Transcript
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Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast.
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I am Corey J.
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Mahler.
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And I’m Woe.
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In this episode, we will be discussing anonymity, pseudonymity, and a number of related issues.
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You may have noticed that we successfully returned to our intended episode length, which is to say just over an hour.
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And one final matter, you may have noticed a small e next to this episode in your podcast player of choice, if the UI happens to show that.
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That of course is the explicit flag.
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Now, no, we have not turned into a blue podcast, and we do not make frequent or really any use of expletives in this episode, and we do not intend to do so.
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However, we do use the word sodomites and discuss an issue related to, well, sodomites.
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And in order to keep our podcast from being banned by the various podcast directories, we are essentially required to flag this episode as explicit.
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Of course, that is an issue Christians should be willing to discuss and about which they should know.
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So you need not have any fear in listening to this episode, although if you have children listening with you, you may have to explain some things if they are attentive children.
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If you read the show notes, and why wouldn’t you?
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They’re short and generally informative.
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Then you already know that we can be reached via Telegram.
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We have a Telegram channel.
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It is linked in the show notes and on the website.
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We can be reached via the comment system on the website.
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And additionally, we now have an email address for comments, questions, concerns, feedback, what have you.
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That email address is comments at stonechoir.com.
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So today’s episode is going to be about a topic that we’ve had in mind for a while.
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It has come to the fore with recent events that have spilled out on Twitter and elsewhere.
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The subject is pseudonymity or anonymity versus men who use their full Christian names when they speak online.
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When people describe us as anonymous or most people online as anonymous, it’s really a misnomer.
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To be anonymous is to have no attribution whatsoever.
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The definition of anonymous is nameless, wanting a name without the real name of the author.
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So for example, if someone leaves a pamphlet on your windshield and there’s no attribution whatsoever, it doesn’t say what group it’s from or any sort of byline, that’s anonymous.
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You have no idea where it comes from.
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On the other hand, if there’s a copyright statement or there’s some sort of group name or maybe it says Publius or something, that’s a pseudonym.
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That’s not their legal name.
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It’s not necessarily a specific person that you can attribute it to.
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But you can attribute in generally what they have said to their identity.
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So I, for example, am not anonymous.
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I have never been anonymous online.
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I am pseudonymous.
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I have had multiple aliases over the years, not because I was up to anything sketchy, but frankly, I kept getting banned from Twitter.
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And so when I came back, I had to change my name or I would immediately get re-banned.
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And that’s an interesting part of all of this, because when most people hear, I was banned from Twitter, your immediate thought is, well, you know, he must have done something to deserve it.
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He must have been a real jerk, or he used terrible language, or he was abusive or something.
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You know, obviously, if I was banned, I must have deserved it somehow.
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Well, what has come out and what is going to come out even further as Elon rips back the veil is that the people doing the banning, which all of us who were getting banned knew for a fact, the banners were trannies, were sodomites, were pedophiles.
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Those are the people who didn’t want me on Twitter, who didn’t want me talking.
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So if you think that you’re on the same page as those guys morally, that’s probably a bigger question that we can ever answer on one of our episodes, but you should spend some serious time thinking about that.
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So I am pseudonymous, not because I’m ashamed of anything I say.
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I mean, the fact that I’m now putting my voice to it, it makes it inevitable that at some point I will too be doxed, and there will be absolute attribution to everything I’ve ever said, which I’m fine with.
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I’m not fine with being doxed.
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That’s an evil, murderous thing for people to do.
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But there is no shame in anything that I have said.
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The things that I say online are the same things that I say in person.
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Now, the difference between an in-person conversation and an online conversation is that in person, you have the other individual in front of you, their particular views, where they’re coming from, and you work with those if you’re a normal human being trying to have a conversation.
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On the internet, it’s different.
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The audience is a generic one.
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So, in a sense, it’s easier to speak directly to what I think, not because I’m hiding something in person and I’m blunt on the internet.
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It’s just that I don’t have to assume any particular givens for whom I’m speaking to.
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So, I’m not anonymous.
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I’m an attributable voice that has everything I’ve ever said.
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You can look at the very pseudonyms and say, yeah, this guy has said all that stuff, and I did.
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And am I proud of all of it?
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No, I’ve said things were stupid.
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I’ve made tweets in the past that I delete it because like that was awful.
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I shouldn’t have said that I’m a human being.
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And so, to say that I’m not ashamed of what I’ve posted doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve never said anything idiotic because I have, but I’ve never said anything evil because I have.
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But the salient facts of the reasons that I was banned and will probably be banned again, even with Elon, are theological in nature.
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They come down to why all these fights are happening in the world, and frankly, why we’re doing this podcast.
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So, just at the outset, I want to make clear that when you say that people like me are anonymous, you’re abusing the word.
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4chan and the other image boards, those are anonymous image boards.
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When you go to one, you click on a forum, they’re a topic group, you click on a thread, you go down to the bottom, you just type in whatever you want to say, and you hit send, and it appears.
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There’s no login, there’s no attribution, you show up as anonymous.
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That’s an interesting case, because there’s no reputation there.
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And someone who is keen on reputation will think, oh, well, that’s terrible, people can do whatever.
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But there’s a flip side to that also, is that you don’t get any credit for being some brilliant person, or for having certain credentials.
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You show up on the timeline whatever your current thought was, and then you vanish.
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You never get any credit for it.
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You can’t take credit because you’re anonymous.
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That’s what anonymous means.
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Again, I’m pseudonymous.
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I have years of posting under various pseudonyms that I take credit for all of it.
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Those are my thoughts.
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It’s funny, I’ve looked back at some of the things I was tweeting two, three years ago, and they’re every bit as relevant today as they were then, even though when I was saying it then, a lot of those things I was saying for the first time.
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In fact, many of them were addressing this very question.
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It’s interesting that you and I, Corey, are the two people talking about this because you are the least anonymous Lutheran out there who’s the target of these very attacks.
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And so I’d like to first ask you, as not a pseudonymous man, as Corey J.
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Mahler, who puts your name on everything, you are the ideal case, you’re the ideal case for what these pastors think everyone should be doing.
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So tell the folks who maybe don’t know behind the scenes what it’s like being Corey in a world where you say things that you believe that are hated by the world.
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Yes, saying that I am not anonymous or even pseudonymous is almost an understatement, considering my website is my name.
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I have my actual profile picture of me on all of my accounts.
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In fact, it’s in front of the brewery I go to after church, no less.
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Pretty much everyone knows I live in East Tennessee.
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It’s not hard to find the church I attend.
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And that’s relevant because I have had individuals, pastors, in fact, who disagree with the things we have said, who have contacted my pastor basically in a proxy attempt to harass me.
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And even beyond that, I mean, there’s the obvious social media.
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You get death threats and things like that.
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I have those sometimes.
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I’ve had particularly lovely DMs show up on Twitter and on Facebook.
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Back when I used that, that’s been a long time ago, though.
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And so really what those who say they do not want anonymity, really pseudonymity, but those who say they don’t want it, they want the ability to harass people.
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That’s what they’re saying.
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They don’t want to engage with the idea.
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They just want the potential.
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They want the power over that person to harass him, and if they can, destroy him.
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I’m a little more insulated than some.
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I’m not working for, you know, a large law firm as an attorney, and so they can’t call my supervisor and get me fired.
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They absolutely would if they could.
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And I do not for a second doubt that some of the people from Twitter and elsewhere have complained to the bar.
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I haven’t done anything that violates any rules, so all they’ve done is annoy some peon at the bar.
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But it’s very obvious, the pattern of behavior in which they’re engaging, what it is they want to do.
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They do not want to have a conversation, as they will sometimes say.
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They don’t want to know the man on the other side of the screen.
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That’s not it.
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They want to be able to locate that man to harass and destroy him.
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It is malice that animates these men.
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In some cases, there’s also a bit of foolishness there, but ultimately, it’s malice.
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And we were talking about this yesterday.
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The particularly hilarious thing about whenever these guys complain about anons, as like these evil slanderers, they always ignore the fact that you exist under your real name, while simultaneously, whenever they refer to you in particular, they treat you like Voldemort on Twitter.
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They’re afraid to type the name Cory Mahler because they’re afraid that somehow you’re going to appear like Bloody Mary.
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And so they will call you a slave.
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In fairness, I have done that a couple of times just to mess with them.
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But they were asking for it.
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Yeah, it’s well deserved.
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But they know your name and they’re too afraid to say it.
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You’re like Voldemort to these people who are intimately familiar with that ridiculous illusion.
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They have a name and then they won’t use it, as you said, except to personally target you to seek harm against you in your life, in your livelihood and in your church.
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Well, they got me banned from Twitter.
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Yeah, me too.
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Well, my Mahler LCMS account on Twitter, fellow Christians got that one banned.
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I’m sure there were some others who were in there as well.
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But I had two accounts.
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I was not avoiding a ban or a suspension because my main account, which is my name, my full name, I’d had since 2012.
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So I wasn’t really planning that far in advance to avoid a suspension.
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I had Mahler LCMS.
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I originally intended to sort of split the two, address politics and such on the main account and religious topics on the other.
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I wound up using the other almost exclusively because I was mostly talking about religious topics and very little about politics.
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But the reason, the thing they used to report me, to get me banned, was they mass reported a particular tweet where I said that the punishment for the production of pornography should be capital punishment.
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I said they should be executed.
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That is a call for a change in the law, of course, but they all mass reported it as a threat, which, of course, is bearing false witness against me.
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But they used that in order to get me banned, and that was largely fellow Christians.
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My main account got banned because I said something about the Eastern Orthodox and somehow someone brought it to the attention of Rod Dreher.
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And I know he’s the one who got me banned because, for those who aren’t familiar with how this works, when you get banned, suspended, whatever they want to call it, you receive an email with the reason.
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Now, it’s probably a vague reason.
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It may not be a relevant reason, but you get an email that contains a reason.
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If you are reported by a blue check because they have a special back channel, you receive nothing.
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Your account is just all of a sudden suspended.
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You can no longer log in.
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And that is what happened to my main account right after I interacted with Rod Dreher.
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And I have the screenshots that’s easy to find.
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Now, briefly, I’d like to apologize to our audience for this extremely online talk.
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There’s a lot of stuff that happens on Twitter and Facebook and elsewhere that the reason that we’re talking about this, this is not sour grapes over our accounts.
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This is about the much more fundamental issue of what is falsely called the culture war, where people confuse theology with politics and vice versa, or they’re not able to understand where the line is if there’s a line at all.
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So the reason we’re talking about this is that we’re trying to ultimately talk about where that line is between theology and politics, because it’s not where these guys are drawing it.
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And for better or worse, these things play out online.
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So while a lot of stuff happens on Twitter and elsewhere, we never want this podcast to be about Internet drama, about e-drama.
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That’s exhausting.
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I don’t want to hear it.
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I know you don’t want to hear it if you care about this podcast.
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So please don’t mistake what we’re saying as being about us and our accounts.
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Whatever.
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But as Corey just said, the fact that Christians have gone after us to remove us from being able to speak at all because they don’t like what we say about theology, that’s much more deeply rooted than just internet talk.
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Like that’s not about any particular website.
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That’s a fundamental question of how the church is to operate, which is what we’re talking about today.
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So I’ve already defined pseudonymity, but I’d just like to give you a few examples of if you think that pseudonyms are evil or they’re a bad thing.
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Anyone who knows etymology knows that pseudo means false in Greek.
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Now, that’s in English.
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That has a very negative connotation.
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To say something is false is the opposite of true.
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So that’s gross.
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Like you won’t find someone who’s more obsessed with the truth than me.
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So for me to be saying something that pseudonyms are great or pseudonyms are fine, you could easily think falsely that I am somehow being a hypocrite.
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Pseudonyms are aliases.
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They’re nicknames.
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They’re fictitious names, stage names, pen names.
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They’re regnal names as well.
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So it’s very common for kings and every pope to assume a new name when they ascend to their office.
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Most people listening have probably heard of Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
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You’ve all heard of Pope Francis.
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That’s his pseudonym.
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He’s not Francis.
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He’s Jorge.
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But in his office, he has assumed the pseudonym.
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Now, in his case, there’s no disconnect between the two identities, but the identity of Pope has with it that association where a pseudonym goes along with it.
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It’s also common, as I mentioned, stage names and pen names.
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You know, everyone knows Mark Twain.
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Almost as many know Samuel Clemens.
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The man was Samuel.
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The author was Mark.
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They were the same guy.
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Very few of you probably would recognize the same Isier Danilovic, but you all know Kirk Douglas.
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No one would know who was talking about when I mentioned Bernard Schwartz, but everybody knows who Tony Curtis is.
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Some people might recognize the name Nimrata Randhawa, but you all know Nikki Haley.
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And here’s a great one.
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Elisa Zinovenia Rosenbaum, who became Alice O’Connor and then became Ayn Rand.
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Now nobody knows Elisa, but everybody knows Ayn.
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In the case of those people, those were all Jews who came into Western countries.
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They shape-shifted into assuming our names, so that when you heard Bernard Schwartz, you’d think, well, that guy’s probably a Jew.
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Tony Curtis, like, that’s the waspiest name imaginable.
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So, you know, maybe he’s Irish or Italian, but you wouldn’t think that he was from the land of his origin and the people of his origin.
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So those are people who assume pseudonyms in order to shape shift.
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I have a pseudonym just because that’s how the internet works.
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I’ve been on the internet for decades, and I’ve lost how many, counting how many pseudonyms I’ve had.
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Again, not because, like, I’m covering my tracks.
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It’s just that my identity online is not…
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It’s just a pointer to my voice.
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So, for example, Corey, you and I are in a group of a bunch of Lutherans, you know, 50-odd guys.
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I know your name, and I know one or two other guys’ Christian names, the names that are written in the Book of Life for Eternity, as we talked about last week.
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But the vast majority, I only know pseudonyms, and some of them have to change their pseudonyms fairly often.
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Now, this is an interesting case, because one of the things that we do in this group is we will regularly pin prayer requests for guys, you know, sometimes half a time, a dozen times a day, where someone is about to have the birth of a child, or the child is sick, or they’re looking for a wife, or they have a parent who’s sick or dying, all sorts of things that happen in real life that are consequential, that are meaningful for prayer.
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And in every one of those cases, it’s somebody with a pseudonym who’s saying, hey guys, please pray for me.
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Now, because we understand what pseudonyms are for, we don’t think, well, I’m going to ask God to pray for Night George and his new baby.
00:19:41.939 → 00:19:44.819
I hope God knows who I’m talking about, because I don’t.
00:19:45.139 → 00:19:45.959
Like, that’s nonsense.
00:19:46.259 → 00:19:47.039
I know who he is.
00:19:47.059 → 00:19:47.999
I know things about him.
00:19:48.019 → 00:19:48.939
I just don’t know his name.
00:19:49.199 → 00:19:50.359
I don’t care about his name.
00:19:50.659 → 00:19:52.059
And it’s not apathy.
00:19:52.359 → 00:19:55.619
It’s that to me, he’s KG, and he’s a close friend.
00:19:56.259 → 00:19:57.519
God knows who he is.
00:19:57.679 → 00:20:04.219
So when I take Night George to God in prayer, I don’t have any doubt that God knows exactly who I’m talking about.
00:20:04.539 → 00:20:06.079
And the same is true of my pseudonym.
00:20:06.919 → 00:20:10.299
God knows exactly who I am when I’m posting on the internet.
00:20:10.799 → 00:20:25.959
And these pastors, these people who get angry that someone is posting without accountability, they want accountability, they want to hold somebody’s feet to the fire, is though I think that I’m tricking God by using a different name than the one that’s written in the Book of Life.
00:20:26.419 → 00:20:27.699
I have no such delusions.
00:20:28.019 → 00:20:30.219
I’m accountable for every careless word.
00:20:30.459 → 00:20:33.599
Like I said, I’ve had careless words, and sometimes I’m ashamed of them.
00:20:33.639 → 00:20:37.499
Like, nope, I got to get rid of that, because I should not have done that.
00:20:38.799 → 00:20:43.099
That was shame before God, because I said it, and God saw me see it.
00:20:43.339 → 00:20:48.479
The fact that it was attributed online to a pseudonym is meaningless between me and my Creator.
00:20:48.799 → 00:20:53.679
And the fact that some pastor who gets mad at me, doesn’t know my name, is totally immaterial.
00:20:54.959 → 00:20:59.139
As you said earlier, these guys never want to actually discuss the things we want to discuss.
00:20:59.519 → 00:21:03.159
They will think that they’re slandering you by calling you slavery, Lutheran.
00:21:03.359 → 00:21:05.179
And I agree with you completely on this subject.
00:21:05.439 → 00:21:09.939
We’ll do an episode probably pretty soon about slavery and what God says about slavery.
00:21:10.179 → 00:21:12.699
Because it’s not what these men say, it’s not what the world say.
00:21:13.259 → 00:21:23.639
But rather than dealing with the text of scripture, they just want to go straight for ad hominem and discrediting the person rather than talking about the ideas.
00:21:24.299 → 00:21:34.599
And so pseudonymity is valuable in that case, because it keeps the attacks away from the person and forces the discussion onto the ideas.
00:21:34.919 → 00:21:37.659
As I’ve said before and elsewhere, I have no credentials.
00:21:37.959 → 00:21:38.939
I’m not a pastor.
00:21:39.179 → 00:21:40.079
I don’t know Greek.
00:21:40.439 → 00:21:42.539
I have no training for any of this.
00:21:42.559 → 00:21:43.539
I freely admit that.
00:21:43.859 → 00:21:48.679
And if you think that that disqualifies me from being heard, then no, listen, that’s fine.
00:21:49.739 → 00:22:05.959
If in spite of the fact that I have no credentials, you hear what I say and think, huh, that’s interesting, or wow, I really think this is valuable, that’s between you and your understanding of scripture through what the Holy Spirit has revealed to you, that you would hear what I say and say, yeah, I think I agree with that.
00:22:06.479 → 00:22:07.919
It’s got nothing to do with credentials.
00:22:07.939 → 00:22:21.479
So guys who need their collar in their avatar online and they need to have their titles in order to be recognized, I think is a very different kind of hiding behind something.
00:22:21.719 → 00:22:23.719
They accuse me of hiding behind a pseudonym.
00:22:24.579 → 00:22:26.919
Frankly, I think most of them are hiding behind their collars.
00:22:28.379 → 00:22:34.439
Well, as mentioned, that is one of the benefits of pseudonymity, is that the only thing that matters is what you said.
00:22:36.079 → 00:22:46.239
And so those who are pseudonymous cannot make an appeal to credentials or to experience or to anything outside of what they have said.
00:22:46.759 → 00:22:49.619
And so it is wholly about the argument.
00:22:50.159 → 00:22:54.719
And in this case, we are basing everything we say on scripture.
00:22:55.059 → 00:23:01.519
And so those who are making these points under a pseudonymous account are simply making the point.
00:23:01.519 → 00:23:07.959
They are not saying, well, I’m a pastor, so you have to listen to me, or I have this degree or that degree or this knowledge.
00:23:08.839 → 00:23:11.919
Yes, in my case, I’m obviously not pseudonymous.
00:23:13.299 → 00:23:16.059
But I am still making an appeal to the things I have said.
00:23:16.079 → 00:23:23.579
You will note that on my website and on my accounts, I’m not adding all the letters that I could add after my name.
00:23:23.939 → 00:23:30.019
I did for a little while simply to annoy a handful of people that really found that noxious because it amused me.
00:23:31.019 → 00:23:36.359
But I’ve removed all that stuff because it’s not actually particularly relevant to the things I’m saying.
00:23:37.479 → 00:23:47.399
Yes, if the topic of European Union antitrust comes up, okay, fine, my credentials are now relevant, my training is relevant.
00:23:47.979 → 00:23:57.199
But when it comes to these things, we are appealing to the Word of God, we are appealing to those who have the Spirit to hear God’s voice in the things we are saying.
00:23:57.719 → 00:24:00.079
And so the credentials are not relevant.
00:24:00.959 → 00:24:04.419
Is being a pastor relevant to some of this stuff in some way?
00:24:04.659 → 00:24:06.759
Well, certainly when it comes to the stricter judgment.
00:24:07.799 → 00:24:14.659
But in a very real way, the only thing that is relevant is whether or not the man who is speaking is repeating God’s word.
00:24:16.259 → 00:24:20.279
He may have whatever sort of clothing he wants on.
00:24:21.019 → 00:24:25.319
He may have whatever degrees he wants, but what matters is what he is saying.
00:24:25.339 → 00:24:30.259
And being pseudonymous is actually in some way a benefit with regard to that.
00:24:32.919 → 00:24:35.359
And it’s not unprecedented within the faith either.
00:24:35.379 → 00:24:39.119
Earlier I mentioned we have a friend who goes by night, George, for obvious reasons.
00:24:39.139 → 00:24:39.379
That’s…
00:24:40.279 → 00:24:46.199
Junker Jorg was one of Luther’s pseudonyms when he was pursued by men who were trying to murder him.
00:24:48.279 → 00:24:49.819
Yeah, and many people don’t…
00:24:50.739 → 00:24:54.059
Actually, I think that many people would not actually know who Junker Jorg is.
00:24:54.079 → 00:24:55.359
They don’t know that story.
00:24:55.879 → 00:25:06.819
But after the Diet of Worms, in 1521, Friedrich the Wise, one of Luther’s patrons, had him kidnapped, so to speak.
00:25:07.639 → 00:25:20.399
He had him intercepted in the countryside on the way back from the Diet, because he had basically just been declared, you know, an outlaw in the old sense of the term.
00:25:20.419 → 00:25:22.059
Someone could kill him without consequence.
00:25:22.399 → 00:25:30.999
And so in order to protect him, they kidnapped him, spirited him away to Vartberg, and he assumed the name of Junker Jorg, more or less Knight George.
00:25:31.339 → 00:25:34.359
It’s a little difference in emphasis there, but it’s close enough of a translation.
00:25:35.679 → 00:25:47.899
And so he lived essentially as a minor noble in Vartberg Castle, in rooms that had traditionally been used for minor nobles who had basically fallen out of favor, but not so far that they needed to be executed.
00:25:48.719 → 00:25:52.899
So it was not quite prison, but sort of house arrest.
00:25:53.779 → 00:25:55.959
But while he was there, he had two squires who waited on him.
00:25:55.979 → 00:25:57.559
He lived as a minor noble.
00:25:57.579 → 00:26:03.279
Incidentally, he may have put on a little weight while he was there, because he switched from a monk’s diet to a minor noble’s diet.
00:26:03.339 → 00:26:04.199
Very different thing.
00:26:04.799 → 00:26:06.719
He interacted with other nobles.
00:26:07.539 → 00:26:12.639
But while he was there, operating under this pseudonym, he translated the Bible.
00:26:15.279 → 00:26:22.119
That’s essentially the first time you really have the Bible in the vernacular being widespread.
00:26:22.119 → 00:26:26.419
Obviously, yes, Greek at the time would have been vernacular, but it no longer was.
00:26:27.039 → 00:26:27.859
Neither was Latin.
00:26:29.659 → 00:26:34.659
And so we have, he also wrote two volumes worth of his works while he was in that castle.
00:26:35.819 → 00:26:52.259
And so we have an instance in our own history, and this is the case for all Protestants, not just Lutherans, but obviously particularly for Lutherans, of a man operating under a pseudonym and achieving a great deal of good and doing it for a perfectly legitimate reason.
00:26:52.779 → 00:26:57.999
In his case, he would have been killed if he had been found, if he had been using his name and been discovered.
00:26:59.139 → 00:27:02.299
Today, the stakes aren’t really that much different.
00:27:03.599 → 00:27:13.039
No, the emperor is not going to literally drag you into the town square and chop off your head if you express these unpopular opinions online and are found out.
00:27:14.759 → 00:27:26.579
But the agents of our evil government are certainly going to find you, are going to get you fired, are going to make your life miserable, are going to send you death threats, may very well cause you physical harm.
00:27:27.079 → 00:27:36.059
In some cases, this stuff does actually eventuate in murder because some of our adversaries, some of our enemies, are willing to go that far.
00:27:38.399 → 00:27:49.139
And that’s the reason that we’re talking about this, is that there are real world consequences to these pastors claiming that you must unmask yourself or you are a coward.
00:27:51.679 → 00:28:04.599
One of my first exposures to the spirit behind what a lot of these pastors think was a year or so ago, when I was on Jonathan Fisk’s discord, Fiskward, he obviously is the admin.
00:28:04.619 → 00:28:06.179
There are like 600 people on the thing.
00:28:06.219 → 00:28:11.139
I was in a channel with Adam Kunz and a number of other pastors whom I respect.
00:28:11.899 → 00:28:19.499
And one day there was a conversation, and I think, I don’t remember the details, I think there was like a disagreement between me and another member, which was pretty typical.
00:28:19.519 → 00:28:25.099
I was there basically to be hated, but to speak the truth in a place where maybe a few people would hear it.
00:28:26.379 → 00:28:35.179
Anyway, something happened, and Jonathan Fisk falsely accused me of a sin in front of everyone, in front of hundreds of people.
00:28:35.199 → 00:28:36.699
He said that I had just sinned.
00:28:37.319 → 00:28:42.979
And the accusation was not borne out by any of the evidence, so that made her slanderous.
00:28:43.499 → 00:28:47.779
And because he’s not only a pastor, but he is the admin, that made it powerful slander.
00:28:47.979 → 00:28:53.379
Like, it’s one thing if I, as just a nobody on Discord, say something mean about somebody else.
00:28:53.739 → 00:28:54.479
Nobody cares.
00:28:54.839 → 00:28:59.499
When the admin and the pastor, who it’s named after, says something, everybody cares.
00:28:59.859 → 00:29:00.659
So I rebuked him.
00:29:00.699 → 00:29:02.779
I said, that was false.
00:29:02.859 → 00:29:05.379
You need to repent, and you need to take that back.
00:29:05.599 → 00:29:07.339
You’ve harmed my reputation.
00:29:08.039 → 00:29:12.599
And the only reason I’m telling this story, it’s not that I’m mad that someone was mean to me online.
00:29:13.199 → 00:29:17.259
I remember it because I learned something very important that day from his response.
00:29:17.959 → 00:29:23.859
Fisk responded by scoffing at me and essentially saying, I don’t even know your name.
00:29:23.879 → 00:29:25.179
You’re not a real person.
00:29:25.859 → 00:29:29.479
I can’t possibly sin against you because I don’t know who you are.
00:29:29.499 → 00:29:30.619
And that was the end of it.
00:29:30.779 → 00:29:40.239
Like, as far as I was concerned, as far as he was concerned, because I was pseudonymous, he could do any manner of harm to my reputation, which is a real thing.
00:29:40.259 → 00:29:46.739
I have a reputation because all of my comments online are attributable to a pseudonym, but to me.
00:29:47.319 → 00:29:48.759
And he said, that’s nothing.
00:29:48.759 → 00:29:51.659
I can rob you of your reputation because it’s not even you.
00:29:51.679 → 00:29:54.999
You’re not even really a human being unless you use your real name.
00:29:55.739 → 00:30:03.859
This is something that played out again this year in what was the inspiration for our very first episode where we talked about Mrs.
00:30:03.879 → 00:30:10.019
Jonathan Lackey’s book that was published by CPH that was teaching theology to the church.
00:30:11.039 → 00:30:11.339
And…
00:30:14.379 → 00:30:21.179
Corey, you and I, our friend group, were the first people within Lutheranism to discuss this.
00:30:21.659 → 00:30:22.839
We discussed it in private.
00:30:22.859 → 00:30:24.779
Like, what’s going on at CPH?
00:30:24.959 → 00:30:29.319
Why are they unable to find pastors to teach theology?
00:30:29.559 → 00:30:30.739
Like, do we have a shortage?
00:30:31.499 → 00:30:33.419
No, there’s not a shortage of pastors.
00:30:33.439 → 00:30:36.699
There may be a shortage of theologians, but that’s a separate problem.
00:30:37.519 → 00:30:45.079
But why is it that the organ of our synod is propping up a 25-year-old girl to teach theology?
00:30:45.739 → 00:30:48.499
Jesus didn’t even begin teaching theology until he was 30.
00:30:48.999 → 00:30:50.719
But we disregard that example.
00:30:50.739 → 00:30:53.039
He’s like, well, okay, this girl, she’s got a ton of gifts.
00:30:53.319 → 00:30:56.099
She might even be better at Jesus teaching theology.
00:30:56.499 → 00:31:01.359
So she’s upheld, and she’s given a publishing deal, and her book is propped up, and issues, etc.
00:31:01.499 → 00:31:04.539
It makes it the book of the month, and everybody loves it.
00:31:05.219 → 00:31:10.299
And some of our friends are like, this doesn’t seem to be consistent with Scripture.
00:31:10.779 → 00:31:14.739
Let’s go look at where Scripture says that I do not permit a woman to speak.
00:31:14.759 → 00:31:16.459
She has to be silent in the church.
00:31:17.239 → 00:31:20.719
And the discussion was, you know, well, does in the church mean that she can’t preach?
00:31:20.739 → 00:31:31.879
And basically, all the pastors concluded that there’s nothing in the Bible that prevents a girl from doing anything except vesting, giving communion, and standing in the pulpit and preaching.
00:31:32.239 → 00:31:33.779
Everything else is up for grabs.
00:31:34.159 → 00:31:37.559
Now, most of them will deny that, but that’s functionally what their arguments are.
00:31:37.879 → 00:31:48.159
Whenever they look to 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 14, they see those texts strictly as protecting their pastoral office and not being about headship.
00:31:49.179 → 00:31:49.919
We disagreed.
00:31:50.359 → 00:31:54.939
So we started discussing it online and saying, hey, look at this book, look what’s going on.
00:31:55.319 → 00:32:01.299
And it quickly spread, because it was rightly controversial that a girl is teaching theology.
00:32:01.779 → 00:32:08.519
And I wanted to read just a couple clips from what appeared on the Goddardstein’s blog and on Larry Beane’s blog as a follow-up.
00:32:10.019 → 00:32:12.819
The first clip here that I’m going to read for you is from John Busman.
00:32:12.839 → 00:32:13.619
He’s a pastor.
00:32:14.399 → 00:32:19.639
In the middle of his post, he just mentioned as an aside that he’s Mrs.
00:32:19.659 → 00:32:21.119
Jonathan Lackey’s pastor.
00:32:21.399 → 00:32:32.759
He really buried the lead there by launching into a multi-page diatribe that I’ll get into here, and failing to mention that it was his own parishioner he was defending so forcefully.
00:32:33.119 → 00:32:36.339
Nothing wrong with defending her, but say up front, I’m her pastor.
00:32:36.359 → 00:32:37.559
Let me tell you what I think.
00:32:38.159 → 00:32:40.019
Well, he’s also defending himself.
00:32:41.559 → 00:32:42.199
Yes, very much so.
00:32:42.219 → 00:32:47.759
Because he’s the one who either correctly or incorrectly taught her husband and her.
00:32:48.839 → 00:32:49.759
Yeah, absolutely.
00:32:50.119 → 00:33:01.579
By us questioning the nature of the headship of a woman teaching theology, we were implicitly questioning his headship, John Busman’s headship, as her pastor.
00:33:01.859 → 00:33:04.719
And so you’re right, he was absolutely defending himself indirectly.
00:33:05.579 → 00:33:06.619
So here’s what he said.
00:33:07.019 → 00:33:08.139
So why the backlash?
00:33:08.479 → 00:33:18.939
I actually think it’s simply people with absolutely nothing better to do than to anonymously troll people and try to discourage them from fulfilling their vocation.
00:33:19.399 → 00:33:23.119
We have those types enter into the goddess blog comment section all the time.
00:33:23.359 → 00:33:24.199
You know the types.
00:33:24.799 → 00:33:26.099
There are a couple things there.
00:33:26.459 → 00:33:28.759
Anonymously is always connected to troll.
00:33:29.039 → 00:33:31.379
If you’re anonymous, you’re automatically a troll.
00:33:31.839 → 00:33:33.339
This is Peter Slayton’s big thing.
00:33:33.359 → 00:33:35.599
He’s the social media manager for the LCMS.
00:33:35.959 → 00:33:37.939
He goes around calling people trolls all the time.
00:33:37.959 → 00:33:45.299
He’s blocked numerous pastors and our own synod from the official LCMS website because they follow trolls on Twitter.
00:33:45.759 → 00:33:51.939
So see, this is this troll thing, this slander of calling someone a troll is exactly what Jonathan Fisk did to me.
00:33:52.199 → 00:33:53.559
He said, I don’t know your name.
00:33:53.559 → 00:33:54.959
I don’t like something you said.
00:33:55.319 → 00:34:01.299
Rather than apologizing for slandering you, I’m going to label you a pseudonymous troll and then you’re nothing.
00:34:01.659 → 00:34:06.079
That’s exactly what these other pastors, that’s what Bussman did and what Larry is going to do in a minute.
00:34:06.299 → 00:34:07.139
Say these are trolls.
00:34:07.159 → 00:34:08.379
They’re not really human beings.
00:34:09.519 → 00:34:19.639
And the other thing that will be a subject for another day, but note he said, trying to discourage them, meaning girls, from fulfilling their vocation, meaning teaching theology to men.
00:34:20.219 → 00:34:26.099
Now, that’s a textbook case of question begging, because that’s what they do.
00:34:26.119 → 00:34:31.159
They say, well, obviously, God gave her the gift to teach, so if she’s teaching, it must be from God.
00:34:31.459 → 00:34:34.019
And if you don’t like her teaching, you must be opposed to God.
00:34:34.299 → 00:34:36.939
Those are the rhetorical tricks that get played in these fights.
00:34:38.899 → 00:34:47.039
In a subsequent post on Godesteen, Bernal Eckhart, and this is mostly written by Larry Beane, but Bernal posted it under his name with credit to Larry.
00:34:47.059 → 00:35:21.159
He said this, Father Bussman’s posts brought to our attention to this, which is good, not only a question of where the scriptural line is drawn in the real world regarding women teaching and publishing in their own time, place and culture, but also regarding the roles of men and women and chivalry, the swarming of a woman by anonymous men, as recently happened in the Twitter world, is not chivalrous Christian masculine behavior, and we all agree on that.
00:35:21.179 → 00:35:23.379
This is fascinating for a few reasons.
00:35:23.619 → 00:35:35.799
One, we never said a single word to Molly on Twitter that was hostile or abrasive or overly critical.
00:35:36.239 → 00:35:41.759
When you use Twitter, there’s an advanced search where you can look and see everyone who has addressed another account by name.
00:35:42.319 → 00:35:46.159
We looked at all the posts that anyone, anywhere on the Internet, had said to Mrs.
00:35:46.179 → 00:35:46.639
Lackey.
00:35:47.799 → 00:35:50.339
There wasn’t a single thing that was mean, that was hateful.
00:35:51.159 → 00:35:59.419
The only comment that we found was from one of our friends who said something nice to her, even in a thread where he was criticizing the fact that this book had been published.
00:35:59.979 → 00:36:10.739
So for Larry and Bernal to say that the swarming of a woman on Twitter is slander, it is a lie, there is zero evidence for it.
00:36:10.999 → 00:36:16.499
And it’s one of these lies that these guys are happy to propagate, because again, we’ve been labeled as trolls.
00:36:16.719 → 00:36:19.799
So if it’s a troll, no holds barred.
00:36:20.019 → 00:36:23.099
You can say whatever you want about a troll because they’re not really human.
00:36:23.599 → 00:36:26.359
There’s no question of sinning against a troll.
00:36:26.859 → 00:36:37.079
So when they make those slanderous accusations, as pastors, as the guys who write the Goddess blog, everyone who doesn’t know anything automatically assumes that that actually happened.
00:36:37.499 → 00:36:41.159
Most people believe that people were saying mean things to Mrs.
00:36:41.179 → 00:36:42.199
Lackey on the Internet.
00:36:42.499 → 00:36:44.519
It literally never happened.
00:36:45.279 → 00:36:46.339
I want to emphasize that.
00:36:46.459 → 00:36:47.719
It never happened.
00:36:48.379 → 00:36:57.439
And yet these men will repeat this over and over again, and they’re free to do so in their minds morally because the people speaking were pseudonymous.
00:36:57.999 → 00:37:00.379
If they had not been pseudonymous, what would they have done?
00:37:00.679 → 00:37:09.939
They would have called their pastors and say, you need to put this person on the lesser ban unless they repent for this sin, where there was no sin, and they know that.
00:37:10.379 → 00:37:22.479
So that’s why we’re talking about this, because when someone makes accusations against a person without his name, they think they can’t possibly sin against them.
00:37:22.839 → 00:37:31.459
So when you see doxing and you see threats against livelihood and even flesh, they think it’s okay, even though it’s exactly what Antifa does.
00:37:33.819 → 00:37:35.419
The post on GoddessBlog goes on.
00:37:36.319 → 00:37:39.399
Finally, it’s been our policy for several years not to allow anonymous posts.
00:37:40.199 → 00:37:41.699
We decided we need to enforce it.
00:37:42.079 → 00:37:50.659
There may have been a need for anonymity in discussing political and hot button social topics, but when it comes to discussing our faith, we are called upon to confess.
00:37:51.299 → 00:38:07.239
Further, putting your name on something requires that you put more thought into your comment to choose your words and your accusations more carefully and subjects you to consequences within the church that you will be held accountable by your pastor in the case of pastors by your brothers in the ministerium.
00:38:07.619 → 00:38:09.439
That goes directly to what we had just said.
00:38:09.799 → 00:38:11.879
They don’t want to discuss the ideas.
00:38:12.179 → 00:38:13.579
They want punishment.
00:38:13.899 → 00:38:22.419
They presume to act as judge, jury and executioner in these theological discussions, and they seek the destruction of the men with whom they disagree.
00:38:23.559 → 00:38:28.259
There is another word that Larry used in there, chivalrous, and that absolutely came from him.
00:38:28.279 → 00:38:28.979
He’s a southerner.
00:38:29.279 → 00:38:31.699
He’s very proud of his southern heritage, and I respect that.
00:38:31.999 → 00:38:33.419
Half my family is from the south.
00:38:33.499 → 00:38:34.099
I get it.
00:38:34.779 → 00:38:50.959
But I think it’s ironic that in a discussion of a woman teaching theology, Larry and others would suddenly invoke these terms of chivalry, and you can’t say mean things to a girl.
00:38:51.999 → 00:39:00.379
If you assume for the sake of argument that it is legitimate for a girl to be teaching theology, she has stepped into the ring.
00:39:00.739 → 00:39:09.859
She has made herself subject to criticism, as every theologian is subject to criticism for what they say and whether they have the right to say it.
00:39:10.279 → 00:39:20.559
So ironically, by begging chivalry as a defense of her honor, he was actually agreeing with us that she has no business talking about theology in the first place.
00:39:21.619 → 00:39:32.539
And on Larry’s own blog, he repeated a week later, her pastor complained that she was being anonymously attacked on social media, and he was angry and protective of this member of his flock.
00:39:32.859 → 00:39:37.919
The nature of some social media platforms lends to swarming by trolls.
00:39:38.959 → 00:39:51.439
This is where we are right now as men, who indeed are supposed to lead the church, refuse to use their real names, but instead approach theology with a mindset of a cowering keyboard warrior using a pseudonym.
00:39:52.039 → 00:39:56.059
When it comes to the Christian faith, we should not resort to pseudo anything.
00:39:56.399 → 00:40:05.119
We come from a long tradition of men and women, clergy and laity, willing to confess and take the consequences of their countercultural confession of Christ.
00:40:05.559 → 00:40:08.299
Be strong and show yourself a man, oh Christian.
00:40:08.959 → 00:40:10.439
Now, he said some other things in the article.
00:40:10.459 → 00:40:27.379
We did actually defend that there’s an appropriate place for pseudonymity, but he specifically carved out if theology is a place where it’s utterly impermissible, which is interesting when you look back to the Luther case, where clearly Luther was speaking about theology, was writing on theology, and he was doing so pseudonymously.
00:40:28.099 → 00:40:41.479
Now, pastors live sheltered lives, particularly pastors who go straight from seminary to…
00:40:42.199 → 00:40:44.319
or go straight from college to seminary to the parish.
00:40:44.739 → 00:41:09.939
They never live a single day in the real life, so they don’t know what it’s like to have an HR department, to have diversity, equity and inclusion training, to have annual multi-hour brainwashing sessions where you are forced to confess that sodomy and transgenderism and all of these other demonic evils are normative and tolerable and necessary parts of life.
00:41:10.679 → 00:41:16.719
So this is where we’re talking about, drawing the line between theology and politics.
00:41:17.439 → 00:41:31.099
You know, if someone is in the workplace and they’re told that they have to call a co-worker who is a man by his assumed name as a woman and his new identity, is that political or is that theological?
00:41:31.659 → 00:41:34.619
Is that a lie he’s allowed to tell because it’s in the workplace?
00:41:34.639 → 00:41:38.819
And, you know, really it’s not about John 3.16, so what if he calls John Jeanette?
00:41:39.959 → 00:41:41.019
That’s theological.
00:41:41.099 → 00:41:42.719
That is a confession of the faith.
00:41:43.039 → 00:41:47.819
Because to call a man a woman is to deny the creator of that person.
00:41:48.279 → 00:41:49.999
That’s a first article denial.
00:41:50.459 → 00:41:58.839
When I was taught as a child, I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things, visible and invisible.
00:41:59.299 → 00:42:02.799
That applies to me as a man, and to someone else as a woman.
00:42:03.179 → 00:42:10.719
And so for someone to come along and say, you need to call this man a woman, that’s the most profound theological statement that I can make in this day.
00:42:11.139 → 00:42:13.719
Because your employer is not attacking justification.
00:42:14.039 → 00:42:18.939
He’s not asking you to say, so do you think, let’s see how you can save yourself before God?
00:42:19.939 → 00:42:21.219
And it’s not even a pinch of incense.
00:42:21.239 → 00:42:25.719
He said, do you need to deny your creator by saying that this person was made in a different image?
00:42:28.199 → 00:42:31.639
Well, it’s Satan has learned over the intervening centuries.
00:42:32.659 → 00:42:40.159
We had the knockdown drag out fight that actually culminated in more than one war over justification.
00:42:41.679 → 00:42:49.539
Satan is still attacking that with regard to the many false churches that exist, but he’s not attacking us with that.
00:42:50.559 → 00:42:54.679
Because you are not going to get Lutherans who deny Article 4.
00:42:54.899 → 00:42:56.299
That’s just not going to happen.
00:42:57.859 → 00:43:03.139
But you don’t need to do that if you can get them to go ahead and deny the first article of the creed.
00:43:04.059 → 00:43:06.959
Because if you don’t have the father, well, you don’t have the son.
00:43:07.099 → 00:43:10.779
The same as if you don’t have the son, you don’t have the father, because God is one.
00:43:11.999 → 00:43:12.919
Three and one, of course.
00:43:12.979 → 00:43:17.759
But that is how Satan is attacking the church today.
00:43:17.779 → 00:43:18.919
It’s how he’s attacking Christians.
00:43:18.939 → 00:43:26.919
He is attacking us with ontology, a word that people are going to hear a lot from this podcast, but probably not very much from anywhere else.
00:43:27.839 → 00:43:32.879
The nature of things matters, because God is the author of that nature.
00:43:32.879 → 00:43:35.379
Yes, our nature is fallen because of sin.
00:43:35.399 → 00:43:36.299
It is corrupted.
00:43:36.639 → 00:43:41.219
But God is still the author of what that nature was intended to be.
00:43:41.819 → 00:43:49.839
And insofar as our nature reflects what God intended it to be, it is directly God’s good creature, God’s good creation.
00:43:50.979 → 00:43:55.039
And when we deny that, it is, as you said, a denial of God.
00:43:55.839 → 00:43:59.699
You cannot say that black is white and white is black.
00:44:00.619 → 00:44:03.539
Woe to those who call good evil and evil good.
00:44:03.699 → 00:44:05.839
God is very clear about this in scripture.
00:44:06.159 → 00:44:14.759
You do not get to deny the reality of things and continue to claim that you are in fact still a Christian, because you’ve denied your creator.
00:44:16.179 → 00:44:33.339
And all of these fights that are called social justice or critical theory, these things are coming from the so-called left-hand kingdom, which is a dichotomy that we need to dissect and put in its proper place in a future episode.
00:44:34.019 → 00:44:39.019
But when pastors like Larry say, well, if you’re talking about the faith, you got to use your name.
00:44:39.579 → 00:44:46.319
Well, it’s talking about the faith to talk about sodomites and the fact that sodomites reproduce by raping children.
00:44:47.499 → 00:44:56.899
One of the other pastors who has recently been posting some better things is Hans Feeney, the Lutheran satire guy.
00:44:56.999 → 00:45:00.819
His last name is Feeney, but his grandfather was a price.
00:45:01.039 → 00:45:06.059
He’s a member of the price dynasty, which I say lovingly, not with any criticism.
00:45:09.579 → 00:45:11.799
He’s probably among the weakest of the prices.
00:45:11.819 → 00:45:14.759
The current crop, the guys like Mark and Christian, are outstanding.
00:45:15.519 → 00:45:16.919
Rolf is one of the older ones.
00:45:17.199 → 00:45:21.079
He’s a great man who will boldly speak the truth about these things.
00:45:21.559 → 00:45:31.319
And so recently, there was a comment from Hans on Twitter specifically talking about the fact that sodomites reproduce by raping children, which is a fact.
00:45:31.959 → 00:45:36.179
I’ve had eight, I’ve had nine homosexual friends over the course of my life.
00:45:37.359 → 00:45:42.859
Every single one of them had stories about their first sexual encounter with an adult when they were between 12 and 14.
00:45:43.639 → 00:45:50.799
And they became sodomites themselves because that was the easiest way to cope with having been raped as a child.
00:45:51.679 → 00:45:52.899
They were groomed first.
00:45:52.939 → 00:46:01.739
Like it wasn’t overtly forcible rape, but no one sane would agree that a 12-year-old can consent to having sex.
00:46:02.199 → 00:46:03.719
And yet that was the case in each of these.
00:46:04.559 → 00:46:09.539
And so now that’s anic data, but it’s also 100% anic data.
00:46:09.979 → 00:46:15.959
And that is borne out by the surveys and by the discussions and by just talking to these people.
00:46:16.719 → 00:46:26.879
They will all be open if they talk long enough about the fact that their first encounters with men of the same sex were as children.
00:46:27.939 → 00:46:29.479
It’s literally how they reproduce.
00:46:29.839 → 00:46:35.719
Nobody wants to talk about that in the church because we want to talk about LGBTQIA identity.
00:46:36.079 → 00:46:38.819
That is such a perverse and demonic acronym.
00:46:38.999 → 00:46:42.519
It should never be in the mouth of any Christian, and God forgive me for having said it.
00:46:42.939 → 00:46:56.279
But I want to point out the fact that when you use those, the rainbow flag, multicolored aspect of, well, sexuality is just this huge, it’s a variety of things.
00:46:56.299 → 00:46:57.199
It can be anything.
00:46:58.299 → 00:46:59.879
It cuts to the heart of theology.
00:47:00.319 → 00:47:06.319
It cuts to the heart of God made man and woman and gave them to each other to be fruitful and multiply.
00:47:06.659 → 00:47:14.779
And all of these perversions, which are not only damnable, but God repeatedly commands the physical destruction of those who commit those things.
00:47:16.379 → 00:47:20.359
Homosexual men will actually go even farther than just discussing those things.
00:47:21.699 → 00:47:30.399
Because as a psychological defense mechanism that’s part of it, they will actually go so far as to brag about how young they were when they were molested, when they were raped.
00:47:31.679 → 00:47:37.019
And a lot of pastors, I don’t think, have ever been around that subset of the population.
00:47:37.039 → 00:47:38.659
They don’t understand these things.
00:47:39.299 → 00:48:18.959
And another thing to go back to, when you said that pastors are at least those who are first career, second career not going to be as insulated, but depending on the age, still fairly insulated from what’s happening today, they don’t realize that what you just said, and by my sitting here, what I have said, and I agree with everything you said to be explicit about it, but simply by my sitting here, if I had just remained silent, I would be fired if I were working at a large corporation or even a medium size one, because someone would report me to HR and HR would fire me, just because you said it and I was sitting here in silence.
00:48:20.399 → 00:48:21.979
Because I said what is in Scripture.
00:48:23.179 → 00:48:26.639
And that’s where the fundamental disconnect is, where these pastors don’t understand.
00:48:27.059 → 00:48:28.339
All this stuff is theology.
00:48:28.559 → 00:48:30.919
Christian nationalism is theology.
00:48:31.099 → 00:48:32.259
It’s not politics.
00:48:33.099 → 00:48:37.279
Just as whether or not a woman can be writing a theological book is theology.
00:48:37.299 → 00:48:38.239
It’s not politics.
00:48:38.659 → 00:48:42.319
Whether a man can have sex with a man is not politics.
00:48:42.339 → 00:48:43.279
It’s theology.
00:48:43.759 → 00:49:00.179
We have these artificial lines that we’ve begun to permit to be drawn by Satan in our world, and they’re deliberately hamming us into a corner where there’s effectively nothing left of the Christian life except for talking about John 3.16, and otherwise just shut up and mind your own business.
00:49:00.379 → 00:49:02.559
And that’s effectively what these pastors are doing.
00:49:03.279 → 00:49:07.299
You had mentioned second career, and you’re absolutely right that the timing is vital.
00:49:07.799 → 00:49:14.859
To his credit, Larry Beane as a second career guy, he originally had a, I want to say a real job, but he had a professional job.
00:49:15.439 → 00:49:22.459
So he has experienced the real world to some extent, but that was 15 years ago, going on 20 years ago before he went to seminary.
00:49:24.039 → 00:49:30.999
I can tell you from the group of guys that we have now, we have a good mix of Zoomers, millennials and Xers in the group.
00:49:32.239 → 00:49:45.999
I’ve said this repeatedly, the 20-year-old guys in our group, the things that happened to them in college today are so much worse than that the 25-year-olds remember that they have a hard time believing it.
00:49:46.759 → 00:49:51.099
Now imagine someone who’s got another 20 years on that, you have no frame of reference.
00:49:51.679 → 00:50:00.159
So a pastor who’s been out of the workplace for 15 years literally has no idea what the workplace is like today when it comes to these things.
00:50:00.479 → 00:50:05.619
He knows what it’s like to have a boss, he knows what it’s like to have coworkers and to navigate office politics and that stuff.
00:50:06.159 → 00:50:15.699
But the specific theological warfare that’s being waged by Satan against the consciences of Christians in the workplace everywhere, pastors have no idea.
00:50:16.099 → 00:50:18.359
And pastors are insulated from this stuff.
00:50:18.999 → 00:50:19.959
And I mentioned Hans.
00:50:20.559 → 00:50:26.099
He alluded to the statistics about homosexuals reproducing by raping children.
00:50:26.519 → 00:50:30.379
When someone mentioned, when someone challenged him in the comments, he then backpedaled.
00:50:30.559 → 00:50:33.879
And so I’m just speculating, you know, why aren’t we seeing in those numbers?
00:50:36.399 → 00:50:51.419
I’m not going to make this claim with certainty because I wasn’t there, but it is my firm belief based on supposition that Hans got that and many of his other good recent takes on Twitter in the last two months or so from price chat.
00:50:51.779 → 00:51:00.179
I think that Mark and Christian have been an influence on the things that he’s said online recently, because they’re things he’s never said before, and they’re things that you and I say all the time.
00:51:00.479 → 00:51:02.519
They’re things that are quote unquote based.
00:51:03.059 → 00:51:06.299
They’re things that would get you fired in the workplace for saying them.
00:51:06.739 → 00:51:10.819
He’s recently been saying them, which is good, because when we say them, we get banned from Twitter.
00:51:11.179 → 00:51:14.719
He has immunity, and we get banned from Twitter by Christians for saying them.
00:51:15.279 → 00:51:19.199
But I’m glad that someone is at least saying them, and they’re being heard, because they’re vitally important.
00:51:20.899 → 00:51:25.599
You want to talk a little bit about the Stephen Wolf book and the Thomas A Court affair?
00:51:27.139 → 00:51:28.439
Sure, a little bit.
00:51:29.339 → 00:52:03.319
Just before that, I want to mention that, I think it was two or maybe three years ago at this point, I got into the exact same issue, the fact that homosexual sodomites were reproduced by raping children, with Tapani Simayoki, a Finnish pastor, Lutheran pastor, and I made a statement along the same lines of what we’ve been saying, and he pushed back against it, because his initial reaction, his innate sense of what he needs to do, is he wants to come to the defense of impenitent sinners against a Christian.
00:52:05.039 → 00:52:10.999
And I, of course, doubled down, but that is an ongoing battle that we have been having all over the place.
00:52:11.699 → 00:52:18.279
And pastors are often either not fighting on the correct side, or simply just not fighting at all.
00:52:19.559 → 00:52:44.139
But to move on to what’s happened with a chord, and you’ll have to fill in some of the details, I think you may have followed this more closely than I have, but essentially what happened is a co-host of Ars Politica made some comments, true comments by and large, some of them may have been maybe a little uncharitable, harshly worded, but true statements on a pseudonymous account.
00:52:44.899 → 00:52:48.959
It came out that it was his account.
00:52:48.979 → 00:52:51.179
He’s now admitted that in a post.
00:52:52.219 → 00:53:02.799
And essentially Twitter and other social media set up a lynch mob to destroy his life, to get him fired, to have him lose his income.
00:53:02.819 → 00:53:05.799
This is a man who has wife and one child or…
00:53:05.819 → 00:53:08.559
I think he has a couple based on that.
00:53:08.579 → 00:53:09.599
Yeah, he may have a couple, yeah.
00:53:10.579 → 00:53:25.699
But their whole goal was just to utterly destroy this man for saying things that 50 years ago, 60, 70, however long, not very long ago, you could have said on TV, and no one would have batted an eye.
00:53:25.919 → 00:53:28.219
That would have just been a normal thing to hear.
00:53:28.639 → 00:53:46.679
And a lynch mob of insane people, evil, wicked people, decided to destroy him, many of whom prefaced their comments with, as a Christian, and then went on to say the most vile things about someone who actually is a Christian in order to destroy him.
00:53:48.079 → 00:53:48.299
Yep.
00:53:49.499 → 00:54:03.879
And the reason that the Ars Politica podcast connection is relevant is that his co-host, Thomas’ co-host of Ars Politica, is Stephen Wolf, who wrote the recent book on Christian nationalism, which is a subject we had just a couple weeks ago.
00:54:04.499 → 00:54:07.579
So they’re trying…
00:54:08.739 → 00:54:16.359
This whole thing has been a proxy attack on Christian nationalism by evil people.
00:54:16.959 → 00:54:32.799
They see Christian nationalism as a subject, as so dangerous to the satanic work that the devil and all of his demons are successfully advancing in the world, that they used a proxy attack of the guy, his co-host.
00:54:33.179 → 00:54:38.319
Like, Thomas Acord didn’t, as far as I know, contribute much of anything to the book.
00:54:38.639 → 00:54:41.799
He just happened to be a friend of Stephen Wolf, the author.
00:54:42.179 → 00:54:49.019
It was so important to Satan to destroy anyone’s ability to even think about Christian nationalism.
00:54:49.599 → 00:54:53.959
That they destroyed a man, they cost him his livelihood right in the holiday season.
00:54:54.299 → 00:55:16.699
And then when someone set up a give-send-go, which is like GoFundMe except for Christians, set up a give-send-go charity drive for him, Christians then waged a campaign against give-send-go to deny him receiving that money that was charity from other Christians who wanted to help his family because he just lost his job.
00:55:17.639 → 00:55:19.699
Which is to say they actually want him to starve.
00:55:20.259 → 00:55:21.279
Literally starve.
00:55:22.079 → 00:55:22.759
That’s murder.
00:55:22.999 → 00:55:24.219
That is attempted murder.
00:55:24.239 → 00:55:28.699
It is murder in the heart, which is then manifesting itself as murder of the person.
00:55:29.079 → 00:55:47.239
And it’s being done because the things that he says, you said some of the things like, I wouldn’t have phrased it that way, but the points that he was trying to get to on his anonymous account are mostly things we’ve already said just in the few short podcasts we’ve had about Christian nationalism, about race, about the fact that a nation is a race.
00:55:47.899 → 00:56:00.339
If you talk about nationalism at all, you are necessarily talking about racism, about kinism, about belief that blood and soil go together and that that is scriptural.
00:56:00.639 → 00:56:02.239
So that’s what’s under attack here.
00:56:02.579 → 00:56:13.539
It’s ironic that the people who are so hysterical against nationalism, they’re implicitly advocating empire because that’s what the United States is today.
00:56:13.559 → 00:56:14.359
It’s an empire.
00:56:14.679 → 00:56:26.259
It is a multi-ethnic empire, not in the sense that we have colonies in other places, but it is an empire of nations under one political umbrella called the United States.
00:56:27.479 → 00:56:35.639
If we were a nation, there would be one racial group under its own dominion.
00:56:36.279 → 00:56:39.939
We also do kind of have colonies, but that’s a discussion for another time.
00:56:40.839 → 00:56:41.519
Yeah, it is.
00:56:42.279 → 00:56:55.739
But again, if you go back and listen to what we said in the Christian nationalism episode, it was going further than they ever go on Mars Politico, and I think further than Thomas was comfortable going in his public life.
00:56:56.399 → 00:57:10.599
But the things that he believed were grounded in Scripture because they were true, and he was a headmaster of a Christian school, and so it’s understandable that he would have been afraid to tell the truth under his real name, not because he’s…
00:57:10.879 → 00:57:14.019
Well, it’s tragic the way he handled the situation.
00:57:14.039 → 00:57:32.619
He did everything wrong because what he did after Rod Dreher and others doxxed him and attributed his pseudonymous comments to his public persona, rather than saying, yes, I said those things, I stand by them.
00:57:32.979 → 00:57:38.239
Maybe I should have said something a little bit differently, but the principle of what I said is absolutely true.
00:57:38.939 → 00:57:40.719
He threw himself under the bus.
00:57:40.919 → 00:57:43.339
He said, oh, what I said was evil.
00:57:43.679 → 00:58:00.519
I was in a dark place at that time, which is a horrible thing to say, because that seeds the entire frame to the left, where it goes back to this whole loser anonymous troll thing, to say that, oh, someone can only believe what he said about race.
00:58:01.179 → 00:58:10.619
If you’re a loser, if you’re in a dark place, if you maybe need to put under a psychiatric hold, those are the only people who are going to possibly believe these things.
00:58:11.019 → 00:58:12.719
That throws all of us under the bus.
00:58:12.839 → 00:58:19.299
So I wish he just kept his mouth shut, because he did more harm in the aftermath than by anything he ever actually said.
00:58:20.099 → 00:58:21.439
But these are the consequences.
00:58:22.479 → 00:58:32.119
We will need an entire episode, really, on tactics and frame and related topics, since, quite frankly, Christians are terrible at it, and it’s a problem.
00:58:32.199 → 00:58:34.079
Actively bad, yeah.
00:58:34.699 → 00:58:46.419
The Christian impulse to apologize, to confess, is weaponized by Satan in these cases, where Satan gets us confessing to things that aren’t sins against God.
00:58:46.979 → 00:58:49.639
And as soon as you do that, you have lost God.
00:58:49.659 → 00:58:51.159
You have made a false confession.
00:58:51.459 → 00:58:53.219
You are offering sacrifices.
00:58:53.239 → 00:58:55.159
Which is a sin.
00:58:55.399 → 00:59:04.019
It is a first commandment violation to offer sacrifices to other gods, which is exactly what all these confessions of false sins are.
00:59:06.119 → 00:59:15.899
But again, this goes back to the central point of this episode, that Thomas Acord was a public figure on Ars Politica, and he was already hated for some of the things he said.
00:59:16.699 → 00:59:29.499
But when his co-host published a book about Christian nationalism, the things that Thomas had also said about Christian nationalism on Twitter under a pseudonym suddenly became a way to destroy it.
00:59:30.079 → 00:59:32.879
And the things that they want to destroy are the things that are true.
00:59:33.579 → 00:59:43.639
And this gets back to what we were talking about earlier with Hans making his comments and Larry calling us cowards, me in particular a coward, because Larry doesn’t know my name.
00:59:43.719 → 00:59:46.899
So he can’t call my pastor and say mean things about me.
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He has to just call me a coward online, which is fine.
00:59:49.859 → 00:59:50.399
That’s his right.
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It’s sin, but we all have the right, quote unquote, to sin.
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The reason I said earlier that these pastors, I think, are hiding behind their collars is that there’s an implicit presumption in the claims from men like Larry and Hans when they say, well, if you just used your name, you would proclaim the truth boldly.
01:00:12.459 → 01:00:24.899
The implicit claim that they are making is that with their collars on, with their real names, they’re making the boldest proclamation, and that no one could possibly make a bolder proclamation than they are.
01:00:25.559 → 01:00:40.039
And that’s what’s really playing out here, because someone who’s pseudonymous says something that is, quote unquote, further to the right than these men, rather than, as in the case of the Mrs.
01:00:40.059 → 01:00:45.779
Lackey episode, rather than saying, well, yeah, it is actually a question whether girls should be teaching theology.
01:00:46.319 → 01:00:46.939
What do they do?
01:00:47.199 → 01:00:53.379
They punch right, because suddenly there is a man who has emerged who is trying to be more godly than them.
01:00:53.739 → 01:00:59.739
And there’s nothing that pisses off a Christian faster than someone who seems to be less with sin than them.
01:01:00.339 → 01:01:08.639
Now, on one hand, there is the obvious scriptural warrant against claiming to be without sin, which none of us would do.
01:01:09.239 → 01:01:17.219
I could start an entire podcast separately, spin off from this, about what a terrible person I have been in my life and all the sins I continue to struggle with.
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The fact that I’m here talking should never, in anyone’s mind, imply that I think I’m free from any degree of sin.
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I know I’m terrible.
01:01:25.999 → 01:01:30.859
I’m less terrible than I was a few years ago because I’ve begun to confront these things more directly.
01:01:31.239 → 01:01:35.319
And I’ve begun to confront these things more directly by looking to Scripture.
01:01:35.879 → 01:01:40.459
And when I look to Scripture, I find things like women to remain silent in the churches.
01:01:40.799 → 01:01:46.079
I find things like women to have their heads covered in church, which is another scandal that’s brewing in the Lutheran Church.
01:01:47.219 → 01:01:55.919
When men who are not pastors find these things, as you said, they were the norm before Vatican II.
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They were the norm in all of Christianity, not just Lutheranism.
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Women covered their heads in the 50s.
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Women didn’t vote.
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What a preposterous idea of voting in church.
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It’s despicable.
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Yet these things that are normative today, that are defended vehemently, they’re anachronistic.
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They have no place in a church where these things have never had any scriptural justification.
01:02:23.899 → 01:02:26.559
So men read the Bible.
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They say, hey, pastor, this isn’t what we’re doing.
01:02:30.039 → 01:02:30.739
What’s the deal?
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Rather than the pastors having their consciences convicted by the Holy Spirit, they punch right, they attack right, hard.
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They won’t go after the alka pastors that they’re buddy buddy with on Twitter for having been ordained by women.
01:02:47.699 → 01:02:53.339
Dressed up in drag as tranny pastors like Ryan Cordell, who’s good friends with lots of Buffalo Twitter.
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They won’t go after them, even though they’re in open or unrepentant sin, and they are in a synod that is going to happen that is going to hell collectively unless they become Christian again.
01:03:03.639 → 01:03:04.999
No, they punch right.
01:03:05.279 → 01:03:09.219
They go after the guy who says, hey, maybe we should be doing better than we are doing.
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Because for you to say that a Christian could possibly sin is the worst thing you can ever do.
01:03:15.139 → 01:03:19.919
To say that someone could possibly sin, these men take as evil when it’s not.
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It is Christian love.
01:03:21.599 → 01:03:22.739
Is there a bad way to do it?
01:03:22.759 → 01:03:23.579
Yeah, absolutely.
01:03:23.599 → 01:03:26.519
There are terrible ways to say, man, I think you’re sinning.
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We try to avoid those, and sometimes it’s a struggle to avoid them.
01:03:31.599 → 01:03:39.079
But that gives no one the excuse not to make the clear confession of the faith that is commanded of every Christian.
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And if you can’t confess boldly, shut your mouth.
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I don’t fault someone who doesn’t want to lose his job and his mortgage from saying nothing.
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But if you want to wade into these waters, you better say what God says.
01:03:53.179 → 01:03:56.199
You better not attack men because they’re doing a better job than you.
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And that’s what we’re facing today.
01:03:58.039 → 01:04:10.119
And that’s what the pseudonymity fight is about, is that the men who are called anonymous, the pseudonymous men who are speaking with the clarity of Scripture that the pastors will not, they’re putting them to shame.
01:04:10.399 → 01:04:15.759
And I think these pastors know that they are shamed by the men who are speaking more clearly than they are.
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How many of these pastors who claim to be boldly confessing everything in Scripture have women voting in their congregations?
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I would wager that’s probably the majority, if not all of them.
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I don’t know.
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You can find it on some of their websites.
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But that’s an evil thing.
01:04:32.599 → 01:04:38.199
That’s an evil anachronistic thing that has no place in the church, and yet it is normed today.
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And so these guys who are like, well, you anons, you should boldly confess like I am.
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And then they keep their mouth shut when this stuff is going on.
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Give me a break.
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That’s not a bold confession.
01:04:48.599 → 01:04:49.819
That’s hiding behind your collar.
01:04:51.419 → 01:05:05.599
Well, and how many are communing women who support abortion or men who support abortion or open communists or any of a number of extremely high profile, obvious, explicit sins?
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How many pastors even address the issue of abortion?
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At most, you may get a tangential throwaway line in a sermon that implies that maybe abortion isn’t such a good idea.
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But how often are pastors actually addressing the things that they know will get them in hot water?
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Well, maybe there’s something in scripture about hot or cold instead of lukewarm, and maybe these pastors should be concerned about what they are doing and are not doing.
01:05:37.499 → 01:05:39.319
But like you said, they always punch right.
01:05:39.339 → 01:05:50.799
It’s always the hand of fellowship to the left and nothing but violence toward the right, because they want to look good to themselves and to the world.
01:05:50.819 → 01:06:00.039
They want to be friendly with the world, and they don’t want anyone who by contrast makes them look like, well, maybe you aren’t actually that Christian.
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Maybe you aren’t actually obeying what God says, because it looks like this person over here is actually saying the same things we find in this book, and you are watering them down.
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I have to agree with the way you made the abortion point, but I think that there’s a way to make it correct.
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My anecdotal experience in the LCMS has been that every congregation I’ve ever been a part of has been rabidly pro-life.
01:06:28.039 → 01:06:36.119
They’ve been very active in protesting abortion, in funding for care centers to help those who are considering abortions.
01:06:36.599 → 01:06:43.939
But where I would absolutely agree with you, I think virtually every pastor falls down, is to call the woman who seeks an abortion a murderer.
01:06:44.619 → 01:06:45.459
Yes, exactly.
01:06:45.479 → 01:06:47.999
Because the abortion is always about the doctor.
01:06:48.219 → 01:06:50.319
It’s always about saving the life of a baby.
01:06:52.699 → 01:06:52.979
Yeah.
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But it’s never ever about a mother hiring a hitman to murder her child, and whether or not there are any women in his congregation who have hired hitmen, which is all an abortion, quote unquote, doctor is, to murder her child.
01:07:06.979 → 01:07:08.439
Well, because women don’t sin, right?
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Yeah.
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It’s not chivalrous to say that they could possibly do anything yet.
01:07:15.059 → 01:07:15.699
And so, like, it’s…
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The point to make is that…
01:07:20.659 → 01:07:25.659
And again, bold confession also has to be done with sanity.
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Everything that I say on this podcast is the sort of thing that I say in person to people when the situation arises.
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Sometimes I keep my mouth shut because I’m not a spurg.
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I’m not insane.
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I know based on the context and the people I’m dealing with whether or not I can have a fruitful conversation.
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So if someone at my congregation is openly pro-feminist, am I going to go directly after the things that fly in the face of that?
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No.
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Not because it’s not true, not because I’m ashamed of my confession, but because I know that the only way to change a feminist’s heart is to go around to find some way to address those errors and, frankly, the way is to get back to headship, which, yes, it necessarily implicates feminism, but it’s not a direct attack.
01:08:17.719 → 01:08:22.879
It becomes an attack when they realize what’s going on, but by then you’re having a scriptural conversation.
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You’re not having a personal one of accusation.
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So that’s the difference between personal conversations and ones that happen online.
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As we talked about in the teaching episode number one, there are one-to-one relationships, and there are one-to-many relationships where you discuss these things.
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Posting on Twitter or on a podcast or elsewhere is inherently one-to-many, so I speak with my voice and say most everything that I think as I can convey it to people who will be receptive.
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Do I say absolutely everything I think on this podcast?
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No, because it wouldn’t be fruitful.
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In private conversation, I’ll have those conversations with individuals, but again, it’s not a question of shame or that I think that I’m hiding my sin from God.
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I don’t think those things are sinful, but there are things that would not be productive to say on a podcast.
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There are things that I believe that would get this podcast deleted from all the podcast listings.
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So I will skirt those lines not out of shame or out of a fear of proclamation, but understanding if I get shut down, no one hears anything.
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So there’s a time and a place to address things, and I don’t fault people for choosing their battles.
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But like I said, choosing your battles means keeping your mouth shut, which I will do.
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I’ll keep my mouth shut when the situation calls for it.
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Choosing your battles is never about punching, quote unquote, right.
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I think that we were discussing this a few days ago.
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I think the left-right spectrum, we all agree, is just about worthless.
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But at the same time, you kind of know what somebody means.
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When someone’s to the left, there’s an implication there that you can clearly understand what’s going on.
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I think that at the far left, you have absolute satanic debauchery.
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You have complete departure from everything that God wants.
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And the closer you get to the right, ultimately, the closer you get to God’s will, which is not to say that what is on the quote unquote far right is necessarily godly, because there are a lot of pagans in those places who are instinctively trying to seek out godly things without knowing God.
01:10:33.059 → 01:10:34.219
And that’s never going to work.
01:10:34.539 → 01:10:41.059
They’re always going to make a mess, which is why I initially began talking about my Christian faith on Twitter about five years ago.
01:10:41.439 → 01:10:47.259
I rebranded from one account to another and started talking about my faith because I saw this very issue.
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I saw that the confusion of politics and theology was actively destructive and was doing harm in the world.
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And I saw these guys on the right who didn’t have God, but they had godly instincts about family, about vocation, about justice that are true and correct and fit perfectly within a Christian worldview.
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And I look and see pastors attacking them for saying those things.
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And all I can do is grasp my head and think, what are these men doing?
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Trying to drive these men away from the church who are seeking out God in the best way that anyone can.
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But the pastors attacked them because they’re talking about things that are more godly than anything the pastor is willing to uphold within his congregation.
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And that’s what this fight is about.
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When someone is pseudonymous, when they don’t face the immediate destruction of their personal life, of their family, of their livelihood, of their physical safety, yes, you can say things that can’t be said by someone who has a gun pointed at his head.
01:11:53.639 → 01:11:54.279
No kidding.
01:11:55.179 → 01:12:04.159
And so for pastors to call us cowards because we don’t expose our names and faces is it is itself cowardly.
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And let them go attack the left.
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Let them go attack the men who who learn at the feet of sodomites rather than rebuking them.
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And then we will have a conversation about who is closer to what God wants.
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I actually don’t think I’ve seen a single pastor on Twitter incidentally attack the leftists who all use pseudonyms.
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It’s always the right.
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And I think we would do well to look at scripture as always.
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I don’t think that Christ called us to be as smart as sheep.
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He used a different term there for a good reason.
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Yeah, modern Christianity is all about the innocent as doves and completely leaves out the wisest serpents part.
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And that’s a tough saying, like many of Jesus’ sayings, because the serpent was the craftiest of all animals, and Satan possessed one and caused this whole mess.
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But we are not to be stupid.
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We are not to be fools.
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Being foolish is damnable.
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It is a sin.
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To be a fool will send you to hell.
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Scripture is clear about that.
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And I think that the modern conception of Christianity, even within Lutheranism, is to embrace foolishness.
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Now, not directly, but it’s always done for the sake of the gospel.
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Well, we need to be foolish so that these people can have more Jesus.
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Why are you trying to give Jesus to people who are unrepentant in their sin?
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The law gospel dichotomy is a valuable distinction, but it has to correctly admit that you don’t give the gospel to people who deny the law.
01:14:00.299 → 01:14:17.519
You may hold it out as a promise to those who will follow the law, who understand the law, but to say to someone who’s unrepentant in their sin, let me tell you about Jesus and how you’re all forgiven, is incoherent, because they’re unrepentant.
01:14:17.539 → 01:14:18.799
They’re like, but I’m free from sin.
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You have to start with convicting the conscience before you can get to the absolution.
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And these pastors who flee from the pseudonymous are afraid of having their consciousness convicted.
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That’s ultimately what they’re fleeing from.
01:14:34.919 → 01:14:42.079
They don’t want to hear men speaking about Scripture in a way that might possibly convict their own words and actions.
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And that’s not to say that we’re sitting in judgment or that we are greater Christians by any measure.
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A pastor devotes his entire life to one of sacrifice on behalf of his sheep as a shepherd.
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I have tremendous respect for that.
01:14:57.559 → 01:15:09.939
So as hard as you’ll ever hear me be on pastors, it is precisely because of the importance of the pastoral office that we are so adamant that pastors must be faithful and must not make these errors.
01:15:10.759 → 01:15:24.139
One of my friends pointed out this past week, the great irony that all these pastors whose salaries are paid by men who are anonymous online are telling them to become non-anonymous and get fired and lose their jobs.
01:15:24.539 → 01:15:27.619
One of these pastors thinks it’s going to happen to their salaries when anybody gets fired.
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When the most faithful men in your congregations who understand the ontological nature of these fights, when they get fired by the sodomite in their HR department for saying that sodomy is damnable, who’s going to pay your bills?
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How are you going to afford Christmas for your kids when everyone in your parish can’t afford to donate anything?
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That’s a real question.
01:15:48.839 → 01:15:56.019
And that’s what this fight comes down to, is to say that the bold Christian confession has to be mindless is…
01:15:58.159 → 01:15:59.559
It’s exactly what Satan wants.
01:16:00.239 → 01:16:06.799
Satan wants men to be as innocent as doves and as dumb as sheep.
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There’s no wisdom permitted in the world that Satan is seeking.
01:16:10.839 → 01:16:22.379
Because as long as men one by one get sent into the meat grinder of Saul Alinsky’s personal destruction, no one will ever be able to join voices.
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And the fight over Christian nationalism and all these other things is fundamentally about keeping each of us atomized to make sure that there’s no unity of voice, that there’s no consistency, that we all one by one, you say your weird little thing, and then you get doxxed, and then you have to admit how terrible you were and what a dark place you were in your life when you said it.
01:16:43.039 → 01:16:45.599
And then everyone says, Oh, shucks, that’s too bad.
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And you get your gifts and go canceled, and then you’re destroyed for life.
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One by one, they want us destroyed.
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They want us isolated and kept apart.
01:16:53.579 → 01:17:08.359
And the whole point of Christian nationalism, the whole point of the push towards overt Christian unity in subjection to God, is to say, hey, if all of us sheep are together in a herd, the wolves can’t pick us off.
01:17:08.799 → 01:17:11.159
We get picked off when we’re separated from the herd.
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That’s why the lost sheep was such a big deal, because that one sheep of the 99 was out alone.
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And the 99 were safe.
01:17:20.039 → 01:17:20.859
They were together.
01:17:21.199 → 01:17:26.679
They were still dumb as sheep, but they had strength in numbers because there was unity of just the mass of them.
01:17:27.419 → 01:17:32.119
It was the one sheep who was in danger because he was off alone fending for himself.
01:17:32.539 → 01:17:34.279
And that’s what Satan’s trying to do to everyone.
01:17:34.419 → 01:17:39.119
Pick us off, destroy us, send examples so that no one else will ever stray.
01:17:39.519 → 01:17:46.399
Only in this case, the straying is not from Christianity, but it’s straying from our churches into Christianity.
01:17:46.739 → 01:17:48.239
And that’s the fight that this is about.
01:17:52.019 → 01:18:06.759
So as we wrap this episode up, I want to make a shocking reveal to won’t really be a shock to anyone who’s actually paid close attention to previous episodes, but this is also an episode about Headship as pretty much all of them have been.
01:18:07.819 → 01:18:15.119
The way that Headship interacts with pseudonymity versus knowing a man’s name points us back to Scripture.
01:18:15.679 → 01:18:22.759
When we look at the sixth day of creation in Genesis 2 where Adam was created, let me just read this briefly.
01:18:23.619 → 01:18:27.179
Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone.
01:18:27.559 → 01:18:29.419
I will make him a helper fit for him.
01:18:29.819 → 01:18:37.599
Now out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.
01:18:38.099 → 01:18:41.719
And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
01:18:42.479 → 01:18:46.919
The man gave names to the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.
01:18:47.279 → 01:18:49.819
But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him.
01:18:50.379 → 01:18:57.779
So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
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And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
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Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
01:19:08.799 → 01:19:12.439
She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.
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Now note that in both cases there, for both all the animals and then for the woman who was created, Adam as the designative head of creation under God had authority over the creatures and over Eve by virtue.
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And as a part of his headship, that included naming them.
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Now, that’s very significant, because to have a name is to have some form of authority over it.
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You know, when you’re talking to someone, one of the first things you do is you want to ask their name.
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And that’s sort of the natural inclination online, except that in a place where pseudonymity is completely normative, it kind of shifts gears.
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And so when pastors are saying, I need to know your real name, they’re not simply asking, as Corey, you mentioned earlier, they’re not simply trying to clarify.
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They’re attempting to assert authority over you.
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And we can see this made clear at the other end of the scripture in Revelation 19.
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Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse.
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The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.
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His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself.
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Now, sometimes in the past, Christians have sort of fixated on this secret name of God.
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It’s not particularly the New Testament.
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The implication for us that there is a name of God that is not known to us is one of authority.
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God has not given us that name to call him by, because it is his own, and he has authority because only he knows it.
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And that’s exactly what the you’re a pseudonymous coward thing comes down to, is that pastors don’t know our names, so they don’t have authority over us, and they seek to reveal that which is hidden from them, as an act of dominance.
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So when we go back to what Larry Beane and the other pastor on Godestean said, John Busman, related to pseudonymity, I just want to quote Larry again.
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He accused me and my friends of, quote, approaching theology with the mindset of a cowering keyboard warrior using a pseudonym.
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Now, this is particularly rich coming from Larry to say that you’re a coward if you don’t use your real name, thereby implying that he who uses his real name has the strength and the courage that is denied to those who do not use their real name.
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This is funny because I know for a fact that Larry Beane is well aware of the demon that we mentioned last week.
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Rick McCafferty is a pulpit, is a Lutheran pastor in our own pulpits.
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He is an open and unrepentant universalist, and Larry knows this.
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Larry’s known about this for many months.
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Now, Larry has never said anything about it on his blog.
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He’s never said anything about goddess deans.
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He has multiple blogs.
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I couldn’t find him saying anything anywhere.
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I don’t care if he wrote a letter to Rick McCafferty’s BTP or not, who, by the way, endorses this stuff because he put it on the district website.
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Larry is the coward here because Larry, rather than punching to his own level, going after pastors and pulpits that he shares by virtue of also being in the synod, there’s a man who’s a universalist who’s going to hell and is going to take his sheep with him.
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Larry knows Larry is silent.
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He’s completely silent.
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I am naming Rick McCafferty, and other anons have gone after him as well because no pastors will do it.
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Now, tell me who’s the coward.
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I’m using a pseudonym, but I’m naming a real man.
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Is that cowardly?
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No.
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The point is the church.
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The point is what’s happening in the church.
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The reason that these men like Larry are pissed off that there are pseudonymous men addressing these issues is that the men like Larry are too afraid to do it.
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Because you know what?
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The Missouri Synod amended its bylaws to make it a corporate crime for a pastor to publicly denounce another pastor’s faithlessness.
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That’s evil.
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That is absolutely evil.
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This is an evil synod today that would say that a pastor is enjoined from addressing the error of others publicly.
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That has never happened in the history of theology, and it’s wound up in false interpretations of the Eighth Commandment and Matthew 18 that have been roundly refuted for a long time.
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Goddastien Setsteff published something that I transcribed a number of months ago from Professor Marquart, who’s sainted now, who clearly laid out that these claims that if a pastor or anyone else does something theological and you don’t like it because it’s not scriptural, you must approach them in private to deal with it.
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That’s nonsense.
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It’s not scriptural.
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It’s not from God.
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What is is its camouflage and its cover for evil men to continue doing their evil things.
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So Corey, you and I are addressing these things publicly because they are public matters.
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Rick McCafferty is a public universalist, and Larry Beane is a public coward for not naming him.
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Rather, he punches down, ironically, the very men who are further to the right than him, who are pseudonymous, who defend him when other pastors like Matt Stanek and Jeremy Stanke and some of these other vipers slander him for being a Confederate.
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As though somehow that’s a bad thing.
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When Larry respects his ancestors from the south, he’s obeying the Fourth Commandment.
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There’s nothing evil about that.
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But just like these guys attack Christian nationalism, they attack all these other things, and they attack racism, it is fundamentally all an attack on the church.
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So for Larry to be attacking anons, quote unquote, he’s attacking the only guys in the Senate who actually have his back.
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And I have his back too.
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I really like Larry.
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I respect him a lot by calling him out here.
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I’m not disavowing him or throwing under the bus.
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I’m simply pointing out that this misconstrual of pseudonymity as some vice or some weakness is nonsense.
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And it’s punching to the right, and it’s attacking the very men who were, frankly, the only ones who were actually fighting for what remains of the Senate’s faithfulness.
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You know, Goddastien is a great place, and I like what they do, but they’re fighting for the liturgy.
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That fight is in the rear of your mirror.
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We’re fighting now for the first article, for whether or not we even believe in God anymore.
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That’s what we’re losing control of.
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I love the liturgy, but it’s not protecting us from these universalists any more than the Constitution has protected this country from people subverting it.
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Because when you take something like the liturgy or the Constitution, you can use it as cover for whatever you want to do.
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And addressing that is something that the anons are doing, that the pseudonymous are doing.
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And I welcome the support of other pastors to get out in front of these things.
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Like we said on the very first episode, Corey and I are the stones who are crying out because these men, these pastors who are not anonymous, are failing to do so.
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We would have nothing to say if these pastors who hate pseudonymity would just do their damn jobs.
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And if they think it’s their job to punch down and to attack the pseudonymous men who are addressing theology, then they certainly must confess that it’s their job to address universalists and vipers in their own pulpits.
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So let’s see that happen.
