WEBVTT 00:00:00.100 --> 00:00:02.680 It is the 24th of July, 2026. 00:00:02.880 --> 00:00:03.900 I am Corey J. 00:00:03.900 --> 00:00:05.720 Mahler, and this is At Any Cost. 00:00:05.720 --> 00:00:08.840 This is episode 36, a Q&A episode. 00:00:09.360 --> 00:00:18.040 And I was going to say, as part of the housekeeping, that OBS had an update, and let's hope everything works, but that's already not the case. 00:00:18.040 --> 00:00:20.180 So let's hope everything else works. 00:00:20.740 --> 00:00:26.760 But at any rate, I was able to fix the audio issue quickly, so everything should be fine. 00:00:26.760 --> 00:00:36.320 Although the chat is not working again, I'm going to have to pull that up in Restream, instead of having it up in OBS. 00:00:36.360 --> 00:00:40.740 Of course, it's now not loading in Restream. 00:00:45.460 --> 00:00:46.100 There we go. 00:00:49.420 --> 00:00:49.820 Okay. 00:00:49.820 --> 00:00:54.360 Now I have, of course, my video is not working in the web interface, but that's fine. 00:00:54.360 --> 00:00:55.420 I don't need to see myself. 00:00:55.420 --> 00:00:56.440 I know what I look like. 00:00:56.960 --> 00:01:01.500 So now I can get into the questions because I can actually see the chat now. 00:01:01.500 --> 00:01:13.780 I don't know that I will get to the questions in chat because I already have 30 questions in the show notes for tonight, and I am unlikely to get through those all. 00:01:14.960 --> 00:01:20.040 Partly because I have bread in the oven, and so I can't stay over too long or else it will no longer be bread. 00:01:21.080 --> 00:01:22.960 So let's get into the questions. 00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:24.140 Question one. 00:01:25.280 --> 00:01:30.640 What is the ruling on purchasing a former church building for use as a private residence? 00:01:31.260 --> 00:01:41.300 Is there any moral or theological distinction between buying such a property after it has already been converted and purchasing it with the intention of converting it oneself? 00:01:43.720 --> 00:01:55.120 I think the general answer to this is that as long as you don't do it with the intent to desecrate the property or do something that is wicked, I think it's generally fine. 00:01:55.500 --> 00:01:56.760 It's not ideal, obviously. 00:01:56.760 --> 00:01:58.800 I could start off by saying it's not ideal. 00:01:59.240 --> 00:02:04.860 But at that point, you're dealing with the downstream consequences of an upstream problem. 00:02:05.360 --> 00:02:11.100 The problem, of course, being the church was empty and already abandoned, and there's nothing you can do about that. 00:02:11.100 --> 00:02:12.020 That already happened. 00:02:12.020 --> 00:02:14.800 That's not your doing, and that's not a good thing. 00:02:14.800 --> 00:02:17.320 God has already left the place, right? 00:02:17.600 --> 00:02:40.860 And God probably left a long time ago, because if the church had the building, the congregation died off such that they had to sell the building, or, you know, maybe there's a case where something good happened and a church grew and outgrew its building and moved, but in that case, they should have sold it to a smaller congregation so they would have a space. 00:02:41.700 --> 00:02:47.580 Generally speaking, when you have a church building that goes up for sale, it's because the congregation died. 00:02:47.580 --> 00:02:49.700 So God has already left that place. 00:02:50.260 --> 00:02:54.760 So don't obviously take over this building with the intent to do something wicked, right? 00:02:54.760 --> 00:02:57.280 Don't turn it into some sort of depraved club. 00:02:57.440 --> 00:02:58.760 That's been done in some cases. 00:02:58.760 --> 00:02:59.980 I can think of some of those. 00:03:00.260 --> 00:03:01.000 Don't do that. 00:03:01.320 --> 00:03:07.560 But if you're turning it into a private residence or something like that, I don't think it's necessarily inappropriate. 00:03:08.120 --> 00:03:10.880 It wouldn't be my personal preference, of course. 00:03:10.880 --> 00:03:12.600 I'd rather see it be a church again. 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:20.180 But certainly if it's already been converted, then the building itself is not per se sacred, right? 00:03:20.280 --> 00:03:25.420 It's God's presence and the gathering of God's people that makes it sacred. 00:03:25.600 --> 00:03:31.200 And so those things having departed, the building is profane again in the sense of being ordinary. 00:03:31.680 --> 00:03:37.700 So not preferable, but not something that's going to be a sin if you go ahead and do that. 00:03:40.600 --> 00:03:47.060 At the same time, I would certainly say, don't destroy an old, beautiful church building that's been around for centuries. 00:03:47.060 --> 00:03:50.720 If possible, restore it and rebuild a congregation in it. 00:03:50.980 --> 00:03:56.240 But certainly, there's a wide range of buildings we're talking about, particularly in the US context. 00:03:56.660 --> 00:04:13.600 So converting some church buildings is not going to be as much of an affront to, say, beauty in this case, as converting some 300-year-old stone, masonry, beautiful church structure that should remain a church or some other building that is sacred in some way. 00:04:17.320 --> 00:04:18.940 Question two. 00:04:22.100 --> 00:04:22.720 There we go. 00:04:25.160 --> 00:04:40.760 In one stream you did with someone, you briefly expounded upon the idea of God being a Trinity in that because of the relationship of the persons of the Holy Trinity, this love between the persons naturally begat creation as a result of this interpersonal and advanced relationship. 00:04:41.100 --> 00:04:44.780 I want to know more about this and if this came from Augustine or not. 00:04:45.740 --> 00:04:50.800 So I haven't really written anything lengthy about this yet. 00:04:51.960 --> 00:04:53.020 I will at some point. 00:04:53.020 --> 00:04:54.440 I don't know when I'll get that done. 00:04:54.440 --> 00:04:55.960 I have some notes here and there. 00:04:55.960 --> 00:05:06.320 I'm not even sure where they are right now, but I can give the brief rundown of the argument, but it's related to an argument that I've made for... 00:05:07.460 --> 00:05:13.760 not the existence of God, because I think there are better arguments for arguing for the existence, for proving the existence of God. 00:05:14.640 --> 00:05:25.580 But I think that this one builds up to making it so that you have to conclude that God is triune, which obviously means the Christian view is right, because Christians have the only triune God. 00:05:25.940 --> 00:05:43.120 Everyone else has a unitary God, or there are a few weird edge cases where they have God with kind of two persons, but usually it's more two aspects of one God, and usually that gets into the sort of, like not yin and yang quite, but like God being good and bad at the same time. 00:05:43.120 --> 00:05:44.020 You see that in a lot of places. 00:05:44.020 --> 00:05:45.160 It's basically Gnosticism. 00:05:45.160 --> 00:05:52.380 But the argument here that I would make, and it's not from Augustine, I can go ahead and say that, just this is my argument. 00:05:52.620 --> 00:05:57.520 In fact, I don't know that any of the church fathers make this argument. 00:05:57.520 --> 00:06:08.520 I can't think of any anyway, but I'm not the best person when it comes to encyclopedic knowledge of the church fathers, so maybe someone else can say that, yes, someone approached this. 00:06:08.840 --> 00:06:18.640 But at any rate, my argument would be that if you had a unitary god, right, one person in the godhead, then he would be such that he is so... 00:06:20.080 --> 00:06:28.720 And we have to speak in human terms here, because there aren't really words to describe what I'm saying in, you know, quickly. 00:06:28.900 --> 00:06:35.900 I could do this over many pages, but bear with me that I'm going to use, you know, to paraphrase Paul as it were, to speak in human terms. 00:06:36.440 --> 00:06:52.920 But a unitary god would be so perfect and self-complete, as it were, that he would subsist totally in himself, and nothing would ever be externalized, because he is unitary, he is all in all, in such a way that there is nothing else, and never will be anything else. 00:06:53.280 --> 00:06:58.400 If you expand that out to two persons, and not in the Gnostic way of good and evil, but in the... 00:06:58.960 --> 00:07:13.600 not even proper way, but in this hypothetical way of two persons still being good, still being of one essence, still being God, I believe that it naturally would be the case that you have to conclude the two persons would have such relationship, it would simply be a back and forth. 00:07:13.940 --> 00:07:28.600 And it would be roughly equivalent to the unitary godhead, because you would have nothing externalized, there would be nothing external to this relationship between the two persons, a give and take for all eternity past, future, present. 00:07:29.820 --> 00:07:41.020 Whereas at Trinity, you have this sort of natural momentum to the thing, because you have the relationship of certainly, let's say, the father to the son, right? 00:07:41.020 --> 00:07:42.240 And the son to the father. 00:07:42.480 --> 00:07:48.120 But you also have the relationship of the father to the spirit through the son. 00:07:48.580 --> 00:07:50.760 And you can do this for each of the persons of the Trinity, right? 00:07:50.760 --> 00:07:54.460 We're just dealing with some very basic combinatorial math here. 00:07:55.580 --> 00:08:04.800 So, I believe that that naturally externalizes in a certain way, because you, again, have that sort of momentum in the relationship of the persons. 00:08:04.800 --> 00:08:11.840 And God being super abundant in his goodness and his love certainly plays a role in creation. 00:08:11.860 --> 00:08:14.040 The fathers certainly speak about that at length. 00:08:14.740 --> 00:08:19.640 You have this externalizing of that relationship into what becomes creation. 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:34.720 And so, the super abundant nature of God's love extends, then, beyond the persons of the Trinity into the created things, and you have the working out of the Trinity in creation, is the sort of quick rundown, as it were, of the argument. 00:08:34.820 --> 00:08:37.440 Like I said, at some point, I will expand on that. 00:08:37.900 --> 00:08:41.320 But, no, that's not from Augustine or any of the fathers. 00:08:41.320 --> 00:08:45.440 As far as I'm aware, none of them wrote on that specific argument. 00:08:46.120 --> 00:09:00.080 If someone knows of some church father who wrote something like that, and then, or something close to it, feel free to reply to the show topic on the form and let me know, because I would be willing to read that and see what he had to say. 00:09:02.140 --> 00:09:09.580 Question three, a return to a topic on which we touch many times, unsurprisingly. 00:09:10.240 --> 00:09:24.920 Question three, there are many Americans whose ancestors were here for generations before them, but either their mother or father married with another race to conceive them, how far must the racial divide be in order for the child to be considered foreign? 00:09:25.520 --> 00:09:32.480 For example, my family, other than my paternal grandfather, all immigrated to the United States from Germany in the early 1800s. 00:09:32.960 --> 00:09:39.080 My grandfather was a white Puerto Rican who immigrated to the US in the 1950s in order to join the military. 00:09:39.480 --> 00:09:46.720 I grew up and live on the same street my ancestors immigrated to and founded a church in the 1900s and continue to farm the land they farmed. 00:09:46.940 --> 00:09:50.440 I feel a deep connection to the soil and would consider myself to be an American. 00:09:51.200 --> 00:09:56.880 But I also understand that due to my parents' miscegenation, that could come into question for some. 00:09:56.880 --> 00:09:59.780 What are your thoughts and whether people like me are truly American or not? 00:10:00.240 --> 00:10:10.900 So, this relates to, obviously, a topic that comes up quite frequently, which is essentially, where do we draw the line, right? 00:10:10.900 --> 00:10:13.300 That's the core of this is where do we draw the line. 00:10:13.340 --> 00:10:21.140 The specifics of this case, they matter, obviously, because this is, like I've said before, a fact-dependent inquiry. 00:10:21.360 --> 00:10:26.860 There are times where you don't need the facts, you can make a general ruling, there are times you need the facts, and you need the facts for this sort of thing. 00:10:27.680 --> 00:10:40.480 But there are many who have asked me this question, and eventually, I probably will draw up a set of guidelines, rules, whatever you want to call them, just so people have something to which they can refer and get my answer for any particular case. 00:10:40.480 --> 00:10:46.240 You can just run down the logic instead of my having to go through and analyze each particular one, right? 00:10:47.080 --> 00:10:49.040 But I'll give the sort of general sense. 00:10:49.300 --> 00:10:50.680 I won't give all the specifics. 00:10:50.680 --> 00:10:52.880 I haven't necessarily worked out all of those. 00:10:52.880 --> 00:10:54.840 Some of them are extremely obvious, right? 00:10:55.420 --> 00:11:04.500 You have the issue of, certainly, Africans are so far distinct from us that they need to be in their own countries and not here, so someone who's half has to go back. 00:11:05.220 --> 00:11:10.040 The same thing for Indians and obviously, Jews are not compatible with our country. 00:11:10.040 --> 00:11:15.600 So you have the obvious cases where you can make hardline calls, but then you have edge cases, right? 00:11:15.600 --> 00:11:21.460 Because I think, for instance, maybe Mexico is probably one of the best examples, right? 00:11:21.960 --> 00:11:29.120 You have the large bulk of the population is clearly extremely racially distinct from Americans, right? 00:11:29.760 --> 00:11:40.060 Because they are intermixed with the Aztec, the Maya, in some cases, Africans, they're mixed to the point with all these different populations. 00:11:40.220 --> 00:11:49.480 They are extremely racially distinct, but you have the upper tiny percentage, it's single digits, but tiny percentage of Mexico that's still Spanish. 00:11:49.980 --> 00:11:53.240 And you have the same thing in certain parts of South America. 00:11:53.240 --> 00:12:01.720 You have an upper class in Brazil that is largely, these days actually quite a bit of German because of post-war considerations. 00:12:01.840 --> 00:12:05.460 Same thing for Argentina, other parts of that world as well. 00:12:05.960 --> 00:12:12.740 Puerto Rico is in the same boat, because Puerto Rico until probably like the 19... 00:12:12.960 --> 00:12:18.980 probably actually the 1950s, give or take, had a very significant white population. 00:12:18.980 --> 00:12:26.220 And I actually mean like white, not white Hispanic as they use the term sometimes for the US census and things, but white. 00:12:26.560 --> 00:12:34.960 And so if your grandfather in this case was just a white man who happened to live in Puerto Rico, that's not a problem. 00:12:35.680 --> 00:12:37.060 Is he American? 00:12:37.220 --> 00:12:37.860 No, he's not. 00:12:37.860 --> 00:12:40.600 He was Puerto Rican or whatever he was. 00:12:40.600 --> 00:12:47.200 If maybe he moved to Puerto Rico or his grandparents, I don't know what the family line was there, but someone moved to Puerto Rico. 00:12:47.200 --> 00:12:48.360 He was there for a while. 00:12:48.540 --> 00:12:51.100 His line was there for a while, and then he moved here. 00:12:51.800 --> 00:12:54.340 If he's white, that didn't change him. 00:12:54.340 --> 00:12:55.420 He's still white. 00:12:55.780 --> 00:12:56.960 There are some distinctions. 00:12:56.960 --> 00:13:01.660 You're going to have some different conceptions or cultural differences, things like that, from living in that place. 00:13:02.160 --> 00:13:08.660 But, you know, I'm not German because I live in Tennessee, and I lived in California before that. 00:13:08.880 --> 00:13:12.460 All my ancestors were German, except for the small part of my line that's Scottish. 00:13:12.640 --> 00:13:13.840 The Celts are German, too. 00:13:14.060 --> 00:13:15.420 There's a question about that later on. 00:13:15.420 --> 00:13:16.240 I may get to it. 00:13:17.660 --> 00:13:22.160 So if he was just a white man living in Puerto Rico, there's no problem there. 00:13:22.160 --> 00:13:24.340 No one can really object to that. 00:13:24.540 --> 00:13:29.460 The only thing they're going to object to is Puerto Rican, because they have this conception of what a Puerto Rican is. 00:13:29.880 --> 00:13:31.960 But it's not true for the entire population. 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:37.560 The same thing as for Mexico, for that, again, in Mexico's age, a tiny percentage of the upper class. 00:13:38.160 --> 00:13:40.500 So it depends on the facts. 00:13:40.500 --> 00:13:56.600 I don't have enough facts here to make that call, but you said white Puerto Rican, so if your assessment is correct, I see no problem here, because that would make him, you know, Spanish or whatever he happens to be, because there were a handful of different European groups that moved to that area, so I don't know what he is. 00:13:57.360 --> 00:13:58.320 He could be German. 00:13:58.320 --> 00:14:00.140 I mean, that happened as well. 00:14:00.900 --> 00:14:09.020 But again, like I said, eventually I'll draw up some actual guidelines or rules for this, that will make it a little easier for people to refer to that and get a general sense of it. 00:14:09.820 --> 00:14:17.540 I don't know when I'll get that done, but the request keeps coming up, so it's definitely moving up my list of things on which to spend my time. 00:14:22.140 --> 00:14:24.220 Question four. 00:14:26.660 --> 00:14:37.940 Given that men can maintain only about 150 social relationships, Dunbar's number, should we reconsider the mass urbanization of humanity? 00:14:41.720 --> 00:14:49.700 This is one of those questions that I could probably talk about for hours, but I don't want to do that because I'd like to try to get through a number of questions tonight. 00:14:51.280 --> 00:14:57.300 I am not in the camp on the right that thinks cities are inherently bad. 00:14:57.380 --> 00:14:58.400 I don't think they are. 00:14:58.400 --> 00:15:00.900 I don't think cities are per se bad. 00:15:01.240 --> 00:15:10.060 I think that cities present a unique set of challenges for the governing authority, for people, for the church. 00:15:10.740 --> 00:15:16.820 But I don't think that those make them worse than rural areas, you know, suburban areas don't. 00:15:17.320 --> 00:15:24.280 They're a weird medium and they exist for various reasons historically and for various reasons racially in the US context. 00:15:24.280 --> 00:15:27.760 But the real divide right is urban and rural. 00:15:28.140 --> 00:15:31.140 And I don't think urban is per se bad. 00:15:31.460 --> 00:15:33.760 We've always had cities, right? 00:15:34.640 --> 00:15:43.920 Yes, one of the first cities founded was founded by a wicked man, but he was doing it in order to, you know, sort of at God, right? 00:15:43.920 --> 00:15:48.340 He was not being a nice man at that case, but at that time in that case. 00:15:49.880 --> 00:15:51.680 I don't think cities are per se bad. 00:15:51.680 --> 00:16:08.620 We've always had them down through human history, and they do serve to concentrate human capital in a certain way, where you have interactions and you have this density of ability that you don't have in the rural context. 00:16:09.240 --> 00:16:14.160 You don't see rural areas creating technological advancements. 00:16:15.220 --> 00:16:20.200 Rarely, I mean, yes, obviously, it has happened in history, but it is usually concentrated in urban areas. 00:16:20.920 --> 00:16:26.440 You can't have a university without having some sort of city to sustain the thing. 00:16:27.180 --> 00:16:31.880 All of these things are part of how we live as human beings. 00:16:32.100 --> 00:16:34.980 Could we have an entirely rural country? 00:16:37.700 --> 00:17:01.560 Yes, with the caveat that someone else would have to maintain international peace, because I don't think that an entirely rural country is going to have the military might to defend its own borders, and certainly not the military might to maintain peace elsewhere in the world, to maintain its internal peace, because obviously the rest of the world affects us, as we know much too well these days. 00:17:03.420 --> 00:17:22.600 I think that the issue of social relationships and Dunbar's number is an argument for bringing back men's clubs and bringing back real men's groups in the churches, and all of these things where we had little microcosms, we had your own niche in society within the larger tapestry. 00:17:23.000 --> 00:17:39.220 So, no, people living in a large city in the Middle Ages, and there were some large cities even in the Middle Ages and even back in Roman times, and the Greeks to some extent, and obviously other empires, before that the Persians, the Assyrians, all sorts of other groups, right, Babylonians. 00:17:41.360 --> 00:17:46.720 I think that what you do is you have this subset of people that are your actual social network. 00:17:47.020 --> 00:17:55.280 You have others with whom you interact, but they're not in your social circle such that you're maintaining a relationship with them socially, right? 00:17:56.080 --> 00:18:01.560 If you have a men's group at church, you should know what's going on in the lives of those men to some degree. 00:18:02.120 --> 00:18:08.860 Men are always a little aloof when it comes to those things, but you should be available to help the other men in your group. 00:18:08.860 --> 00:18:11.500 You should have some awareness of what's going on in their life. 00:18:11.700 --> 00:18:15.060 At least how many children they have, if their wife's doing well, things like that. 00:18:16.080 --> 00:18:18.620 Those are the people in your social circle. 00:18:19.040 --> 00:18:26.280 You don't necessarily know everything about your baker, or your tailor, or your butcher, whoever it happens to be. 00:18:26.760 --> 00:18:29.040 That man has his own social circle. 00:18:29.040 --> 00:18:30.240 You may be part of it. 00:18:30.240 --> 00:18:31.040 You may not. 00:18:31.500 --> 00:18:32.960 I don't think that that's bad. 00:18:33.680 --> 00:18:42.520 I think that you can have a society in which you have this stratification of the different layers of, I know these people well, and these people less well, and these less well. 00:18:42.820 --> 00:18:45.680 That's how it works everywhere, even if it's rural. 00:18:46.080 --> 00:18:51.480 If it's rural, you just have greater distances between those who are in your immediate social circle, right? 00:18:51.560 --> 00:18:56.780 And maybe your next door neighbor is two miles down the road, depending on where you live. 00:18:57.140 --> 00:19:01.000 You know, my neighbors are a little more distant here, certainly than when I lived in California. 00:19:01.000 --> 00:19:03.860 In California, you can almost reach out and touch the next house. 00:19:04.400 --> 00:19:05.580 I would just fall out the window here. 00:19:05.580 --> 00:19:06.720 There's no house there. 00:19:07.700 --> 00:19:12.000 So, I think the baseline is, I don't think cities are bad. 00:19:12.000 --> 00:19:20.940 I think they just have to be managed properly, and you have to tamp down on some of the problems that can happen more easily in cities than in rural areas. 00:19:20.940 --> 00:19:23.040 But rural areas have their own challenges. 00:19:24.120 --> 00:19:26.680 You're dealing with people in both cases. 00:19:26.920 --> 00:19:29.800 So, I don't think having cities is bad. 00:19:29.800 --> 00:19:32.440 I think having cities is necessary for certain things. 00:19:32.940 --> 00:19:40.540 But the issues that we have with cities, to sort of touch on a tangential, but important matter before I continue the next question. 00:19:42.020 --> 00:19:43.700 The problem with cities is not cities. 00:19:44.340 --> 00:19:47.200 The problem with cities is demographics, and we all know that. 00:19:47.700 --> 00:19:53.480 The problem is that we have imported millions upon millions of foreigners, and they've taken over our downtown areas. 00:19:54.040 --> 00:19:56.640 And so, they're no longer European cities. 00:19:57.280 --> 00:20:02.060 Look at old footage of European cities, and see that they function just fine. 00:20:02.060 --> 00:20:04.460 The people are doing quite well. 00:20:04.740 --> 00:20:07.080 They are moral, upstanding, good people. 00:20:07.440 --> 00:20:11.780 The problems came with so-called immigration, with demographic changes. 00:20:11.800 --> 00:20:13.600 So, cities aren't the problem. 00:20:13.940 --> 00:20:21.780 And the fact that you can only maintain so many social relationships just means you only know a subset of the people in your given city. 00:20:22.680 --> 00:20:24.720 And you're probably not going to 150 anyway, right? 00:20:24.720 --> 00:20:25.540 Most men don't. 00:20:25.640 --> 00:20:27.020 It's probably going to be like 30 or 40. 00:20:30.280 --> 00:20:33.100 Question five. 00:20:34.660 --> 00:20:39.980 Trying to take some notes here as I go so that I don't miss things for the future. 00:20:45.480 --> 00:20:58.320 Do I have any responsibility to friends who choose to go to Elca to guide them towards a better church, or can I rely on felicitous inconsistency knowing that God gives faith even when the circumstances are not ideal? 00:20:58.680 --> 00:21:08.600 I do not want to get in the way as these friends have not been in church in decades prior, and I'm worried that trying to explain all of the problems with Elca will overwhelm them and push them away. 00:21:10.960 --> 00:21:17.620 So it's better that they're in church, almost any church, than not in church. 00:21:18.560 --> 00:21:24.320 That is, with a pretty big caveat, Elca is an extremely broad umbrella. 00:21:24.740 --> 00:21:38.780 There are wild, apostate, wicked, rainbow flag, Black Lives Matter, all that crap in large cities, and in some small cities, particularly in, say, the Northeast. 00:21:40.100 --> 00:21:44.440 However, in some areas, there are also Elca churches that aren't that bad. 00:21:44.620 --> 00:21:51.880 They're just in Elca because they were in something else that merged with Elca 40 years ago, and they never left. 00:21:51.880 --> 00:21:52.840 Should they have left? 00:21:52.940 --> 00:21:53.800 Absolutely. 00:21:54.340 --> 00:21:56.740 Do boomers ever bother to do that kind of thing? 00:21:57.000 --> 00:21:57.780 No, they don't. 00:21:58.160 --> 00:22:00.420 So it depends what kind of Elca church. 00:22:00.420 --> 00:22:10.580 If they're in the one that has a female pastor, so called, and flies the rainbow flag and all that stuff, they're probably in more danger in that church than not being in that church. 00:22:10.580 --> 00:22:12.340 So in that case, you need to do something. 00:22:12.720 --> 00:22:18.780 If they're in one of the churches that just happens to be Elca but isn't that bad, and the same thing is true, right? 00:22:18.780 --> 00:22:22.080 For Presbyterians and others, there's the spectrum, right? 00:22:22.080 --> 00:22:29.060 There are the crazy, far left, radical Marxist churches and the really good ones and everything in between. 00:22:29.780 --> 00:22:33.240 So you have to make the assessment of what kind of church that is. 00:22:33.620 --> 00:22:38.080 If it's a decent church, then you can slowly nudge them toward better things. 00:22:38.280 --> 00:22:43.300 If it's a really bad church, you need to be more aggressive in stepping in to fix the problem. 00:22:43.620 --> 00:22:54.740 Because if they continually hear apostate theology, it will be harder in the future to undo that harm and bring them to an actual belief, to proper belief. 00:22:55.140 --> 00:22:58.780 So make the assessment of how bad the church is. 00:22:59.300 --> 00:23:02.840 I don't know which one it is, because again, that umbrella is too broad. 00:23:03.400 --> 00:23:08.300 So if it's a really bad church, you need to be more aggressive in trying to get them to do something else. 00:23:08.720 --> 00:23:13.660 If it's an okay church, then great, at least, they're hearing the word of God. 00:23:14.120 --> 00:23:16.480 It could be better, but that's true of most churches. 00:23:16.720 --> 00:23:22.600 Just keep talking to them about the faith, and get them to, on their own, recognize some of the problems. 00:23:22.600 --> 00:23:26.800 And then when the opportunity presents, perhaps you can get them into a better church. 00:23:27.720 --> 00:23:30.520 But you have to make that assessment of how bad the church is. 00:23:33.820 --> 00:23:34.740 Question 6. 00:23:34.740 --> 00:23:37.640 Okay, I am going to get the question on the Germans and the Celts. 00:23:37.780 --> 00:23:39.560 I forgot how far down the list it was. 00:23:43.840 --> 00:23:50.100 I was curious if you could explain the connection between Celtic and Germanic peoples, which you made reference to in a recent tweet. 00:23:50.420 --> 00:24:21.640 So, if you actually run the genetic analysis on, say, the Germans and the Scots, or the Germans and other Celtic populations, the Irish are a little more distant, the actual Irish, not the Northern Irish, who are Scottish people pretending to be Irish, but the actual Irish, they're a little more distant, but by and large, the genetic distance between Germanic and Celtic populations is extremely minimal, to the point where we're basically the same people. 00:24:22.380 --> 00:24:27.440 Maybe historically, the Celtic people, and this is in, like, prehistory, right? 00:24:27.440 --> 00:24:34.740 This is, we don't necessarily have the records to make this analysis, we don't have enough DNA samples from skeletons and things like that. 00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:45.960 But perhaps in prehistory, the Celts descended from one of the sons of Gomer, and not Ashkenaz, Ashkenaz being the father of the Germans. 00:24:45.960 --> 00:24:48.280 Maybe he was one of the other sons of Gomer. 00:24:48.960 --> 00:24:54.980 But over time, the tribes have moved around and mixed to the point where we're effectively one people. 00:24:56.400 --> 00:25:01.720 Yes, we have national distinctions now, and we have cultural differences, certainly. 00:25:02.100 --> 00:25:11.860 The Germans and the Scottish are not identical culturally, but we're not really different people, fundamentally speaking. 00:25:12.060 --> 00:25:16.380 You could take a German, and he'd live in Scotland just fine, or a Scotsman, he'd live in Germany just fine. 00:25:16.380 --> 00:25:21.660 You might get a little mad about how organized things are sometimes, but we're the same people. 00:25:22.080 --> 00:25:35.760 We are such close cousins that there's no real reason to call us distinct unless it is in terms of preserving, say, Scottish culture and German culture, which I would love to do. 00:25:36.060 --> 00:25:49.020 I would like our victory to be such that we preserve these distinctions culturally despite the fact that we are quite nearly brothers, not even really cousins, but quite nearly brothers genetically. 00:25:49.460 --> 00:25:52.960 So, we should be friendly nations on the best of terms. 00:25:53.380 --> 00:25:55.000 Yes, we have those cultural differences. 00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.220 Yes, it's good to preserve those, but we're not alien people to one another. 00:26:00.600 --> 00:26:02.700 So, we should view them as brothers, both groups. 00:26:02.700 --> 00:26:07.620 As Americans, we should view the Scottish, the British, and the Germanic nations. 00:26:07.880 --> 00:26:08.860 Those are Germanic nations. 00:26:08.860 --> 00:26:11.300 So, all the Germanic nations, we should view as brothers. 00:26:17.020 --> 00:26:20.280 And yes, that includes the Dutch before anyone comments about the Dutch. 00:26:20.680 --> 00:26:26.020 The Dutch are just swamp Germans that speak weird German, but they're still brothers. 00:26:33.180 --> 00:26:50.200 On the topic of annihilationism and eternal conscious torment, could you address the verses of Matthew 10, 28, where it talks about God being able to destroy body and soul in hell, and Romans 6, 23, where it talks about the wages of sin being death? 00:26:52.000 --> 00:26:55.680 So, I will pull up Logos after I make a note for myself. 00:27:08.300 --> 00:27:10.400 Okay, let's pull up Logos. 00:27:11.760 --> 00:27:20.480 And I don't think we need the introduction, the preface to the Book of Concord talking to Emperor Charles, but we'll pull up. 00:27:26.840 --> 00:27:27.840 Matthew 10, 28. 00:27:28.680 --> 00:27:32.680 He pretty much gave the full verse, but I will read the verse. 00:27:33.020 --> 00:27:36.680 And do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. 00:27:37.060 --> 00:27:41.060 Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 00:27:42.100 --> 00:27:42.500 Right? 00:27:42.940 --> 00:27:43.300 So. 00:27:44.980 --> 00:27:48.000 And the verb there is just destroy, right? 00:27:49.160 --> 00:27:51.520 We're not dealing with any weird sort of Greek here. 00:27:51.600 --> 00:27:56.780 You can't see what I'm highlighting because, Logos, but at any rate, it is destroy. 00:27:57.360 --> 00:28:00.920 So let's look at the next Roman 623 before I comment on them. 00:28:04.640 --> 00:28:10.600 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. 00:28:11.320 --> 00:28:17.560 And so, I'm not going to do a broad study of scripture right now. 00:28:17.780 --> 00:28:21.540 I'm partly because I'm just not prepared for it, and you don't need to watch me looking verses up. 00:28:22.120 --> 00:28:26.920 But partly because I don't want to dedicate the next hour to this, so I can get through more questions. 00:28:27.820 --> 00:28:39.080 But the general sense here, the general understanding that you need to have, is that there is a contrast in scripture with regard to really two pairs. 00:28:39.620 --> 00:28:45.620 You have life and death, and you have eternal life and eternal death. 00:28:46.200 --> 00:28:48.480 Hell is eternal death. 00:28:49.380 --> 00:28:51.300 Death is separation from God. 00:28:51.480 --> 00:28:53.580 That's sort of fundamentally what it is. 00:28:54.020 --> 00:28:56.620 Now, is God present everywhere? 00:28:56.760 --> 00:28:57.240 Yes. 00:28:57.240 --> 00:29:04.780 You know, in the words of the scripture, you can't hide from God, whether you are in the deepest Hades or the furthest ends of the earth, to paraphrase the psalm. 00:29:06.300 --> 00:29:11.120 But you have that separation from God because you are a sinner. 00:29:11.440 --> 00:29:18.820 And so unless you are in Christ, that separation is in life, you're basically a living death. 00:29:19.100 --> 00:29:21.780 And then in death, it's eternal death in hell. 00:29:22.160 --> 00:29:24.000 And so that's what that destruction is. 00:29:24.000 --> 00:29:26.040 The destruction is not annihilation. 00:29:26.040 --> 00:29:28.180 Greek has a verb for annihilation. 00:29:28.180 --> 00:29:28.900 That's not the one there. 00:29:28.900 --> 00:29:29.700 It's destroy. 00:29:31.300 --> 00:29:33.320 So this is not ad nihilo, right? 00:29:33.320 --> 00:29:38.540 It's not annihilation, it's not reduction, or the erasure of something. 00:29:38.540 --> 00:29:41.340 It's not reduction to zero, to nothing. 00:29:42.200 --> 00:29:45.480 This is eternal destruction. 00:29:45.740 --> 00:29:46.760 That's what hell is. 00:29:46.940 --> 00:29:50.380 Hell is eternal separation from God, eternal torment. 00:29:50.800 --> 00:29:51.980 It does not end. 00:29:52.020 --> 00:29:53.400 You are not annihilated. 00:29:53.580 --> 00:29:54.980 You do not disappear. 00:29:55.140 --> 00:30:00.880 The torment does not stop, because the wages of sin is death. 00:30:00.920 --> 00:30:02.660 And in this case, it's eternal death. 00:30:03.680 --> 00:30:09.140 And the payment is infinite, because the transgress of sin is infinite. 00:30:09.260 --> 00:30:15.560 And so, you being a finite, the only way you can pay an infinite is with an infinite amount of time. 00:30:16.340 --> 00:30:17.960 That's why you need God and the scales. 00:30:17.960 --> 00:30:25.340 That's why you need Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ being God could pay an infinite sum, because he is the infinite. 00:30:25.720 --> 00:30:28.300 And so, if you are in Christ, you get eternal life. 00:30:28.660 --> 00:30:31.140 If you are not in Christ, you get eternal death. 00:30:31.440 --> 00:30:38.560 It's not annihilation, it's destruction in the sense of being in fire that does not consume. 00:30:39.020 --> 00:30:41.440 It is just that eternal separation from God. 00:30:41.440 --> 00:30:43.300 So, it's not annihilationism. 00:30:43.620 --> 00:30:50.300 There are many other places that speak of this, and I could draw out the doctrine from many other verses, and a full study would obviously do that. 00:30:50.780 --> 00:30:54.480 But annihilationism is simply not taught in scripture. 00:30:55.620 --> 00:30:57.920 There is no actual support for it. 00:30:57.940 --> 00:31:03.600 It is an attempt, philosophically, to soften hell. 00:31:04.040 --> 00:31:04.940 That's all it is. 00:31:05.400 --> 00:31:13.620 And it's only an attempt to soften hell for those who don't understand the destruction of that which is good is evil. 00:31:14.080 --> 00:31:19.900 And so, God can't destroy his creation, because God cannot do evil. 00:31:20.260 --> 00:31:22.540 And so, anything God has made is good. 00:31:22.800 --> 00:31:25.360 God will not annihilate anything he has made. 00:31:25.860 --> 00:31:31.540 Now, the infinite separation from God, that is due to the willful choices of the person in hell. 00:31:32.260 --> 00:31:37.080 God does not desire that any would be lost, but that all would come to faith and be saved. 00:31:37.320 --> 00:31:39.340 Scripture is abundantly clear about that as well. 00:31:40.860 --> 00:31:47.620 But yes, hell is eternal, and it is eternal separation from God, and you are conscious for the entire time. 00:31:47.620 --> 00:31:53.980 So, don't make that choice, because it is a choice to go to hell. 00:31:55.180 --> 00:32:02.660 The free gift of God is available to all, because God so loved the world, Tan, Cosmon, all things, the universe. 00:32:03.060 --> 00:32:05.380 We could translate that more accurately than just world. 00:32:07.560 --> 00:32:08.700 Question 8. 00:32:16.460 --> 00:32:21.300 What is your opinion of the Muslim attack in Utah by Peter Larson? 00:32:21.300 --> 00:32:25.640 I actually had to look this one up, because I have not been really following that sort of news. 00:32:26.760 --> 00:32:44.980 So, the general rule for this, my general comment, I've commented on it before, so I don't mind necessarily commenting on this sort of thing again, but don't do dumb stuff, and don't say dumb stuff on the internet, because this stuff isn't a game, right? 00:32:45.460 --> 00:32:52.420 And you can make your life very unpleasant, and you can cause problems for a lot of other people as well. 00:32:53.280 --> 00:32:58.220 So, there's also the fact that white men don't behave like that. 00:32:59.340 --> 00:33:06.600 White men organize and achieve things as a coherent group, politically, in the broadest sense of political. 00:33:07.080 --> 00:33:08.660 That's how white men do things. 00:33:09.080 --> 00:33:18.140 Don't do the lone wolf nonsense, particularly, you know, you didn't even achieve anything, like, it's completely ineffective, you haven't done anything. 00:33:18.820 --> 00:33:25.380 So, am I always going to condemn, sort of, as a moral matter, what we would call vigilanteism, right? 00:33:25.740 --> 00:33:34.520 In this case, sure, but you can think of the famous case of, the man's name has slipped my mind, I'm sure someone in the chat will know it. 00:33:34.620 --> 00:33:40.780 But you can think of the pedophile, and the victim's father solved that problem in an airport. 00:33:41.720 --> 00:33:46.820 So, I'm not going to say I always condemn vigilanteism, because it's not always wrong. 00:33:46.820 --> 00:33:50.280 Where the state fails, the duty devolves to others. 00:33:50.840 --> 00:33:53.600 Eventually, it's going to devolve to individual Christian men. 00:33:54.780 --> 00:34:05.120 But the general rule is, don't do dumb stuff, don't say dumb things, particularly on the Internet, and white men don't do the lone wolf thing. 00:34:05.120 --> 00:34:13.980 White men act as a coherent group in a way that is effective, in an ultimate sense, politically and meaningfully. 00:34:20.560 --> 00:34:22.480 Question 9. 00:34:24.100 --> 00:34:30.240 Which punishments other than the death penalty for murder are we obligated to copy from the civil law and why? 00:34:31.060 --> 00:34:40.860 So, we are not actually obligated to copy any punishments from the civil law. 00:34:41.940 --> 00:34:45.740 The punishment, the death penalty for murder is not from the civil law. 00:34:45.740 --> 00:34:48.860 It's in the civil law, but it's not the civil law. 00:34:48.860 --> 00:34:50.120 It is the moral law. 00:34:50.660 --> 00:34:56.980 He who sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed, for in God's image, God made man. 00:34:57.920 --> 00:34:59.240 That's Genesis 9, 6. 00:34:59.860 --> 00:35:01.980 Genesis 9, 6 is moral law. 00:35:02.080 --> 00:35:09.380 So, the moral law is binding on all men for all time, because the moral law flows from God's nature. 00:35:10.040 --> 00:35:16.300 And the civil law was for Old Testament Israel, for the polity of Old Testament Israel. 00:35:17.140 --> 00:35:19.700 It is not for us. 00:35:20.300 --> 00:35:24.960 It is persuasive, because God gave it to a nation. 00:35:24.960 --> 00:35:33.840 And so, obviously, this was something God would said, at least it was good for them, and it is not wicked, because God cannot enact something that is evil. 00:35:34.260 --> 00:35:38.560 So, it is persuasive for us, but it's not binding on us, because it's not eternal. 00:35:38.920 --> 00:35:41.180 It's for a certain time and people in place. 00:35:41.180 --> 00:35:42.820 It's for Old Testament Israel. 00:35:43.840 --> 00:35:48.640 The moral law, again, flows from God's nature, binding for all time. 00:35:49.140 --> 00:35:51.060 Genesis 9, 6 is moral law. 00:35:51.060 --> 00:35:56.180 This comes way before Old Testament Israel, way before the civil law. 00:35:56.200 --> 00:35:58.160 This is moral law handed down by God. 00:35:58.520 --> 00:36:05.400 So, moral law always binding, civil law persuasive, ceremonial law completely gone, because it was fulfilled in Christ. 00:36:05.620 --> 00:36:08.760 And its only purpose ever was to point forward to Christ. 00:36:09.200 --> 00:36:12.680 That's the tripartite division of the law in the Old Testament. 00:36:16.320 --> 00:36:18.080 Question 10. 00:36:19.680 --> 00:36:22.500 Any thoughts on the PCA condemning kinnism? 00:36:23.020 --> 00:36:24.400 Tried to ask on Telegram. 00:36:24.880 --> 00:36:26.300 Okay, that's just about Telegram, so. 00:36:27.520 --> 00:36:33.340 I have not read their condemnation of kinnism, so-called. 00:36:33.540 --> 00:36:34.400 So I don't know exact... 00:36:34.400 --> 00:36:42.060 I mean, obviously, a condemnation of kinnism, given the formulations of kinnism that I've seen from every group that's formulated it thus far, is wicked. 00:36:42.060 --> 00:36:42.600 They sinned. 00:36:42.600 --> 00:36:43.580 They sinned by doing that. 00:36:43.580 --> 00:36:44.860 They're in high-handed sin. 00:36:44.860 --> 00:36:47.600 They're basically apostate, because they still hold to it. 00:36:47.980 --> 00:36:50.000 And unless they repent, they're probably damned. 00:36:50.660 --> 00:36:54.760 So that is the general assessment, the general rule here. 00:36:55.380 --> 00:37:02.400 You know, there's always felicitous inconsistency to consider, but these are men who are in a position of teachers, strict judgment. 00:37:03.340 --> 00:37:05.640 I would not want to be in their shoes on judgment day. 00:37:07.520 --> 00:37:12.600 The problem that I have with kinnism is that it's a nonsense category, ultimately. 00:37:12.880 --> 00:37:16.480 It has the same problem as ethno-nationalism. 00:37:17.280 --> 00:37:18.280 There's no such thing. 00:37:18.900 --> 00:37:21.080 Nationalism is nationalism. 00:37:21.460 --> 00:37:26.680 Nationalism is necessarily tied to an ethnos being a race or a nation. 00:37:27.960 --> 00:37:30.100 Nation, so you're calling it nation nationalism. 00:37:30.640 --> 00:37:38.400 We do that sometimes in English, though, but it's harmless when we do it with something like non-bread, right, bread bread, or any of a number of other times we do that. 00:37:39.300 --> 00:37:44.120 But when we do it with something like this, it's subversive. 00:37:44.860 --> 00:37:49.480 It's wicked because it is misleading in a way that is impermissible. 00:37:50.980 --> 00:37:58.660 Nationalism is necessarily tied to a race because nation and race mean the same thing, and ethnos also means race. 00:37:59.080 --> 00:38:06.020