SPEAKER_1: It is the 30th of January, 2026.
SPEAKER_1: I am Corey J.
SPEAKER_1: Moller, and this is At Any Cost.
SPEAKER_1: This is the 14th episode, a Q&A episode, and I will get right into the questions.
SPEAKER_1: I do not have any sort of housekeeping matters tonight.
SPEAKER_1: So the first question is one that comes up a number of times, but I don't mind having to address it again, so I'll go ahead and address it.
SPEAKER_1: I'm curious to hear your opinion on the topic and the best arguments for the perpetual virgin side of the debate, since clear reading of the Gospel seems to indicate she was not perpetually virgin.
SPEAKER_1: This is one of those where I don't know that I would necessarily advance an argument for the supposed perpetual virginity of Mary because I don't believe in it.
SPEAKER_1: Now, just because I don't believe something doesn't mean I can't formulate an argument for it because often it is helpful to formulate the strongest version of your opponent's argument in order to refute that.
SPEAKER_1: Because if you simply take advantage of the fact that your opponent has made a weak version of his argument, all you're doing is leaving it open for him to then come back with the strong version later, and then you're mortal, maybe you're gone.
SPEAKER_1: Someone else will have to deal with the problem that you could have addressed at the time.
SPEAKER_1: If you had steel manned his argument instead of straw manning his argument.
SPEAKER_1: And so, the argument from the mostly Roman Catholic side, just to be blunt, but the argument from the side of those who argue for semper virgo, the perpetual virginity of Mary, whatever you want to call the doctrine, the fundamental problem that I have trying to make their argument is that I don't find any of the things they argue compelling.
SPEAKER_1: Because, for instance, you have the passages about the entryway through which a particular figure in the Old Testament, the figure is Christ, of course, but through which this king enters is then closed.
SPEAKER_1: And then they try to argue that that is Mary's womb.
SPEAKER_1: We'll go ahead and not be unduly explicit, but they try to argue that it's Mary's womb.
SPEAKER_1: But it doesn't make any sense, because if you read it in context, then it also says that he will sit in the entryway and eat bread, and it says other things like that.
SPEAKER_1: It just, it doesn't follow, because they pull out this one verse and try to build an entire doctrine on it, whereas even the immediate context of that verse, or parallel ones and other parts of scripture, refute the very argument they're trying to make.
SPEAKER_1: I think the best argument that they can formulate, and I personally don't find it convincing at all, but the best sort of version of their argument would be when they try to say that she is the second arc of the covenant, right?
SPEAKER_1: And then, because she's the second arc of the covenant, well, what happened if you touched the original arc?
SPEAKER_1: Well, God struck you dead.
SPEAKER_1: So, the problem with that is that people undoubtedly didn't give Mary a ten-foot-wide berth and never come near her, because, well, if you touch her, you die.
SPEAKER_1: I think if that had been the case, it would have probably been recorded.
SPEAKER_1: And so, the parallel there with the arc of the covenant also doesn't hold up, because obviously, I'm going to go ahead and say that she had other children, right?
SPEAKER_1: So, her other children touched her, right?
SPEAKER_1: You know, she held them, they grabbed her face, they did all the things that children do.
SPEAKER_1: God didn't strike them dead.
SPEAKER_1: She's not, in that way, a second arc of the covenant.
SPEAKER_1: That's not what she is.
SPEAKER_1: And then you'll get them trying to argue for passages in Revelation and trying to say that Mary is the woman, the woman is the church, the woman's not Mary, and so you can't directly apply those.
SPEAKER_1: I think that the issue fundamentally is that it doesn't come from scripture.
SPEAKER_1: It comes from various Gnostic sources that add in perpetual virginity and other supposed doctrines that simply are not true.
SPEAKER_1: And then you wind up with things like the assumption of Mary, which is nowhere in scripture.
SPEAKER_1: You have assumption in scripture, that's a thing.
SPEAKER_1: God does sometimes take people, and they don't die.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't happen very often.
SPEAKER_1: And I think if that were something that had been done in Mary's case, it would have been recorded, because that seems kind of important.
SPEAKER_1: And so, and we also don't have early church sources saying that that happened, because bear in mind, the apostles all knew Mary, and many of those trained by the apostles knew Mary.
SPEAKER_1: They would have noted if Mary had just ascended into heaven at some point and ceased to be found, because they would have drawn the parallel to things that happened in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_1: It wouldn't have been unusual for them in that sense.
SPEAKER_1: It would have been unusual in the sense if it did not happen very often, but it would have been recorded.
SPEAKER_1: So, I just don't find any of the arguments for it compelling, because again, it ties back to Gnosticism, this idea that the flesh is evil and the spirit is good.
SPEAKER_1: That's ultimately what the Semper Virgo doctrine is.
SPEAKER_1: It is the formalization of that into a dogma of the Roman church, and then spread to others as well.
SPEAKER_1: Because of course, some Lutherans did hold to it.
SPEAKER_1: They were wrong.
SPEAKER_1: I believe they were an error.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think it's an error that damns you, but I do think it is an error, because I think it is very clear in Scripture, it speaks of his brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_1: And I know that you'll have Roman Catholic, well, Mary was 14, and Joseph was 40, and it was not a real Mary.
SPEAKER_1: No.
SPEAKER_1: Look at what Scripture says.
SPEAKER_1: Scripture says, Joseph is a righteous man.
SPEAKER_1: God commanded him to take Mary as his wife.
SPEAKER_1: He did that because he obeyed God.
SPEAKER_1: And Mary's age isn't given in Scripture.
SPEAKER_1: So if you're pulling out her age and trying to say she's 11, 12, 13, whatever it is, first off, you're being a little weird, please stop.
SPEAKER_1: And second, you're pulling from a Gnostic text that isn't part of Scripture.
SPEAKER_1: It's not binding.
SPEAKER_1: You shouldn't use it as a source.
SPEAKER_1: So the flesh is not wicked.
SPEAKER_1: The flesh is corrupted and fallen because of the fall, but the flesh is not per se wicked.
SPEAKER_1: There's nothing wrong with the natural use of marriage, which is what Scripture, of course, calls it.
SPEAKER_1: God did not set Mary apart in some way that makes her not a woman.
SPEAKER_1: What is one of the greatest blessings God can give to a woman?
SPEAKER_1: A loving husband and children that naturally result from that.
SPEAKER_1: I don't believe God denied that to Mary.
SPEAKER_1: So I just do not see any compelling argument for it, and I think it is a dangerous doctrine because of the fact that ultimately it is founded on Gnosticism, not on Christianity, not on something that is in the actual words of Scripture.
SPEAKER_1: It is found in the various Gnostic texts.
SPEAKER_1: I won't go ahead and name them because you shouldn't read them.
SPEAKER_1: They don't actually have value.
SPEAKER_1: They're not like the Intertestamental texts, which are historical and have some value because they place some parts of Scripture into an historical context.
SPEAKER_1: That's a different thing from the Gnostic text, which are themselves a separate religious text.
SPEAKER_1: It would be the equivalent of reading Buddhism or the Koran, or any of those various documents that are explicitly other religions.
SPEAKER_1: The danger for the Gnostic text is that they try to pretend they are Christian, and they simply are not, and they're not written by the men whose names are sometimes attached to them.
SPEAKER_1: And so, you know, it's not written by Thomas.
SPEAKER_1: You don't have these various other Gospels from apostles who did not write these things.
SPEAKER_1: So again, I don't think it's an error that damns, but I do believe firmly that it is an error, and it's one that we should try to remove from the churches over time.
SPEAKER_1: It's going to take some time because there are those who are very attached to it.
SPEAKER_1: Rome is going to have the biggest problem because they built up a cult of Mary that is part of their, we'll call it, expression of Christianity.
SPEAKER_1: We'll go ahead and say that.
SPEAKER_1: But they built up a cult, and that's very difficult to undo.
SPEAKER_1: And I know that many Roman Catholics don't want to hear that, but when you are praying to Mary and praising things about her that are not present in the pages of scripture, that should probably worry you.
SPEAKER_1: So insofar as building up a steelman argument of Semper Virgo, I don't think that I really can, because it would be pure sophistry.
SPEAKER_1: I do not find in the pages of scripture actual sufficient warrant, and I don't find according to plain reason either, actual sufficient warrant to build up that argument without resorting to those Gnostic texts, which is impermissible.
SPEAKER_1: The next question is also about sort of the church, but this time about praxis instead.
SPEAKER_1: Let me pull up the actual wording here.
SPEAKER_1: Hey, Corey, we are recent converts.
SPEAKER_1: Family of four just baptized last month altogether.
SPEAKER_1: Congratulations.
SPEAKER_1: Thanks to Stone Choir for bringing us into the fold, and we're pretty new to this tradition from a non-denominational background.
SPEAKER_1: Wondering what you recommend we should do or practice for the season of Lent.
SPEAKER_1: Is it just as simple as fasting, giving something up for the season?
SPEAKER_1: So, I know that there are those who are going to object to Lenten practice, and I'm just going to go ahead and say that it's been part of the church and part of the church calendar for a very long time.
SPEAKER_1: And there's nothing wrong with it.
SPEAKER_1: There's no serious objection to Lenten practice.
SPEAKER_1: The issue would be when it becomes a matter of conscience, if people tell you, you are compelled to do certain things during Lent, that's making a law where God has not made a law.
SPEAKER_1: Now, I think it is good to practice certain things during Lent, and I'll get into some specifics, but you're not compelled to do it.
SPEAKER_1: It is not a sin to omit it.
SPEAKER_1: It is not a matter of conscience.
SPEAKER_1: You are not being a bad Christian if you don't give up chocolate during Lent or whatever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: But Lent is what is called a penitential season, and there are various different seasons in the church year, commemorating different things in different ways.
SPEAKER_1: Some of them are a celebration, some of them are introspection, and they are a little more somber.
SPEAKER_1: Lent is one of the more somber ones.
SPEAKER_1: It is in part commemorating Christ's 40 Days in the Wilderness, and it is of course also in part just preparing your heart for Easter, for the Easter celebration, recognizing the reality of sin, the reality of why Christ's work was necessary.
SPEAKER_1: And so, it's building up to passion tide, to passion week, the Easter week, right?
SPEAKER_1: Good Friday, good Saturday, and Easter Sunday.
SPEAKER_1: Of course, Monday, Thursday as well.
SPEAKER_1: And the Lenten season begins with Ash Wednesday, which is the 18th of February this year, I believe.
SPEAKER_1: I would have to check the calendar to be absolutely certain on that, but I believe it's the 18th this year.
SPEAKER_1: And so, that is the beginning of the 40 days of Lent.
SPEAKER_1: Sundays are special because Sundays are feast days, they're treated differently.
SPEAKER_1: However, traditionally, one of the salient things, and this is worth bringing up, not again because it's a matter of conscience, you're not bound by it, but I do think this one is good practice for some practical reasons that I will explain.
SPEAKER_1: Traditionally, the Lenten season is a season during which you did not, for instance, conduct the marriage ceremony.
SPEAKER_1: The reason for that is because you didn't want to mix the celebration, obviously, of marriage, your anniversary, things like that, with the somber nature of the Lenten fast, and have that sort of tension there, not necessarily a true conflict, but a sort of tension, because if you are following the Lenten fast, then obviously you're going to take a break from that, right, on the day of your anniversary to celebrate your anniversary, and so traditionally you didn't schedule marriages during that period.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think you necessarily have to do that, but if you are going to make your Lenten practice, your observation of the Lenten season something that would be in conflict with that in the future, it's something to consider.
SPEAKER_1: Again, not a matter of conscience, you're not bound to do it, but it is something you should think about when you're making these decisions.
SPEAKER_1: But insofar as the actual practice of Lent goes, again, it is a penitential season, it is a 40-day period building up to Easter.
SPEAKER_1: And so part of how you observe that is some kind of fast.
SPEAKER_1: Again, it doesn't have to be, I gave up chocolate for Lent, or I gave up caffeine, which I'm probably not going to do, as I have both coffee and tea sitting on my desk right now.
SPEAKER_1: But if that is something that is good for you, if that is something that turns your mind toward God during the season, then by all means, do it.
SPEAKER_1: That's sort of the key here.
SPEAKER_1: What you're doing is removing something from your life and exchanging the time you would have spent on that, to spend on the things of God, to focus on God, whether it is contemplating the passion of Christ, whether it is contemplating the depth and nature of sin, the great gifts that God has given to you in your baptism and the Lord's Supper and the baptism of your wife and children as well in this specific case.
SPEAKER_1: Whatever it happens to be, you are taking some time out of your calendar, out of your year, and rededicating that to God in order to think about the things of God.
SPEAKER_1: Again, not as a matter of conscience, not as a matter of being bound to do this thing and then running into sin if you don't, because it's not a sin to leave it out, but as something that we should want to do as Christians, because we should want to remember the things that God has done for us.
SPEAKER_1: We should want to think about the things that God has done for us, and we should set aside time to do that.
SPEAKER_1: And there's also just the practical aspect of it.
SPEAKER_1: This is something that has definitely fallen away in the non-denominational space in many other churches as well.
SPEAKER_1: Less so high churches, so-called, but even there sometimes.
SPEAKER_1: The observation of different holy days, holidays, whatever you want to call them, same word.
SPEAKER_1: The observation of these things, and the times, and the seasons, is an important part of just being human.
SPEAKER_1: We recognize this, because we see it outside, depending where you are in the world.
SPEAKER_1: I used to live in Southern California, and so less of the seasons there.
SPEAKER_1: But there's a rhythm to things.
SPEAKER_1: You have the seasons that pass in the natural year, and you have the seasons of the church year.
SPEAKER_1: And so we are going through these things repeatedly over the course of our life, and it's important to have that sort of rhythm, to have those reminders, to have sort of waypoints along the way in our Christian walk, in our walk with Christ.
SPEAKER_1: And if there are no seasons in your practice, if there's no change of any kind, it's just one tone all the time, which is what many of the non-denominational churches are, except for they sometimes go all out for Christmas and Easter, which I'm not saying is bad.
SPEAKER_1: It's good they do that.
SPEAKER_1: At least they're observing two of the great feasts of the year, right?
SPEAKER_1: But it's important to have this rhythm to your life, not just to your personal life out in the world, but to your Christian life as well.
SPEAKER_1: And Lent is a big part of that, because you have the beginning with Ash Wednesday, and I'm sure I will get questions about Ash Wednesday probably for next week or the week after.
SPEAKER_1: I'll answer those then.
SPEAKER_1: I'll leave them aside now.
SPEAKER_1: But the verse of which some of you are thinking right now, it's actually part of our readings for Ash Wednesday.
SPEAKER_1: So save that for later, but I'll go into that probably next week.
SPEAKER_1: You have the beginning with Ash Wednesday, which is a somber remember, a remembrance, a remembering of the depth and depravity of sin and the corruption, the separation from God.
SPEAKER_1: And the ashes are an important part of that, right?
SPEAKER_1: For does thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.
SPEAKER_1: It's important to remember that.
SPEAKER_1: But then leading up to, through the period of Lent, to Easter and the recognition that because of Christ, we have new life.
SPEAKER_1: We were buried with him.
SPEAKER_1: We will be resurrected as he was.
SPEAKER_1: We have already avoided the second death.
SPEAKER_1: That is what baptism, of course, does, is because you have already gone into death and come out, so you will not taste the second death, which, of course, is hell.
SPEAKER_1: The first death is the mortal death.
SPEAKER_1: The second death is hell.
SPEAKER_1: Unless you want to use the theological one, then, of course, the first death is the fall, but that's a separate teaching tool.
SPEAKER_1: But as far as the Lenten practice goes, just dedicate a little more time to your Christian praxis, whatever it happens to be.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe you set aside ten more minutes of reading in the morning or in the evening.
SPEAKER_1: Preferably do that with your family.
SPEAKER_1: That is something you should be doing as the head of the household.
SPEAKER_1: So maybe set aside 15, 20 minutes in the evening if you can.
SPEAKER_1: Go through the catechism.
SPEAKER_1: Go through part of the large catechism.
SPEAKER_1: You can go through a lot of the small catechism in 20 minutes.
SPEAKER_1: So you can go through that many times over the course of Lent, which is important because it's good to know the parts of the catechism, particularly the small catechism, by heart.
SPEAKER_1: Because as I've said before, and this is something where even the Roman Catholics agree, so they won't disagree with me on this one.
SPEAKER_1: There are Roman Catholic missionaries who have handed out the small catechism to various parts of the world.
SPEAKER_1: Because there is no better short summary of the Christian faith than the small catechism.
SPEAKER_1: It's not saying no one could make a better one, it's just Luther made the best one, and it stood the test of time, five centuries and counting.
SPEAKER_1: So all Christians, I would say, should read the small catechism.
SPEAKER_1: Obviously you're going to have disagreements if you are over in Baptist territory, non-denominational territory, because of the teaching on the sacraments, but I don't want you to skip those.
SPEAKER_1: But if you disagree with what Lutherans teach on them, then just go through the first few parts of the catechism instead, because you can't disagree with the Ten Commandments, you can't disagree with the Lord's Prayer, you can't disagree with the Apostle's Creed, right?
SPEAKER_1: These are things that you have to accept as a Christian, because they're simply universally true.
SPEAKER_1: So if you don't want to agree on the sacraments, fine, I wish you would, but you can leave those out when you're teaching your children.
SPEAKER_1: You'll answer to God for whether you taught correctly or not, but that is between you and God, ultimately.
SPEAKER_1: But spend some time going through these things, spend some time focusing on the things of God, and if you give up something as part of that, again, use that time that you would have spent on that thing to dedicate it to God as well.
SPEAKER_1: That's what the real practice is.
SPEAKER_1: The practice is focusing on what God has done for us, and being thankful for that, it's not focusing on, oh, I have to fast because it's lent.
SPEAKER_1: That's not the point.
SPEAKER_1: The purpose of the fast is what matters, right?
SPEAKER_1: You can think of places in Scripture where God has spoken of the nature of the fast is what matters, right?
SPEAKER_1: It's not just that you fasted and you were gloomy and you looked sad and you were wandering around in a fugue state, right?
SPEAKER_1: That's not what God wants.
SPEAKER_1: When you fast, it's not for me, it's for you.
SPEAKER_1: That's God condemning the Israelites for their hypocrisy.
SPEAKER_1: That's not the sort of fast we should be doing as Christians.
SPEAKER_1: So, that's the basics of the observation of lent and why you should do it and how you should do it.
SPEAKER_1: And I do think that you should.
SPEAKER_1: Again, not a matter of conscience, you're not bound to do it, but Scripture does say when you fast, not if.
SPEAKER_1: So, lent's a good time.
SPEAKER_1: We got a question here from the chat, I'll just address quickly since I noticed.
SPEAKER_1: What do you make of the thousands like myself, born Roman Catholic, who destroyed their lives with alcohol and were saved by the Holy Spirit, no less miraculous than Christ himself laying hands and having a limb grow back?
SPEAKER_1: AA worked when the church was clueless.
SPEAKER_1: I have mixed feelings about AA because of some of the things they teach, but at the same time, I 100% recognize that they have done very good work for many men and women.
SPEAKER_1: And for that, they should be praised.
SPEAKER_1: And yes, I do think the church has done a particularly poor job of addressing those issues, and I think the church needs to do better.
SPEAKER_1: Because I think that the church can take a lot of cues from AA, from Alcoholics Anonymous, and from the various other groups, right?
SPEAKER_1: There's NA as well, and other things like that.
SPEAKER_1: And the church can use the tools that have stood the test of time, and have stood up under actual scrutiny and use, and also pull things in from psychology.
SPEAKER_1: I've gone over psychology in previous episodes.
SPEAKER_1: And the church has the great advantage of the truth of Christ, and the truth of sin, and why we fall into these things, right?
SPEAKER_1: Because alcoholism and drug abuse and things like that are not a problem in a world that has not fallen.
SPEAKER_1: And so, Christians have the ability to say, not just how these things happen, but why these things happen.
SPEAKER_1: Why is the alcohol attractive to some men?
SPEAKER_1: Why are the drugs attractive to some men?
SPEAKER_1: Why do people fall into these things and then destroy their lives and the lives of those around them?
SPEAKER_1: Now, AA and other groups like that can, of course, give you tools to help you get out of the pit.
SPEAKER_1: But even they, of course, recognize the higher power, Christianity can give you a name for that higher power.
SPEAKER_1: Christianity can give you the reason why this sort of desire, this impulse, this concupiscence, this desire to sin exists in you.
SPEAKER_1: And that is something that the church should be doing.
SPEAKER_1: The churches absolutely should be involved in those things.
SPEAKER_1: And I'm not saying just wrench your space out to AA.
SPEAKER_1: I'm saying the church needs to be actively involved in the problems that are live in society.
SPEAKER_1: Now, the church isn't the only source of solving all of society's problems, right?
SPEAKER_1: But when it comes to something that is very clearly the result of sin, the result of concupiscence, the result of the corruption that is subsequent to the fall, the church has something to say to that.
SPEAKER_1: And Christians should be the ones working within that framework to help these men and women.
SPEAKER_1: It's not to say that the pastor has to lead the equivalent of an AA group, but this is something the elders can do if alcoholism is a problem in your community, and in many places, many parts of the world, it is going to be, because it's still a serious problem.
SPEAKER_1: It's been a problem for humanity for thousands of years.
SPEAKER_1: It's probably not going away.
SPEAKER_1: It's not to say we should ban alcohol.
SPEAKER_1: I don't obviously believe that, but it is to say that there are problems for some men, and we have to address those.
SPEAKER_1: And the church can address them in a particularly useful way.
SPEAKER_1: And again, it should be something that is addressed, not just with the individual, with the individual as part of that social network, because when a husband is an alcoholic, it doesn't just affect him.
SPEAKER_1: It affects his wife, it affects his children, it affects his parents, his job, everyone around him.
SPEAKER_1: And every alcoholic knows that.
SPEAKER_1: Now, I disagree with, this is one particular point where I disagree with AA, I don't think that there is such a thing as a man who is, per se, an alcoholic, and cannot ever change.
SPEAKER_1: He's always an alcoholic, even if he doesn't drink, right?
SPEAKER_1: I just simply don't believe that.
SPEAKER_1: And personally, I think that those who get their lives back under control could probably have a beer every now and then and be fine.
SPEAKER_1: I think that AA goes overboard on that.
SPEAKER_1: However, that also comes with the caveat, if you are someone who recognizes that there is a danger for you of falling back into that hole, by all means, simply avoid it.
SPEAKER_1: Just go ahead and avoid it.
SPEAKER_1: Now, insofar as the sacrament is concerned, that's a different thing, because you should still want to go to the sacrament, and the sacrament involves wine.
SPEAKER_1: But I firmly do not believe that anyone is going to fall off the wagon as it were, or have trouble because of a literal thimble full of wine.
SPEAKER_1: You get more alcohol when you use mouthwash, as most alcoholics are going to know, quite frankly.
SPEAKER_1: So, I don't think that AA is bad.
SPEAKER_1: I do think it has some problems, but I think it does very good work, and I think it is a serious problem that the church has been negligent in this area, has simply not done what it needs to do.
SPEAKER_1: And part of that is because we have teachers and pastors who don't want to rebuke the sins they see in front of them, because that makes them uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_1: It's a lot easier to attack the sin that isn't a live issue in your congregation, because then you don't have to look anyone in the eyes and say, you are doing X, Y, and Z, and those are sin.
SPEAKER_1: That's a lot harder than just saying, well, you shouldn't do this list of things that no one in your congregation has ever done or is doing.
SPEAKER_1: So it's a problem for the churches, it's a problem for teachers and pastors, but not exclusively, because again, I don't think the pastor should necessarily be the one running this sort of thing.
SPEAKER_1: This is sort of the natural place for the elders to take initiative and do something on their own.
SPEAKER_1: So I think that our churches should be working on that.
SPEAKER_1: And yes, I do think that if you have that sort of addiction, that sort of problem, there's definitely a miraculous aspect involved in that, getting out of that pit.
SPEAKER_1: Christ needs to be part of the equation.
SPEAKER_1: Someone commented as a follow-up that there are genetic differences.
SPEAKER_1: And yes, that's absolutely true.
SPEAKER_1: There are very clear genetic components to whether or not you become addicted to certain substances.
SPEAKER_1: And for instance, that's why Amerindians in the US context had such a problem with alcoholism.
SPEAKER_1: They have, because of their Asian ancestry, a lack of, it's an alcohol enzyme, it's an enzyme that breaks down alcohol.
SPEAKER_1: Europeans have much more of it.
SPEAKER_1: Asians, many of them, not all of them, but many of them have much less of it.
SPEAKER_1: And so that is a very real problem.
SPEAKER_1: When you can't break down ethanol, it affects you more strongly.
SPEAKER_1: And so if someone who has a lot of that enzyme goes shot for shot with someone who basically has none, well, I think it's pretty predictable what's going to be the outcome there.
SPEAKER_1: So yes, there are absolutely genetic components to that, just like many other things that are sin.
SPEAKER_1: We're right back to Gnosticism, right?
SPEAKER_1: There are many who want to try to say that there is this fundamental distinction between this divide between the body and the soul, and there just isn't, because you are a Gestalt.
SPEAKER_1: You are a sum that is greater than the individual parts.
SPEAKER_1: You are not just your body, but you are not not your body.
SPEAKER_1: The same is true of your soul.
SPEAKER_1: And there are going to be things where there is a biological component to something that is sin.
SPEAKER_1: You are biologically predisposed to certain sins.
SPEAKER_1: That's not to say you can't avoid them.
SPEAKER_1: It's not to say that you don't have free will still, but it is to say that there are going to be things that are going to be more difficult for you than for other people.
SPEAKER_1: And we all recognize this.
SPEAKER_1: Certainly all the men here know that, right?
SPEAKER_1: There are certain sins that are going to be more enticing for men because of the reality of biochemistry.
SPEAKER_1: That is simply how it goes.
SPEAKER_1: And part of that, of course, is going to be age as well as genetics.
SPEAKER_1: Someone asked about Anglicanism.
SPEAKER_1: I'm going to leave that one for next time since I just want to go over that question a little bit more.
SPEAKER_1: I will note it down for next time.
SPEAKER_1: Someone asked about parables.
SPEAKER_1: I scrolled up and found that at the top of the chat.
SPEAKER_1: Have you ever employed parables to teach, aside from citing existing ones, which of course I'm going to do.
SPEAKER_1: I'm going to use the parables of Christ to teach.
SPEAKER_1: Personally, I haven't used anything I would necessarily call a parable, which I guess is just an sort of extended metaphor or analogy, right?
SPEAKER_1: It's essentially what a parable is.
SPEAKER_1: I use metaphor and analogy and things like that all the time, not just for teaching, but obviously rhetoric as well, the rhetoric and teaching are related.
SPEAKER_1: I haven't personally created a parable to teach.
SPEAKER_1: That's just not something I've done.
SPEAKER_1: I don't object to it.
SPEAKER_1: It's just not my personal preference.
SPEAKER_1: The pending question from a few weeks ago about the National Party of South Africa and particularly their 1947 platform and essentially whether or not it was a translation of Christian nationalism into actual politics.
SPEAKER_1: I'll probably come back to this one in a couple of weeks, just go over it a little more deeply.
SPEAKER_1: But in that party platform, and it's really more of a pamphlet than a platform, but in the pamphlet slash platform, they're essentially doubling down on the apartheid regime and do actually have a focus on the Christianization of the various peoples around them as well.
SPEAKER_1: So, explicitly a Christian thing, and yes, I would say it was a translation of Christian nationalism as an ideology, as a set of ideals, into an actual political practice.
SPEAKER_1: And I think that what they were doing was largely correct.
SPEAKER_1: I obviously don't object to the apartheid regime.
SPEAKER_1: I think it was fine.
SPEAKER_1: I think that is a reasonable way to handle those circumstances where you have different races, where you have different groups of men living in essentially one territory.
SPEAKER_1: And so you had the aspects of geographical or physical separation, the aspects of cultural and economic separation, all of those things.
SPEAKER_1: Those are all perfectly permissible for Christians.
SPEAKER_1: That is something that you are allowed to do in organizing and maintaining your society.
SPEAKER_1: And I think it's a good thing as well, because they were designed in order to preserve the things that God gave us, not least of all, to be our race, because our race is a gift from God.
SPEAKER_1: You're not whatever you happen to be by chance.
SPEAKER_1: And that will lead into a question that I have here from someone else in the reply to the thread on X here.
SPEAKER_1: But you are not what you are by chance in any way, shape, or form with regard to any part of you.
SPEAKER_1: And so I think that is true not only of your body, but also of your soul.
SPEAKER_1: And I think that their system was trying to preserve that.
SPEAKER_1: They were doing what was right.
SPEAKER_1: They should have fought for it with a little more vigor than they did.
SPEAKER_1: But I'll get into that a little more deeply, I think, in a couple weeks here.
SPEAKER_1: Leading into the question that I referenced there, someone asked about traducianism.
SPEAKER_1: And for those who are not familiar, there are two main schools, as it were, two main ideas with regard to how the soul for a particular person is created, how it comes into being.
SPEAKER_1: There's creationism and traducianism.
SPEAKER_1: And, I mean, realistically, they're both creationism of a sort, but that's the distinction used to just tell the two apart.
SPEAKER_1: Creationism is that God specifically creates that given soul when that person, that zygote, that unique genetic expression comes into being, right?
SPEAKER_1: The other is traducianism.
SPEAKER_1: Traducianism basically says that the soul is transmitted naturally, in quotes, and I'll get into that, in the same way as everything else you have.
SPEAKER_1: So as your body, your soul is created, essentially, from your parents' souls.
SPEAKER_1: It's a natural generation process.
SPEAKER_1: I hold to traducianism.
SPEAKER_1: Luther was very inclined toward the end of his life.
SPEAKER_1: It's always been sort of the majority, I would say overwhelming majority position in Lutheranism, particularly among Lutheran theologians.
SPEAKER_1: And I think it's one of those where it's just patently obvious, right?
SPEAKER_1: Because if you had sort of souls that were just, they just came into being, God just created them with no reference to line or anything like that, then you wouldn't have distinct races.
SPEAKER_1: You couldn't.
SPEAKER_1: You wouldn't have racial characteristics.
SPEAKER_1: You wouldn't have groups of people who have certain predispositions to certain things, because I think that there's an intimate relationship there between the soul and the mind.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think you can really disentangle them even.
SPEAKER_1: And I do hold a tripartism, of course, but that's a separate discussion.
SPEAKER_1: Related, but separate discussion.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think that any of the things that we see in the world make any sense unless the soul is also generated naturally.
SPEAKER_1: And I said I would get to that, but God creates the rules, right?
SPEAKER_1: So there is ultimately, there's a difference, but at the same time, God is creating the soul in either case.
SPEAKER_1: It's just, is he creating it through a set of rules that he put in place, and through these rules, then creating souls down into the distant ages of the world, whenever the world ends, right?
SPEAKER_1: The last person is created.
SPEAKER_1: Did he do it that way?
SPEAKER_1: Or is he stepping into time, as it were, in every single instance of conception and putting a soul into that zygote?
SPEAKER_1: I don't think that one.
SPEAKER_1: I think the traducianism, because again, I think it's very clear there's such a thing as a German soul, or a Chinese soul, or a Japanese soul.
SPEAKER_1: I think that different peoples have, not in the sense of a higher soul or a lesser soul or anything like that, and certainly any of the problems that have resulted from the fall and interaction between the soul and the body will disappear in the next life, right?
SPEAKER_1: Because the effects of the fall, the effects of sin are removed.
SPEAKER_1: But I think that the differences remain, because a German is a particular thing, an American is a particular thing, and I don't think it's just biologically, I think it's spiritual as well.
SPEAKER_1: And so, yes, I definitely hold to traducianism, but there was another question within this that, yes, is his reasoning correct that rejecting traducianism is a serious error, because that allows man to compel God to act?
SPEAKER_1: Insofar as that's concerned, I'm not sure there's much of a difference, because of what I said about the fact that in either case, God is the one creating the soul, right?
SPEAKER_1: So, I don't think there's a fundamental difference there in terms of, you know, we're not compelling God to act, because God either set the conditions where the thing will inevitably and naturally happen, because he set the rules, or he is personally doing it in that particular instance.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think there's a big enough difference there to say that it's incorrect or wrong, or even morally wrongful to argue for one versus the other on those grounds.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think that is necessarily compelling, but I do think that, again, it just very clearly from what we see in the world, I think it's very obvious that traducianism is correct, and creationism is, it's sort of blank slate-ism, really, for the soul, and I just don't think it makes any sense, or has any real proof.
SPEAKER_1: Got another question here.
SPEAKER_1: Let me pull up the actual wording.
SPEAKER_1: Bob from Speakers Corner recently did a podcast arguing against ethno-nationalism.
SPEAKER_1: As I pointed out before, I don't like the term because it's redundant, right?
SPEAKER_1: We're just, we're mixing Greek and Latin for no reason.
SPEAKER_1: Being incompatible with Christianity.
SPEAKER_1: They did happen to name drop you as well, but their argument is that ideas are what's most important for a prospering society, not homogeneity, so.
SPEAKER_1: Would you be interested in debating Bob on this topic?
SPEAKER_1: He does seem to be increasing his vocalizations lately, that ethno-nationalism is incompatible with Christianity.
SPEAKER_1: I am not familiar with that, I assume, podcast, so I don't necessarily have a firm answer to that.
SPEAKER_1: I'm generally willing to discuss these issues, as I think is obvious at this point.
SPEAKER_1: I don't really think that there's much in the way of the theological argument that needs to be developed at this point, that needs to be expanded from what we did with Stone Choir.
SPEAKER_1: I think that we really laid out the argument for not just the compatibility of Christianity and Nationalism.
SPEAKER_1: I'll go ahead and drop the redundant prefix there.
SPEAKER_1: I think that we laid out the case that it is a requirement of being a Christian, and that there is no way that you can possibly avoid it.
SPEAKER_1: And the homogeneity of a society is obviously of particular importance, or God wouldn't have created things that way.
SPEAKER_1: If God had wanted us to have some sort of wild diversity, really to abuse the term, but if he wanted basically everyone to be completely unique, he could have done that.
SPEAKER_1: He could have had it be the equivalent of, you know, roll a bunch of dice when someone is born, and it's completely unrelated to their parents.
SPEAKER_1: He could have had you hatch from an egg that just appeared in the wilderness if he wanted.
SPEAKER_1: You could have grown on a tree.
SPEAKER_1: God could have done basically anything.
SPEAKER_1: He didn't do that.
SPEAKER_1: And so we can draw out things from what God did versus what God did not do.
SPEAKER_1: God made it so that you are born to parents who were born to parents, who were born to parents all the way back, and over time, due primarily to loss of genetic information, you have an entrenching of certain characteristics and enhancement of those characteristics and the expression of them in certain populations, in certain proportions.
SPEAKER_1: And so you wind up with what we call races.
SPEAKER_1: And that's very clearly God's plan.
SPEAKER_1: So the idea that human ideas or ideologies are more important to a nation than the very substance of the nation and the fact that God created that nation and the fact that God created nations as a thing, as an idea, I think it's completely ludicrous and anti-Christian.
SPEAKER_1: I think you have to conclude this was important to God, and it should be important to us.
SPEAKER_1: And on top of that, I mean, other than obviously the libertarianism of the thing, which I find detestable, but there's this argument underlying this that if we just have the right ideas, everything will be fine.
SPEAKER_1: It's a denial of the flesh.
SPEAKER_1: It's a denial of reality.
SPEAKER_1: We're right back to Gnosticism, which we always wind up back at Gnosticism because it's sort of the over arching heresy.
SPEAKER_1: It is the arch heresy that spawns all of these little children that run about and causes problems in the world.
SPEAKER_1: The argument that I would use against that is I would just say, well, Liberia exists, right?
SPEAKER_1: We gave them our Constitution, we set them up, we did all these things, gave them the exact same society we have based on the ideas, and it turned into Liberia because of the difference in race.
SPEAKER_1: So would you want to live in Liberia?
SPEAKER_1: It has the same ideas as the US.
SPEAKER_1: I think I'd rather live here.
SPEAKER_1: We ran the experiment, it didn't work, because ultimately culture is downstream from race.
SPEAKER_1: There's a feedback loop to some degree, of course, but you are not going to produce the culture of Norway with Somalians.
SPEAKER_1: That's not how it works.
SPEAKER_1: God didn't create it that way.
SPEAKER_1: We all know it doesn't work that way.
SPEAKER_1: It's completely ludicrous, and the only reason that men argue it is because they don't like the necessary conclusions you have to draw from the truth.
SPEAKER_1: The truth makes them uncomfortable, and so they fight against it.
SPEAKER_1: Someone said the video is black on Twitch.
SPEAKER_1: I have no idea why, because everything shows fine on my end, so I would say probably just switch over to YouTube if there's no video on Twitch, because it's showing as being fine.
SPEAKER_1: So that might be an error on their end.
SPEAKER_1: Someone asked about the rosary.
SPEAKER_1: I am not Roman Catholic, as I think everyone probably knows by now.
SPEAKER_1: And so no, I'm not going to pray to Mary or the saints, and so I'm not going to pray the rosary.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think having a set number of prayers that you pray in a certain sequence is wrong.
SPEAKER_1: I think that's completely fine.
SPEAKER_1: So for instance, I'll pray the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed in pretty much the same order every day.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think that's a problem, but I think that at some point, you cross that line into the mindless repetition that Christ condemns, the heaping up of words instead of prayer.
SPEAKER_1: Praying the Lord's Prayer is good.
SPEAKER_1: Praying the Lord's Prayer 500 times in a row is no longer prayer.
SPEAKER_1: It's mindless repetition.
SPEAKER_1: It is what God condemns.
SPEAKER_1: It's what Christ explicitly condemns.
SPEAKER_1: You can do that with any prayer.
SPEAKER_1: Don't use them in that way.
SPEAKER_1: Christian meditation is on something.
SPEAKER_1: It is not clearing the mind.
SPEAKER_1: That's Eastern meditation.
SPEAKER_1: It is something we condemn as Christians.
SPEAKER_1: So if you want to meditate on something as a Christian, read a book of the Bible.
SPEAKER_1: Read something that is Christian material, and meditate on that instead of the clear your mind meditation.
SPEAKER_1: Because again, the clear your mind stuff, which is what repetition is designed to do, it's designed to quiet the mind, the analytical faculties, the critical faculties, that's Eastern, not Christian.
SPEAKER_1: So no, I am not a fan of the Rosary.
SPEAKER_1: But I don't object to set prayers, I object to their abuse, which is a different thing.
SPEAKER_1: I think that's most of the questions from the chat.
SPEAKER_1: So, I know I had more questions here.
SPEAKER_1: Let me pull them up.
SPEAKER_1: A lighthearted one, do hippies have souls?
SPEAKER_1: And if they do, are we obligated to treat them like humans?
SPEAKER_1: Hippies, yes, they can be salvaged, and they actually sometimes do some very good things like open nice restaurants, right?
SPEAKER_1: So, I'm not going to necessarily disparage all hippies and hipsters and sort of that subset of people, because they've done some good things.
SPEAKER_1: They're, they have their problems, they can be obnoxious, particularly when they smell like patchouli oil, right?
SPEAKER_1: But they've done some good in the world.
SPEAKER_1: They can be brought to our side.
SPEAKER_1: If you can start to point out one of the most important things, you can point out to them, technically, the right wing is the environmentalist wing, not the left.
SPEAKER_1: The left stole that issue from us, and they're terrible at it, because they make the environment worse every time they try to improve it.
SPEAKER_1: So, if you can get them to believe that some of these issues are actually right wing issues, like we care about the health of our people, we care about the health of the environment, we care about the natural world, we care about the disappearing species and invasive species and all these other problems, those are concerns for the right wing.
SPEAKER_1: Just convince them they're on the wrong side, because they have this caricature of the right as being some sort of arch capitalist who wants to just burn the earth to ash if it'll increase GDP.
SPEAKER_1: And quite frankly, it kind of sounds like the GOP, the Republican Party, but actual right wing Christian politics is a fundamentally different thing.
SPEAKER_1: And I think many of those people will come over to our side.
SPEAKER_1: They'll still be a little weird, because they're a little weird, but I think many of them are actually good people that are just very misled on some issues.
SPEAKER_1: Now communists aren't people, and they don't matter.
SPEAKER_1: No consideration there.
SPEAKER_1: Let's see.
SPEAKER_1: No, there was another question I had here.
SPEAKER_1: There's one, I wanted to get this question about art, but I think I'm going to get myself some tea.
SPEAKER_1: There's no point in having the tea in the background if I never drink any of it.
SPEAKER_1: So, how valuable do you think the production of new edifying artwork, music, visual, otherwise, is in the current cultural landscape?
SPEAKER_1: I obviously don't mean lucrative, that's a fair point, but refer to moral value.
SPEAKER_1: I think art is a fundamental part of the human experience.
SPEAKER_1: I think it is extremely important, and it is something that the right wing is starting to take more seriously.
SPEAKER_1: It was a little bit lacking there for a while, but I think the right is starting to take it more seriously.
SPEAKER_1: I guess perhaps I'm personally inclined, my last name is literally Painter.
SPEAKER_1: I didn't personally get those particular skills, Painter of Stainglass, I could maybe pull that part off.
SPEAKER_1: But I think that art is extremely important, and it's not just the cultural landscape, because art in part dictates the cultural landscape.
SPEAKER_1: You can't have a culture, I suppose you could have a culture without art, but it wouldn't be worthy of being called a culture.
SPEAKER_1: One of the things that we are fundamentally fighting to defend is European culture and the expression of Christian artwork and Christendom that is our patrimony.
SPEAKER_1: It's something that we should be jealous of, something we want to preserve and transmit to future generations.
SPEAKER_1: And so our great cathedrals, our museums, our great works of art, the stained glass, choral music, organ music, all these things that are expressions of beauty, and I'm not going to get into the beauty issue.
SPEAKER_1: I know that that was asked, and I will get into that later, not this episode.
SPEAKER_1: But beauty is a transcendental.
SPEAKER_1: It is a fundamental part of creation itself.
SPEAKER_1: It's part of the fabric of reality.
SPEAKER_1: And we simply cannot ignore that.
SPEAKER_1: Particularly as Christians, we cannot ignore that.
SPEAKER_1: But as human beings, we can't ignore that.
SPEAKER_1: So I think the production of new artworks is extremely important.
SPEAKER_1: And yes, unfortunately, these days, it's probably not going to be particularly lucrative, unless you find some niche and you find people are willing to support you.
SPEAKER_1: That's a difficult thing, because that is something, incidentally, one of the reasons I object to our current societal organization and our political system.
SPEAKER_1: Really, you need a system of patrons, or you don't have the arts.
SPEAKER_1: That's even the case today, because most of the arts are not supported, for instance, by ticket sales.
SPEAKER_1: So if you look at ticket sales and what they support for, say, an opera company or a theater company or an orchestra or anything like that, there's a reason they're constantly running events for donors.
SPEAKER_1: That's what supports them.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, there's some government funding and things like that sometimes, but the issue is that you have to have a patron class, which is to say nobility, is how it should be, who support the arts.
SPEAKER_1: And without that, you can't have the arts, because there's no money for it.
SPEAKER_1: And artists, despite what people think, do actually have to eat.
SPEAKER_1: That's something they need.
SPEAKER_1: And they have to heat their apartments and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: And the issue with how our current economic system allocates resources is that it gives money to the worst sort of men in many cases.
SPEAKER_1: And I'm not saying everyone who has money today is a bad man, but I'm saying that particularly horrible men do tend to make a lot of money under the sort of capitalism that we have.
SPEAKER_1: I'll say the sort of capitalism to make those happy who think that capitalism is just the free exchange of goods, which it's not.
SPEAKER_1: We went over that in the episode Capitalist Idolatry.
SPEAKER_1: I encourage men to go back and listen to it again.
SPEAKER_1: But the sort of men who make great sums of money under this system are not the sort of men who are going to build grand cathedrals and great public works and great public buildings and fund the artists who make symphonies and operas and all those things.
SPEAKER_1: All the things that we enjoy that were passed down to us from previous centuries were funded by aristocrats, were funded by noblemen, were funded by kings and emperors and counts, and all of these men who had great wealth at their command and great power.
SPEAKER_1: And if we like those things, then we need that sort of system again.
SPEAKER_1: So, I'm glad to see artists producing great artwork, and I wish there were more of it, and I wish they were better funded.
SPEAKER_1: Because I think that, just as scripture says, the workman is worth his wages.
SPEAKER_1: Artists should be paid as well.
SPEAKER_1: They serve a very important function in society.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, to some degree, it's a luxury function, but we should not want to have a society that exists at the subsistence level.
SPEAKER_1: We don't want everyone scrabbling in the dirt, trying to produce enough food not to starve, trying to survive the winter.
SPEAKER_1: That's not a civilization that's worth calling a civilization.
SPEAKER_1: Is Glock the second best thing to come out of Austria?
SPEAKER_1: I don't know that I would necessarily say that Glock is the second best thing, because I just went over art and opera and symphony music, and it's very hard to say that Glock is necessarily better than all of those.
SPEAKER_1: But I don't hate Glock, I'll certainly go that far.
SPEAKER_1: When are you running for office?
SPEAKER_1: I do intend to do that, I've said that openly, and I will be posting an article to that effect, hopefully, Monday, maybe tomorrow, if I actually get around to it.
SPEAKER_1: I have a backlog of articles to post.
SPEAKER_1: One of them related to one of the questions asked earlier, actually, about, actually the one I just answered about artwork, although related more to the narrative arts, but very much on that point.
SPEAKER_1: Hopefully, I'll get that one done as well.
SPEAKER_1: But I'll post an article on that soon, and we'll see how that goes.
SPEAKER_1: I'm sure that I will be targeted by the media, and it will probably become a little bit of a circus.
SPEAKER_1: But I'm fine with that, it doesn't bother me.
SPEAKER_1: How are we to respond to migrant or immigrant minorities in our local church congregations?
SPEAKER_1: The issue is that they shouldn't be here.
SPEAKER_1: That's the fundamental issue.
SPEAKER_1: And the Christian response is to treat them well, because you're not going to, you know, you're not going to be mean to them and give them the cold shoulder and say, oh, no, you can't sit here.
SPEAKER_1: But at the same time, it is perfectly permissible to call the immigration authorities to handle it, because they shouldn't be here.
SPEAKER_1: So, you're sort of straddling that line, as it were, but there's nothing wrong with doing that.
SPEAKER_1: It's good that they want to be Christians, hopefully they're sincere, but they need to be Christian in their own home, in their own land.
SPEAKER_1: And by home, I clearly mean physical territory, not their own house, right?
SPEAKER_1: Because they shouldn't own property here either.
SPEAKER_1: So, perfectly fine to report them to the authorities, because they, again, just simply should not be here.
SPEAKER_1: And as I pointed out before, there's another point worth making here, I pointed out before that if you are a Christian, you recognize that immigrant, migrant, economic migrant, whatever it happens to be, this isn't a Christian category, it's not a scriptural category.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying scripture always has to have an exact verse on the subject, but sojourner is, so you can visit for a time, but sojourners go home.
SPEAKER_1: If these people were Christian, they would want to eventually go home.
SPEAKER_1: They don't intend to go home.
SPEAKER_1: That is at odds with them saying they are Christian.
SPEAKER_1: And so that's another part of the calculus there, that's part of the calculation.
SPEAKER_1: Someone asked about the district president who was arrested for those who don't know.
SPEAKER_1: One of the members of the leadership of the LCMS was arrested on charges related to, I don't want to get this video banned or flagged or whatever, but on, think of the worst charges on which you can be arrested that occur subsequent a hard drive search.
SPEAKER_1: I think you all know what I mean.
SPEAKER_1: He was arrested on those charges.
SPEAKER_1: And I think that he is only part of the problem in the LCMS.
SPEAKER_1: I won't go further than that because, well, various reasons, some of which are obvious, some of which aren't.
SPEAKER_1: But I think you're going to see more of it in the coming years.
SPEAKER_1: We said it.
SPEAKER_1: We called that years ago.
SPEAKER_1: Woe was fairly explicit with some of his posts about what was going to happen, and it is now coming to light in some cases.
SPEAKER_1: There are evil men in the churches.
SPEAKER_1: Evil men are attracted to power, particularly when it is power that does not require much in terms of oversight or much in terms of effort to obtain.
SPEAKER_1: And so oftentimes, they find themselves in the churches.
SPEAKER_1: It is a call for the men in the churches to be vigilant, even with regard to those who are in positions of authority in the churches, in order to not let them pray on children and cause these problems.
SPEAKER_1: It's something that has been there for centuries.
SPEAKER_1: This is nothing new.
SPEAKER_1: But it has been ignored for many years, and it is a serious problem, not just in any one church, but in many churches, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_1: Someone asked if I would have a dialogue with Nick Fuentes.
SPEAKER_1: I actually answered that one, not in an episode of this, really.
SPEAKER_1: I did touch on it with an answer to a previous question, but I did reply to someone on X about that.
SPEAKER_1: I think it was two weeks ago.
SPEAKER_1: Not that I'm saying you have to know all of my X posts, not, you know, forming a catalog or a database there.
SPEAKER_1: The issue would be, I don't think there's anything productive to be discussed there.
SPEAKER_1: My comment to the other man who asked about it was that I know what he is, he knows what he is, he knows that I know what he is.
SPEAKER_1: And he's blocked me, of course, but I don't think that there's anything productive to be done there.
SPEAKER_1: I think that the nature of that group will become even more apparent as we continue to go on.
SPEAKER_1: I think it already is relatively apparent, but it will become more apparent in time, and the good men will leave for better things.
SPEAKER_1: I think that's probably a sufficient answer to that.
SPEAKER_1: I think that was all of the questions in that thread for X.
SPEAKER_1: Is there a political party in the United States or America, whichever way you want to say that.
SPEAKER_1: They're distinct, but that's not the point here.
SPEAKER_1: Worth belonging to anymore.
SPEAKER_1: This is one of those that has a number of different answers, and it's really one answer, sort of, the lawyer answer, right?
SPEAKER_1: It depends, but is it necessarily the case that there is no utility left in the Republican party?
SPEAKER_1: I don't think the Democrat party is ever going to be useful for the right, for those of us who are Christian, particularly Christian nationalists, except insofar as they continue to get crazier and make everyone else look better by comparison.
SPEAKER_1: But I think that you can involve yourself in Republican politics, which is the right-wing politics in the US just by virtue of the system.
SPEAKER_1: I've discussed it before Du Verger's law, the fact that first past the post, winner take all system will always wind up with two political parties that are relatively close together, ultimately, all things considered, but with minimal party discipline and a broad spectrum under their own respective umbrellas.
SPEAKER_1: That's sort of the brief version of it.
SPEAKER_1: But the reality and sort of the practical consideration is that you can become involved in local Republican politics and actually achieve things because of the fact that we don't have that party discipline.
SPEAKER_1: And so in some systems, to go over it again, I've gone over in previous episodes, but in some systems, you have ways for the leaders of the party to enforce adherence to the party line.
SPEAKER_1: We don't have much of that in the US system.
SPEAKER_1: Really the only thing they can do is not give you money.
SPEAKER_1: Well, if you're at least an open Christian nationalist, they already weren't going to give you money.
SPEAKER_1: And so what threat do they have for you?
SPEAKER_1: We won't run ads for you.
SPEAKER_1: We won't say anything nice about...
SPEAKER_1: They can't do anything because there's no mechanism for them.
SPEAKER_1: Now, maybe in some cases, they can say you can't call yourself a Republican, right?
SPEAKER_1: Unless, of course, you already are, right?
SPEAKER_1: I'm registered as a Republican.
SPEAKER_1: I can say I'm a Republican.
SPEAKER_1: They can't do anything about it because it's technically true.
SPEAKER_1: Now, they're not going to endorse you, perhaps, but there are plenty of offices where you can be involved with Republican politicians, and maybe the office that you go for isn't itself technically political.
SPEAKER_1: All offices are ultimately political, but you can involve yourself in these things productively on the local level, maybe even on the city level, the regional level.
SPEAKER_1: There's a very big difference between national level politics and local politics in the US system.
SPEAKER_1: And so, the national parties are both terrible, right?
SPEAKER_1: The GOP is awful.
SPEAKER_1: There are basically no good men left in Washington.
SPEAKER_1: But that doesn't mean that the Republican party in all places at all levels is bad.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't mean that there are no productive things to do at the local level.
SPEAKER_1: So the answer is that yes, the national parties are terrible.
SPEAKER_1: There's no good national party.
SPEAKER_1: But with the enormous caveat that at the local level or even the regional level, you can achieve some pretty good things inside the Republican party.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not saying that's necessarily the only way forward, or that's the ultimate solution.
SPEAKER_1: I'm just saying it's part of the equation at this time.
SPEAKER_1: I have someone asking me why I don't believe that Jesus is the son of God.
SPEAKER_1: I'm honestly not sure what he's asking.
SPEAKER_1: I obviously affirm that Jesus is indeed the son of God and is God.
SPEAKER_1: Scripture's pretty clear about that one to say nothing of the creeds.
SPEAKER_1: I think I will go into maybe a couple more questions here for this particular episode.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe three since I just noticed another.
SPEAKER_1: Are Roman Catholics right to ban contraception in all circumstances?
SPEAKER_1: French Canadians in their prime had more kids than their Anglo neighbors.
SPEAKER_1: This is one of those that I've answered before, but I think it does bear repeating.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think that all contraception, in the broadest sense, is morally impermissible.
SPEAKER_1: And so, for instance, I think the one that is probably where you should draw the line, because I think everything else has negatives that are either too great or simply morally impermissible.
SPEAKER_1: So, the pill, morally impermissible.
SPEAKER_1: I think that you can't pursue those ones because of those negatives, but I think that the natural family planning method, which is basically just tracking your wife's cycle, totally permissible, that's fine.
SPEAKER_1: You are permitted to do that, because you're permitted to use wisdom in timing when you have your children.
SPEAKER_1: Now, should you avoid children altogether?
SPEAKER_1: No, of course not, because children are a blessing from the Lord, and particularly the children of one's youth.
SPEAKER_1: Scripture praises that even more highly.
SPEAKER_1: And so, no, I don't think that you should, everyone should have 12 children, right?
SPEAKER_1: That's probably too many for most people.
SPEAKER_1: That is quite the task, and not everyone is up to that task.
SPEAKER_1: And so, there is an aspect of wisdom in this.
SPEAKER_1: But should we be using barrier methods and things like that?
SPEAKER_1: I don't think so.
SPEAKER_1: I think they have biological and other downsides, including downsides with regard to psychology and the overall health of the woman.
SPEAKER_1: There are a lot of negatives for those, so I don't think those are good.
SPEAKER_1: But just tracking your wife's cycle is morally permissible, and that's fine if you want to do that.
SPEAKER_1: I don't think you should use it, again, to avoid having any children.
SPEAKER_1: But if you want to space them a little bit, I think that's perfectly morally permissible.
SPEAKER_1: And it's also one of those cases where the punishment, if you go too far, is built into the thing itself.
SPEAKER_1: Because what is the natural consequence of using contraceptions?
SPEAKER_1: Well, God won't bless you with children.
SPEAKER_1: So if you don't want God's blessings, that's sort of between you and God.
SPEAKER_1: I think that would be foolish.
SPEAKER_1: And I think that it is detrimental to society.
SPEAKER_1: And so, yes, I think we should absolutely be trying to increase the fertility rate right now, and we should be encouraging that in many different ways.
SPEAKER_1: I have the German Mother's Cross in the box here behind me.
SPEAKER_1: I'm tempted to get it out, but everyone's seen it before, so that's something we should be doing.
SPEAKER_1: So short answer, no, not all contraception is morally wrongful, but many methods are, and don't go overboard.
SPEAKER_1: There's someone asking about the Seventh Day Adventist.
SPEAKER_1: I've commented on that before, so I don't know that I'll go into it in depth here, but I'll point out sort of a salient point about it.
SPEAKER_1: I've made the point before, but it is worth repeating.
SPEAKER_1: No one knows what the Seventh Day was.
SPEAKER_1: Now, that sounds almost insane, and then it maybe also sounds irrelevant initially, but it's not.
SPEAKER_1: And the reason for that is that if you want to say the Seventh Day is Saturday, right?
SPEAKER_1: That's just what you've called it.
SPEAKER_1: You've assigned the name Saturday to the Seventh Day in Creation Week.
SPEAKER_1: And so Sunday obviously is the first.
SPEAKER_1: Okay.
SPEAKER_1: Now you have to say that you can count seven, seven, seven, so a week, all the way from Creation up to today.
SPEAKER_1: You can't do that.
SPEAKER_1: No one except God can do that.
SPEAKER_1: So you don't actually know when the original Seventh Day was.
SPEAKER_1: And so you can't say which day of our modern week corresponds to it.
SPEAKER_1: And so if you pick Saturday or you pick Sunday, ultimately you are just picking a day out of the week.
SPEAKER_1: And that's the case even if you go back, not all the way back to creation, but even just back a couple thousand years, because the calendar has changed several times.
SPEAKER_1: In fact, you've had cases where people showed up for international events the wrong week because they were using a different calendar.
SPEAKER_1: The Russians did that at one point.
SPEAKER_1: And so you have no way of knowing what day the seventh day of creation week was.
SPEAKER_1: And so those who latch on to that are just latching on to some nonsense to be different, to be off in the corner saying, no, the rest of you are wrong.
SPEAKER_1: There's no warrant for it.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't make any sense, and you can't prove it.
SPEAKER_1: And so ultimately, Christians are picking a day of the week.
SPEAKER_1: Everyone picks Sunday.
SPEAKER_1: And unless you have an extremely compelling reason, you should not be the one saying everyone else needs to change.
SPEAKER_1: Which is to say, unless God says you have to do something, you don't get to just change Christian practice.
SPEAKER_1: And Christian practice from the very early years of the New Testament church has been to observe Sunday as the Lord's day.
SPEAKER_1: And, you know, you obviously also have the words of Christ, right?
SPEAKER_1: The son of man is Lord of the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_1: Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_1: And then you have the words of Paul, where one man esteems one day as more important, and one man seems all days the same.
SPEAKER_1: A matter of conscience.
SPEAKER_1: I think it's very clear in scripture that go with what is good for order, and what is good for order is that we all observe Sunday.
SPEAKER_1: I think you can have Saturday services.
SPEAKER_1: Saturday night service is totally fine.
SPEAKER_1: You know, there are necessary workers who work on Sunday.
SPEAKER_1: So if you have a service, some other time during the week, for doctors and firefighters and policemen and all the others who have these necessary functions that require them to work on Sunday, I think that's totally fine.
SPEAKER_1: But I think as a matter of overall praxis, we should all be observing the Lord's Day, which is Sunday.
SPEAKER_1: I have a question about the Internet contributing to global awareness of the JQ.
SPEAKER_1: I think I will leave that one for next time, because it will probably run a little long.
SPEAKER_1: So I will note that for next time.
SPEAKER_1: Do people ever recognize you in person?
SPEAKER_1: Infrequently, but yes.
SPEAKER_1: I think that the large beard and the fact that I'm bald probably makes me stand out a little bit.
SPEAKER_1: And so anyone who has seen me from an interview or something is probably going to recognize me because of that fact.
SPEAKER_1: And so I've been recognized a few times, but not that many, which I guess is probably good, because then people harass you, but that's how it goes.
SPEAKER_1: I have not had anyone come up to me and harass me in public yet.
SPEAKER_1: So there is that, which I guess is beneficial.
SPEAKER_1: And my chat window just froze, so I can't scroll.
SPEAKER_1: I will have to pull that up.
SPEAKER_1: I think that I will probably go ahead and take the chat window freezing as my sign to call the stream for tonight, which, okay, now it unfroze, of course, as soon as I say that.
SPEAKER_1: But anyway, I think that's about an hour at this point, little over, so I think that's good for this week.
SPEAKER_1: And if anyone wants to contribute more questions, you can of course do so on the forum, omniforo.com.
SPEAKER_1: You can just follow the banner and the other notifications there.
SPEAKER_1: There's a particular part of the forum for submitting questions.
SPEAKER_1: If you post it somewhere else, I'll move it.
SPEAKER_1: That's fine.
SPEAKER_1: Some people have done that.
SPEAKER_1: I understand that not everyone knows exactly how that software works, and that's perfectly reasonable.
SPEAKER_1: If I did not get to your question, and you have asked it on X or somewhere else, and it's been a few weeks, then by all means, please resubmit it.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe I missed it.
SPEAKER_1: Sometimes X hides things from me, so that's part of the problem.
SPEAKER_1: But if you put it on the forum, then that's my site, I control that.
SPEAKER_1: I will actually see it there, because I get a notification, and it's not going to disappear, because someone on X in the moderation team decides I don't get to see your post.
SPEAKER_1: So that's mostly just for my convenience, and for future reference, so people can find these things more easily.
SPEAKER_1: I try to put up a post with the audio from these Q&A sessions, usually a couple days after the stream, to be honest, not the day after.
SPEAKER_1: But I do that, and then have a transcript as well, so things are searchable, should make it very easy for people to find these in the future, recommend them to others.
SPEAKER_1: If someone has a question about something I've said, perhaps I've expanded on it in one of these episodes.
SPEAKER_1: And like I said, I do intend to address the issue of beauty, which caused a bit of a controversy on X.
SPEAKER_1: That wasn't actually necessarily my goal, because I was saying something that was simply in line with what Christian theologians have always taught.
SPEAKER_1: But I'll go ahead and expand on that.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe not next week, but perhaps the week after, or in a standalone episode, perhaps, because that one may run long.
SPEAKER_1: So I may just release an hour of audio by itself.
SPEAKER_1: But thank you to those who submitted questions, and thank you for your time listening to my answers.
SPEAKER_1: Hopefully you found this useful, and I'm glad that you were able to spend this time.
SPEAKER_1: And I hope that you all have a great weekend.
SPEAKER_1: It is, of course, Friday.
SPEAKER_1: I tried to do these on Thursday, but it keeps slipping to Friday.
SPEAKER_1: So Friday evening for this one.
SPEAKER_1: Again, if you have questions, submit those on the forum or elsewhere.
SPEAKER_1: I try to find them and collate them.
SPEAKER_1: And thank you for your time.
SPEAKER_1: I will see you all next week.
SPEAKER_1: Until then, God bless.