A Name No Man Knows

0:37 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Corey J. Mahler. And I'm Wo. In this episode, we will be discussing anonymity, pseudonymity, and a number of related issues. You may have noticed that we successfully returned to our intended episode length, which is to say just over an hour. And one final matter you may have noticed a small E next to this episode in your podcast player of choice if the UI happens to show that. That of course is the explicit flag. Now no, we have not turned into a blue podcast and we do not make frequent or really any use of expletives in this episode, and we do not intend to do so, however, we do use the word sodomites and discuss an issue related to well, sodomites,

1:25 and in order to keep our podcast from being banned by the various podcast directories, we are essentially required to flag this episode as explicit. Of course, that is an issue Christians should be willing to discuss and about which they should know. So you need not have any fear in listening to this episode. Although if you have children listening with you, you may have to explain some things if they are attentive children. If you read the show notes and why wouldn't you they're short and generally informative, then you already know that we can be reached via telegram. We have a telegram channel, it is linked in the show notes and on the website. We can be reached via the comment system on the website, and

2:11 additionally we now have an email address for comments, questions, concerns, feedback, what have you. That email address is comments at stone-quire.com. So today's episode is going to be about a topic that uh we've had in mind for a while. Uh it has come to the fore with recent events that have uh spilled out on Twitter and elsewhere. Uh the subject is pseudonymity or anonymity uh versus men who use their full Christian names when they speak online. Uh when people describe us as anonymous or most people online as anonymous, it's really a misnomer. to be anonymous is to have no attribution whatsoever. The definition of anonymous is nameless, wanting a name, without the real name of the author.

3:06 So for example, if someone leaves a pamphlet on your windshield and there's no attribution whatsoever, it doesn't say what group it's from or any sort of byline. That's anonymous. You have no idea where it came from. On the other hand, if you know there's a copyright statement or there's some sort of group name or maybe it says Publius or something. That's a pseudonym. That's not their legal name. It's not necessarily a specific person that you can attribute it to. But you can attribute in generally what they have said to their identity. So I, for example, am not anonymous. I have never been anonymous online. I am pseudonymous. I've had multiple aliases over the years, not because I was up to anything sketchy, but frankly, I kept getting banned from Twitter.

3:52 And so when I came back, I had to change my name or I would immediately get rebanned. And that's an interesting part of all of this because when most people hear I was banned from Twitter, your immediate thought is, well, you know, he must have done something to deserve it. He must have been a real jerk, or he used terrible language, or he was abusive or something. You know, obviously if I was banned, I must have deserved it somehow. Well, what has come out and what is going to come out even further as Elon rips back the veil, is that the people doing the banning, which all of us who were getting banned knew for a fact, the banners were trannies, were sodomites, we're pedophiles, those are the people who didn't want me on Twitter, who didn't

4:34 want me talking. Uh so if you think that you're on the same page as those guys morally, that's probably a bigger question that we can ever answer on one of our other. episodes, but you should spend some serious time thinking about that. So I'm pseudonymous, not because I'm ashamed of anything I say. I mean the fact that I'm now you know putting my voice to it, it makes it inevitable that at some point I will to be doxxed and there will be absolute attribution to everything I've ever said. Which I'm fine with. I'm not fine with being doxxed. That's an evil, murderous thing for people to do. But there is no shame in anything that I have said. The things that I say online are the same things that I

5:13 say in person. Now, the difference between an in-person conversation and an online conversation is that in person you have the individual in front of you, their particular views where they're coming from, and you work with those if you're a normal human being trying to have a conversation. On the internet, it's different. the audience is a generic one. So in a sense, it's easier to speak directly to what I think, not because I'm hiding something in person and I'm blunt and on the internet. It's just that I don't have to assume any particular givens for whom I'm speaking to. So I'm not anonymous. I am a an attributable voice that has everything I've ever said. You can you can look at the various pseudonyms and say, yeah,

6:00 this guy has said all that stuff, and I did. And am I proud of all of it? No. I've said things were stupid. I've I've made tweets in the past that I deleted because I'm like that that was awful. I shouldn't have said that. I'm a human being. And so to say that to that I that I'm not ashamed of what I've posted doesn't necessarily mean I've never said anything idiotic because I I have, or I've never said anything evil because I have. But the salient facts of the reasons that I was banned and will probably be banned again, even with Elon, uh are theological in nature. they come down to why all these fights are happening in the world and frankly why we're doing this podcast. So just at the outset I want to make clear that when

6:43 you say that people like me are anonymous, you're abusing the word. Um 4chan and the other image boards, those are anonymous image boards. When you go to one, you click on a forum or a topic group, you click on a thread, you go down to the bottom, you just type in it whatever you want to say and you hit send, and it appears. There's no login, there's no attribution, you show up as anonymous. That's an interesting case because there's no reputation there. And someone who is keen on reputation will think, oh, well, that's terrible. People can do whatever. But there's a flip side to that also is that you don't get any credit for being some brilliant person or for having certain credentials. You show up on the timeline whatever, whatever your current m thought

7:31 was, and then you vanish. You never get any credit for it. You can't take credit because you're anonymous. That's what anonymous means. Again, I'm pseudonymous. I have years of posting under various pseudonyms that I take credit for all of it. Those are my thoughts. I it's funny. I've I looked back at some of the things I was tweeting two, three years ago, and they're every bit as relevant today as they were then, even though when I was saying it then, a lot of those things I was saying for the first time. In fact, they were many of them were addressing this very question. Uh it's interesting that you and I, Corey, are are the the two people talking about this because you are the least anonymous Lutheran

8:11 out there who's the target of these very attacks. And so I'd like to first ask you as as not a pseudonymous man as is Corey J. Mahler, who puts your name on everything, you are the ideal king. You're the ideal case for what these pastors think everyone should be doing. So tell tell the folks who maybe don't know behind the scenes what it's like being quarry in a world where you say things that you things that you believe that are hated by the world. Yeah, saying that I am not anonymous or even pseudonymous is almost an understatement considering my website is my name. I have my actual profile picture of me on all of my accounts. In fact, it's in front of the brewery I go to after church, no less.

8:59 Pretty much everyone knows I live in East Tennessee. It's not hard to find the church I attend and that's relevant because I have had individuals, pastors, in fact, who disagree with the things we have said, who have contacted my pastor basically in a proxy attempt to harass me. And even beyond that, I mean, there's the obvious social media, you get death threats and things like that. I have those sometimes. I've had particularly lovely DMs show up on Twitter and on Facebook back when I used that, that's been a long time ago though. And so really what those who say they do not want anonymity really pseudonymity, but Those who say they don't want it, they want the ability to harass people. That's what they're saying.

9:47 They don't want to engage with the idea. They just want the potential, they want the power over that person to harass him and if they can, destroy him. I'm a little more insulated than some. I'm not working for, you know, a large law firm as an attorney, and so they can't call my supervisor and get me fired. They absolutely would if they could. And I do not for a second doubt that some of the people from Twitter and elsewhere have complained to the bar. I haven't done anything that violates any rules, so all they've done is annoy some peon at the bar. But it's very obvious the the pattern of behavior in which they're engaging, what it is they want to do. They do not want to have a conversation, as they will sometimes

10:35 say. They don't want to know the man on the other side of the screen. That's not it. They want to be able to locate that man to harass and destroy him. It is malice that animates these men. In some cases, there's also a bit of foolishness there, but ultimately it's malice. Yeah. And the we were talking about this yesterday, the particularly hero hilarious thing about whenever these guys complain about Anands as like these evil slanders, they always ignore the fact that you exist under your real name while simultaneously whenever they refer to you in particular, they they treat you like Vulnabort uh on Twitter. they'll they're afraid to type the name Cory Mahler because they're afraid that somehow you're gonna like appear like Bloody Mary.

11:24 And so they will be able to say I've done that a couple times just to mess with them. But they they were asking for it. Yeah, it's well deserved. But like the they know your name and they're too afraid to say it. You're like Voldemort to these people who are intimately familiar with that ridiculous illusion. they they have a name and then they won't use it, as you said, except to personally target you, to seek harm against you in your life, in your livelihood, and in your church. Uh well they got me banned from Twitter. Yeah. Me. It was fellows my Mahler LCMS account on Twitter. Fellow Christians got that one banned. I'm sure there were some others who were in there as well, but I had two accounts.

12:10 I was not avoiding a ban or a suspension because my main account, which is my name, my full name, I'd had since twenty twelve, so I wasn't really planning that far in advance to avoid a suspension. I had Mahler LCMS. I originally intended to sort of split the two, address politics and such on the main account, and religious topics on the other. I wound up using the other almost exclusively because I was mostly talking about religious topics and very little about politics. But the reason the thing they used to report me to get me banned was they mass reported a particular tweet where I said that the punishment for the production of pornography should be capital punishment. I said they should be executed.

12:57 That is a call for a change in the law, of course, but they all mass reported it as a threat. Which of course is bearing false witness against me, but they used that in order to get me banned, and that was largely fellow Christians My main account got banned, because I said something about the Eastern Orthodox and somehow someone brought it to the attention of Rod Dreyer. And I know he's the one who got me banned because, for those who aren't familiar with how this works, when you get banned, suspended, whatever they want to call it, you receive an email with the reason. Now it's probably a vague reason, it may not be a relevant reason, but you get an email that contains a reason. If you are reported by a blue check because they have a

13:39 special back channel, you receive nothing. Your account is just all of a sudden suspended, you can no longer log in. And that is what happened to my main account right after I interacted with Rod Dreyer. And I have the screenshots, that's easy to find. Now briefly I'd like to apologize to our audience for this extremely online talk. There's a lot of stuff that happens on Twitter and Facebook and elsewhere that the reason that we're talking about this, this is not sour grapes over our accounts. This is about the much more fundamental issue of what is calls falsely called the culture war, where people confuse theology with politics and vice versa, or they they're not able to understand where the line

14:28 is, if there's a line at all. So the reason we're talking about this is that we're trying to ultimately talk about where that line is between theology and politics, because it's not where these guys are drawing it. And for better or worse, these things play out online. So while a lot of stuff happens on Twitter and elsewhere, we we never want this podcast to be about internet drama, about e-drama. Like that's that's exhausting. I don't want to hear it. And I know you don't want to hear it if you care about this podcast. So please don't mistake what we're saying as being about uh scenario counts. Whatever. But the is as Corey just said, the fact that Christians have gone after us to remove us from being able to speak at

15:09 all because they don't like what we say about theology, that's much more deeply root rooted than just internet talk. Like that's not that's not about any particular website. That's a fundamental question of how the church is to operate, which is what we're talking about today. So I've already defined uh pseudonymity, but I'd just like to give you a few examples of if you think that pseudonyms are evil or they're a a bad thing, I anyone who knows etymology knows that pseudo means false in Greek. Now, that's in English, that's a has a very negative connotation. Say something is false is the opposite of true. So that's gross. Like I I you won't find someone who's more obsessed with the truth than me.

15:53 So for me to be saying something that pseudonyms are great or pseudonyms are fine, you could easily Think falsely that I am somehow being a hypocrite. Pseudonyms are aliases. they're nicknames. They're fictitious names, stage names, pen names, uh their regnal names as well. So it's very common for kings in every pope to assume a new name when they ascend to their office. Most people listening have probably heard of uh Jorge Mario Bergoglio. You've all heard of Pope Francis. That's his pseudonym. He's not Francis. he's Jorge. But in his office, he has assumed the pseudonym. Now in his case, it's n there's no disconnect between the two identities, but the identity of Pope has with it that association where

16:48 a pseudonym goes along with it. It's also common, as I mentioned, you know, stage names and pen names. You know, everyone knows Mark Twain. Almost as many know Samuel Clemens. The man was Samuel, the author was Mark. They were the same guy. Uh very few of you probably would recognize the same Isir Danielovich, but you all know Kirk Douglas. Uh no one would know who I was talking about when I mentioned Bernard Schwartz, but everybody knows who Tony Curtis is. Uh some people might recognize the name Nin Nimrata Randowa, but you all know Nikki Haley. Uh and here's a great one. Elisa Zinovenia Zinov Ven I could say this earlier, Zinoven Venevina Rosenbaum, uh who became Alice O'Connor and then became Ayn Rand.

17:40 Now nobody knows Elisa, but everybody knows Ayn. In the case of those people, those were all Jews who came into Western countries, they shape shifted into assuming our names so that when you heard Bernard Schwartz you think, well that guy's probably a Jew. Tony Curtis, like that's the that's the waspiest name imaginable. So or you know, maybe maybe he's uh Irish or Italian, but you wouldn't think that he was from his the land of his origin and the people of his origin. So those are people who assume pseudonyms in order to shape shift. I have a pseudonym just because that's how the internet works. I've been on the internet for decades and have had I've lost how many count how many pseudonyms I've had.

18:23 Again, not because like I'm covering my tracks. It's just that my identity online is not it's just a point or two to my voice. So for example, you Corey, you and I are in a group of a bunch of Lutherans, you know, fifty odd guys. I I know your name and I won know one or two other guys' Christian names, the names that are written in the book of life from bet for Eternity, as we talked about last week. But the vast majority, I only know pseudonyms, and some of them have to change their pseudonyms fairly often. Now this is an interesting case because one of the things that we do in this group is we will regularly pin prayer requests for guys, you know, sometimes half a time, dozen times a day,

19:07 where someone is about to have the birth of a child or the child is sick, or they're looking for a wife, or they have a parent who's sick or dying. Uh all sorts of things that happen in real life that are consequential, that are meaningful for prayer. And in every one of those cases, it's somebody with a pseudonym who's saying, hey guys, please pray for me. Now, because we understand what pseudonyms are for, we don't think, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna ask God to pray for Knight George and his new baby. I hope God knows who I'm talking about, because I don't. Like that's nonsense. I know who he is. I know things about him. I just don't know his name. I don't care about his name. And it's not apathy, it's that to me he's KG and he's

19:54 a close friend. God knows who he is. So when I take Knight George to God in prayer, I don't have any doubt that God knows exactly who I'm talking about. And the same is true of my pseudonym. God knows exactly who I am when I'm posting on the internet. And these pastors, these people who get angry that someone is posting without accountability, they they want accountability, they want to hold somebody's feet to the fire. Is though I think that I'm tricking God by using a different name than the one that's written in the book of life. I have no such delusions. I'm accountable for err every careless word. Like I said, I've had careless words and sometimes I'm ashamed of them. Like, nope, I gotta get rid of that because that that

20:36 was I should not have done that. That was shame before God because I said it and God saw me see it. The fact that it was attributed online to a pseudonym is meaningless between me and my creator, and the fact that some pastor who gets mad at me doesn't know my name is totally immaterial. These as you said earlier, these guys never want to actually discuss the things we want to discuss. They will think that they're slandering you by calling you slavery, Lutheran. And I agree with you completely on that subject. We'll do an episode probably pretty soon about slavery and what Gaz says about slavery, because it's not what these men say, it's not what the world says. But rather than dealing with the text of scripture, they just want

21:17 to just go straight for ad hominem and discrediting the person rather than talking about the ideas. And so pseudonymity is valuable in that case because it keeps keeps the attacks away from the person and forces the discussion onto the ideas. As I've said before and elsewhere, I have no credentials. I'm not a pastor, I don't know Greek, I have no training for any of this, and I freely admit that. And if you think that that disqualifies me from being heard, then don't listen. That's fine. If in spite of the fact that I have no credentials, you hear what I say and think, huh, that's interesting. Or wow, I really think this is valuable. That's between you and your s understanding of Scripture through what the

22:00 Holy Spirit is revealed to you, that you would hear what I say and yes and say, yeah, I think that I agree with that. It's got nothing to do with credentials. So guys who need their collar in their avatar online and they and they need to have their titles in order to be recognized, I think is a very different kind of uh of hiding behind something. They accuse me of hiding behind a pseudonym. Frankly, I think most of them are hiding behind their collars. Well, as mentioned, that is one of the benefits of pseudonymity, is that the only thing that matters is what you said. And so those who are pseudonymous cannot make an appeal to credentials or to experience or to anything outside of what they have said,

22:46 and so it is wholly about the argument. And in this case, we are basing everything we say on scripture. And so those who are making these points under a pseudonymous account are simply making the point. They are not saying, well, I'm a pastor, so you have to listen to me or I have this degree or that degree or this knowledge. Yes, in my case I'm obviously not pseudonymous. But I am still making an appeal to the things I have said. You will note that on my my website and on my accounts, I'm not adding all the letters that I could add after my name. I did for a little while simply to annoy a handful of people that really found that noxious because it amused me. But I've removed all that stuff because it's not actually particularly relevant

23:35 to the things I'm saying. Yes, if the topic of, you know, European Union antitrust comes up, okay fine. My credentials are now relevant. My training is relevant. But when it comes to these things, we are appealing to the Word of God, we are appealing to those who have the Spirit to hear God's voice in the things we are saying. And so the credentials are not relevant. Is being a pastor relevant to some of this stuff in some way? Well, certainly when it comes to the stricter judgment. But in a very real way, the only thing that is relevant is whether or not the man who is speaking is repeating God's word. He may have whatever sort of clothing he wants on, he may have whatever degrees he wants, but what matters is what he

24:24 is saying, and being pseudonymous is actually in some way a benefit with regard to that. And it's not unprecedented within the faith healer earlier. I mentioned we have a friend who goes by Knight George for obvious reasons. That's Junker Jorg was one of Luther's pseudonyms when he was pursued by men who were trying to murder him. Yeah, and many many people don't actually, I think that many people would not actually know who Junker Jorg is. They don't know that story. But after the Diet of Worms in 1521, Friedrich the Wise, one of Luther's patrons, had him kidnapped, so to speak. He had him intercepted in the countryside on the way back from the diet because he had basically just been declared declared

25:16 you know, an outlaw. In the old sense of the term, someone could kill him without consequence. And so in order to protect him, they kidnapped him, spirited him away to Wartburg, and he assumed the name of Junker Jorg, more or less Knight George. It's a little difference in emphasis there, but it's close enough of a translation. And so he lived, essentially as a minor noble in Vartburg Castle, in rooms that had traditionally been used for minor nobles who had basically fallen out of favor, but not so far that they needed to be executed. So it was not quite prison, but sort of house arrest. But while he was there, he had two squires who waited on him. He lived as a minor noble. Incidentally, he may have put on a little weight while he was

25:59 there, because he switched from a monk's diet to a minor noble's diet, very different thing. He interacted with other nobles, but while he was there, operating under this pseudonym, he translated the Bible. That's essentially the first time you really have the Bible in the vernacular being widespread. Obviously, yes, Greek at the time would have been vernacular, but it no longer was. Neither was Latin. And so we have he also wrote two volumes worth of his work His works while he was in that castle. And so we have an instance in our own history, and this is the case for all Protestants, not just Lutherans, but obviously particularly for Lutherans, of a man operating under a pseudonym and a And

26:47 achieving a great deal of good, and doing it for a perfectly legitimate reason. In his case, he would have been killed if he had been found, if he'd been using his name and been discovered. Today, the stakes aren't really that much different. No, the Emperor is not going to literally drag you into the town square and chop off your head if you express these unpopular opinions online and are found out. But the agents of our evil government are certainly going to find you, are going to get you fired, are going to make your life miserable, are going to send you death threats, may very well cause you physical harm. In some cases, this stuff does actually eventuate in murder. Because some of our adversaries, some of our enemies, are willing to

27:35 go that far. And that's the reason that we're talking about this is that there's there are real world consequences to these pastors claiming that you must unmask yourself or you are a coward. Uh one of my first exposures to the the spirit behind what a lot of these pastors think was a year or so ago when I was on Jonathan Fisk's uh Discord or Fiskord. He obviously is the admin. There are like six hundred people on the thing. I was in a channel with uh Adam Koontz and a number of other pastors whom I respect. And one day there was a conversation and I I think I don't remember the details, I think there was like a disagreement between me and another member, which was was pretty typical. I was I was there basically to be hated, but to to

28:22 speak the truth in a place where maybe a few people would hear it. Anyway, something happened and uh Jonathan Fisk falsely accused me of a sin in front of everyone, in front of hundreds of people. He said that I had just sinned. And the accusation was not borne out by any of the evidence. So that made her slanderous. And because he's not only a pastor, but he is the admin, that made it powerful slander. Like it's one thing if I as just a nobody on Discord say th something mean about somebody else. Nobody cares. When the admin and the pastor who's it's named after says something, everybody cares. So I rebuked him. I said, that was false. You need to repent and you need to take that back. You've harmed my reputation.

29:07 And And his resp the only reason I'm telling this story, it's not that I'm mad that someone was mean to me online. I remember it because I learned something very important that day from his response. Fisk responded by scoffing at me and essentially saying, I don't even know your name, you're not a real person. I d I can't possibly sin against you because I don't know who you are. And that was the end of it. Like as far as I was concerned, as far as he was concerned, because I was pseudonymous, he could do any manner of harm to my reputation, which is a real thing. I have a reputation because all of my comments online are attributable to a pseudonym, but to me. And he said, that's nothing. I can rob you of your reputation because it's not even you.

29:51 You're not even a real human being unless you re use your real name. This is something that uh played out again this year in what was the inspiration for our very first episode, where we talked about Mrs. Jonathan Lackey's book that was published by CPH that was teaching theology to the church. And Corey, you and my and I, our our friend group were the first people within Lutheranism to discuss this. We discuss it in private. And like, what's going on at CPH? Why are they why are they unable to find pastors to teach theology? Like, do we have a shortage? No, there's not a shortage of pastors. There may be a shortage of theologians, but that's a separate problem. But why is it that the the organ of our synod is

30:42 propping up a 25-year-old girl to teach theology? Jesus didn't begin teaching theology until he was 30. But we disregard that example. He's like, well, okay, this girl, she's got a ton of gifts. she might even be better at Jesus that teaching theology. So she's upheld and she's given a publishing deal, and her book is propped up and issues, etc. makes it the book of the month, and everybody loves it. And some of our friends are like this doesn't seem to be consistent with scripture. Let's go look at where scripture says that I do not permit a woman to speak. She is to be silent in the church. And the discussion was, you know, well, does in the church mean that she can't preach? And basically all the pastors concluded that there's nothing in the Bible

31:24 that prevents a girl from doing anything except vesting, giving communion, and standing in the pulpit and preaching. Everything else is up for grabs. Now most of them will deny that, but that's functionally what their arguments are. Whenever they look to first Timothy two and first Corinthians fourteen, they see those texts strictly as protecting their pastoral office and not being about headship. We disagreed. So we started discussing it online and saying, hey, look at this book, look what's going on. And it quickly spread because it was rightly controversial that a girl is teaching theology. And I want to read just a couple uh clips from what appeared on the Godest Stein's blog and on Larry Bean's blog as

32:07 a follow-up. The first The first clip here that I'm gonna read for you is from John Bussman. He's a pastor. Uh, in the middle of his post, he just dis mentioned as an aside that he's Mrs. Jonathan Lackey's pastor. He really buried the lead there by launching into a multi-page diatribe that I'll get into here and failing to mention that it was his own parishioner he was defending so forcefully. Nothing wrong with defending her, but say up front, I'm her pastor, let me tell you what I think. By both of them he's also defending himself. Yeah he's the one who either correctly or incorrectly taught her husband and her. Yeah, absolutely. by us questioning the nature of the headship of a woman teaching

32:55 theology, we were implicitly questioning his headship, John John Busman's headship as her pastor. And so you're right, he was absolutely defending himself indirectly. So here's what he said. So why the backlash? I actually think it's simply people have absolutely nothing better to do than to anonymously troll people and try to discourage them from fulfilling their vocation. We have those types enter into the goddess blog comment section all the time. You know the types. There are a couple things there. Anonymously is always connected to troll. If you're anonymous, you're automatically a troll. Uh this is Peter Slayton's big thing. He's a social media manager for the LCMS. He goes around calling people trolls all the time.

33:37 He's blocked numerous pastors in our own synod from the official LCMS website because they follow trolls on Twitter. So see this is this troll thing, this slander of calling someone a troll is exactly what Jonathan Fisk did to me. He said, I don't know your name, I don't like something you said. Rather than apologizing for slandering you, I'm gonna label you a uh pseudonymous troll and then you're nothing. That's exactly what these other pastors, that's what Busman did and what bit Larry's gonna do in a minute. Say these are trolls. They're not really human beings. And the other thing that will be a subject for another day, but note he said trying to discourage them, meaning girls, from fulfilling

34:16 their vocation, meaning teaching theology to men. Now that's a that's a textbook case of of question begging because that's what they do. They say, well, obviously God gave her the gift to teach, so if she's teaching, it must be from God. And if you don't like her teaching, you must be opposed to God. Those are the rhetorical tricks that get played in these fights. Uh in a subsequent post on Godestine's uh Burnell Eckert, uh in this is mostly written by Larry Bean, but Burnell posted it under his name with credit to Larry. He said this. Father Busman's boat posts brought to our attention to the butt attention to this which is good, not only a question of where the scriptural line is drawn in the real world regarding women teaching and

34:59 publishing in their own time, place and culture, but also regarding the roles of men and women women and chivalry quote in uh colon, chivalry chivalry, the swarming of a woman by anonymous men, as recently happened in the Twitter world, is not chivalrous Christian masculine behavior, and we all agree on that. This is fascinating for a few reasons. One is We never said a single word to Molly on Twitter that was hostile or abrasive or overly critical. I when when you use Twitter, you there's an advanced search where you can look and see everyone who has addressed another account by name. We looked at all the posts that anyone, anywhere on the internet had said to Mrs. Lackey, there wasn't a single thing that was mean that was hateful.

35:51 the only comment that we found was from one of our friends who said something nice to her, even in a thread where he was criticizing the fact that this book had been published. So for Larry and Burnell to say To say the the swarming of a woman on Twitter is slander. It is a lie. There is zero evidence for it. And it's one of these lies that these guys are happy to propagate because again, we've been labeled as trolls. So if it's a troll, no holds barred. You can say whatever you want about a troll because they're not really human. There's no there's no question of sinning against a troll. So when they make those slanderous accusations as pastors, as the guys who write the goddess blog, everyone who doesn't know anything automatically assumes

36:35 that that actually happened. Most people believe that people were saying mean things to misses Lackey and that. The internet. It literally never happened. I want to emphasize that. It never happened. And yet these men will repeat this over and over again, and they're free to do so in their minds morally because the people speaking were pseudonymous. If they had not been pseudonymous, what would they have done? They would have called their pastors and say, you need to put this person on the lesser ban unless they repent for this sin where there was no sin. And they know that. So that's why we're talking about this, because when someone m makes accusations a sem against a person without his name, they think they

37:20 can't possibly sin against them. So when you see doxing and you see threats against livelihood and even flesh, they think it's okay, even though it's exactly what Antifa does. The post on Goddess Blog goes on. Finally, it's been our policy for several years not to allow anonymous posts. We decided we need to enforce it. There may have been a need for anonymity in discussing political and hot button social topics, but when it comes to discussing our faith, we are called upon to confess. Further putting your name on something requires that you put more thought into your comment, to choose your words and your accusations more carefully, and subject subjects you to consequences within the church that you be

38:02 held accountable by your pastor in the case of pastors by your brothers in the ministerium. So that goes directly to what we had just said. They don't want to discuss the ideas. They want punishment. They presume to act as judge, jury, and executioner in these theological discussions, and they seek the destruction of the men with whom they disagree. There is another m m word that that Larry used in there, shovel varous, and that absolutely came from him. He's a southerner. He's very proud of his southern heritage, and I respect that. Half my family is from the South. I get it. But I think it's ironic that in a discussion of a woman teaching theology, Larry and others would suddenly invoke these terms of of chivalry and well, you can't say mean things

38:50 to a girl. If you assume for the case of for the sake of argument that it is legitimate for a girl to be teaching theology, she has stepped into the ring. She has made herself subject to criticism, as every theologian is subject to criticism for what they say and whether they have the right to say it. So ironically, by begging chivalry as a defense of her honor, he was actually agreeing with us that she has no business talking about theology in the first place. And uh on Larry's own blog, he repl repeated a week later, her pastor complained that she was being anonymously attacked on social media and he was angry and protective this member of his flock. The nature of some social media map platforms lends to swarming by

39:37 trolls. This is where we are right now as men, who indeed are supposed to lead the church, refuse to use their real names, but instead approach theology with a mindset of a cowering keyboard warrior using a pseudonym. When it comes to the Christian faith, we should not resort to pseudo anything. We come from a long tradition of men and women, clergy and laity, willing to confess and take the consequences of their countercultural confession of Christ. Be strong and show yourself a man, O Christian Now he said some other things in the article. We did actually defend that there's an appropriate place for pseudonymity, but he specifically carved out of theology as a place where it's utterly impermissible, which is interesting when you look back to the Luther case,

40:21 where clearly Luther was speaking about theology, was writing on theology, and he was doing so pseudonymously. Now pastors live sheltered lives, particularly pastors who go straight from seminary to or go straight from college to seminary to the parish, they never l live a single day in the real life. So they don't know what's like to have an HR department, to have diversity, equity, and inclusion training, to have annual multi-hour brainwashing sessions where you were forced to confess that sodomy and transgenderism and all of these other demonic evils are normative and tolerable and necessary parts of life. So this is where we're talking about drawing the line between theology and politics.

41:17 You know, if someone is in the workplace and they're told that they have to call a coworker who is a man by his assumed name as a woman and his new identity. Is that political or is that theological? Is that a lie he's allowed to tell because it's in the workplace? And, you know, really it's not about John 316, so so what if he calls John Jeanette? That's theological. That is a confession of the faith. Because to call a man a woman is to deny the creator of that person. That's a first article denial. When I was taught as a child, I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible, that applies to me as a man and to someone else as a woman.

42:03 And so for someone to come along and say, you need to call this man a woman. That's the most profound theological statement that I can make in this day. Because your employer is not attacking justification. He's not asking you to say, Well, so do you think let's see how you can save yourself before God? And it's not even a pinch of incense. He said, Do you need to deny your creator by saying that this person was made in a different image? Well, it Satan has learned over the intervening centuries. We had the knockdown drag out fight that actually culminated in more than one war over justification. Satan is still attacking that with regard to the many false churches that exist, but he's not attacking us with that.

42:50 Because you are not going to get Lutherans who deny Article IV. That's just not going to happen. But you don't need to do that if you can get them to go ahead and deny the first article of the Creed. Because if you don't have the Father, well you don't have the Son. The same as if you don't have the Son, you don't have the Father, because God is one three and one, of course, but that is how Satan is attacking the church today. It's how he's attacking Christians. He is attacking us with ontology, a word that people are going to hear a lot from this podcast, but probably not very much from anywhere else. The nature of things matters, because God is the author of that nature. Yes, our nature is fallen because of sin, it is corrupted,

43:36 but God is still the author of what that nature was intended to be, and in so far as our nature reflects what God intended it to be, it is directly God's good creature, God's good creation. And when we deny that, it is, as you said, a denial of God. You cannot say that black is white and white is black. Woe to those who call good evil and evil good. God is very clear about this in Scripture you do not get to deny the reality of things, and continue to claim that you are in fact still a Christian, because you've denied your Creator. And all of these fights that are called social justice or critical theory, uh these things are coming from the so-called left-hand kingdom, which is a a dichotomy that we need to dissect and and put

44:31 in its proper place in a future episode. But when pastors like Larry say, Well, if you're talking about the faith, you gotta use your name, well, it's talking about the faith to talk about sodomites and the fact that sodomites reproduce by raping children. Uh one of the other pastors who has recently been posting some some better things is uh Hans Feeney, uh the Lutheran satire guy. He's uh his last name is Feeney, but his grandf grandfather was a Preuce. He's a member of the the Preuiss uh dynasty, which I say lovingly, not not with any criticism. Um He's probably among the weakest of the prices. The current crop, the guys like Mark and Christian are outstanding. Uh Rolf is one of the older ones.

45:17 he's a great man who will boldly speak the truth about these things. And so recently uh there was a there was a comment from uh Hans on Twitter specifically talking about the fact that sodomites reproduced by raping children, which is a fact. I've had hate eight I've had nine homosexual friends over the course of my life. Every single one of them had stories about their first sexual encounter with an adult when they were between 12 and 14. And they became sodomites themselves because they that was the easiest way to cope with having been raped as a child. You they were groomed first. Like it wasn't it was an overtly forcible rape, but no one sane would agree that a twelve year old can consent to having

46:01 sex. And yet that was the case in each of these. And so now that's anecdotal, but it's also a hundred percent anecdotes. And that is borne out by the surveys and by the discussions and by just talking to these people. They will all be open if they talk long enough about the fact that their first encounters with men of the same sex were as children. It's literally how they reproduce. Nobody wants to talk about that in the church because we we want to talk about LGBTQIA identity. That is such a perverse and demonic acronym. It should never be in the mouth of any Christian, and God forgive me for having said it. But I want to point out the fact that when you use those the rainbow flag multicolored

46:50 aspect of well sa sexuality is just this huge it's a variety of things. It can be anything. It cuts to the heart of theology. It cuts to the heart of God made man and woman and gave them to each other to be fruitful and multiply. And all of these perversions, which are not only damnable, but God repeatedly can't commands the physical destruction of those who commit those things. Homosexual men will actually go even farther than just discussing those things because as a psychological defense mechanism that's part of it, they will actually go so far as to brag about how young they were, when they were molested, when they were raped. And a lot of pastors, I don't think, have ever been around that subset of the population.

47:37 They don't understand these things. And another thing, to go back to when you said that pastors are at least those who are first career, not second career, not going to be as insulated, but depending on the age, still fairly insulated from what's happening today, they don't realize that what you just said, and by my sitting here, what I have said, and I agree with everything you said, to be explicit about it, but simply by my sitting here, if I had just remained silent, I would be fired, if I were working at a large corporation or even a medium sized one because someone would report me to HR and HR would fire me just because you said it and I was sitting here in silence. Because I said what is in scripture.

48:22 And that's where the fundamental disconnect is, where these pastors don't understand all this stuff is theology. Christian nationalism is theology, it's not politics. Just as whether or not a woman can be writing a theological book is theology, it's not politics. Whether a man can have sex with a man is not politics, it's theology. We have these artificial lines that we've begun to permit to be drawn by Satan in our world, and they're deliberately hemming us into a corner where there's effectively nothing left of the Christian life except for talking about John 3.16. And otherwise just shut up and mind your own business. And that's effectively what these pastors are doing. You had mentioned second career.

49:04 And I it you're absolutely right, that the timing is vital. To his credit, Larry Bean as a second career guy, he he originally had a uh I don't want to say a real job, but he had a professional job. So he has experienced the real world to some extent. But that was 15 years ago, going on 20 years ago before he went to seminary. I can tell you from the group of guys that we have now, we have a we have a good mix of Zoomers, millennials, and Xers in the group. I've said this repeatedly. The 20-year-old guys in our group, the things that happened to them in college today are so much worse than that the 25-year-olds remember that they have a hard time believing it. Now imagine someone who's got another 20 years on that.

49:49 You have no frame of reference. So a pastor who's been out of the workplace for fifteen years literally has no idea what the workplace is like today when it comes to these things. He knows what it's like to have a boss, he knows what it's like to have coworkers and to navigate office politics and that stuff. But the specific theological warfare that's being waged by Satan against the consciences of Christians in the workplace everywhere, pastors have no idea. And pastors are insulated from this stuff. Now And I mentioned Hans. he alluded to these statistics about homosexuals reproducing by raping children. When someone mentioned, once someone challenged him in the comments, he then backpedaled. And so I'm just speculating.

50:31 You know, why aren't we seeing any of those numbers? I'm not gonna make this claim with certainty because I I wasn't there, but I f it is my firm belief based on supposition that Hans got that and many or many of his other good recent takes on Twitter in the last two months or so from Price Chat. I think that Mark and Christian have been an influence on the things that he said online recently because they're things he's never said before and they're things that you and I say all the time. They're things that are quote unquote based. They're things that we get you fired in the workplace for saying them. He's recently been saying them, which is good because when we say and we get banned from Twitter, he has a he has

51:11 immunity. And we get banned from Twitter by Christians for saying them. But I'm glad that someone is at least saying them and they're being heard because they're vitally important. Um you wanna talk a little bit about the the Stephen Wolfe book and the Thomas A. Court affair? Sure, a little bit. Uh just before that, I want to mention that I think it was two or maybe three years ago at this point, I got into the exact same issue, the fact that homosexual sodomites reproduce by raping children with Dopani, uh Simoyoki, a Finnish pastor, Lutheran pastor, and I made a statement along the Along the same lines what we've been saying, and he pushed back against it because his initial reaction, his innate sense of what he needs to do is he

51:59 wants to come to the defense of impenitent sinners against a Christian. And I, of course, doubled down, but that's that is an ongoing battle that we have been having all over the place. And pastors are often either not fighting on the correct side, or simply just not fighting at all. But to to move on to what's happened with a chord, and you'll have to fill in some of the details, I think you may have followed this more closely than I have. But essentially what happened in is a co host of Ours Politica, made some comments true comments, by and large, some of them may have been it maybe a little uncharitable, harshly worded, but true statements, on a pseudonymous account. It came out that it was his account.

52:48 He's now admitted that in a post. And essentially Twitter and other social media set up a lynch mob to destroy his life. To get him fired, to have him lose his income. This is a man who has wife and is it one child or something? I think he has a couple, based on that. Yeah, you may have may have a couple, yeah. But their whole goal was just to utterly destroy this man for saying things that fifty years ago, sixty, seventy, however long, not very long ago, you could have said on TV, and no one would have battened an eye. That would have just been a normal thing to hear, and a lynch mob of insane people, evil, wicked people, decided to destroy him, many of whom prefaced their comments with as a Christian and then

53:39 went on to say the most vile things about someone who actually is a Christian in order to destroy him. Yep. And uh the reason that the Ars Politica podcast connection is relevant is that the his co-host, Thomas's co-host of Ars Politica, is Stephen Wolf, who wrote the recent book on Some book on Christian nationalism, which is a subject we had just a couple weeks ago. So they're trying this whole thing has been a proxy attack on Christian nationalism By evil people. They see Christian nationalism as a subject, as so dangerous to the satanic work that the devil and all of his demons are successfully advancing in the world. The they used a proxy attack of the guy, his co host, like Thomas Acord didn't, as far as I know, contribute much of

54:37 anything to the book. He just happened to be a friend of Stephen Wolf, the author. It was so important to Satan to destroy anyone's ability to even think about Christian nationalism that they that they destroyed a man, they cost him his livelihood right in the holiday season. And then when someone set up a uh give, send go, which is like GoFundMe, except for Christians, set up a give f give, send go charity drive for him. Christians then waged a campaign against Give Send Go to deny him receiving that money that was charity from other Christians who wanted to help his family because he just lost his job. U Uh which is to say they actually want him to starve. Literally starve. That's murder.

55:22 That is attempted murder. It is murder in the heart which is then manifesting itself as murder of the person. And it's being done because the things that he sa as you said, some of the things like I wouldn't have phrased it that way, but the points that he was trying to get to on his anonymous account are mostly things we've already said just in the few short podcasts we've had about Christian nationalism, about race, about about the fact that a nation is a race. If you talk about nationalism at all, you are necessarily talking about racism, about kinism, about belief that blood and soil go together and that that is scriptural. So that's what's under attack here. It's ironic that the people who are so hysterical against nationalism, they're

56:09 implicitly advocating empire because that's what the United States is today. It's an empire. It is a multi multi-ethnic empire, not in the sense that we have colonies in other places, but it is an empire of nations under one political umbrella called the United States. If we were a nation, there would be one racial group under its own dominion. They also do kind of have colonies, but that's a discussion for another time. Yeah, it is. Yeah. But again, like if if you go back and listen to what we said in the Christian nationalistm episode, it was going further than they ever go on Mars Politico, and I think further than Thomas was comfortable going in his public life. But the things that he believed were grounded in scripture because they were

57:00 true. And he was a headmaster of a Christian school, and so it's understandable that he would have been afraid to tell the truth under his real name. Not because he's well, it's it's tragic the way he handled the situation. He de did everything wrong. Because what he did after after Rod Dre and others doxxed him and attributed his anon his pseudonymous comments to his public persona rather than saying, yes, I said those things, I stand by them, maybe I should have said something a little bit differently, but the principle of what I said is absolutely true. He threw himself under the bus. He said, Oh, I was what I said was evil. I was in a dark place at that time, which is a horrible thing to say, because that seeds the entire frame to the

57:50 left where it goes back to this whole loser anonymous troll thing to say that oh someone can only believe what he said about race if you're a loser, if you're in a dark place, if you maybe need to put under a sa psychiatric hold, those are the only people who are gonna possibly believe these things. That throws all of us under the bus. So I wish he just kept his mouth shut because he did more harm in the aftermath than by anything he ever actually said. But these are the consequences. We will need an entire episode really on tactics and frame and related topics since quite frankly Christians are terrible at it. And it's a problem. Actively bad. Yeah. the the Christian impulse to apologize, to confess is weaponized

58:40 by Satan in these cases, where Satan gets us confessing to things that aren't sins against God. And as soon as you do that, you have lost God. You have made a false confession. You are offering sacrifices. Yes. It is a it is a first commandment violation to act to offer sacrifices to other gods, which is exactly what all these confessions of false sins are. But again, this goes back to the central point of this episode that Thomas Acord was a public figure on Ars Political and he was already hated for some of the things he said. But when his co host published a book about Christian nationalism, the things that his that Thomas had also said about Christian nationalism on Twitter under a pseudonym suddenly became a way to destroy it.

59:29 And the things that they want to destroy are the things that are true. And this get back gets back to what we were talking about earlier with Hans making his comments and Larry calling us cowards, me in particular a coward, because Larry doesn't know my name. So he can't call my pastor and say mean things about me. He has to just call me a coward online, which is fine, that's his right. It's sin, but we all have the right quote unquote to sin. The reason I said earlier that these pastors I think are hiding behind their collars is that there's an implicit presumption in the claims from men like Larry and Hans when they say, well, if you just used your name, you would proclaim the truth boldly.

1:00:12 The implicit claim that they are making is that with their collars on, with the real names, they're making the boldest proclamation. And then no one could possibly make a bolder proclamation than they are. And that's what's really playing out here. Because someone who's pseudonymous says something that is quote unquote further to the right than these men, rather than as in the case of the Mrs. Lackey episode, rather than saying, Well, yeah, it is actually a question whether girls should be teaching theology, what do they do? They punch right because suddenly there is a man who has emerged who is trying to be more godly than them. And there's nothing that pisses off a Christian faster than someone who

1:00:57 seems to be less with sin than them. Now, on one hand, there is the obvious scriptural warrant against a claiming to be without sin, which none of us would do. I I could start an entire podcast separately spin-off from this about what a terrible person I have been in my life and all the s the sins I continue to struggle with. The fact that I'm here talking should never In anyone's mind, imply that I think I'm free from any degree of sin. I know I'm terrible. I'm less terrible than I was a few years ago because I've begun to confront these things more directly. And I've begun to confront these things more directly by looking to scripture. And when I look to scripture, I find things like women

1:01:38 to remain silent in the churches. I find things like women are to have their heads covered in church, which is another scandal that's brewing in the Lutheran church. When men who are not pastors find these things that were, as you said, they were the norm before Vatican II. They were the norm in all of Christianity, not just Lutheranism. Women covered their heads in the 50s. Women didn't vote. What a preposterous idea of voting in church. it's despicable. Yet these things that are normative today that are defended vehemently are they're anachronistic. they don't they have no place in a church where these things have never had any any scriptural justification. So men read the Bible. They say, Hey Pastor, this isn't what we're doing.

1:02:30 What's the deal? Rather than the pastors having their consciences convicted by the Holy Spirit, they punch right, they attack right hard. They won't go after the Alka pastors that they're buddy buddy with on Twitter for having been ordained by women dressed up in drag as tranny pastors like Ryan Cordle, who's good friends with lots of Buffalo Twitter. They won't go after them, even though they're an open or unrepentant sin, and they are in a synod that is going to hell collectively unless they become Christian again. No, they punch right. They go after the guy who says, Hey, maybe we should be doing better than we are doing. Because for you to say that a Christian could possibly sin is the worst thing you can ever do.

1:03:14 To say that someone could possibly sin these men take as evil when it's not. It is Christian love. Is there a bad way to do it? Yeah, absolutely. There's there're terrible ways to say, Amen, I think you're sinning. We try to avoid those and we it sometimes it's a struggle to avoid them, but that gives no one the excuse not to make the clear confession of the faith that is commanded of every Christian. And if you can't confess boldly, shut your mouth. I don't fault someone who doesn't want to lose his job and his mortgage from saying nothing. But if you want to wade into these waters, you better say what God says. You better not attack men because they're doing a better job than you. And that's what we're facing today.

1:03:57 And that's what the pseudonymity fight is about. Is it the the men who were caught anonymous, the pseudonymous men, who are speaking with the clarity of scripture that the pastors will not, they're putting them to shame. And I think these pastors know that they are shamed by the men who are speaking more clearly than they are. How many of these pastors who claim to be boldly confessing everything in scripture have women voting in their congregations. I would wager that's probably the majority, if not all of them. I don't know. I you know it you can you can find it on some of their websites. But that's an evil thing. That's an evil anachronistic thing that has no place in the church and yet it is normed today.

1:04:38 And so these guys who are like, Well, you and Anns, you should you should boldly confess like I am, and then they keep their mouth shut when this stuff is going on Give me a break. That's not a bold confession. That's hiding behind your collar. Well and how many are communing women who support abortion or men who support abortion or open communists or any of a number of extremely high profile, obvious, explicit sins. How many pastors even address the issue of abortion? at most you may get a tangential throwaway line in a sermon that implies that maybe abortion isn't such a good idea. But how often are pastors actually addressing the things that they know will get them in hot water? Well, maybe there's something in scripture about hotter cold instead of lukewarm,

1:05:31 and maybe these pastors should be concerned about what they are doing and are not doing. But like you said, they always punch right. It's always the the hand of fellowship to the left and nothing but violence toward the right. Because they want to look good to themselves and to the world. They want to be friendly with the world, and they don't want anyone who, by contrast, makes them look like, well, maybe you aren't actually that Christian. Maybe you aren't actually obeying what God says because it looks like this person over here is actually saying the same things we find in this book. And you are watering them down. I have to agree with the the way you made the abortion point, but I think that there's a way to make it correct.

1:06:19 My anecdotal experience in the LCMS has been that every congregation I've ever been a part of has been rapidly pro-life. They've been very active in protesting abortion in funding for uh care centers to help those who were considering abortions. But where I would absolutely agree with you I think virtually every pastor falls down is to call the woman who seeks an abortion a murderer. Yes, exactly. Because the abor yeah. The abortion is always about the doctor. It's always about saving the life of a baby. It's never about a mother Yeah. But it's never ever about a mother hiring a hitman to murder her child and whether or not there are any women in in his congregation who have hired Hitman, which is w all an abortion

1:07:03 quote unquote doctor is, to murder her child. Now Well because women don't sin, right? Yeah, well that's it's it's not chivalrous to chivalrous to say that they could possibly do anything yet. And so like it's the point to make is the and again bold confession also has to be done with sanity. Everything that I say on this podcast is the sort of thing thing that I say in person to people when the situation arises. Sometimes I keep my mouth shut because I'm not a spurg. I'm not insane. I know based on the context and the people I'm dealing with whether or not I can have a fruitful conversation. So if someone, if someone at my congregation is openly pro-feminist, am I going to go directly after the things that fly in the

1:07:56 face of that? No. Not because it's not true, not because I'm ashamed of my confession, but because I know that the only way to change a feminist's heart is to go around, to find some way to address those errors, and frankly the way is to to get back to headship, which yes, it necessarily imp implicates feminism, but it's not a direct attack. It becomes an attack when they realize what's going on, but by then you're having a scriptural conversation. You're not having a personal one of accusation. So that's the difference between personal conversations and ones that happen online. As we talked about in the teaching episode number one, there are one-to-one relationships and there are one-to-many relationships where you discuss these things.

1:08:39 Posting on Twitter or on a podcast or elsewhere is inherently one to many. So I speak with my voice and say most everything that I think as I can convey it to people who will be receptive. Do I say absolutely everything I think on this podcast? No, because it wouldn't be fruitful. In private conversation, I'll have those conversations with individuals. But again, is it's not a question of shame where that I think that I'm hiding my sin from God. I don't think those things are sinful, but there are things that would not be productive to say on a podcast. There are things that I believe that would get this podcast deleted from all the podcast listings. So I will skirt those lines not out of shame or out

1:09:20 of a fear of proc proclamation, but understanding if I get shut down, no one hears anything. So there's a time and a place to address things, and I don't I don't fault people for choosing their battles, but like I said, choosing your battles means keeping your mouth shut, which I will do. I'll keep my mouth shut when the situation calls for it. Choosing your battles is never about punching quote unquote right. I I think that we're discussing this a few days ago. I think the left-right spectrum, we all agree, is is just about worthless. But at the same time, you kind of know what somebody means. When someone's to the left, th there's an implication there that you can clearly understand what's going on.

1:10:03 I think that at the far left you have absolute satanic debauchery. You have complete departure from everything that God wants. And the closer you get to the right, ultimately, the closer you get to God's will, which is not to say that what is on the quote unquote far right is necessarily godly Because there are a lot of pagans in those places who are instinctively trying to seek out godly things without knowing God, and that's never gonna work. They're always gonna make a mess. Which is why I initially began talking about my Christian faith on Twitter about five years ago. I rebranded from one account to another and started talking about my faith because I saw this very issue. I saw that the confusion of politics and theology was actively destructive

1:10:52 and was doing harm in the world. And I saw these guys on the right who didn't have God, but they had godly instincts about family, about vocation, about justice that are true and correct and fit perfectly within a Christian worldview. And I look and see pastors attacking them for saying For saying those things. And all I can do is grasp my head and think, what are these men doing? Trying to drive these men away from the church who are seeking out God in the best way that anyone can. But the pastors attack them because they're talking about things that are more godly than anything the pastor is willing to to uphold within uh within his congregation. And that's what this fight is about. When someone is pseudonymous, when they don't face the immediate destruction of

1:11:42 their personal life, of their family, of their livelihood, of their physical safety. Yes, you can say things that can't be said by someone who has a gun pointed at his head. No kidding And so for pastors to call us cowards because we don't expose our names and faces, is it is itself cowardly. And let them go attack the left. Let them go attack the men who who learn at the feet of sodomites rather than rebuking them, and then we will have a conversation about who is closer to what God wants. I actually don't think I've seen a single pastor on Twitter, incidentally, attack the leftists who all use pseudonyms. It's always the right. And I think we would do well to look at uh scripture, as always.

1:12:37 I don't think that Christ called us to be as smart as sheep. He used a different term there for a good reason. Yep. Modern Christianity is all about the innocent as doves and completely leaves out the wise serpents part. And that that's a tough saying, like many of Jesus' sayings, because the the serpent was the craftiest of all animals and and Satan possessed one and and caused this whole mess. But what We are not to be stupid. We are not to be fools. Being foolish is damnable. It is a sin. To be a fool will send you to hell. Scripture's clear about that. And I think that the the modern consumption conception of Christianity, even within Lutheranism, is to embrace foolishness. Now, not directly, but it's always done for the sake of the

1:13:35 gospel. Well, we we need to be foolish so that these people can have more Jesus. Why are you trying to give Jesus to people who are unrepentant in their sin? I the the the law gospel dichotomy is a valuable distinction, but it has to correctly admit that you don't give the gospel to people who were deny the law. You may you may hold it out as a promise to those who will follow the law, who understand the law, but to say to someone who's unrepentant in their sin, let me tell you about Jesus and how you're all forgiven, is incoherent because they're unrepentant. They're like, but I'm free from sin. You have to start with convicting the conscience before you can get to the absolution. And these pastors who fleer flee from the pseudonymous

1:14:30 Are afraid of having their consciousness convicted. That's ultimately what they're fleeing from. They don't want to hear men speaking about scripture in a way that might possibly convict their own words and actions. And that's not to say that we're sitting in judgment or that we are greater church Christians by any measure. Uh a pastor devotes his entire life to one of sacrifice on behalf of his sheep as a shepherd. I have tremendous respect for that. So As hard as you'll ever hear me be on pastors, it is precisely because of the importance of the pastoral office that we are so adamant that pastors must be faithful and must not make these errors. Uh, one of my friends pointed out this past week the great

1:15:12 irony that um all these pastors whose salaries are paid by men who are anonymous online are telling them to become non anonymous and get fired and lose their jobs. What these pastors think is gonna happen to their salaries when everybody gets fired. When the most faithful men in your congregations who understand the ontological nature of these fights, when they get fired by the sodomite and their HR department for saying that sodomy is damnable. Who's gonna pay your bills? How are you gonna afford Christmas for your kids when everyone in your parish can't afford to donate anything? That's a real question. And that's what this this fight comes down to is to say that the bold Christian confession has to be mindless is

1:15:57 it's exactly what Satan wants. Satan wants men to be as innocent as doves and as dumb as sheep. There's no wisdom permitted in the world that Satan is seeking. Because as long as men one by one get sent into the meat grinder of Sol Alinsky's personal destruction, no one will ever be able to join voice voices. And the fight over Christian nationalism and all these other things things is fundamentally about keeping each of us atomized to make sure that there's no unity of voice, that there's no consistency, that we all one by one, you say your weird little thing, and you then you get doxxed, and then you have to admit how terrible you were and what a dark place you were in your life when you said it.

1:16:42 And then everyone says, Oh shucks, that's too bad. And you get your gifts and go canceled and then you're destroyed for life. One by one, they want our us destroyed. They want us isolated and kept apart. And the whole point of Christian nationalism, the whole point of the coop the push towards overt Christian unity in subjection to God is to say, hey, if all of us sheep are together in a herd, the wolves can't pick us off. We get picked off when we're separated from the herd. That's why the lost sheep was such a big deal, because that one sheep of the ninety-nine was out alone, and the ninety-nine were safe. They were together. They were still dumb as sheep, but they had strength in numbers

1:17:23 because there was unity of just the mass of them. It was the one sheep who was in danger because he was off alone fending for himself. And that's what Satan's trying to do to everyone: pick us off, destroy us, send examples so that no one else will ever stray. Only in this case, the straying is not from Christianity, but it's straying from our churches into Christianity. And that's the fight that this is about. So as the as we wrap this episode up, I want to make a shocking reveal to won't really be a shock to anyone who's actually paid close attention to previous episodes, but this is also an episode about headship, uh, as pretty much all of them have been. Uh the way that headship interacts with pseudonymity versus knowing a

1:18:12 man's name uh points us back to scripture. When we look at the sixth day of creation in Genesis two where Adam was created, uh let me just read this briefly. Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of bird of the heavens, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature that was its name. The man gave names to the livestock and to the birds of the heavens, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the

1:18:53 man, and while he slept took one of his ribs, and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man, then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Now note that in both cases there for both all the animals and then for the woman who was created, Adam as the designated head of creation under God had authority over the creatures and over Eve by virtue and as as a part of his headship that included naming them. Now that's very significant because to to have a name is to have some form of authority over it. Um you know when you when you're talking to someone, one of

1:19:45 the first things you do is is you want to ask their name. And that's sort of the natural inclination online, except that in a place where pseudonymity is completely normative, it kind of shifts gears. And so when pastors are saying, I need to know your real name, they're not simply as cause you as Corey you mentioned earlier, they're not simply trying to clarify. They're attempting to assert authority over you. And And we can see this made clear at the other end of the scripture in Revelation 19. Then I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse, the one sitting on it was is called faithful and true, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head

1:20:26 are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. No Now, uh sometimes in the past Christians have sort of fixated on this secret name of God. It's not particularly the New Testament. The implication for us that there is a name of God that is not known to us is one of authority. God has not given us that name to call him by because it is his own and he has authority because only he knows it. And that's exactly what the you're a pseudonymous coward thing comes down to, is that pastors don't know our in our names, so they don't have authority over us, and they seek to reveal that which is hidden from them as an act of dominance so when we go back to what Larry Bean and uh

1:21:19 the other pastor on Godstein said uh John Busman uh related to pseudonymity, I just want to quote Larry again. He accused me and and my friends of quote, approaching theology with the mindset of a cowering keyboard warrior using a pseudonym. Now, this is particularly rich coming from Larry to say that you're a coward if you don't use your real name, thereby implying that he who uses his real name has the strength and the courage that is r denied to those who do not use the real name. This is funny because I know for a fact that Larry Bean is well aware of the demon that we mentioned last week. Rick McCafferty is a pulpit is a Lutheran pastor in our own pulpits. He is an open and unrepentant universalist.

1:22:09 And Larry knows this. Larry's known about this for many months. Now, Larry has never said anything about it on his blog. He's never said anything about Goddess Deanst. He has multiple blogs. I couldn't say anything anywhere. I don't care if he wrote a letter to Rick McCaffrey's beat DP or not, who by the way endorses this stuff because he put it on the district website. Larry is the coward here because Larry, rather than punching to his own level, going after pastors and pulpits that he shares by virtue of also being in the synod, there's a man who's a universalist, who's going to hell and is going to take his sheep with him. Larry knows. Larry is silent. He's completely silent. I am naming Rick McCafferty, and other Anands have gone after him

1:22:54 as well because no pastors will do it. Now tell me who's the coward. I'm using a pseudonym, but I'm naming a real man. Is that cowardly? No. The point is the church. The point is what's happening in the church. The reason that these men like Larry are pissed off that there are synonymous men addressing these issues, yet that the m is that the men like Larry are too afraid to do it. Because you know what? The Missouri Synod amended its bylaws to make it a corporate crime for a pastor to publicly denounce another pastor's faithlessness. That's evil. That is absolutely evil. This is an evil synod today that would say that a pastor is enjoined from addressing the error of others publicly. That has never happened in the history of theology.

1:23:42 And it's wound up in in false interpretations of the eighth commandment in Matthew eighteen that have been roundly refuted for a long time. Gottestine Set Stealth published something that I transcribed a number of months ago from uh Professor Marquardt who's sainted now, who clearly laid out that these claims that if a pastor or anyone else does something theological and you don't like it because it's not scriptural, you must approach them in private to deal with it. That's nonsense. It's not scriptural. It's not from God. What is, is it's camouflage and it's cover for evil men to continue doing their evil things. So Corey, you and I are addressing these things publicly because they are public matters.

1:24:23 Rick McCafferty is a public universalist, and Larry Bean is a public coward for not naming him. Rather he punches down i ironically the very men who are further to the right than him who are pseudonymous who defend him when other pastors, like Matt Stanick and Jeremy Stankey and some of these other vipers slander him for being a Confederate, as though sad somehow that's a bad thing. When Larry respects his ancestors from the South, he's obeying the fourth commandment. There's nothing evil about that. But just like these guys attack Christian nationalism, they attack all these other things in they attack racism, it is fundamentally all an attack on the church. So for Larry to be attacking Anans, quote unquote, he's attacking the

1:25:10 only guys in the Senate who actually have his back. And I have his back too. I really like Larry. I respect him a lot. by calling him out here, I'm not disavowing him or throwing under the bus. I'm simply pointing out that this misconstrual of pseudonymity as some vice or some weakness is nonsense in its And it's punching to the right and it's attacking the very men who were the frankly the only ones who were actually fighting for what remains of this synod's faithfulness. Yeah, Godestine's a is a great place and I like what they do, but they're fighting for the liturgy. that fight is in the rear view mirror. We're fighting now for the first article for whether or not we even believe in God anymore.

1:25:51 That's what we're losing control of. I love the liturgy, but it's not protecting us from these universalists any more than the Constitution has protected this country from people subverting it. Because when you take something like the liturgy or the constitution, you can use it as cover for whatever you want to do. And addressing that is something that the Anands doing, that the Pseudonymus are doing. And I welcome the support of other pastors to get out in front of these things. Like we said on the very first episode, Corey and I are the stones who are crying out because these men, these pastors who are not anonymous, are failing to do so. We would have nothing to say if these pastors who hate pseudonymity

1:26:32 would just do their damn jobs and if they think it's their job to punch down and to attack the pseudonymous men who are addressing theology, then they certainly must confess that there's it's their job to address universalists and vipers in their own pulpits. So let's see that happen.