all we have to do is be faithful and do 01:39:44.800 --> 01:39:45.760 our duty. 01:39:45.760 --> 01:39:49.360 Everything else is left up to God, and we know that God 01:39:49.680 --> 01:39:52.720 never lies and cannot fail.