Listener Feedback 002

0:37 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Corey J. Mahler. And I'm still Woe. On today's Stone Choir we're going to be doing another episode on listener feedback. We did one of those a couple months ago and we wanted to get back into it because we have a few more good questions uh and because we both been busy last week. Uh in the show notes we will give a link to the myth of the twentieth century podcast with Adam and Hans uh Corey and I both joined them last week and that was that aired this past Monday. So there's actually some extra Stone Choir content out there for you. You'll just have to go somewhere else to listen to it. On the subject of listening to Stone Choir, uh just is a little bit of housekeeping.

1:19 Spotify has delisted one of our episodes. Probably won't be the last time. Eventually, probably some or all the podcast listings will delist us entirely. We are immune from that as broadcasters, as podcasters. You are not immune from that as listeners unless you take some affirmative steps. So the stonehyphen choir.com website will always be there. As long as we can keep the lights on, that will be a place where you can always find us. Which means that worst case you can always stream the episodes you know, on a w in a web browser. That's not a great experience. Uh if you are an iOS user, you should be using Overcast. Uh from Overcast.fm, uh you can find it on the App Store. If you're an Android user, you should also be using a podcast

2:07 uh player. I've been told the podcast addict is supposed to be pretty good. Uh so if you're an Android pour, you should be using one of those or your favorite one. But the the reason that I specifically want to say use one of these or a similar podcast player is for this specific reason. Podcast is based on RSS. There's it's a standard that lets content be distributed without using the web, basically. It's there's complexity behind the scenes it's a protocol on the stone but website at the very top of it you can find the rss feed for stone choir the reason that is relevant is that you can paste that rss feed into Overcast or Podcast Addict or a similar high quality podcast player, and you'll automatically get all the

2:57 new episodes without doing anything. And that will be done in such a way that it cannot be censored. So it won't matter if somebody comes along and delists us or cancels us or any of that other crap. You will always be able to find our episodes on your device automatically without having to think about it. And that's the whole point. Like this should be easy for you as listeners. As more and more of the services try to come after us and shut us down, as happens to pretty much every decent podcast in the dissident, right? We'll just start vanishing. So if you want to keep listening and you don't want it interrupted, I would highly recommend you take a few minutes today, use one of those podcast players and get the RSS feed from the

3:37 website and then just add it manually as a source and then Stonequire will just always be there for you and you don't have to think about it. Uh thank you to everyone who's been you know leaving reviews on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere. Obviously it helps to spread the word and help keep spreading what you know you all are finding valuable and and what we do. A special thanks again to to Andrew and to the other folks or sorry to Adam. As and you know I was thinking Andrew Torba as well, who's been a big booster of the uh of the show. We really appreciate it. You know, it's without you sharing the show with others, no one hears about it. And if everyone stops caring, that's fine. This is a hassle.

4:16 I mean we d we had to fight audio gremlins for an hour just to get recording today. This is this is this is like punching ourselves in the face sometimes. We do it because it's important. Today we're gonna be discussing a grab bag of issues and uh so it won't be a real overarching theme, but we wanted to get some questions people had. Uh the first one will address a specific question, then we're gonna go into a more general question about how to read the Bible in general and which Bible to read, which Bible should I buy, you know, if you don't have a Bible, or if maybe you're thinking you should have a different Bible, we'll give you some ideas. Um spoiler alert, we are not supremacists for any particular translation.

4:59 We'll talk about translations a little bit and why they do and don't matter and what to do with it. So I think a lot of today's episode will be just about how to read the Bible and which Bible to be reading. And it's not going to be specifics. We will have some links in the show notes to a couple of Bibles that we have had friends recommend uh is is very good reader Bibles, another one that will be uh uh specifically a good Bible for a study Bible. We'll talk about the differences because there are different ways of reading the Bible. You know, do you read out loud? Do you read to yourself? Do you're reading to others? Are you doing, you know, a systematic study of a word or a subject versus just reading, you know, pages and pages.

5:44 Those are all fundamentally different tasks and when we don't treat them as discrete tasks, it can make it not as obvious whether we're using the right tool for the job. Ultimately, you should probably have you know at least two or three different Bibles. And I mean, you don't have to, you know, it's not a rule, it's just that they're they're different benefits to different styles of Bibles. So uh when we start with that question, we deal with the uh translation specifics and then get in some of those generalities. So when it comes down to it, we have the good fortune of living at a time when there are a lot of options for reading scripture. Our ancestors would be incredibly envious of the wealth of materials to

6:29 which we have access. Now, that being said, one of my primary and first recommendations for reading scripture is pick a version, one that you can actually read and understand, and stick with it. Part of the reason for that is that that's how you memorize things is repetition. And if you're constantly switching versions, you're going to have a harder time memorizing scripture, and it's important to memorize some of Scripture as you go through it. This is one of the big things that Luther actually comments on when he is speaking to teachers, pastors, and others in the church, he specifically says pick a version of your teaching and repeat it every year word for word. And that's why we have people, for instance, memorize the small catechism.

7:20 That's why we have children memorize one version. We don't hand them a different version every week, because then you're going to have unending trouble actually recalling specifically what it is you were reading. And so if you pick the ESV, stick with the ESV. If you pick the new King James, stick with the new King James. I and Woe will both tell you, do not use the KJV. It's not because we think the KJV is a bad translation. The KJV is a very good translation. However, the KJV was written in English that was deliberately archaic when it was published centuries ago. English is a language that has changed significantly in the past handful of centuries. If you think that you can just pick up anything that's written

8:13 in English, in quotes here, perhaps, and read it, go try to read Chouser in the original English. It's in English still. It's a different English from our modern English, but that's the point. The King James is also a different English from the one we are speaking here. You can understand me because I'm speaking modern English and you know modern English. If I were speaking Middle English, there'd be a language barrier. And so don't use a translation just because someone told you all this is the perfect and the old and the exact. If you want to make that argument, just go learn Greek and read the Greek. But on the note of the Greek, God made a very important point very early on with regard to translation.

8:58 He caused the Old Testament to be translated into Greek. The best version of the Old Testament we have is the Septuagint. It is less removed from the originals, it is closer to the originals, and we aren't missing intermediate steps as we are with the Masoretic. God caused that to happen. So he's telling us very clearly: translations are fine. It is fine to use a translation of his word, translation. are still God's word. And so use an English translation, or if your first language is another language, use one in your your first language. There's no reason you should necessarily use one in a foreign language, even if you know it fairly well, unless you're using scripture to practice the foreign language, which is historically one of the ways that

9:48 our ancestors learned a foreign language, but pick a translation that you can read and stick with it and read it. And as I said, they're excellent options. I have an ESV reader set that I like quite a lot. It's sitting over on a shelf in this room. Biblioteca is another one that we'll link to. It's more expensive. It's a very nice version. If you have the money to spend on it, by all means grab one, it's an excellent set. But if not, there are great cheap options. So there's a wide range. You can spend twenty dollars on a Bible, you can spend $500 on a Bible set. And they're very good options for reading scripture. So we'll link a number of those in the show notes. But the overarching point is pick a translation and stick with that

10:37 translation. And part of that is going to mean probably using the same translation that your congregation uses. You know, so if everyone in your congregation is using ESV or NKJV or whatever, and you have a different one, that's going to be a hassle because you're going to be able to follow along mostly, but if you take turns reading and it's your turn to read, you're gonna be reading slightly different words than they have and you're gonna be following along and not exactly tracking. So just for the sake of consistency, as Corey said, it is important to be on the same page because one of the key elements of just using and engaging with scripture is being able to have conversations with other people about it.

11:23 Now, an important thing to note there is that if you have ever said or if you're ever inclined to say, well, my Bible says this, please don't. That's d don't do that. that's bad theology. Because what you're doing is you're pitting one translation against another and just assuming that yours is right, which is nonsense. Maybe it is a better translation, but for you to just say, Well, my Bible says is just stupid because you haven't done any of the legwork to see if that's true. So if there are circumstances where your translation, the one you have in hand, says one thing, and then someone else's says something else, that's an interesting question. What's going on? Don't assume one is corrupted.

12:10 Don't assume that one is full of errors and that someone was up to no good. Don't assume that either one of them are exactly correct. Maybe they're both right. That's a property of translation, is that a word that has a nuance in one language can split in a couple different ways when moved into a different language. So So as we've said in the past, one of the links in the show notes will be to Biblehub.com. One of the very valuable things about this website is you can punch in any verse and it will show you 30 odd translations of that verse in all the major common Bible translations. So you can see like here is how everyone else has translated this verse and whatever verse you pick, they're virtually all going to

12:58 read very similarly. See when we we have these very strongly held opinions about this Bible version is good and this one's really bad. When you pick a verse, not a random, but just the verse you're actually interested in, and you look at a bunch of different ones, the translations that have any sort of decent reputation, there's some there's some crappy ones, but most of the common ones are pretty okay. Even if they're more liberal, even if there are places where they've messed with some things in ways that are undesirable, if not intolerable, most of the verses are still gonna read print pretty similarly to the rest. The other valuable thing there is you can click on the interlinear, and that will show you the Greek or the Hebrew text for

13:44 the verse that you're actually looking at. So you can see the original word order, you can see the original parts of speech, and you can start to get a sense of what the translators were doing when they made those various choices on the other page. So this is we've said this before, but it's worth reiterating. When you're reading your Bible, pick whatever translation you want and just use it. If it you know, we'll we'll have a list of some that we like, it's not exhaustive. And I think an important thing when you're talking about translations is to acknowledge that they're all in error somewhere. Human beings translated every one of them. Every person has a certain bias that they bring to what they're

14:24 translating. They're going to make editorial choices. That's not editing God in the sense of adding or removing things, but when you translate from one language to another, you're necessarily doing some editing. You're saying which direction, which nuance am I going to pick with this word or this phrase? That is always going to impart your own biases, whatever they are. You know, as Lutherans, if we are translating something and there's a sacramental aspect to a passage, we will make sure that our translation is, you know, A faithful to to the original s words, but B, it's going to make sure not to miss out on any nuance that's sacramental. If someone has a completely opposite view of the sacraments, you're going

15:10 to want to avoid that. So that's part of where some of these translations diverge is that the men who are trying to do their best as they're translating the words. You know, they're they're making decisions as they go and they're trying to be faithful. And obviously these are then doctrinal disagreements that flow subtly into the text that you have in front of you. And so that should never be a source of you having your faith undermined and thinking, oh no, I don't even have the real word of God here. Yes, you do. That doesn't necessarily mean that every single exact word captures all the nuance of the original language. And you don't have to go learn Greek or Hebrew. Just be aware that when there are variations, there's something going on

15:55 and that's interesting. Another thing to keep in mind is that particularly now, like any any translations or even newly published Bibles with new footnotes in like the last ten years, one of the big changes is entirely predictable. It's moving to gender neutral language, where even the Trinity, even the verses that refer to the Father and to the Son, some of the newest translations are messing with that stuff to try to make it gender neutral. That's blasphemous. Those Bibles should be burned. And that's a Christian thing to say incidentally. There are absolutely Bibles that should be burned if they have absolute blasphemy in them. I think I mentioned this before, but one of the classic examples

16:40 from history is the so-called Wicked Bible. This is a printing that inadvertently removed a knot from one of the Ten Commandments. So the commandment on adultery said, thou shalt commit adultery. It was it was an omission. Ostensibly, it was a mistake. Almost every copy was hunted down and destroyed because it was treated as a very serious blasphemous error. A few copies remain. I've actually held one in my hands and seen it with my own eyes. It's called the Wicked Bible precisely because it's an inversion. Most translation errors aren't like that, but that approach, that that knowledge of this is a corruption of God's word severely, this shouldn't exist, that's that's a holy thing. That that's a good thing because it is ultimately God's.

17:29 And if someone's going in and changing fundamental things and saying that well God didn't really say that is no longer the Bible. Even if it's 99.99%. If you go in and you start messing with things that are removing key doctrine, you've created something wicked. Most of the time, the errors in translation are obvious stuff. Like I said, the general neutral language is extremely popular. The uh I think the NIV 2011 and later has adopted a lot of that. ESV, even some of the earlier versions, they are really weak on slave. We've complained about that before. The nice thing about you having just a random translation in front of you and working through it is that you already know just sitting there before you even open the Bible you know anything about

18:19 it, you know what the weak spots, if there are any, are likely to be. You know that they're gonna be messing with sex, they're gonna be messing with things like power dynamics. You know, uh David and Bathsheba. Places where today modern controversies get stirred up, what happens? There's a tendency for men to want to go back into the text and subtly change it so that they can reinforce the modern point that they want to make. This is something that false prophets are continuously doing. So slavery, race, sex, all the obvious stuff, all the stuff that we talk about a lot in other contexts, the newer translations are going in and messing with those things. As I said, ESV in particular, which is the Bible that I

19:03 use almost all the time, gets slavery wrong in a number of places. It doesn't undermine my faith. It doesn't cause me to doubt what the Bible that I'm reading, because when I see bondservant, I just automatically flip it to slave. And I'm gonna be wrong about that translation choice a lot less often than I'm gonna be right. I'm almost always gonna be right with ESP because most of the time when it says bondservant, it means slave. So it's okay to use a Bible that has some of these errors as long as you know that they're in there. And you don't need even like I said, you don't need to know the specifics of the translation team bec or t committee because you know the things that they're gonna want to mess with.

19:43 So use the one that you have and and just read it faithfully. Uh another aspect of Bible selection has to do with how it's physically formatted. Um we'll link to at least one or two uh websites that review Bibles so you can see some specific examples of different styles. This is kind of fiddly typographical stuff that most people don't think about at all, but it has a huge impact on how your brain processes the written word. So, one of the most common Bible types that you've probably seen many times you probably own at least one of them. You have two columns. You have the you know the headings with the chapters and the verses and their footnotes and then you know they're so their letters and numbers appended in the text.

20:30 And a lot of times the the sides of the pages or the centers of the pages will be filled up with notes about what's in the text itself. Those are typically called study Bibles. If it has you certainly if it has the extra notes and stuff, those are study Bibles. There's a lot of value in a study Bible, and then it helps you who is you know just getting into the Bible, you don't have a perfect knowledge of the thing because nobody does. The study notes help you to say, oh, well this verse here is a reference back to this thing from, you know, 38 books ago. You probably wouldn't remember that yourself, at least the first time through. So it's very nice to have someone who has the expertise and you know You know, this this knowledge has been built up

21:13 over many, many centuries of men, faithful men paying attention to the stuff, I mean thousands of years, correlating one verse to another verse. So it's nice to have that stuff. On the other hand, those visual distractions really rob your ability to actually comprehend what's on the page. It doesn't seem like it when you're reading through it, but all that visual noise, it's basically graffiti. Because as Corey said in a past episode, when you're reading, you're not looking at the letters, you're looking at the shapes of the words, and then the shapes of the words build up to a sentence and your so your brain is processing chunks. It's processing chunks of text on the page, not the individual characters.

21:56 What that means is that when these additions include numerals and subscript and superscript letters with footnotes. All those things disrupt your ability of your brain completely apart from your comprehension. The ability of your brain to completely comprehend what it is you're reading without constantly tripping over, oh well that's different. And there's something else going on. So there's a ton of distraction there. And there's no way to be immune from it. It's like, oh well, if I'm really smart, I can handle it. I can't handle it. I I need to go to a Bible that doesn't have that stuff to be able to actually concentrate on the text. And if you think that that's not the case, you're you just

22:36 haven't realized it. So we'll give a couple examples in the show notes of something that's called a reader's Bible. As Cory mentioned, the bibliotheca is a fantastic one. Readers' Bibles omit all the appendages. So there won't be any footnotes, there won't be any of those end and indentations with where they are in or in inserting extra facts. They also will generally omit the verse numbers. We'll link to a New King James that per puts every fifth verse number in the side of the page just to kind of help you, because on one hand, there's a tremendous value in a reader's Bible of being able to just read. You start sit down and start reading the book of Isaiah. And without the demarcations of chapters and verses, you'll just read, you

23:24 know, five or ten pages the way it was meant to be read without realizing how much you've gone through, because your brain's not being distracted. It's a fundamentally different experience. On the other hand, if you want to look at a particular verse on the page that you've read and said, hmm, I wonder about this, there is additional burden for you to go find that in something else. So the nice thing about a reader's Bible that has at least a few of the verse numbers off on the side is that it helps you be able to context switch to another Bible or to, you know, another website or something where you can see the see the specific verse that you're talking about and figure out you know what whatever question came to mind.

24:02 So that's one of the differences. If you're if you're trying to study a subject, a reader's Bible is probably gonna be more helpful. If you just want to read, having fewer of those visual distractions is crucial. And one of the nice things is because readers' Bibles are specifically focused on readability, they tend to have nicer font choices, which again is the the font is forms the shape of the words. So I personally I really love type typography. It's a it's a big deal to me. Even if you know absolutely nothing about typography, when you're using something that has a really nice serif font where the characters flow really nicely and every word has a distinct shape, it's easier to read. It's easier for your brain to process and therefore to understand.

24:49 So these small details that you don't think about normally. You just pick up a book and you read it. You don't care. You know, typesetting, typography, whatever. That crap is not interesting to most people. But when it's done really well, it makes it easier for you to understand. And when it was done poorly, it can actually detract from your comprehension, not simply your enjoyment. Like I'm not talking about the aesthetics of the thing, although the aesthetics are also better. But when you completely lose yourself in the word if things like those little niceties are done better, your brain is going to have an easier job processing and absorbing the word of God, which was the whole reason you're reading it in the first place.

25:27 To specifically address the question that got us on this particular subject, the question was over some of the changes, as it were, in more modern versions of certain translations where essentially they mess with the word that is translated as Jews. And to directly address that, the problem with translating it as Jews, as we've mentioned in previous episode, Eudios, the word being translated here from the Greek, is the Jews didn't exist at the time. That is a modern term that has a modern connotation when used by modern English speakers. And so to translate it as Jews is misleading. It should be Judeans. And also it is worth noting, they were Judeans, because remember, as we have discussed in previous episodes, Israel had been destroyed, which is

26:26 to say the northern kingdom, was gone. So the only Israelites left were in fact Judeans, and so that is the term that is what is meant, that is what is referenced by the Greek term. And so that's how it should be translated. We have the same issue as we've mentioned the Elsewhere, and as Woe just mentioned with Dulos, the word for slave. Bond servant is more of a nebulous term. It's not really a term that we use in modern English, which is why they used it, of course, because then the reader can impart his own meaning into it. But slave is a better translation because everyone immediately knows what slave means. So yes, some translations play these little games, but as long as you understand what is being said in the text, or

27:19 if you need to, you can go back to the Greek and look at it. You don't have to know Greek You can go to Bible Hub, you can look at the inner linear, you can see which word was there in the Greek, how it was translated in the English, and then you can pull up strongs or some other concordance and look at exactly what that Greek term means, and you don't have to know any Greek. All you have to be able to do is identify the Greek letters and be able to click a link. Which anyone listening to this show can certainly do. And to comment additionally on the issue of Eudios, some modern exegetes will call them attempt to argue that it means the Jewish leaders, and not the Judean people. That's false.

28:07 It meant the Judean people, generally speaking. Yes, there were those who followed Christ, but most of them didn't. And part of the reason that we know this is that we have a contrast between the leaders and the general people using the word Udilos in Mark seven, where it says for the Pharisees, those would be the leaders of the Jewish people, and all the Jews, in the wording of the ESV, do not eat unless they wash their hands properly. Well we have both terms right there. And in the Greek that is the term for Pharisee and the term for Judean. Similarly, when we have modern translations that try to play games with gender neutral so called language, well we know that's false because we have from the very mouth of Christ in Matthew twelve, both the

28:59 word Brother and Sister Adilfas, chi adulfe Brother and sister, We have that from Christ, and so if Scripture wanted to use gender neutral language as it were, the option is there in Greek. You can use both brother and sister. And so when they attempt to insert that in various other places, they're playing games with the text that are not warranted 100% due to their modern priors. And so avoid those translations. If you see one that starts translating every instance as brother and sister, if that's not there in the Greek, it shouldn't be there in the English. And that is something that like I said, that's that's pretty much only in the last ten, maybe fifteen years that that started to really happen.

29:52 You know, I personally I don't think there should be more than one new translation in a language every two hundred years. it's nonsense to have such a proliferation. I understand the reason for it. You know, for one thing, books have gotten much cheaper to publish, and as these doctrinal disagreements have occurred in the past, churches, you know, who are you know trying to faithfully hold to their own doctrine are going to make sure want to make sure that the Bibles they're using aren't corrupting what they're worried about. So So if their priors are good, then their translation's gonna be good, but if their priors are bad, their translation could easily go off into the weeds. It's less of an issue for with the ones that existed prior

30:36 to the twenty-first century. As it stands today, I think you can pretty safely avoid most new translations, certainly anything from here on out. Like, you know, anything after like if if you paid any attention to the decay of Hollywood, I mean Hollywood was always toxic, and yet still in the In the last 10 years, you know, eight to ten years, movies have gotten significantly worse. The same as true of Bible translations. Like it's it's everything. So just keep that in mind. We will link to a CSB Bible that is a reader's edition that doesn't even have any verses. Uh a number of my friends use the CSB. One of the things that they really like about it is another aspect of reading the Bible that we haven't discussed yet, which is

31:21 reading it versus reading it out loud, because it's very, very rare for a man's voice to work equally well in the written word and the spoken word. And this will come into play in translations. Some translations, like for example the ESV, is more of a literal translation, meaning that it tries to stick closer to both both the the words and the sentence structure and the word order of the underlying language that it's being translated from. So if you're just reading it and you're studying it, it's going to tend in most cases to give you a better sense of what the Greek was trying to do. On the other hand, that also means it's tends to be a little weirder and a little more wooden to read in some places.

32:08 ESV is that is harder to read out loud. This matters if you have a family. If you're a father and you're reading to your wife, if you're reading to your kids, if you're doing daily devotions. Having a Bible that's easier to read out loud and therefore to understand when when heard does matter. So this is, you know, it's it goes back to the standardization question. I don't think it's a great idea to have, you know, three or four different translations in the mix as part of your daily life. On the other hand, w in the show notes, we're going to give three or four different translations as different examples of different types of Bibles. So like I said, the CSB will be a reader's Bible. It's really nice.

32:48 It's like 35 bucks, hardbound. It has really nice typography and no visual decorations at all. It's just a straight Bible in a faithful translation that reads really well out loud. Uh we'll link to a new King James that has some verse numbers and the the sidebars so that's easier if you're cross-referencing when you want to do additional study. And I think we'll link to the Concordia study bible from CPH, that is a it's a really good study Bible. Most of the notes are faithful, uh certainly useful. It's also really expensive. One recommendation, one thing to consider when you're looking at Bibles is the print size. If at all possible, when you're looking online, try to see if they have an example that will show you the actual size on

33:34 the page. Uh reason I'm mentioning this is that for the Concordia Lutheran study bible, the footnotes are tiny. Even if you have good eyesight, they can strain it. As your eyesight starts to fade a little bit as you get older, they'll be really hard to read. I recommend for absolutely anyone, no matter how young and cool you are, get the large print version of the study bible because it's not that much larger. You know, when we say large print, we're not talking about like fourteen or sixteen fies. It's a little bit bigger. And so it's definitely easier to read, especially in those footnotes and the the end notes and stuff. But it'll make a difference today. It'll make a big difference 20 years from now because your eyes

34:14 will will eventually get worse and you'll it's still be nice to use the same Bible. So that you have to consider, you know, as you're looking at a Bible shopping, if you can only have one Bible, you have to decide what's the most important to you. And I can't tell you. I I don't I don't personally I would tend to want to avoid a study Bible vers my my soul Bible, I think, simply because all those distractions make it seem like the Bible is a lot more complicated than it is. Same with the King James. It was Corey was saying, I also like the King James is beautiful. I would never, ever, ever recommend anyone read it, not as their first Bible. And if someone has told you to read it and you've tried

34:57 and you're struggling with it. That's why. It's because there's not a magic Bible language. It makes me so frustrated when guys are like, okay, I want to get into this Christianity stuff. I just want to find out what it's about. And someone hands them the king James and then they're fumbling around, they don't know what's going on on the page. That sort of confusion is the exact opposite of what God wants. And so the visual confusion of a study bible is similar in that it detracts from your ability to just consume the raw word. If your brain is doing any sort of additional processing, whether it's ignoring extra characters and numbers and letters, whether it's having to translate archaic language, you've probably never heard some of it before in your

35:41 life, trying to figure out what does that even mean. That's wasted mental energy that should be spent on consuming the very text that you're there to learn about in the first place. So Personally, I generally recommend that someone get some sort of more basic reader's Bible to just to start reading because the most important thing you can do is to read the thing. To read the Bible, to read it regularly, to study it, and to consume it. If you get more into it, yes, you do probably want some sort of study bile or other resources. And there are a ton of those online and you know, lots of places you can find them. The Bible industry is a I'm sure it's a multi-billion dollar industry. That's frankly that's part of the problem.

36:23 That's part of why there's so many Bibles. Is that everybody has this demand for like well, I want something new. I want the woman's Bible, I want the little kids' Bible, I want the single man's Bible study under 25 who weightlifts Bible. Like what? Just read the thing. What's all this extra stuff about? But you know, worst case, you buy a Bible you don't want, or you know, it's mismatched versionally with one of your others, give it to a friend, give it to a stranger, give it to someone else. There's no such thing as a wasted Bible in your house unless you're not reading it. So you know, be budget sensitive and that's why there's no one size fits all. Um there are some incredibly nice Bibles.

37:03 Uh you can get some that are two hundred dollars that are you know wrapped in goat skin and calf skin and have just absolutely impeccable printing and paper and everything and they're truly heirlooms that you would want to pass on to your grandchildren. That's very nice, but you certainly don't need that for your first Bible. And frankly I'd be very cautious about beginning in a place that's fancy because whatever bible you get is going to be in a translation. And so say you get a New King James and then you read it for a while and you actually I'd prefer the ESV because that's what I use most of the time. Well, now you get a $200 Bible, it's in the wrong translation relative to what you want.

37:42 And again, like it's not a wasted Bible. You can you can sell it or give it to someone, but if you're going to be looking at an investment in something that's truly special, like that, make sure you like the version of it first. And as Corey said, then you know stick with the rest of your life and it will it will pay dividends. I've said before, most of the verses that I know by heart are King James. Uh, the reason for that is that growing up the uh the hymnal that we used in the Lutheran church used to be based on the King James. My uh believe my my catechesis was also based on the King James. So I do not disparage. I do not dislike it. There's some incredibly beautiful language. I twenty third Psalm should only ever be spoken in the King

38:24 James English. I I completely reject any other version because it's not necessary because the the the problem that we're talking about with not being able to understand, everyone understands that because it's such foundational English that it it has shaped the rest of our knowledge of our own language. So again, it's not that it's bad or it's terrible. It's just that it will impart confusion where a modern translation would not impart confusion. And that concerns me as someone trying to introduce someone to scripture much more than you know the textual variants that are involved in the translation decisions. It's fine to get into those fiddly things later on if you want to be invested, but as we said earlier, if you want

39:05 to get down into the the words themselves, the individual words you're looking at, you're gonna be looking at least in a concordance, looking at you know an interlinear to see what was the underlying language. And what you'll learn when you do that, again, we're not saying like, oh, you're gonna be a junior Greek scholar. No, that's not the point. When you start looking at all the other applications, you realize there's a lot going on here. There's a lot of nuance, there's a lot of history. Well, the nice things on Bible Hub when you go to the interlinear and then look at all the other examples of where the same word is used elsewhere in scripture, is you get a lot of of nuance, you get a lot of texture around okay well

39:43 here's all the other ways that word's been used and sometimes you'll make very interesting connections just in terms of questions. I'm not saying be a you know junior splunker where you're gonna discover some secret Bible mystery. Guys have been doing that for thousands of years. You don't need to worry about finding anything new, but it is very enjoyable to go discover stuff and then to learn more about those discussions because as we said on the myth of the twentieth century recording this past week the entire Bible is interconnected in ways that can only possibly be inspired by God. No human being could have ever created the number of correlations from all the different books to each other.

40:22 Only the mind of God could have done that. Because of all the different physical authors, the the different men who were recording with their own hands and their own voices in many cases those books, only God could have kept it all together. They there would have been disagreement. There would have been like it's just uh it's the example I made there and I'll make it again here. If Corey and I were to write one hundred page book about the stuff that we know really well and we hash out and we're in complete agreement, it would not be as internally consistent as what the Bible manages to do across thousands of years with dozens of human authors. And that's because the ultimate author is God. And so it's it's a treasure to be able to delve into

41:03 scripture and to find those inner connections. And that's really it's one of the most enjoyable parts of studying the Bible is you're down in it. you're not just like it's not just an advice column. It's not just it's wisdom, but there's a lot more to it than that because it's part of a much greater whole. And the more you learn about that whole, the more you realize how how infinite the whole is that the whole is greater than than the universe because it's it's God. On the subject of delving deeper into the text, I will also include a link to two applications, at least two, maybe a couple others, but two applications for studying God's Word, one that is excellent for just reading God's Word, and the first one is the Literal Word app.

41:50 It is free. It has currently four translations of scripture in it, although one is the King James, so probably stick to the other three, which would be the NS ninety five, the LSB, and the ESV. But this one is a very nice application to use just for reading scripture. It has a clean interface, it's just the text. I believe it has a reading mode. And you can also hit a button in the app, and then it will underline the words that you can click on and see the underline Greek in the New Testament. Which is great. Unfortunately it doesn't yet have the Septuagint, I don't believe, for the old testament But it's a great app just for reading scripture, and the other is Logos. Now the drawback of Logos, and I will be completely upfront and

42:41 blunt, it's expensive. The app is not, the app is free, and there are some free resources in Lagos. But Lagos is an expensive proposition once you start getting into actually purchasing the resources. So this is something Is something if you're going to be teaching classes at your church, consider grabbing logos. If you're just going to research the word for yourself to some degree, go ahead and grab it and use the free resources, maybe spend ten dollars here or there on something. Don't invest into the big study packages. You'll probably never use most of it. And they're expensive. Hundreds or thousands of dollars for some of these. So I'm just going to include that because that way you sort

43:25 of have a range of options. You have the free option and the potentially very expensive one. The same as scripture. We'll include some options in the show notes that are very budget friendly, and then as Woe was mentioning, some of the nicer Bibles I'll link to Skylar as well, which is one of the options for the two hundred dollar goat skin or calfskin Bible. Don't feel that you need to jump in in the deep end. That's totally unnecessary. Start out with the free resources. That is how this is supposed to be. The word of God is not supposed to cost you money to have access to it. Which is perhaps hearkening back to our earlier episode on copyright and Paywalling God, the title of that episode.

44:13 So the next question that we're going to address in this episode is a question about the Sabbath, and whether or not Christians are supposed to keep the Sabbath or a Sabbath, what are the rules for us in the New Testament with regard to the third commandment, as we number it as Lutherans. And I want to start off with two bits of scripture. One was included in the question, so I'm I will give credit to the questioner, even though we're not reading the question itself, but that is Colossians two sixteen. Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. And the other one, there are a few other verses that are important too, but the other one of the two that I want

45:00 to use for this answer is Romans from Romans 14. One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God, for none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself, for if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. These two verses, and some others as well that you can cross reference certainly a little bit of a homework for the show.

45:49 These give the general answer for the Christian observance of the Sabbath, for Christian compliance with the third commandment. I would also draw out, I won't necessarily read the verse or quote it here, but we are instructed in many places not to forsake the gathering together of the saints. So this forms the framework within which we as Christians keep the Sabbath. We are supposed to gather together, but we are not commanded to esteem any day as better or more important than any other. And so we do not get to tell people, oh well you went to church on Saturday, so you're a sinner. No, that's fine. If you go to church on Saturday, because your church meets on Saturday, so be it. Now, if you're doing it because of a Judaizing reason you believe

46:45 that Saturday is the Sabbath, that can be a problem Now, if you're totally convinced in your own conscience that what you're doing is what Scripture commands you to do, then it's a more complicated matter. Because on the one hand, scripture is very clear, each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. But on the other hand, if you are fully convinced of false doctrine, so if you think that it is absolutely necessary for Christians to maintain the Saturday observance of the Sabbath, you should be rebuked with regard to that, because that's false. We are no longer required to do that. That was for the Israelites that was not for Christians generally. And so the reason that we meet together on Sunday and meeting

47:39 together on Sunday is of course fine. The reason we do it there a number of reasons. One, it's so we all know when to meet, because that's just what we do. You have to actually have a day when you meet so that everyone can show up. Two, it's the day that we have off. It's modernly it's the weekend. Historically, Sunday you had off so that you could go to church. That was a big part of the reason that Europeans closed everything down on Sundays. Because all you did on Sunday was you went to church and then you went home. Or you went out for a beer with friends, depending on where you lived. Because it is still the day of rest, it is important to have periods of rest, and that is something that again a godly

48:23 government has a duty to oversee, to institute, to maintain, So the old blue laws and things like that were in fact godly forms of governance, they should have been maintained, and where they are it's a good thing. So essentially it it boils down to the real reason why we observe the Sabbath on Sunday, why we've made the Sunday our Sabbath is order. It's good order in the church. Because there are things that you must do and there are things that you may do. You must hear the Word of God, you must gather together with other Christians. You may do that on Sunday, you may do that on Saturday. If we had decided to do so it could have been Wednesday. But Sunday has a symbolic aspect to it that is part of

49:11 it that we should really teach more explicitly in the church to let people know we meet on Sunday because of the symbolism. And the symbolism of that is the resurrection. And in addition to the resurrection, the Sabbath is metaphorically and symbolically in Scripture, that seventh day, it is the day of rest. And so we meet together on the seventh day because we are looking forward to that ultimate rest that is in paradise in Christ. And so for the sake of symbolism and order, meeting together on Sunday is what we have done historically, and there's really no reason to change that. Now I don't say that we shouldn't have, say, a Saturday service for some people who cannot make it on Sunday. That's understandable.

50:00 There are people who have to work on Sundays. If you are working in an emergency room or your police officer or a firefighter, or any of a number of these occupations where you can't really have a day off. Someone at least has to be working every week on that day. Then it's understandable to have another time when those people can meet together. That's entirely fine. Because again it is not required that we meet together on Sunday. It is required that we meet together. Sunday is part of symbolism and good order in the church. And I think one of the important distinctions that comes into some of these arguments today is in current year, when guys are saying, Well, I read something online and I

50:49 heard this guy who said that you didn't have to do this and it's okay to do this other thing. One of the questions is you know the traditional stonequirk question, what problem are you trying to solve? But there's also the important question that every Christian has to have, which we also bring up frequently, why are you breaking with tradition? In other words, if Christians have always done this, which is the case, Christians have always gathered on Sunday for two thousand years, with exceptions, but they were exceptional. Why do you in current year think that you have Christian liberty just to do whatever you want in the face of what everyone else is doing? And so the question is not are Christians imposing a law on

51:38 each other by saying you must gather on Sunday. The question is why someone would rebel against, as Corey said, just order. Like here's where it is. Churches on Sunday morning. Yes, there are reasons why you might have a Wednesday night or Saturday night or Saturday morning or whatever. That's good. Having more church is good. The it used to be that church occurred every day. When Corey says, you know, they went to church on Sunday, they didn't go for an hour. It was a most of the day affair. they were there for hours. Sermons were long. There was it was a very much more involved process. So that was that was their world. It wasn't like you check in for an hour in the morning and you still get home in time for the the NFL kickoff,

52:23 which is frankly one of the major pressure points on pastors today to keep their sermon short. And to make sure that church doesn't go too long. Because when it's football season, you better not have a service that runs over. that's not the right Christian approach to anything. That's not the way we should be ordering our lives, worrying about things that are not only less important but actively evil. You know the the NFL games last Sunday and the end zone. It said end racism. Huh. Well that's neat. There are probably a lot of pastors who preach the same sermon and the as the NFL. You know what? Yeah. In that case, if your church is preaching NFL sermons, I would say yeah, go to the game. You're gonna have more fun at the game than you are at

53:09 church and you're practicing the same religion either way. But it's not Christianity. If you want Christianity, you go to church with other believers and you hear what God says and not what the NFL and MSNBC and the World Economic Forum and all these other places say. Because those are the two competing religions, as we always say. The other aspect of the Sabbath, and Corey touched on it, but I want to point to something. I don't have a lot to say to flesh out the details, but it's something that was definitely lost between the Old and the New Testament, and it's something that it is i is we were talking before recording, Luther doesn't do a great job addressing in some of what he says about the Sabbath.

53:52 As Corey said, one of the important things of the observance of God's day of rest is gathering together with the faithful to make sure there's one day a week where you're devoting some time to the study of the Word of God together corporately with other Christians. There is also the pattern of rest. Day of rest is not the same as day of going to church when God rested on the seventh day, which the Sabbath is patterned after. When God ordered that there be Sabbath years and that there be Jubilee years, where the animals, the livestock, the fields, were given days and years of rest. That is much more fundamental to creation than Bible study and sermons. It's a different thing. So I think one of the things that we have lost sight

54:47 of as Christians, again, this is not, I'm not trying to be proscriptive and saying you are forbidden just as the Pharisees did. This occurred in Jesus' ministry, where he performed a miracle and they got mad at him, and he said, If your ox fell into a ditch on the Sabbath, would you not pull it out? Yeah. If someone fell into a well on the Sabbath, would you not pull them out? So their argument that oh well you can't do work, you did work, was their misdefinition of work as certain types of activity that weren't worship related. That is not at all what I am advocating. On the other hand, when God rests and does nothing on the seventh day of creation, and when he commands that animals give be

55:29 given a day off of the week off, and man, and that fields be given every seventh year, and then the Jubilee was arrest of incidentally for debt, as well as the land, as well as the people. That has significance even outside of sin, because it harkens back to creation, the six days, the seventh day of creation, before sin entered the world. So the idea of resting in opposition to working, not only is it commanded by God, but it has no bearing on salvation. In other words, the fact that you are saved, the fact that you're a Christian doesn't free you from the obligation of needing rest. No, when I say obligation of needing rest, I'm not making a law of it. You have to sleep. You have to sleep every day, or you will go insane and

56:20 you will die. You can kill someone with sleep deprivation. Working someone to death is a very real thing too. This was a common case in certain kinds of horrific slavery around the world where, you know, the African slaves that were taken into Arabia, there are no black people there now because A, they were castrated and B they were worked to death. They only lasted a couple of years and then they died because they were used not as humans who were to be treated properly, they were just used as machines and they were chewed up and spit out and replaced. You can kill someone with work. And God is specifically forbidding us from doing that to ourselves. And there are a lot of people today, you know, the one

57:04 of the misnomers of the Protestant work ethic, where somehow you have to be constantly go, go, go all the time. This came up in in Stone Choir chat last week where someone expressed you know kind of guilt or just confusion. What do I do on on you know on Sunday? I I feel like I should be doing something. I think that there's something really twisted about our culture that a man who's idle for an hour feels like he's sinning, like I gotta be doing something. That's at some point that becomes neuroticism. Now not advocating for laziness, but when God takes a whole day off, you can do the same. Again, it's not to say you can't do anything. You know, if you want to go do some woodworking in the

57:44 garage because it's soothing, if there are chores around the house, like we're not being proscriptive around saying you must sit perfectly still in a certain place and you can't lift your arm above this height and your food has to all be prepared before sundown the night before. None of that. Just give your body a break. Give your mind a break. God actually designed us that way. And another part of the observance of the Sabbath that was lost in the certainly the modern version of what we view is the notion that resting is salutary and it is. I know when when a man feels like he's doing something bad by being idle for a time, he should spend some time thinking about that and maybe studying some of what the scripture says because

58:30 that's not healthy. You should be able to sit still and sit quietly and sip some coffee and pet your dog and look out at the sunset and not feel like you're betraying yourself as a man or your creator or your family or anything, like God created us to rest too. You know, six days of work, one day of rest. There's a ratio there. I think that's important. So again, like we're we're not giving like here's your ICAL reminder to rest, or here are the days and the hours to do this and that. Christian freedom is not prescriptive in that sense, but we're creatures and creatures need rest. So don't let your observance of the Sabbath end with, okay, I went to church, I'm done. Now I gotta go to work.

59:15 I gotta do eight hours of work and go go to to sleep exhausted tonight. If that's your life at seven days a week, you're hurting yourself, and I think that you you should be concerned that you're doing something God doesn't want you to do. Part of what plays into the lack of commentary on rest in the small catechism, the large catechism does a better job, which notably the small catechism was designed for children and those who are incapable of learning more than the small catechism contains. It is sufficient for salvation because it contains the core of the Christian faith. If you knew only the content of the small catechism, you would be a Christian if you believed it. However, the large catechism is for fathers and teachers and others to

1:00:04 then instruct those who are themselves learning from the small catechism. But the issue is twofold. That's the first aspect. The second aspect, Luther lived in a culture where observing a day of rest was simply part of the culture and it was not optional. If you opened your business on Sunday in historically Christian Germany, or the German principalities as existed at the time, the Holy Roman Empire, they would have come and shut down your business because you were not permitted to do that. The day of rest was mandatory. Now you could go ahead and go work on your farm if you were so inclined. They weren't going to stop you from doing that. You should rest. God commands you to rest. Resting is part of what Christians are supposed to do.

1:00:52 But the society itself was structured in such a way that it was incomprehensible that you would engage in commerce, that you would engage in business and work on the Sabbath. And so Luther didn't have to address it, because this was something that was so out of the ordinary. It just was something that did not happen. Now he addresses some of this elsewhere in his writings, but addressing it as a core matter for instructing Christians was not something he needed to do. And we have to bear that in mind when we are reading older authors, be it Luther or someone else, some of the problems we have today are not problems that they had in their day. In fact, some of the problems we have today are so outside

1:01:35 the norm, so outside Christian experience, that these older authors never even thought about them. They didn't think they were a possible issue that could arise. Now Luther comments on the abuse of the Sabbath in some places, and so he did raise that issue, because obviously you had the Pharisees and others who were creating specific rules and abusing the Sabbath, that's addressed Specifically explicitly in scripture. But he would have never addressed the idea of men proclaiming to be women, or women proclaiming to be men, or someone saying that he's actually a dog in a human body. That's just something that they wouldn't have addressed, and so just because as a matter is not addressed in the ancient authors, does not

1:02:19 mean it is something about which Christians have nothing to say. And we get that today sometimes, where the left, the Marxists, will try to argue, well, this isn't addressed in any of the ancient Christian authors. Well, of course it isn't, because it's so inconceivable that this would ever be permitted to happen to happen in a culture. It's so inconceivable that anyone would even have these thoughts that there was no need to address it. Because those men back then, the thought would have never even crossed their minds because it was so outside the norm, so outside their experience, it was literally unthinkable. And so just because a thing has not been addressed by the ancient authors does not mean it is not a matter about which

1:03:04 About which Christians should speak, about which Christians should have an opinion, and on which we should have policies. And so that includes the issue of the Sabbath. We should want to live in a society which enforces these days of rest, which enforces periods of rest for workers, and Luther does rightly comment that this is primarily a matter for laborers because those who are in the upper echelons of society will typically have more opportunity to rest. Now that doesn't mean they'll take it. We have plenty of workaholics in our society today who make vast sums of money who are members of at least the upper middle class, if not the upper class, and still work themselves to death. You can work yourself to death as an executive in a Fortune

1:03:54 five hundred company, just as easily as you can work yourself to death, digging ditches. It's part of it as a mindset. But primarily and historically, the reason we have had these legally mandated Mandated periods of rest is for the protection of workers. Because ultimately the executive, if he's high enough up in the bureaucracy anyway, is beholden to himself for how many hours he works. That's on him. For the worker, it is the duty of the godly prince to protect that worker from being exploited, and part of that is periods of rest. And this is a concern that we have in Scripture because God is concerned about how we treat our workers, how we treat our animals, how we treat our children, how we treat our slaves, all

1:04:38 of those entrusted to our care, we are required to treat appropriately, and that does mean giving them periods of rest, not exploiting them. And I will amplify what Corey said. When I speak of not wanting to bind individuals' consciences about this, it does not go to policy at all. I would absolutely support any policy policy that said that if you open your business on Sunday, that business is taken and sold to someone else and you don't get a dime for it. I businesses should be closed. The only people who should even contemplate working on Sunday would be emergency workers. You know, if if you're a line worker and there's a storm, if you're a police officer or fire, if you're in a hospital,

1:05:24 Obviously, those things which are needed to sustain life, just as Jesus said, there's stuff that happens on Sundays too. It is entirely permissible morally for men to deal with those things on Sundays. However, commerce, trade, I would include, I don't think should be happening. I think it's entirely permissible for a godly prince to shut that down. And you know, there's a discussion on Twitter this week. I m my inclination is to say to imprison the owner. I think beatings and seizure of of assets is much more appropriate because prisons shouldn't exist. Historically prisons only existed for pretrial detainment and for torture. And once you were sentenced, you're either sentenced to lashes, to fines,

1:06:07 or to execution. I think we should go back to that model for that. That's probably an episode for another day. But when I'm specifically talking about the Sabbath being kinda up in the air, it's so as not to bind consciences where scripture does not. However, this stuff shouldn't be happening because the day of rest should be enforced at the state level, as Corey said, to protect men who do not have power over their own lives. If you're an employee, you don't have the sort of power that an employer has. That's not Marxist to say that. That's a basic fact. You don't you don't need to to worry about power dynamics to understand that the guy who pays the bills and can leave you homeless, can make you do things that you don't want to do,

1:06:48 or even things that you don't think are appropriate to do. Our next question is about something that we find in the pages of scripture, but we don't find today and so it ties into one of our earliest episodes, Neglected Matters, and the question is about foot washing. And we see in scripture the washing of others' feet by Christians, in fact by Christ. But we don't do that today other than some performative versions of it done for perhaps by the Pope with We can leave that aside for now. But why don't we do footwashing today and how should Christians view this to take those in reverse order, this ties directly back into what I said earlier about the difference between must and may, the difference

1:07:45 between a command and something that is permissible or perhaps even recommended in some cases, but not required. Footwashing falls into that. Is it permissible for Christian denominations, for Christian traditions to have a foot washing ceremony? Sure. Should it be accompanied with right teaching to explain why it is being done? Absolutely. Is it something that is required, something that we absolutely must bring back into church practice? And the answer is no. Now, part of this is purely practical. Think about the state of basically everyone's feet back in those days. And notably it did not matter if you were extremely wealthy or very poor. Unless you were perhaps a Roman official and you were being carted

1:08:40 around everywhere, in which case your feet never touched the ground, except inside buildings, then your feet were perhaps clean. At least cleaner. But back in the day, and this is even until fairly recently, your feet were filthy. This was more so the case in the context in which scripture took place, because almost everyone was wearing sandals or barefoot. If you wear sandals everywhere or you're barefoot and all the roads are dirt and everyone uses animals to transport everything, your feet are unbelievably filthy. And not just dirt. So you need to wash your feet when you enter a building that you want to keep clean. You need to wash your feet when you come home, or else you're going to track unmentionable things into your home.

1:09:30 So just as a practical matter, footwashing was a big part of that culture because it was necessary. Footwashing in the modern Western world is just something you do in the shower. Or if you take baths in the bath. It's not something that is really particularly necessary just when we enter our homes. Now, if you are so inclined, perhaps you take off your shoes when you're in your home. I happen to do that because I don't want to track things things onto my carpet. It just helps with cleaning. But the state of your feet is significantly better than the state of the feet that were present in the New Testament scriptures. Because you aren't walking everywhere in sandals or barefoot. Most likely.

1:10:17 And even if you are, our general environment today is significantly cleaner than their environment was back then. We don't have horses and depending where you are, donkeys everywhere. That's something that was a problem in that era. That was something that was an issue, a live issue in the Western world, really until the advent of the automobile, because then we didn't need horses to cart everything around. And of course paved roads also help, and sidewalks and concrete and all these things. So the practical matter is a big part of this. But as far aside from the practical matter, there's another practical matter of we don't have the setup to do this in the modern church. This is something where you really have to plan to have

1:11:04 this as a ceremony. You're probably not just going to cart a rubber maid full of water up onto whatever elevated platform you have in your church and start washing feet. Now of course there are some churches that do that, and I'm not saying you can't do that, but you have to explain why. This is because you're you're taking on that role of a servant for your brothers and sisters in Christ. This is a matter of humility, it is a matter of a right view of oneself with regard to the body of Christ. Because regardless of what you are in the body of Christ, if you're a pinky toe or you're you know, the right hand, whatever you happen to be, you are a servant of the whole. And that's Christ's point when he speaks in these parabolic terms, when

1:11:52 he's speaking in parables to the people, and when other writers of Scripture are teaching us about the body of Christ, all of the parts of the body are important. They must work together. if you are washing someone else's feet, It's hard to feel haughty about your position, even if you are in every way, shape, and form superior to that person. And you may be. You may be more intelligent, you may be more physically fit, you may have greater wealth, the list could go on and on. But in the body of Christ, every Christian is a servant of every other Christian. And this helps to reinforce that. And so this can be used sort of as an object lesson, instructing Christians in how they are to behave within the body of

1:12:40 Christ, how they are to view themselves and others. And so could it be useful in the modern context? Of course. But it's not necessary. It's not something we have to do. It is something that is permissible. And so that's the right way to think about this. Think of it as not required. So it's a may, not a must. And just to reinforce, it was an immediate need. Yeah, when you're talking about walking in sandals the half a dozen miles through animal excrement and then you come into someone's home, the first thing you need to do is have your feet washed. And in order to do it well, you can't necessarily do it yourself. And so as Corey's saying, it's usually slaves or servants who were doing that sort of thing.

1:13:31 And so the command within the early church, where it had to be done anyway, to say, you will wash your brother's feet, frankly, in addition to solving the the practical problem, I guess what Corey was saying at the end, if you have an issue with someone else in your congregation, if you've been harboring some grudge against some guy and you feel like you there's there's something there you you wouldn't even talk to the guy, and then you are forced to wash his feet, it's going to naturally bring all the rest of that to a head because the physical act of submission of being down on your knees in front of someone else doing something that's gross and degrading, your your heart's gonna stir up and you're not

1:14:18 gonna do it. And so this was this was one of the wise things that that God instituted in that place to prevent those sort of things from percolating because you couldn't harbor a grudge against someone if you're gonna be washing his feet once a week. It's not it's not gonna last. That's and it's not that there's anything special about foot washing, it's just in that context, we all know that people aren't gonna be able to bite their tongues. They're gonna stand up and stomp out. Like that's that's in all of us. I would feel very uncomfortable to be in a place where this sort of thing were being brought back specifically because it is I I'm happy to be convinced otherwise theologically. I I I didn't do a ton of reading on this.

1:15:03 We know from church history that for the most part this more or less went away. Like it's been preserved to some extent symbolically, but I think for us to bring this back doesn't make sense as head coverings do. Because that was something again that like we lost head coverings in the 60s and seventies. And it has an eternal purpose. This does not have an eternal purpose because there's as Corey said, there's no longer a purpose for washing feet. Unless I hike or you're riding a a horse for hours, my dogs aren't gonna be barking. My feet are not gonna be gross. So it's completely symbolic and loses all of the the inherent nature that it originally had. And so to Corey's point is it is a teaching moment, yeah,

1:15:51 there's things you can teach. I think there are other things that could potentially be done in congregations that would teach the same things without reproducing this. Because it's not a law, it's an example of the church coexisting, as Corey laid out very well. Uh the next one we want to just do brush just briefly, someone asked about the uh conspiracy theory episode where we talked about uh the shape of the planet and the moon landing and that stuff. And he challenged us for not using scripture to justify that the earth is round. And And we did that very deliberately. You know, one of the things we talked about earlier was the the King James version, which uses the word firmament. No one knows what firmament means.

1:16:38 I'm not I'm not trying to be cheeky. If someone says firmament in the context of flat Earth, there are men who will swear up and down that firmament can only possibly mean a frisbee shaped disc. And so that word necessarily implies the shape of the earth, which is just it's complete nonsense. It's one of the biggest problems I have with the King James is that guys will hear a word, they don't know what it means, they're going to impart all of this other baggage to assume, well it has to necessarily bean this, and therefore I'm going to conclude things about reality from a mistranslation of scripture in such a way that are at odds with reality. So we ignore the Bible because the Bible doesn't say anything that

1:17:28 dictates what the shape of the earth is. I don't need the Bible to tell me the shape of the earth. That's not what the Bible is there for. And it's part of the reason we ignored it was very explicitly to deny the efficacy of Scripture for delineating the shape of the globe or anything else. Where scripture is silent, our reason is what God has given us scripturally to ascertain things. You know, if I tell you dogs tend to chase cats, it's retarded for you to respond with, well, where is that in Scripture? That's not what the Bible is for. If you think that's what the Bible is for, you have much bigger problems than not understanding dogs and cats or the shape of the earth. Scripture is not a list of facts.

1:18:13 It is not a list of things that just exist for their own purpose. It was God revealing himself in his work in the universe. And so when God says that he separated the waters above from the waters below and formed the dry land, that's it. When he says waters, does that mean H two O or does that mean some other sort of liquid form. I don't know and I don't care. You know, I don't need the chemical reaction chain from two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen, down to everything that exists on the planet in order for me to be able to believe that what scripture says is true. Because that's not what it's there for. What I know is that God revealed it, God took credit for doing the work, and then God gave it to us.

1:19:01 And so all I have to do is believe God and trust, yeah, you did it. And here I am. And I'm on a globe. I am on a sphere that's twirling through space along with every other sphere in space. And they're all spheres, and they're all twirling. That's how it all works. Everywhere, at every scale, from the electron shell to the galaxy, it's the same pattern over and over again. The Earth is not the exception. We are part of a whole universe that God created to testify to his glory. We don't need to use the Bible and we shouldn't have the instinct to try to use the Bible to disprove reality. You're going to end up being Gnostic if you do that. Reality is real at the risk of an absurd tautology, but like

1:19:48 what more can you say? You have a physical body, everything that we have, everything that we observe is is either a trick and there are things that you know, we've we've talked in the past about visu visual uh gotchas where your your mind is tricking you, where your eye sees one thing and your brain is piecing stuff together. Those sorts of illusions are also part of reality. Like light does weird things, our brain does weird things. That's not an assault on the fact that something is real. It just means that things are sometimes weird and complicated. But that's also it's still part of created reality. So I yeah, yeah you're correct. we did explicitly ignore it for this very purpose, because firmament doesn't

1:20:30 mean anything. It just it's referred to the same thing that is used and it's said in all the other translations in other words that mean the same thing. There's stuff, there's material. It's talking about the material world. And I don't need to have above and below separated either spherically or as a series of layered pancakes in order to have the correct view. Scripture is in accord with creation. God gave us both, and they both testify to his glory. We have another question here that is about some of the issues we've covered with regard to Christian nationalism and the Jews, And the request is for additional reading material. Now I could give a very long list at this point, but I think we'll keep it short relatively speaking, considering what I'm about

1:21:22 to recommend is probably five or six thousand pages worth of reading. So relatively short. But I'll include in the show notes some links the books that I would initially recommend reading, some of the the best options, the most accessible options That are just really statements of I won't necessarily say fact with no caveats because I don't agree with Solzhenitsyn on everything. He's one of the authors here. But these are very solid works that have great material in them, even if the authors themselves are not perfect, which of course there are no perfect authors except for the author of scripture. So the books I would recommend would be Two Hundred Years Together by Sultzenitsin, The Gulag Archipelago, also by Soltz and Itsen, and The Jewish Revolutionary

1:22:14 Spirit by E. Michael Jones. Now E. Michael Jones is a papist, he has terrible, terrible views when it comes to Luther and the Reformation, but they're exactly what you expect. So skip over those sections, read them and laugh, whatever it happens to be. Otherwise his analysis is fairly good. So those are probably good starting places, and if you want additional reading materials, feel free to send another comment or email, and I can provide additional links. But those are good places to start. We have another question then about helping those with mental disabilities to to understand scripture and the Christian religion. We touched on this a little bit earlier when we mentioned the small catechism.

1:23:04 Now I don't mean to say that the small catechism is specifically for those with developmental disabilities, for those who are mentally retarded. But at the same time, it is designed to be comprehensible to little children, and while little children are not mentally mentally retarded because they will eventually grow up and mature and gain capacity, they are actually roughly the mental equivalent of those who are adults and are mentally retarded. That is why sometimes in the psychological literature and elsewhere, you will compare an adult with disabilities to a child of a certain age. This is you know a child that is uh an exemplar of what children are supposed to be at that age, and so an adult may have the mental capacity of a five year old.

1:23:55 And so the small catechism is a good starting place because it is aimed at children, so those with these disabilities, with these limitations, will to some degree be able to better understand the material as presented in the small catechism. And as I mentioned earlier, if you know only the small catechism, because it is a statement of the Christian religion from Scripture that is sufficient for saving faith, know the small obviously yes, you still have to have faith. I'm not saying if you just go Know the material. We've gone over the different kinds of belief before notitia, ascensus, and fiducia. You must have fiducia, but that is a gift from God, and one of the ways God gives that is through the word.

1:24:40 And the small catechism presents the word in a way that is readily comprehensible. In fact, even some Roman Catholic missionaries will hand out the small catechism because there is no better version. It is the best short statement of the Christian religion. And so start there. But I would also be remiss if I didn't mention that back when the LCMS was a more serious church body, and ironically the publication date is nineteen sixty nine, so not everything that came out of the sixties was truly awful. But there's a book that was put out, you've probably seen a meme of it, if you've been in Christian online spaces for a particularly long time. And the book is helping the retarded to know God. This is back when we had people who were very concerned about

1:25:33 reaching the neighbor, about reaching their neighbors with the gospel, with the word of God. And one of the concerns is how do you reach those who cannot truly comprehend the material you are presenting? And so I'll link to that book as well. But the small catechism is really where you start with this, because anyone can understand the small catechism. And let's say you're working with someone who is profoundly retarded, someone who's in in that category of mental disability. There are many good Christians who fall into that category? Because again, faith is a gift from God, and He promises to give that with His Word. Teach them the Word, speak the Word to them, the rest is not up to you. It's not dependent on you.

1:26:24 God can work with that person as easily as he can work with you, and with regard to God, you are no different from that person because the space between you and God is still infinite. You are profoundly retarded with regard to God. So if God can work faith in you with his word, he can do the same thing for someone with whom you cannot really interact, someone you cannot teach. So don't worry about it. Do what you are able to do with the materials God has given us to do those things, God will do the rest. It's the same as early on in Lutheranism, there was a big concern about well, how do we reach the deaf? And this has been an ongoing concern for Christians in various traditions and denominations since the beginning.

1:27:14 Because what does Scripture say? Faith comes by hearing. Well the deaf can't hear, so how do we reach the deaf? And so this has been a very big concern in the church. Of course, if you can teach them to read, they can read the word, and that is hearing it internally as it were, and so you can still, yes, of course, receive faith by reading the word. But these are legitimate concerns for Christians. If you take God's word seriously, if you take his promises seriously, because he says faith comes by hearing, well how do we reach those who can't hear in that sense? Well we reach them by teaching them to read so they can hear the word internally when they read the word. How do we reach those who are profoundly retarded?

1:27:56 Well we rely on God's promises to be present in His Word when it is taught rightly. And so we speak the Word to these people, and we depend upon God's promise, we trust in His promise, that the Spirit will be present, that faith will be bestowed on these children or disabled adults, because the work ultimately is God's not man's. And I would only add that such a task should be a source of joy and not one of doubt or concern. As Corey said, God's going to do the work. So you if you have someone who's profoundly retarded, you you tell them that Jesus loves them, that Jesus made them just as he made you. They understand good and bad. No matter how retarded they are, they understand when they do something

1:28:42 bad, they they get in trouble, just like we all get in trouble. And you can teach whatever you are able to teach them about forgiveness in those contexts and say Jesus loves you and forgives you too. And that's the gospel. that's it. the Christian life is not intellectual assent to a big list of of rules and ideas. It is submission to to God's love. I at the at the risk of sound like like a Muslim. Like it's it it's simple. And so it's it's God's gifts to all of us. And it's a blessing to be able to share your faith with someone who's been baptized. And you know, again, that's part of the reason we did the episode on baptism. when you have the confidence that they have received the Holy Spirit

1:29:29 in that, you don't have to doubt that God is on both sides of the transaction. God is in them receiving God's word from your lips, strengthening and preserving their faith unto life everlasting.