BHoP#346 Baptism, Confessional Christianity, and Cultivating Character

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Well, this is a brief history of power.

I'm Willie Grills here with Adam Coons today taking some listener questions.

But first, it's time for depressing weather posting.

Well, we are, you know, Austria-Hungary over here,

so it's gray. It's like 38.

And, you know, it's a little bit cold. It's snowed like three inches last night.

So I'm waiting for the emperor either to send us into a war

that will be destructive of the dual monarchy,

or to be glorious, succeeded by the next generation of Habsburgs.

How are you doing?

I was thinking of a different emperor when you began.

But anyway, it is 59 and sunny, which sounds pleasant,

but it's not, I believe, we got some trickster, Kami, around here.

Yeah, you got tarantulas gearing up, so.

Yeah, it's, you know, tarantulas season always coming.

Actually, I didn't believe August to October,

so, you know, we'll just be horrified by weather posting then.

Yeah, it's just, well, so we went up to the 80s.

And then we went back down to the 30s.

And so I look forward to a pneumonia death very soon.

Yeah, definitely, definitely, you know, onset of cholera ahead of your way soon.

Yeah, so that, that is the weather.

We're looking forward to, to spring,

where we can enjoy the weather posting once again.

So be sure to check your Almanac's, not John Bear though,

and see what, see what we got coming for us by Easter.

Yeah.

It's, it's truly for John Bear.

It never has been more over something to contemplate forever.

Yeah.

So, all right.

So we've got, really, there's about three questions we're going to tackle today.

So I'll just go ahead.

Meeting questions.

Meeting questions.

Yeah.

I'm going to do my typical summarize, but read most of it.

So.

So they thank you for the great episodes.

And they listen episode 344 on confessional baptistry.

Fascinated to hear your, your interviewee.

The person is in Oklahoma, but not a Baptist or not a Methodist,

or assembly of a God.

And so he's spoken to many about so on and so forth.

But I, but also no Baptist, I know, would claim confessionalism.

But even more often, those who belong to congregations that should adhere to a confession,

bulked the idea of one.

Frequently, the listener is battered with a talking point of open and closed handed doctrines.

IE, that there are things that make us Christians and things that don't.

We shouldn't fight over those.

They have heard more than once.

You can think you're right.

You should always be open to the possibility that you are wrong on something,

such as close communion.

And what's your assessment of the discussion for me?

Well, as he's saying is logos and for them is pathos.

The sheer act of me submitting to church's teachings is seen as an act of bigotry

because their pastor church says that no one should have beliefs on such things.

If your belief says someone else is wrong,

it won't hold their own belief as strong as I will mind or even use my rhetoric.

It will be rebellion against their pastor, at least such as my understanding.

Since this seems to be the root of most of the church milled and is headed,

and solo-scriptura seems to be the dominating philosophy,

you have any insights into the limits of people who not only don't have a confession,

but don't want to have one either.

So, not to unpack there.

Yeah.

And I mean, the listener is in a state where the Southern Baptist Convention

and or adjacent types of churches, such as non-enominational,

are going to be dominant.

You know, a politician like Dusty Dever doesn't exist in Connecticut.

So, you're dealing with a situation that is a distinction between what is historically

or sociologically weighty versus what is theologically weighty.

And part of the reason that I interviewed Pastor Josh Tinkam was because

he would provide theological weight,

something for people to think about, not just, you know,

whatever, Pastor Rusty White from second Baptist of, you know, Broken Arrow,

who would be absolutely typical, okay?

So, what the listener is interacting with to begin with is the typically non-confessional nature

of American evangelicalism.

And that's worth talking about, but it's certainly not worth

being particularly exercised by or or excited over because it is typical.

Your average Christian in the United States, for reasons that I think some of which are theological

and we can talk about that regarding Baptist or non-enominational Christians or whatever you want to do,

some of them are theological.

Some of them are simply the inclusion within the church of the spirit of our age,

which is theological, only in the sense of being evil.

The spirit of our age, which prizes inclusion and indecisiveness

over almost any other characteristics, either for an individual or for a group of people.

Yeah, and it's interesting because it's always under the mask of humility, you know.

Right.

Nobody can be right, and then it's actually just a haughty attitude anyway.

I'm holier because I'm saying that nobody can be right.

That's right.

Yep, that's right.

Yeah, and so that's a specifically churchy version of this spirit,

which is also found in your local public school teacher and lots of other people.

Right.

So like he mentions, you know, Baptist or non-enominational Methodist or Assemblies of God,

Baptist and non-enominational are basically synonymous outside of certain exceptions there.

Methodists are sort of non-confessional and different reasons, although they do have confessions.

Yeah.

And I would argue that the Assemblies of God are at least one doctrine are very, very confession.

Very confession.

It's kind of a question of degrees here.

Yes.

And so with the Baptist, you have this whole rainbow of Baptist theology.

There is certainly a strain that is very, very, very confessional.

And that's kind of one of the things I wanted to talk about,

but it's how they operate or how they have to operate.

Yeah.

So we take the Southern Baptist Convention, for example,

Contra the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod,

where ostensibly we're all bound to the same confessions.

Officially, I should say, we are bound to the same confessions.

Go on.

And if we say that, and if we say the words, then we all believe the same things.

So anyway, but high-diaggress.

Please do go on.

I'm more comfortable talking about the Baptist.

Right.

Within the Southern Baptist Convention, you have something like the Founder's Movement,

which is going to withhold to London Baptist Confession, that sort of thing.

It has to be a reformist movement within a much bigger tent, or at least an honestly bigger tent.

So the way the Baptists are organized is around a much more bear confession of faith.

So underneath that umbrella, you can have some pretty strongly confessional by Baptist terms.

You know, you're not going to have what you have in the LCMS or similar.

And then you can have everything under the sun, as long as it broadly conforms to the Baptist faith and message,

which is intentionally written to include both Arminian and Calibs camps, for example.

Yeah.

Those satirialogical distinctions that are so blindingly contrasting.

Yeah, contradictory.

You have to include.

And I mean, I think it's always helpful to realize there just is no such thing as non-confessional Christianity.

There's either consciously confessional Christianity and the pastor I interviewed would be consciously confessional.

He's not Southern Baptist, but he is aligned with Founder's Ministries, teachers for Founder's Seminary,

consciously confessional, whatever the association they may be in, or there is unconsciously confessional.

So, I mean, to me, a Baptist and the Eastern Orthodox are very similar because they like to be slippery with their doctrines,

but nobody's endlessly slippery.

Everybody has some kind of doctrine that he holds to and may require other people to be held to.

So, it doesn't really matter to me how many times you say, yeah, we don't use creeds, we don't use vain repetitions,

or, you know, you're looking at this from a scholastic Western perspective.

Whatever the replies are, if you're dealing with somebody who's actually a Christian, he has a confession.

Actually, it's not even non-negotiable, it's inescapable.

It's not a matter that's up for discussion.

The question always is, what is the nature of his confession?

And I think part of the unspoken confession or unwritten confession for modern American evangelicals specifically is this false humility you pointed out earlier.

And that's going to govern other parts of their confession in the same way that an objection to an Augustinian doctrine of justification,

governs a lot of other things you see in Eastern Orthodoxy, even when the person claims that he's open to Augustine being a saint or something.

So, it's, you know, when you're dealing with unconscious confession or unwritten confession, something that is definitely there, but not on the books.

I think that, you know, since you brought orthodoxy into it, you know, I see a greater clarity in older writers there.

I think that it's a modern obfuscation that's happened in a lot of cases, and the anti-Westernism as signal, you know, to be cool online with them.

Right. And this is actually related to the Baptist thing, you know, go ahead.

And I'm just going to go on record as saying, Ramonides is the problem, but there you go.

This kind of just this reinventing anti-Western thing that you just don't see elsewhere, but we're here to talk about the Baptist, so I've got to get back on that at the same time.

So, you have this modern iteration of evangelicalism, which I'm, you know, in the broad sense, which is just sort of championed a kind of mere Christianity, which is how you get here.

And this sort of false humility behind, we only have to believe the essentials. Now, I don't think that that's the fundamentalist movement to blame.

I don't think believe that that was the fundamentalist aim per se. That was more like, no, to be a Christian, you have to believe these things because people are saying things like there is no virgin birth.

That's right. And then we start debating on what the listener calls open and closed handed doctrines, but what I'm more familiar with as primary and secondary doctrines or haven't forbid essential and non essential.

Right. I don't want to be the guy who labels any of these either one of those because I don't know who gets to make the decision.

And we technically have those and you'll find that kind of in paper. And again, I want to know who who sets the standard because it's usually well if it doesn't pertain to salvation, then it's not an essential doctrine.

And yet, then they'll turn around and say, so therefore baptism in the Lord's supper are not essential doctrines.

Right.

Thus showing they actually do have a confession about that.

Yes.

And so, you know, and so he says, you know, things that we shouldn't find over, don't determine our status as Christians.

You know, ultimately, God's going to really determine your status as a Christian at the end of days or when you die.

So that's an important one to remember.

That's good.

This is an in and out thing here in us trying to really determine the minutiae based on some kind of worldly principle gets us into all kinds of quagmire.

Yeah.

I think that also portraying all disagreement between Christians as fighting is not necessary.

I mean, I can, I, it's not just that I can imagine I've certainly seen it.

Nonetheless, disagreement or trying to find a way to resolve disagreement through greater understanding, greater searching of Scripture.

If that gets inathematized, then let's just give up on the whole thing.

Yeah.

Because at that point, we're going to have to give up on all doctrines, all confessions, all certainties.

And, and that is, in fact, as, as Jay Gressam H. and taught us, that is not Christianity.

That's liberalism.

Right.

This is now an OPC podcast.

I mean, you know, I mean, I'm here.

This is my born on the 4th of July moment.

I can't go back.

I'm calling you out, Sergeant.

I, I, I think that there, I think that this is, this is basic to Christianity that we have doctrines and confessions.

Whether those things are written down or not.

Yeah.

When they're explicit, they're going to be there.

That's right.

And, and when that gets abandoned, we abandon Christianity.

And the fact that Machen has been vindicated time and again in the history of mainline Protestantism,

is, is the reason that we can say this with such certainty, because we've already seen it happen.

I'm waiting it, waiting for it to happen to second Baptist Church of Broken Arrow.

When they continue to approach Christianity with this hesitancy that you don't find in the scriptures about doctrine.

Yeah.

You do that.

You're going to end up believing nothing.

That's how it goes.

You always get to replace with something else and usually some version of community.

Yeah.

Bizziness.

For the, and, and some of us just aren't interested in that.

Right.

For a, there was a time when you could say the mega church was about busyness and the smaller churches about this.

Now, no, they've all kind of adopted the same thing.

Yeah.

It doesn't matter if it's 50 on a Sunday, 5,000 on a Sunday.

Let's get you in.

Let's get you busy.

Right.

Let's get you active in the water here.

Let's get you in the, let's get you into this and keep you kind of turning through it.

And that really is what binds them together.

And they go from one thing to one thing to one thing.

Yeah.

And, and that is really kind of the spirit of it when, when doctrine goes away.

At a certain point, someone has to, when they're not busy, they sit down, they get a breather and they go, what am I doing here?

Right.

You know, what do I believe?

Why are we gathered around this?

Right.

And they're just as guilty as anybody of the slogan hearing type of thing.

Well, we're here for the gospel.

And then for some people, the gospel means I have four small group meetings a week, followed by Pickleball.

And then we're going to do Operation Christmas Child, which all sounds kind of wholesome and everything when you say it.

But it does become, you know, a little bit of a grunt.

And not the same thing as what do I believe?

And how should I then live?

Yeah.

Very different questions.

So, the other thing you come, you know, he has is the anecdotal.

You think you're right, but you should always be open to the possibility that you're wrong.

We've both heard that from people a million times.

Yeah.

And, and, and the thing the listener needs to understand is all of the things that he's saying the Baptist have said to him, which I believe they did, I've heard LCMS Lutherans say.

There you go.

There it is.

And so let's take it, let's take this one.

You can think you're right, but you should always be open to the possibility that you're wrong.

Talk about your argument.

You don't want to follow to its obvious sin.

You know, yeah.

Jesus is God.

Well, you can say that, but they'll be open to the possibility.

And then you're a Muslim, I guess.

Now, at this point, or a secular humanist, you could be a Jew.

You could be a Jew.

I think that it's, it's helpful then to think about confessionalism.

I want to articulate this in a specifically possibly even virilently Protestant way, okay?

Uh-oh.

Because I, because I see the LCMS as often functioning like Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy just for northern Europeans, rather than Italians or Russians or something.

And I see pastors kind of talking this way.

I certainly see young men converting for these reasons.

And I despise it.

I don't submit to, I don't confess the book of Concord to be a faithful exposition of Holy Scripture.

Because I am submitting to the Lutheran Church.

That's where the soundbots going to get cut off by the word.

That's fine.

That's fine.

I, I confess it to be a faithful exposition of Scripture because I have searched Scripture.

Yes.

Because I have searched Scripture because I am convicted by the word of God.

Right.

Okay?

And if we're not doing that, let's just pack it in.

Yeah.

And you hear that all the time.

Well, they'll, they'll, they'll even sort of temper it a little bit.

And they'll go, well, I don't believe there's any error in there.

But they'll put a bot on there.

Yeah.

Unless you have, unless you have a serious scruple.

This is not respect A, okay?

This is not a PCA podcast.

I don't think exceptions.

Yeah.

I wasn't necessarily talking about past.

Yeah.

We don't, I believe it was scruples in the OPC as straight up exceptions in the PCA.

How's the PCA doing?

Well, they're not doing well, but at least they're honest about it.

Scruples.

So they're on the side of it.

Yeah.

Scruples.

Yeah.

This is true.

So we allegedly don't allow those.

Now, if a person, and I'm speaking broadly of a Lutheran here, you know, not necessarily

a pastor in the LC mess because that opens up a whole can of worms.

But I still respect, though, when somebody says, I don't know about that.

I don't know about this.

Yeah.

If this is completely true yet.

So I'm still studying this.

Yeah.

Or even if they study it and say, I don't believe this.

And so I'm leaving.

Right.

Right.

Right.

Now, sounds terrible.

Sounds like a pastor here saying, oh, I'm glad when people leave.

No, I was saying that there's a difference in, and it probably is worse, you know, saying,

I'm convinced of something in my conscience that this is wrong.

So I'm going to leave.

And now, now people are thinking, I'm talking about some major doctrine.

Maybe they think that the LCMS is wrong in the doctor of the ministry.

And they want to go Wisconsin.

Let's pretend that that's the, that's the debate or whatever.

There you go.

At least it's a sincere conviction.

And somewhere we have a listener that's done that.

I'm sure of this.

Yes.

Please write in.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so very different from I'm angry here.

Or I don't like the brand of grapes in the fridge.

And I'm going to leave.

Yep.

Or, or, or, or the LCMS is too mean or something like that.

Yeah, right.

Or the Southern Baptist Convention is too whatever.

Right.

But I do this argument of you can always be open to the possibility that you're wrong.

You can't, actually.

There, there, there are.

And now it's going to sound like I'm endorsing primary and secondary doctrines.

But maybe it's like where, you know, the beach meets the ocean.

You know, what is the shore kind of argument here?

There's a point where you cannot say I could be wrong.

I can't say Jesus is Lord and say maybe there is no qualifier there.

Jesus is Lord.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jesus is Lord possibly.

I'm pretty sure.

Like most likely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's the Scott Adams.

Hedge in your bet there.

Oh.

Where the end, right?

Oh.

That's what you did.

Yeah.

Scott Adams, ironically, so certain about other things, but not, but not, but not you,

but he said, but it's, you know, reasonably certain.

Right.

Or no, he wouldn't say that.

He's just like, well, just in case Scott.

Scott Adams.

Pascal's wager respecter.

Yeah.

I mean, you got to, you got to respect the game.

It's better than the way some people go.

I'll give him that.

But, you know, there, there has to be a point where you say, no, this is definitely wrong.

Yeah.

You can never make any stand even outside of theologically, ethically, anything.

Yeah.

If you, if you believe this, why, why do we only think this theologically?

And here's the theological thing.

Murder is bad.

Can I get up and say, don't murder this person?

I could be wrong.

I could be wrong.

Please don't drink this jar of poison.

I could be wrong.

Longer ending a mark aside.

It's an absurd thing to me.

It, what they're trying to say is, don't be too arrogant.

Yeah.

Lest you fall.

If they said it that way, be confident, but also be humble.

Yeah.

But there's a way to do that without the possibility of denying the faith.

Yes.

Yes.

And I think that is related to being, let's say militantly Protestant.

And I don't believe that most of American Protestantism particularly is very Protestant in the sense

of having convictions on the basis of scripture.

Can you unpack your Lutherans as Catholics thought a little bit more?

The Lutherans as Catholics thing has to do with people not knowing what's in the Bible.

So it's kind of, we're kind of, it's as if we are already in the future where people don't know how to read.

Yeah.

And therefore they are just believing whatever they're told, buyer in the church.

And then they pick among the churches for most convincing, most comforting, most traditional, most based, whatever their criteria are.

But they're in and of themselves, they're, they're living sort of idiotically, meaning they're not really thinking.

They're just kind of feeling.

This sounds familiar to the listeners Baptist, but I'm saying this is a general malfunction.

And then what the Lutheran church offers within that marketplace is just a sort of northern European version of the same, you know, ancient certainties, ancient traditions, blah, blah, blah.

With Addenda from the 16th century, that is offered in Rumcathosis, Immigration, Orthodoxy.

So these, the reason those things function so well as ethnic religions is because you can be born into it and you don't have to think about it.

Yeah.

It's amazing to me in the LCMS and hope a listener doesn't mind the tangent here, but how strongly of an ethnic church we are and how it shows and things like what you're talking about here.

And we've talked about many, many episodes before and not even only on this show about how comparatively devotional life of the average Lutheran is quite different from that of we'll say the confessional reformed or something.

And we attributed it in part because convert church versus ethnic church.

Yeah.

That's part of it.

And that's part of it, you know, raised into it.

And it's funny because, you know, we want to promote like, oh, we're this global thing and we're not just German.

But then we turn right around and have a million references to German culture and German this and German that.

And we want to have our cake and eat it too with it.

And I just want people to read the Bible more at the end of the day.

Yeah.

I mean, I actually, I don't have, I don't have any issue with the, with, I mean, ethnicity and history.

That's just the way.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

It's just is what it is.

I'm saying that there is a point where PR wise, we want to have our cake and eat it too.

Yeah.

And you can't do that.

You know, it's just what do you want to be?

I was, I was, I was not giving ethnically specific weapons to use.

I was, yeah, the sword I take up is the sword of the word of God.

So if you're not going to read it, just let's just move on, right?

Right.

And this, this is where abusing solar script Torah.

I do not think is at all the right tack.

And the traditional description of a non-confessional Christianity would be Nuda script Torah.

Just for the record.

Yeah.

I want to say that, that Tinkam got that wrong in the interview.

You can go back and listen to that.

But Nuda script Torah is the idea.

It's just me and my Bible.

Okay.

And we've described already why we think that's fake.

The issue, though, is I need people to be convinced on the basis of the word of God.

That's what I preach.

I don't preach historical accidents of ethnicity.

Well, and then this is, and then thank you for that.

Because this helps me kind of make my ethnic point.

And the whole point is, love sauerkraut suffers.

Love German jokes.

We'll continue to make them understanding that particular ethnic groups mind and culture

is very important in pastoring congregations, full of them.

Yeah.

Okay.

Right.

However, that I'm sorry.

Please repeat that point.

Because I just forgot what I was going to say.

I mean, you know, I enjoy the generally pleasant demeanor of Slovaks.

Because some of the jokes that are made about being Lutheran

are very actually specific to German ways of relating to each other.

And being kind of direct.

And not necessarily being that into verbal humor, let's say, for example.

And Slovaks are different.

So I think that all of those ethnic things are great.

That's what you were saying.

And then you wanted to say.

Yeah.

And kind of so what happens sometimes is they use what can be a secondary bolster for

a scriptural principle as the primary bolster.

Yeah.

I believe X because it's what was taught in Wittenberg in 1537.

Yeah.

That's not a good argument.

Now, you can say we believe this because scripture teaches it.

And here it was taught here in 300.

And here it was taught in 852.

And here it was taught in 1583.

So on and so forth.

But a lot of times we there's in a certain segment.

And appeal to this thing is true because it was held by this person at this time.

It got forgotten by this person at this time or minimized by this person at this time.

That is only a strong secondary argument to show that this doctrine is not novel.

But that really doesn't speak to the truth of it.

Right.

And we're guilty sometimes of going just to this historic argument as the primary argument.

And that wouldn't work in a Baptist church because they don't have that same sense of history.

Landmark Baptist aside.

But a church like this with strong historical roots is more susceptible to those kinds of arguments.

And so you just want to be careful with that.

Yeah.

You do.

And so engaging with people who are not, let's say, who are not consciously confessional.

Simply means not being patronizing and engaging with them on the primary terms of any Christian discussion,

which is holy scripture.

It is absolutely basic to Christianity throughout history that holy scripture is accepted as the word of God.

This is something that gets repeated by all parties in Reformation times.

And it's why people who do not regard holy scripture as the word of God just cannot be dealt with inside of the church.

Yeah.

That just, that just is a different religion, whatever it calls itself for.

And to the listener, you know, it's, it's going to be very frustrating.

You know, how do you, how do you, you know, how do you engage with people who, not only don't have a confession,

and what he means is like a book of concord, but don't want you to have one either.

You want to sit down and reason with them from scripture.

Right.

And it's very, very frustrating because you're going to very quickly see that they read scripture through very different lenses oftentimes.

Now sometimes we'll be pleasantly surprised and it'll click for them and they'll go, oh, this makes a lot of sense.

Yeah.

Or they'll say something like, I can see where you're coming from.

Yep.

And maybe respectfully disagree.

I think the challenge for the listener and the challenge for all of us is to not become unnecessarily frustrated.

Yes.

Because it can be a very frustrating pursuit and can take a lot of time.

Right.

You know, but, but you know, go back.

Do the Baptist thing.

Look chapter and verse.

Do you do that to them?

Right.

And open up the scriptures and show them and reason with them.

Yeah.

Keep a King James handy.

Yeah.

Because you do have a religion and you have a confession that is based on scripture.

So you can show from scripture and things, things that are not necessarily shown or inferred from scripture such as

are use of the church here.

You don't need to argue over right now.

Yeah.

There's going to be a time.

Yeah.

There will be a time.

You can talk about vestments later.

You can talk about many things later.

But those, the basic doctrines of the Lutheran church, which are according to our confession, simply the doctrines of Christ and the apostles.

It is simply is Christianity.

This is the basic setting as Lutheranism.

Can simply be shown from scripture and not to be also not to be impatient with people.

I mean, people are all over the place.

And when they are all over the place, they are generally lacking in humility about being all over the place.

People who are actively pursuing truth tend to have greater humility.

People who are not tend to have the capacity to make giant statements about what they think you should be doing with your life and your thoughts.

Don't be too impatient with them.

Yeah.

When you're just discovered this, people can become very, very excited about it.

I want everybody to be as excited and they're not going to be.

We used to call this cage stage implying that people grow out of it.

But the sociological data is here for me to observe.

And some people are not growing out of this.

The internet is cage stage from Althehyde.

And you can stay forever.

Yeah.

Oh, you know, it would have been nice to remember Lutheranism before the internet.

But then I go back and look at what time that was.

I have maybe not.

I have also seen Althehyde.

I'll see a mess stuff from the 1990s.

Exactly.

And then I'm like, well, never mind.

I'm going to withdraw that desire.

We're like 1930s.

I'm like, 30s.

I can jam.

It starts getting weird in the 70s.

As old things did.

We're just talking about graphic design at this point.

We're not even mentioning anything else.

That is our greatest.

You can take Seminex and say what you want.

But how ugly was our stuff in the 70s and 80s?

Right.

Seminex did not exercise that demon.

Yeah.

Now I am not exercising humility.

I'm making.

This is a doctrinal thing for me.

Weird.

Like blobbing 70s graphics.

Yes.

Have to go.

They have to go.

They're still on some of your banners.

Maybe on some of mine.

That's okay.

The Lord covers us with his wings.

So the next question also related to the Baptist episode.

Yeah.

I'm wondering if you could explain Lutheran sacraments though.

With the Baptist sacraments, they wait to baptize the new community of the person.

Those what they're doing.

Yeah.

But Lutherans baptize before person even knows if they want to be or not.

But they want to wait on community of the person knows that they want it.

And what it is.

If Lutherans can baptize without someone knowing what baptism is.

Why can't they give community to them too without knowing what it is?

If baptism gives a baby faith, it's not like communion.

What hurt them since babies can't sin.

All right.

Yeah.

I would start with two assumptions.

The listeners grammar makes that just aren't true.

Number one is babies can and do sin.

They're not sinning by crying.

Contra the Christmas Carol.

The little or Jesus could have cried.

It's okay.

But they sin by existing.

That is why what is called original sin is also called in other languages in various versions.

Person sin or nature sin or inherited sin.

So the sin is existence in descent from Adam without a second birth.

That's the sin.

That's the problem.

That's why they can die.

Yes.

These couldn't sin, babies would not die.

I know that sounds wild, but it's true.

Yeah.

It's literally right there in the epistle.

That's right.

So that's one assumption and just in the question that's wrong.

And this is going to affect the actual answer to the question.

The other assumption is the question of knowledge cannot be applied equally to the two sacraments.

And that's where the distinction between the sacraments becomes quite important.

This is something that I think we will increasingly handle as a church because evangelicals seem to

and my biggest proof for this is the existence of the CREC.

Evangelicals seem to have a lot of trouble when they grow up not baptizing children,

distinguishing between the sacraments in a way that at least historically for Lutherans has been quite easy.

Baptism is absolutely necessary for salvation.

The Lord's supper is not.

And we'll critique the Lutherans after we answer this question.

But the distinction between the sacraments is quite important.

I don't want to go like all John 6 for the entire episode.

So we'll just forego that for now.

The evangelicals also, I think, deep down, yearned baptized babies

because they've invented the child dedication that is ubiquitous in their churches.

Because they have to pseudo bring them into the church in a light way

in sort of a probationary way until they can get to baptism,

which marks, you know, after their public profession of faith.

But the two sacraments are different and we can't treat them as if they're the same.

I mean, obviously my easy solution is this Adam.

And that's very simple.

And I don't think it's controversial at all.

You baptize the baby, chrismate the baby, then commune the baby.

I mean, that seems pretty pretty easy and not going to upset anybody at all

to advocate for that position.

You know, so I think I think that's it.

We can just end the episode right there.

For the record, Adam is laughing.

He has just muted his microphone.

I'm laughing in a, in a decorous fashion, you know, in this specific case.

I think that I don't, you know, the words that I'm struggling to find

concern the Lutherans rather than you specifically.

But I do not think we are ready for the internet just to go back to the 1990s for one second

because I am not sure that people have ever had weirder thoughts

like this genuinely did not come up as an issue.

What is, what is the life cycle?

And the life cycle is now being questioned.

And a lot of that I think is very salutary.

I don't think you have to wait until you're 14 to understand what Communion is.

Right.

We made some very good positive moves there.

Right.

And, you know, this is something I hate to go back to like, you know, my former days in the OPC

and my former days in jail.

I've already been there.

Go ahead.

But the infant baptism thing was, or infant, excuse me, infant communion thing was there.

And in a, you know, like Baptist versus Lutherans is a little bit easier to discuss

because the Baptist believe broadly, no matter what they're going to say,

that the sacrament is symbolic.

Both sacraments are symbolic to one degree or the other.

I know somebody is going to come in and be like, no, we're not purely memorialists,

but more or less.

Okay, you don't, you know, without getting into that, let's just say to keep it simple,

we don't have the same view on what sacraments are and do.

Yeah, of course.

Right.

Now, get to something like the OPC, which does baptize infants for covenantal purposes,

then they have similar questions about the communion of infants.

So I remember, and then they allegedly have a strong adherence to the Westminster Confession of Faith,

yet we had Baptists in the pews who could openly commune with them.

And I remember at least once, maybe twice being in a service where,

sit next to a guy and he's got a baby there.

And the minister brings communion around and he takes one of the hosts and he breaks it off

and starts handing it out to the toddlers and to the babies.

And people being scandalized by that.

So the question came up there and just in a different way.

See, we're talking about in terms of forgiveness of sins and regeneration.

They're having the debate in the context of who is in the covenant community,

and therefore gets the sit at the table.

Right.

So similar argument, but different avenues, avenues to get there.

Don't have that with the Baptists as far as I know.

So, but at the end of the day, Baptism and Communion are different things.

And to think of them completely synonymous is kind of a fool's errand.

It is a fool's errand.

I think that people really do not grasp that children are the model for discipleship

and explaining how or why.

I'm not saying this entirely facetiously, only half facetiously.

Why are we baptizing adults?

Who's going to lie to me?

Who's going to deceive?

Who's going to cloak and disemble to use some nice old language?

Who is going to do any of that?

It's going to be the adult.

The kid is much more open, forthcoming,

and lacking in the spiritual complexity, which is generally negative, evil, and dark,

that adults possess.

I don't think we grasp that, and then we're asking,

okay, well, why?

How do we include or exclude kids from something?

Kids are included, necessarily, and are the model for.

And the Lutheran baptismal rights sets them up as the model for holy baptism,

which is inclusion as an era of heaven.

The Lord's Supper is necessary for those fainting on the way,

and that becomes increasingly necessary the older one gets.

You can have a debate about when you do that.

Totally fine with having that debate.

But I think you need to see the Lord's Supper as kind of an unfortunate necessity

for people who are getting increasingly good at sin and closer to death.

Yeah, and you have to have the difference between the two sacraments in this case

because otherwise, you end up on one very strong side or the other

because you'll say, well, baptism in the Lord's Supper are the same.

Okay, they can't be.

And then you show that by saying, we're going to make somebody wait until they don't have to examine themselves for baptism,

but they do have to examine themselves and sometimes is way latest 14, 15, 16,

because we forget who first Corinthians is actually talking to there.

Yeah.

And I'm not negating at all examination,

but we've kind of confused the examination with passing a set of doctrinal standards

when the context of first Corinthians or adults who should know better

and understanding what they're receiving and why not just merely a question of

any other myth that plus a bunch of other doctrinal propositions,

it's a question of am I taking this wordily or not?

And what does that mean, especially in the midst of a conflicted congregation

like correct that Corinth was to a certain degree?

So a lot of times when we say examination and know what you're doing,

we mean a set of classroom coursework, not an ongoing kind of examination.

I know pastor means intends it to be that way, but it kind of is what it works out to be

because we're never talking about hardly ever who should still be taking communion.

We're only ever talking about the first time they should take it.

Yes.

That's where the discussion starts and stops.

Yep.

That's right.

That's right.

And so if you say, okay, because communion has the proviso in it that

if you take it wrongly, it harms you, but folks, there are warnings about those

who have received faith and walked away and how it's worse for them.

So you could also apply that argument to baptism and go, well, we want to wait

and then congratulations.

You're back to deathbed, baptism at a certain point.

So to kind of get back to the question, I mean, I think we've sort of answered it there.

And remember that faith is a gift that everything we receive from God is a gift.

And now I can, I'm using the platitudes, but platitudes are often times very true

just because it's a platitude.

Or slogan.

Doesn't mean it's false.

Yeah.

It's just early.

It means it's a little tired.

There you go.

But this, so that they are different.

And God says this promise is for you and for your children, for our who are far off.

So we baptize you and we baptize your children.

And we'll baptize those who are far off.

Children always included in the covenant.

Yep.

You know, you start stacking up what the Scripture says about baptism versus what the Scripture says about Lord's

supper.

I would probably take a more necessary, other word, supper is necessary position, but we're

absolutely in agreement.

It's just a question of what direction we want to insult certain segments of the audience.

So isn't that every episode?

I think when the listener uses the word no, you have to realize that you don't have any word,

quite like no or examine or anything used in connection with baptism.

You have statements of the necessity that the apostles teach and baptize, which is extended

through the office of the ministry today.

You have a discussion of what baptism does, that it's a washing of regeneration, a renewal

by the Holy Spirit, that it now saves you, et cetera.

You don't have a verb that is then connected to, you know, once you do this, okay, then

get baptized, right?

And the Ethiopian unique, in fact, only asks the question rhetorically, what is to prevent

me from being baptized?

Yeah.

Now that I see that there's some water here in the desert, conversely with the Lord's

supper, you have let a man examine himself.

That's why you can debate what is the extent of examination?

How much do you have to know?

Do you have to memorize a sonotical explanation in order to take communion?

You know, you can debate what the content of examination is.

You can't debate that there is examination.

You just, you can't, right?

And so the idea that, you know, babies know one thing but don't know the other, you're

again trying to map the functioning of the sacraments onto each other and you don't need

to do that.

They don't do the same thing, they're not for the same thing.

And like, you know, like you said, I think that we don't really take the danger of having

known, having tasted of, to use a sacramental word, having tasted the glories of the kingdom

of heaven and then having fallen away in the danger that that presents, I mean, you know,

honestly, long before the liturgical movement, we didn't take the Lord's Supper very often.

We didn't take, even when it was offered all the time in that there's a very interesting

old CPH book, Bach and liturgical life and Leipzig, not for everybody significantly though.

The Lord's Supper is offered every single week, okay?

This is like your classic, everybody agrees, this is the Lutheran church situation, right?

It's offered every single week, obviously Bach is in church every single week.

He works at the church, okay?

There's like a really hard year, I think like maybe a wife dies or a wife dies and there's

like a miscarriage and then maybe there's two miscarriages and one, one death, I don't know.

He takes communion, like an extra number of times that you're, he takes communion like

eight times or something, yeah.

So you, you can debate how often and what the nature of the Lord's Supper needs to be,

but every single one of his like 20-some children was baptized as soon as possible, okay?

Yes.

So part of the reason that we also have this debate is because, because of the influence

of the liturgical movement, we have come to see not just the offering of the Lord's Supper,

but the taking of the Lord's Supper as needing to occur constantly.

And again, you can debate that.

That's fine, but don't let that force you into thinking that one is as necessary as

the other.

Yeah, you know, I would actually like to see more sonanical discussion about the delaying

of baptism than I would on the delaying of communion because we don't talk about that

enough.

How many times have you dealt with this?

Well, we've got to wait three months until ants so and so can get here.

We've got to do this, but at the same time, we need to have communion every Sunday because

that's what the church always did.

We know what the church did with baptism.

Midwife just shuffled you over to the church and got it done, right?

And congratulations.

It's so-and-so's name day.

That's your name now.

Yeah.

This has come to the world, Martin.

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

That actually troubles me just, you know, presently more than a lot of other things do this.

Yeah.

We're getting better.

We're getting better.

But there is just this, because there's this idea and you touched on it a little bit,

we don't think about falling away.

We don't think about the urgency of bringing someone into the kingdom.

Because much like anything else, we've created all these little exceptions.

We know the baptism is necessary.

But then we've philosophized into it, but not absolutely necessary.

And so then all of these concerns about the laver of regeneration being applied are done

away with.

Yeah.

And we are because we argue, frankly, a little bit like they're reformed on this when

it comes to these difficult cases and saying, well, they were included in the covenant naturally.

There's a healthy way to look at that in a biblical way.

And there's also the baptism now saves you.

So just please quit delaying the baptism of your children is what I'm saying.

Yeah.

And I think it's an interesting example of something being communicated to a people group

over a long time.

Delutherans have always known that baptism is really important.

But then you kind of pull this family centric maneuver rather than word of God centric maneuver

where you're like, it's so important.

We have to wait for Aunt Betty to be able to be here.

And she's not going to be here for two months because she's in a rubah right now.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, joking.

Not joking.

It's like these things happen happening now in the room with us because it's such a special

day, you know, and it's like, let's do your special day right now, you know, let's,

and then Aunt Betty can hear about it.

But Aunt Betty is in a rubah and that's her problem, you know.

Imagine if we treated heart transplants that way, which is exactly by the way what a

baptism is, which is what a baptism is.

Yeah.

No, it's really big.

I've been waiting on this new heart for 10 years now, but I'm going to be able to come

in.

Yeah.

He's fishing right now.

It's, you know, he just got the new John boat.

So I got, I got to wait.

What if we treated it that way?

Yeah.

I'm now a 90s preacher.

I have reached my zenith.

It's, it's all downhill from there.

You're there.

Yeah.

That's good.

I'm happy for you, man.

Thank you, man.

I'm proud.

We're, we're, we are ready.

White socks, Birkenstocks, ready to grill.

Good.

All right.

We've left here.

We should unpack this, you know, more at some point because it's a fascinating discussion.

You know, we conflated the two and then unconflate them in other ways.

And then the little cultural things we get all we're saying is take communion responsibly

and baptize your children quickly.

There you go as soon as possible.

All right.

Just finish leads part two and something struck me while discussing the importance of

character, the integrity of the private life for those who are governor.

In particular, I began thinking about how often people are left in the lurch, consider

someone who has issues with road rage.

When he realizes he has an issue, who can he speak to get better if he speaks to his

pastor?

He will be shunned out of what responsibilities or steam he's been given.

If he speaks to friends, they will tell him he's overacting in so big deal or else they

believe him altogether.

Similarly, consider someone who is an anxious pessimist.

Should he ever talk to his friends?

They will tell him that his thoughts and concerns are on Christian, which they really

mean that shut up.

No one wants to talk about that.

And so many are stuck and able to improve personally without risking their entire livelihoods.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah.

I mean, start off.

Yeah.

This is an interesting question.

And I don't know what the listeners, friends or pastor or anything are like.

So we're going to have to speak generally, unfortunately.

In connection with the development of an elite, one thing that I stressed over and over

in those episodes, that I want to stress again in this specific application of one's

improvement for the sake of other people.

We stress that over and over and over again because people have an issue with the concept

of virtue.

It has been maligned and it was always intended for service and weak people maligned virtue

because they don't want to pursue it.

That also results in there being without fail, cruel in a way that someone who is pursuing

strength is not.

And that relates to, I want to handle this, both in terms of the pastor and then separately

in terms of ones, ones friends because when you're thinking about ones friends, I actually

think this is kind of simpler than we make it out to be.

If you are not having actual conversations that don't sound like a counseling session,

then you can't really have conversations that sound like a counseling session.

That is, you can't receive counsel about dire or difficult things if you don't have

a general concept of friendship.

Yes.

That involves talking about the weather and, you know, maligning you for being such a boomer

in your personal habits and stuff like that.

You know, you, it's, it's okay to cover brother, it's okay.

You can't, you, you're not going to have those conversations and, and I think that people

are so socially, not just awkward, but socially inapted and inexperienced that they don't

realize that you, you can't just demand that people handle heavy things in a, in a sudden

or abrupt way.

That is, we're not built to be each other's unpaid therapist.

Yes.

We can be friends and that can handle really heavy stuff.

In fact, much heavier stuff than anybody you're going to pay to handle it, can handle

for you.

But you need to do all of the other stuff too.

You can't just call on people in your hour of need and expect them to show up when

you don't even know what their kids' names are.

And this is where I'm going to redeem Lutheran culture over and against the reform, like

I said earlier.

Yeah.

If people are still listening, because that's why it'd be the first time I've done this.

So we've talked a lot about how like, okay, you're in some, some confessional reformed,

right?

They're very concerned about theology, they're lay people are reading it, they're discussing

it, going this.

This is where you see the negatives in my experience, like this man is seeing, because

a lot of times you don't have them the personal aspect that comes across in a much more natural

way.

Yes.

That's where you get the really hard words, because they're only ever talking about doctrine

this and doctrine that or what the, what the sentence, you know, Presbyteria or whatever

is doing wrong session, even.

And, and so then they do become very harsh and very cruel, like you, you know that you

shouldn't be doing this.

How dare you, you know, you're not reformed, right?

You're not Christian.

What you have with our communities is when they work well, or yeah, they might not care

that much about theology in a lot of cases, but they know your kids names, and they know

when you're sick, and they're going to call you, and there might be a casserole that shows

up.

Now, this is not unique to Lutheran, and I know that tons of churches do that.

I'm not saying that.

I'm talking about a very specific example of, of a place that has cultivated relationships

only around the discussion of theology and doctrine and practice, versus one that has

those things, but is cultivated a broader community as well, where they know you as a person.

And this is where our churches can be very good.

For all of, you know, the, the stereotypes about Lutherans being cold, or whatever, in

most of my experience, they've actually been quite warm, quite welcoming, and very interested

in what's going on in people's lives, especially if they're sick, especially if they've got

something's broken down, they're there, they're helping because they know people on that

personal level.

And this is, this is something that you cannot market to converts, and is very much a function

of something being inherited, that people live comfortably and unsolved consciously inside

of the Lutheran church, and therefore learn to be human beings in the image of Christ inside

the Lutheran church.

We can't, and we shouldn't market that to people, but it's different from, from showing

them to the big church and going, this is the welcoming committee, this is the friendship

committee.

Exactly.

That's right.

That's right.

So, I think that that concept of friendship, whether they are friends inside your congregation

or outside the congregation, is that you have to share your life with people in order for

them to bear, particularly with you and for you, the heaviest burdens in your life, okay?

The pastor is kind of converse, and I'm not going to use the listeners, you know, quotations

or, or, or, or imagine quotations or whatever they are.

To talk about the pastor, I, I would say that a lot of Lutheran pastors have the difficulty

that they flatten every issue into a question of guilt and relief of guilt, okay?

To speak of the question emotionally, okay, that every life problem is guilt and then

relief of guilt, and the, the difficulty, the reason I say flatten is because it's not

unreal, but it is a flat version of reality that there are other things in reality.

There is, for instance, hunger and being sated.

There is contentment and there is discontentment.

There is speed and there is slowness, and these pertain to different things in one's life

at different times when everything gets flattened into guilt or, or innocence or especially being

relieved of one's guilt, then it's, it's really kind of impossible to change in any way

because your life is a continual accumulation of guilt and then that is continually relieved,

and it is as if there are no other dynamics.

If I can use an analogy, it would be like saying that driving a car involves turning on the defrost.

Well, sometimes it does. There's no question. If you live in a cold climate, there's plenty of

defrosting to do, right? I have it on almost every day right now, but sometimes I don't,

and I also need to change the oil and I need to use the shifter and lots of other things have to

happen to drive the car. The defrost is part of it and a lot of Lutheran pastors, if you think of

counseling, not in some kind of clinical way, but offering counsel from the Word of God,

right? We're doing real J. Adams hours here today. When you're doing that,

there are other things to say. You can see the proverbs saying a lot of other things

about how to assess people and assess one's own motives and stuff like that that don't involve

guilt or relief of guilt. If the guy kind of only has that tool in his toolbox, it's difficult to

get help with how one deals with life. There's always a hesitancy to give practical advice

because sometimes they see themselves as only there. I mean, they've got to start with,

okay, you committed a road rage, right? Well, you're forgiven. Well, that's not really my question.

My question is, how do I stop flipping people off at stop-sons? Sometimes even hesitant to be

like, well, just quit doing it. There is a hesitancy to tell people to stop it. I mean, I have always

appreciated that about Lutheran. Maybe he was just getting bored because he had done all that

stuff on the 10 Commandments and then the Creed, the Creed's fun. He gets the Lord's prayer and he's

like, this is in the large catacombs. He's like, well, you know, besides anything else I can say,

you're commanded to pray. So that should be enough. Luther just committed a legalism.

Right. If you are just supposed to stop doing something, let's start by telling you that you need

to stop because maybe nobody's ever told you that. Like, maybe nobody's ever told you, stop talking.

Yeah. You were gentle parents. It all the way to the age of 29 and you wonder why you have a

repellent personality. Why don't you stop talking? Have you considered not talking all the time?

You considered listening. Maybe I'm brushing those teeth every now and then. It's wild, you know.

So I think that like, I don't know that I've, you know, not to speak too much on

and knowing a wide swath of pastors. I don't know too many who would, who would completely shun you

out of responsibilities for road rage or whatever. It usually has to be something very extreme. And

especially within the context of state confession, then it becomes even you're much, much less likely to

get shunned. It would have to be something extraordinarily dangerous to someone or detrimental to the

church. Now, if you were in a Baptist church down in the south and less so today, but let's say

20 years ago and you confess that when you really like to drink heavy or drink at all, then yeah,

you might actually get, get there. But in our churches, I don't, it would have to be some pretty

stunning examples. And if you're to the point where you're going for counseling for it,

you're probably going to want to step out of your responsibilities in the church anyway,

voluntarily. You know, I, we typically don't counsel people by breaking their esteem

in that way. You know, it's saying, I'm going to take away, you're no longer a trustee because

you got angry today or something like that. Yeah. No, that's, that's really good. I think that

relief from official position is, yes, is one thing. I, I do think that the, the prevalence of

anger that I have observed just as a, as a reaction. I mean, even in group settings in the Lutheran

Church. And I'm not, I'm not really talking about your average congregation. And I might actually,

I mean, the instances of which I'm thinking really all involve clergy. Yeah, is that the prevalence

of anger at, it means, it, it means a lot of things that I think it's connected to it to a

prevalence of depression. But that, that, that isn't, that is an instance where I think that our

pastors need to be able to offer not just disagreement with other people in a way that doesn't sound

like they're raging out all of the time. But, but also that it, if character is the question,

and that, that is at the heart of the listeners question, apart from the specific instances,

if character is the question, then I need the person who is shaping that character in, in some

specific way. Not to be in a punitive mode. Yes. Yes. Okay. Like, and, and, and Paul distinguishes

between those two things in 1 Corinthians 4 when he says, you know, you need to be like I am.

Okay. You need to be like I am. And if you're not, then there could be punishment when I come

with a rod, right? Which is, which is what a father does in the ancient world, right? He comes with a

rod. Or should I come in a spirit of gentleness? But the character question comes before that question,

right? Punishment, the kind of, the kind of reaction or emotion or talk that is punitive comes

after the concern that they be reshaped. And if they are reshaped, then there is no need for

punishment. And I find it very often in our circles, we go directly to, to punishment, to a punitive

mode. I'm just talking about how people relate to each other. We go to this punitive mode. And when

you're in the punitive mode or you fear the punitive mode, and this, that has to do with probably how

people are raised, it's very hard to talk about this because the way that people act, particularly in

a group that is not trying to change the way that it acts, is that they're coming out. It's like

the unconscious confession we talked about earlier, they're coming out of a place we don't even really

understand. Right. But when they are in that punitive mode, they're not really going to be in a

place to reshape anybody else because the person who is going to wig out is not a person I really

want to consult ultimately. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, there are several different, you know, we

talked about the past world one, but the person who goes to his friends and tells him his thoughts and

concerns are un-Christian. And what they really mean is no one wants to talk about that,

may just talk and improve personally. There may be some of those dynamics in relationships I

don't doubt that. There also could be something the person does to make these people, you know,

not want to talk about that. Yeah. There is, you know, a contingent out there that considers anything

pessimistic or negative to be somehow un-Christian and that's wrong too. There you go. Yeah. You

know, so it's kind of a hard one to answer just not being there in the situation, right? Yeah.

What are we talking about here? What kind of people are we dealing with?

But it kind of goes back to your initial point about cultivating healthy friendships. Yeah.

And healthy friendships, there are times right? You know, dude, that's not Christian. Don't talk about

it, but there are also friends who will talk about anything and everything with you and talk

through that. Yeah. Especially when it's not necessarily not Christian and you're not trying to

have a pious way to get out of hard conversations or something like that. Yeah.

Probably to do a whole another episode on friendship and relationships again.

That might that might be helpful for the folks. Yeah. Because you're not you're not going to have

a collective that is responsible for an even larger group of people as envisioned in the elites

episodes. If you don't have those friendships, it just will not endure. Okay. You can't you can't

have a collective that endures particularly one that is male. That is that is not based on both

friendlyness in social demeanor and friendship. Okay. You can have a you can try to have it based

purely on we all believe the same thing purely on we're all in the same hierarchy purely on this

purely on that. But it will disintegrate because and to me that that's that's one reason that the

LCMS overcame a major probably a a life ending doctrinal problem 50 some years ago. But has

continued to disintegrate in many ways because particularly among the leaders of this this collective,

this synod which are going to be the clergy. There is a lack of cultivation of these things between

each other and there is incessant suspicion. It's really hard to hold the group together that way.

I mean, you know, more people miss about elites and good old boy clubs on a more local level

is that they think that they all get together a bohemian grove and bill or bird or whatever.

And it only only talk about business stuff, right? Right. But there is always that social

relationship that they have. We were just a bohemian grove last week. Right. Right. I echo what Nixon said.

But you know, and I hesitate to talk about elites and relationships and social activities in a lot

of recently released emails. But yes, not necessarily that is a social interaction. But

but there even is on the local level state level federal level. There are there are these social

interactions always along with they're not always sitting down talking about bills, talking about

interest rates and things like that that go along with this. And that's part of the way deals

are able to be struck and governments are able to be run in any organizations able to be run.

Please don't hear that what we're saying is, okay, so the church should compromise on stuff because

two district presidents are buddies or in laws or something. That's not what we're saying. It's just

the natural order of things. And when they especially work well is you have people who are

fundamentally friends who can then govern more effectively because they are men of good character

and are surrounded by men of good character in a in a sphere that isn't just smart business

acumen or something like that. Yeah. There's just more to it. It's it's a holistic approach to do

everything. Yeah. Yeah, I do not I do not actually think that it's possible to run a society

without having men who know one another and trust one another. And instances where they don't

know one another, but they but they probably trust one another eventually grow into they know one

another personally and they trust one another. And you can see that in the in the formation of

new nations. You can see that in the case of really United States, for example, the Virginians know

each other, the Yankees know each other. And then they have to learn to know one another and trust

one another to the degree that they can. They don't have an option where they just all abstractly

agree on the constitution, but don't know one another or trust one another. That's right. That's

not a world anyone lives in. Right. Well, we are at time. So that was a fun one. Always appreciate

your questions. We do take a look at them and I would love to come from here in the show. Some of

them will respond to privately, but keep sending those in through the website. We really appreciate

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