30 Oct 2026 (Q&A)

2:09 It is the thirtieth of october twenty twenty six. I am Cory J. Mahler, and this is at any cost, and of course there is now a lawnmower going outside, but hopefully that will stop shortly, so if the noise is a little too loud, let me know and I will do something about it. At any rate, the chat is working for my intake system here, but not in OBS, so if you have a question mark I will see it. If you don't have a question mark, hopefully the AI will catch it. At any rate before I get into the questions, I will go with housekeeping and some announcements first, really I don't think I have any real housekeeping this week so I will just go straight into a few announcements that I have. I guess the housekeeping could be that I am doing this a

2:58 little bit early because I have somewhere to be in a couple hours and I didn't want to miss it three weeks in a row. So try not to miss it more than one week in a row, but sometimes things come up and it's inevitable. At any rate, for announcements, I really have three things that I would just like to announce briefly. If you are in my telegram chat, you'll have already pretty much seen these. So these will not be new to you. However, let me go ahead and pull up well that's not showing the whole thing. I'll just go ahead and make this full screen for the announcements because you don't really need to see me while I'm announcing this. But the three things that I wanted to announce is that I have two apps that I have made that are in open beta

3:46 as it were. They are we'll do this one first, Z Dossier and Z Diary. This one is basically for keeping notes on your contacts. I've wanted this for years. I've just never had the extra cash and time lying around to start up a software development firm obviously I'm using AI to make these things because I do not know enough programming to do it myself. However, I know enough about programming to get it done well. So I'll probably do a demonstr just a brief demonstration next week. Hopefully I will do a QA next week because I'm actually personally using this and so I don't have a device available to show anyone right now because they all have my actual contacts on them. I'm using the beta for what it intends for for what I

4:37 intend it to be. The other one is Z diary. It is a location diary completely local, 100% on your device. That's kind of the overarching goal here. I want things that don't have a bunch of third-party services calling who knows whom. Instead, it stays on your device. And this is just so you can look back at where you've been on a particular day. I had my own system that was doing this, but it was a little clunky and had occasionally some issues. It did basically it did back end calls from my iPhone back to a computer I have here at my house, and that didn't always fire exactly correctly, so I made one that's 100% on device. I've been using it for a handful of weeks now and it works well. There are some rough edges I'd like to iron out with that

5:25 one first, but Z Dossier is pretty much done. The third announcement, and some of you will have already noticed this one as well, is that I built and launched a podcasting platform, a hosting platform, not the other stuff. The reason that I did this essentially is that if not for the system that I basically designed for doing the hosting part of Stone Choir, we would have probably had to have found someone to subsidize part of it because the bill would have been horrendous for Stone Choir. Because until fairly recently, you didn't have a lot of options for podcast hosting, and most of them charge on the basis of bandwidth, download numbers, or hours. And basically that means that if your podcast become popular, you get

6:17 hit with a huge bill. We hosted Stone Choir basically using what Cloudflare provides, and so we were able to do that quite cheaply. So basically I built the front end in order to have Cloudflare as the back end for it. And I have actually had it online and been using it for a number of weeks now. It is currently what is serving Stone Choir, the podcast for confident faith, so that'd be through the Bible in a year, the daily devotions, the Lutheran lectionary, and also the podcast version of this show has been served from this platform for a number of weeks now. So if you have a podcast or know someone who does, a good option. Doesn't charge you for bandwidth, which was the big thing. Unlimited bandwidth, unlimited egress, so kind of removes that surprise bandwidth bill

7:11 you can get if your podcast becomes popular. But that is pretty much all of the housekeeping and the announcements, and so I will go ahead and get into the questions because I really do have only about an hour today. So let me go ahead and pull up that first question. The first question is similar to one that I've answered before, but it's worth commenting on because it is an important point. It comes up a lot. And it's about strategy and social media. I'll extrapolate it out from just X. Although I'm pretty much only on X. God be with you, Mr. Mauler, I'm a longtime listener and enjoyer of Stone Choir, and at any cost, the exegesis of scripture and theology expressed through you is price is priceless.

7:58 However, when I see posts from your ex account, I notice there is a distinct shift of tone from your oration and writing, more polemical slash abrasive. It timic it typically draws the ire of other less blunt Christian nationalists, which I find amusing. I want to ask, is the shift of tone on your ex post by design, is it strategic? I understand that engagement and building a following is a strategic boon, and most of your statements unabashedly shove the Overton window, which assists the broader pro-white Christian nationalist movement. I'm curious as to how you view your part within the movement. Thank you for what you do. So the answer is, and I have commented on this before, yes, I engage differently depending on the platform, the audience, things like that.

8:40 And this is something that we used to recognize as a society. It's fallen away a little bit, and this is unfortunate. And the way that I like to compare it is that we used to dress differently depending on where we were, what we were doing, the audience, the company. So you didn't dress this is still the case in a few places like the opera. Most people don't show up to the opera in Bermuda shorts and flip flops. Some people do. I've seen that in LA. That happens, but most people don't do that. But generally speaking, as Americans, we pretty much wear short-sleeve shirts and jeans everywhere. Unless you have to wear a suit, right? Unless you're in court, in which case the judge can throw you

9:20 in jail if you don't wear a suit. So the same thing is true with regard to how we behave and how we interact. You should behave and interact differently when you're out having a few pints with your friends at the pub versus when you're in church or at the opera or in court or somewhere like that. And I believe that is also the case with regard to things like social media. X is the sort of platform where unless you word things in a way that catches attention, nothing will ever come of it. If I did not word the things that I say the way that I word them, then I wouldn't have 40,000 followers on X. That's just the reality of it. And so there is something to be said about effectiveness. And so part of the way I interact is designed to be

10:10 effective, designed to elicit responses. Without crossing the line into being false, I'm still very careful that the things I say are in fact true, that they are worded in a way that isn't against scripture or any other form of truth. But yes, I do calibrate the way that I say things, the way that I respond to the platform, to the audience, to the time. And with regard to growing the audience, and then the last part of your question here, I have been capped at 40,000 followers for like 18 months. So clearly they play little games with the platform, and I can see the number of people who followed me. I have a bot in the background tracking that. And so I'm just capped at that. That's what they've capped me at for right now.

10:56 Maybe at some point they will unleash my account again. That happens occasionally, I don't know exactly what's happening behind the scenes, but that's how that goes. Which is to say the platform is not neutral as was promised when the ownership changed. But with regard to how I view my part in the movement, at this point really I act largely as an advisor. I know most of the men who are leading various groups in various parts of the country. I've spoken with them. I've attended a number of Meetings, national conferences, things like that. I don't go to quite so many conferences as the Reformed, I know those are very popular over in Reformed land, but we Lutherans do occasionally go to those too.

11:38 I have no objections to being more involved in politics, and I'm certainly looking into that, and I think that that is something that makes sense in the future. We'll see how that goes. Perhaps I'll have something to announce on that end in the coming months. I won't put a timeline on that though. Question two mother and son relationship How should the mother, son relationship be navigated as the son becomes a man, balancing the command to honor thy parents with the importance of respecting male authority. My five-year-old son already exhibits patriarchal behavior especially towards me. Very interesting to see how it develops naturally without any instruction. For clarification I mean the son honoring his mother as the parent,

12:22 but also I am still a woman that must respect male authority. This is for when my boys are grown men. So yes, you are correct to recognize this is a balancing act, right? You are supposed to honor your father and your mother. Yes, that does include if you are a male, if you are a son, you must still honor your mother. Does that mean that it is the exact same as how you honor your father? The answer is no, because your father, at least while you're young, is your head. He's also her head. And so part of what it means to honor your mother, even when you are in fact older, is that you are ultimately honoring your father by honoring your mother, because by honoring her, you're honoring her head, which is to say your father.

13:06 Now, the place where this really gets complicated is when when you have when you're a widow, right? If your husband dies, then the issue would be that the closest male relative is the one who takes over that headship. That may very well be your son. Of course, that's a bit different because if you're talking about a five-year-old, you're obviously not 80-85 years old at this point. That's sort of far off in the future for you. But that is something also to consider. Your son could foreseeably in the future be your head. And then that relationship would change, but of course, that changes just naturally with age, right? We all recognize that. The way that we interact with our mother and our father when

13:49 we are twenty is not going to be identical to when we are sixty, because then they're in their eighties or their nineties. For your son though, your son still has to respect you because you are his mother. He is supposed to honor his parents. And yes, that relationship will change as he ages, because yes, at some point he becomes a man. And it's this is not like a hard line. This is not what we're going to say, oh, you know, eleven or thirteen or whatever it happens to be. Is there a point past which it would be inappropriate for women to be teaching boys? Yes, but that's a different thing. That's not exactly identical to a mother-son relationship where you have this explicit command from God, one of the commandments, that your son is

14:35 to honor you. So it is incumbent on him to do that at the same time recognizing that he is his own head at some point. Once he matures into a man from a boy into a man, he is his own head. He is responsible for himself after a certain fashion. And so yes, he should still listen to his father certainly, because his father is still his father and should be advising him wisely, and he should still listen to his mother. It's not that women have no wisdom to share, it's that there is a different dynamic because God has made men their own head. Yes, you also have things like hierarchy in society, in the church, you have kings, princes, those things. But a woman is never her own head, so the relationship is

15:20 always going to be different there. Now, you are married to his father, and so his father will still be a man, he'll be your head, and so that is also part of that relationship between you and your son. Part of it is mediated, as it were, by your husband, because he is your head. There is also an aspect of it that as long as he's living in your house, right, it's good Right, it's going to be different because that gives you a certain sort of authority. You're you shouldn't lord it over him, right? That's not the authority that it gives you. But it is a different relationship from when he moves out on his own, and particularly when he has his own wife and children. Then he's the head of his own household.

16:03 So it's not so much that it's a relationship of hierarchy and authority. This is a familial relationship. This is a different thing. He's supposed to love you as his mother. You're supposed to love him as your son. And yes, he is still supposed to respect and consider your opinions and listen to you as his mother, but at some point he is no longer required simply to obey them. He takes them under advisement, he takes them into consideration, but he's not required to just obey what you say. The same thing is true with regard to his father. If he is out on his own as head of his own household, his father no longer can command him to do whatever because his father no longer has that kind of authority because he has become

16:47 head of his own household. So there are a lot of moving parts and there are a lot of wisdom calls, but most of this stuff is very natural to navigate. Human beings have been doing it for thousands of years. We kind of know innately how this works. There are points at which boys become men. There are points at which they become a man such that they are self-established and basically when they're head of their own household. That's the big thing. If you don't if a man doesn't marry and have children and all those things, then yes, he's still his own head. You know, I'm my own head. I'm not I don't have a bunch of children, right? I have done God has not blessed me with a bunch of children at this point.

17:27 However There is going to be a difference in that relationship that will change between your son and your husband when your son becomes head of his own household or when he reaches a certain age. But like I said, it's not a hard line because everyone develops differently, right? There are plenty of people who are very mature at fifteen, and there are plenty of people who are very immature at twenty-five. That's part of the equation as well. So your duty as a mother is to love your husband and love your son. His duty as a son is to love his parents and obey them and honor them. And even when he no longer has to obey you you he's still asked to honor you. Question three is a related question.

18:20 Actually going to swap these two around. Question three is about newlyweds. I have recently returned from a lovely honeymoon with my wife, in a sense I feel like a spectator instead of being fully present in the moment with my wife, is this a normal adjustment for a Christian? I feel almost a heightened sense of my own selfishness in wanting to preserve aspects of previous singleness. I think that's just entirely normal. That's it's a big change, right? Ha suddenly having another person living in your house and for whom you are responsible is a very big change. Just like it will be a big change when you have your first child. So it takes time to adjust to these things. And I would say one of the best things you can do

19:08 is be intentional about it. Don't think that all of these things will just come along naturally. Many of them will, because many of them are built into who and what we are as human beings, how God designed us. But be intentional about bringing this woman into your life and including her in your life, that doesn't mean include her in everything, right? I've spoken about don't burden women with the political. Generally speaking, you should not be involving your girlfriend or your wife life in political stuff. That doesn't mean you can't discuss any of it with her, but it does mean don't come home and offload all of the politics or everything that happened in the office on her. That's not what that relationship is supposed to be.

19:52 Go have a pint at the bar with your friends and offload it on them. That's what your male friends are for. Different relationship with your wife. Some things you don't bring home because it's not good for the home. But do intentionally include her in your life in the other things. Recognize you now have this other person in your home, part of your life, part of you, right? Because the two shall become one flesh, make an effort toward recognizing that. And you don't have to be paranoid about this, right? Most of this will come naturally. But I don't think you have to worry about the fact that you're aware that there's a major change. I think that's probably a good sign because it is a major change, right?

20:37 If you go from a single man living by yourself, and we all know how single men generally live, you're going to have a very different sort of day once you have a wife. It's a better sort of day because there are things that are now part of your life that are good, things God designed you for, designed her for, that you now have that you didn't have when you were single. So I don't think you have to worry about it. It's a natural transition period. I'm sure that things will be fine in, you know, weeks or a few months, you'll accustom to it. And if not, ask a follow up question, but I think you'll find that you grow accustomed to it very quickly. Question four is, I guess, tangentially related, but

21:24 only tangentially. Question about Friedrich the Great It seems to me that the assertion that Friedrich the Great was a sodomite is forced, as I remember he attempted to escape to England after the after his arranged marriage to an English woman fell through in favor of a marriage to an Austrian woman. What do you think? I think that yes. This is definitely one of those cases of historians trying to make some historical figure, usually one they don't like very much, but some historical figure to be a sodomite. They do this all the time, and it's one of the reasons that male friendship has become so much trouble, such a a real effort in the modern context, in the modern world, because every time

22:08 men act like friends with other men, they try to say, Oh, he's a homosexual. And they do the same thing with historical figures all the time. And I think Friedrich the Great is a great example of that. And I believe that Carl Radl on X has also done a thread on Friedrich the Great, or at least he shared some resources on it, so I would search his timeline for that. You may want to search in both English and German. Just Friedrich de Grosse, it's going to be easy to find. But yes, I do think that's a case in which no, he was not a sodomite. Question five. Let's see. Going to look at the chat real quick. Okay. Just making sure that that's working. And checking OBS briefly because before I started up the stream, OBS

23:09 crashed on me twice, which was lovely. I had to manually update it and then it didn't crash, so I think we're good. It's not using 40 gigabytes of RAM this week. Okay, question about dead faith. I guess a slight switch in tenor there. You have discussed previously how hell is worse for someone who lived a long sinful life than for someone who lived a shorter one. I have tried to have living faith, but I have only ever demonstrated a dead faith. I'm struggling to see a reason why I shouldn't just repent and die. Even if God rejects the repentance, hell won't be so bad as it otherwise would have been. I am interested to hear your thoughts on this. So I know that this came from someone who did indeed ask

23:56 me to anonymize his account and so I assume there is a bit of a crisis of faith going there. And that I'm not revealing anything in that it shows on the public website the account's been anonymized. This is similar to fears about having committed the unforgivable sin. If you can worry about it, you haven't f you haven't committed it. You have not committed the unforgivable sin. If you can worry about repentance and living out a life and having a living faith and producing good works, then you have that faith, or at least you are oriented in the correct direction, you're moving in the right direction. And so that's not a cause for despair. The fact that you struggle with sin or even probably, I'm guessing,

24:45 fall back into a particular besetting sin that's not a cause for despair. Is it a cause for standing up and trying again? Absolutely. But that's the Christian life. The Christian life is a matter of falling back into sin and then standing up, repenting, and trying again. Because we live in a fallen world. We are fallen flesh. We are tempted constantly by the devil, by our own flesh, by our wicked society, we are going to fall into sin. You are not going to be able to resist every temptation. That is the reality of this life. That is one of the reasons that we pray every single day. It's one of the reasons you should pray the Lord's Prayer. Every time you wake up and before you go to bed, I would say also before and after meals, but at the very least

25:36 twice a day, when you wake up and when you go to bed. Because what are you praying? Forgive us our trespasses. Because you are praying for even the things you don't remember, right? Scripture is very clear on that. There are sins you have committed of which you aren't even aware. God knows of them, and he has already forgiven them. You were forgiven all of your sins in your baptism. You're forgiven all of your sins every time you read about the forgiveness in Scripture, when your pastor pronounces the forgiveness, assuming you have a sort of church that does that. Some of the low churches do not. God is super abundant with his grace and with his forgiveness, so it's not a cause for despair or even really a cause for

26:16 worry. It's just a cause for trying again, recognizing that yes, you're a poor, sinful being, but that is the entire reason that Christ had to come to earth, be incarnate, suffer and die, and rise again. That's the whole point of the gospel. And so it's not a cause for despair, not even a cause for worry. And I would say you do have a living faith. You're demonstrating works in keeping with that faith. Because worrying about these sorts of things, even if I would say don't worry about them demonstrates you don't have that dead faith, because the dead faith wouldn't care. The same thing as the unforgivable sin. The person who's committed it wouldn't care. But by all means, feel free to ask a follow-up question.

27:01 I guess again, I know I anonymize the account at your request, but by all means you can send me a DM. That will still work on the forum. And if not, contact me on X or somewhere else, of course. Question six In the twelfth century when King Henry I of England died, his heir apparent was his daughter Matilda, but her cousin Stephen of Bloy tried to overthrow her causing a civil war. From what I hear he did this because he did not want a female monarch over England. Do you think Stephen was justified? And then the reasoning is I know women in positions of power is not the Christian ideal, but I want to know how our way our way a how out of our way it is permissible to enforce a patriarchy and if a coup d'etat is justifiable in

27:57 a case like England's I won't comment on the specific historical case because I'm just not sufficiently familiar with it. English history is not my personal strong suit. So I will comment on the more general question, which is really probably the more important one here, right? Because really it's the application to our own time and things like that. And so the abstracted general question can then be applied to our time. So when is it permissible for Christians to engage in a coup? Even a coup d'etat, right? Which for those who don't know a a coup is an overthrow of coup d'etat is one that involves violence. So the sort of foundational question is is it ever permissible? The answer is yes. There are times when it is permissible.

28:43 And the question then becomes, okay, when? What is sufficient warrant? What are the conditions under which we are permitted to engage in such actions as Christians Christians without running afoul of God's laws, right? Because you can think of all the places we are admonished to obey the rulers. However, those places are also polemical. Romans 13, right, describes the nature of a Christian ruler, the nature of a godly ruler, even if he's not Christian, at least being godly. And our rulers today certainly don't fit that. Many historical rulers did not. The example I've often used is that if you lived in the USSR, did you have a duty to be submissive to Stalin, to the Communist Party? And my answer is no.

29:29 You would have been fully justified rebelling against that, using whatever means were at your disposal. So we did touch on this in a Stone Choir episode. I've written about it, and I will include some of those things in the show links as well, the show notes. But yes, this is a wisdom call, right? This is one of those where you should be very certain of your action, of your actions before undertaking them because there are places where obviously God commands us to submit to the ruling authorities, but that is not categorical. There are times where it is your Christian duty to rebel against the ruling authorities because they are not true ruling authorities. They are wicked usurpers and they deserve to be overthrown.

30:22 Best case would be the communists and others like that, right? Someone who is actively persecuting the church and murdering Christians. I do not believe it would be wrongful to overthrow that man. Now is it the place of pastors to do that? No, because that's the division right between the right and the left hand kingdoms. But it is the duty of some men, because some men have duties in the left hand kingdom to do these sorts of things. But again, this is one of the most difficult questions, wisdom calls. And I would say read the Magdeburg Confession, if you have not, your screen name on here is in German, so I think the odds are higher than fifty percent that you probably have read it. But I think that the Magdebird Confession, our episode on violence, and

31:12 some of the things that I've written, some of the essays and things like that are probably a good starting place for a fuller answer to this question. But insofar as overthrowing a female ruler simply because she is female, I don't believe that alone would be sufficient. Because I think I think that the amount of evil that would be caused by overthrowing such a ruler would probably be more would probably be greater evil than just permitting a woman to reign for a period of time. Work I think the answer there would be working within the system as best you can to get a king on the throne, right? Maybe it's her son, maybe you have to suffer for a generation But if she's doing additional evil things on top of that, then

32:00 I think probably you have sufficient warrant, which is why I wouldn't comment on the specific case because I don't know enough about the actors involved here. But the foundational sort of baseline answer is that this is a wisdom call and it's a difficult one to make, but there are men God has equipped to make that call, and they will be called to answer for whether they do or do not act, right? Because action and inaction, basically the same thing. Because you're choosing not to act. Which is an act. Question seven. I can move to the chat now. Would you please share any details you'd care to about the local AI setup you used for the Septuagint? I'd love to hear about the workflow. So

33:01 that would kind of be a long answer, but I can certainly give uh a basic outline of it. I really have two systems that I use for translation work. Excuse me. The first system that I use is the fastest one. It's a basic system. If I just have a chunk of some text that I need translated and I've got it set up for a handful of different languages, mostly Latin and Greek. But if I need just like a paragraph or even a page translated, I drop it into that system. And the way that I have that one set up is I have it very highly restricted as to which sources it is permitted to use in its understanding of the language and the context and things like that. And I've excluded all the modern stuff, right?

33:50 I don't want any of that for at least Latin and Greek. I don't need any of that stuff. And in restricting that, you get a lot of the way to solving a lot of problems. On top of that, I have given it a specific personality to play act as the personality, and I found that this does help with the AIs keeping them on the rails. And basically it's a philologist from a certain era. It varies depending on what exactly I want it to do. And with certain preconceptions, presuppositions, a certain personality, and so it's going to behave in a certain predictable way. I found that helps quite a lot. That basically serving as guardrails or you know the bumpers when you're bowling, that kind of thing. If you want the full system, the full system is significantly more

34:41 complicated and much more intensive and is going to burn through your usage very fast, which is part of why I have only produced sort of preliminary translations of certain things, because it just eats up my entire weekly usage. And And I don't want to pay thousands of dollars to get it finished. So how that one works I'll explain it in a some detail, but not in full detail, because just it'll take too long to explain all of it. But the core concepts that you essentially want to follow are adversarial interactions between basically competing AIs. You do not want one AI to just accept what another one did. You want it to be adversarial in its assessment. You want to deliberately poison things at certain stages, and then you

35:31 use other AIs to check, and if the check misses the poison, you throw out that batch because that batch was clearly not up to your standards, because if it had been produced up to the standard you set, the poison you deliberately injected would have been caught. And so in translations basically what you're doing is you'll have An AI produce the translation. This is a rough outline. And then you'll have a reviewing one insert something into that that is deliberately poisoned. A mistranslation, something that is inaccurate, you know, resorting to the Hebrew, if you only want the Greek, something like that. Although Iffy on whether you're not you want to play with the Hebrew at all, but you insert something that it should deliberately catch.

36:15 And then the reviewing AI in the next step, if it doesn't catch that, you consider the batch to have been poisoned, you go back and revise the system because something is falling through the cracks somewhere. And you can also do this by having multiple AIs produce the initial translations, you run comparisons on those with also the poisoning step right and then the check, and basically you synthesize those into your final product. I've got a system with basically all of these checks and balances and quite a bit more set up so that I can start doing some translations of the Book of Concord, because unfortunately CPH has kind of dropped the ball on having certain languages available, and I would like to have those publicly available.

36:59 Again, it's just a matter of usage why I haven't done it yet, because it's just it's very token intensive. And the other problem I've run into is that for translating the book of Concord, I I can do the German, I can slog through the Latin, but if the target language is something other than English or German, I need someone else. I need some other set of eyes for someone who's fluent in the language on it. And that is the other part of the system that I've been doing, and part of the reason that it's so slow to produce finalized translations of certain things. Psalm 1 is my final version because I had the AI do the work, run the analysis, and then I painstakingly stepped through every word choice and every line, and then the lines in context, and

37:52 then the psalm in context to produce that final translation. So Psalm 1 on Septuagent lxx.confident.faith is my final translation of that. I don't think I'll change any words in that whatsoever. But that took a lot of time. So the AI produces a very good readable version. I wouldn't say that it is what I would consider a final version because I think that what we laid out in the episode on translating scripture is what it will actually take to produce that proper actual reading version that should go forward as the standard in English for a hundred years. Or maybe a little bit shorter because we have so many problems today that need solved. But The readable versions are perfectly serviceable.

38:41 I use them. I'm using them for the psalm readings and the daily devotion. And the literal translations are great for study and the notes are great for study as well. So it is a very good useful resource that I put online for people, and I'm glad that people are using it. For anyone who has not seen it yet, by all means go to lxx.confident.faith and the resources are all there. The other slight issue that you will run into and it's worth mentioning, and I'm not doing it just because I'm an attorney, there are some copyright issues. Some of the materials are not in the public domain. You'd think, hey, these should no. It's complicated, right? IP law is always complicated. I have used mostly the suite translation because that one basically is

39:28 just entirely unencumbered, other than some miscellaneous bits and pieces here, the apparatus, things like that. But if you can find them, use public domain text if you're planning on doing any of this, because that will protect you from potential copyright claims and problems like that. Which is unfortunate. like we've said many times before on Stone Choir, as I've said many times other places, this is not the kind of stuff that should be copyrighted, right? You don't get to pay Wall God. Unfortunately a lot of people think they can. Question eight. Long hair on men. I am not trying to be trans or something, just a style choice. Is this wrong slash sin somehow just past shoulders length roughly.

40:16 Let's see. Obviously here we want to go to first Corinthians, right? So let me go ahead and pull up Logos here. Where did logos go? There we are. Okay. So I won't read the the whole chapter because really we just want the the bit here at the end, right? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him, but if a woman has long hair it is her glory, for her hair is given to her for a covering, etc. And so the question really here is is this a universal principle? Is this something that is being commanded that you must never wear long hair because long hair is always disgraceful and you know and I do have the I have pulled up the wrong logos window, so let me give you the actual logos window so you can

41:14 see what I'm reading. There we go. That's probably more helpful. But as I was saying, I have pulled up the Greek word here, right? Kama'o, which is indeed we're long here. So we can't play any games with the Greek. The Greek is very straightforward. It's wearing long hair. So yes, is there probably some societal context here, subcontext, of wearing very styled hair, the kind of hair you'd expect from a woman going to, say, the opera. We'll g use that example again, right? Yes, that's probably in view to some degree. But the verb does very much just say wears long hair. I'm going to go ahead and just bluntly say that no, that doesn't mean as a man you can't have shoulder length hair. As a man, should you have hair that's all the way down

42:06 to your mid back that you perm and braid and no, because now you've The problem there is what you've done is you've gone into the effeminate, which is something men should never do. You never engage in stuff that is effeminate in behavior that is effeminate. But just having longer hair no. And one of the best ways we can answer that is just looking at scripture, right? What was one of the things you could do in Old Testament Israel? You could take the Nazarite vow, which was that you wouldn't shave your head for a period of time. So if a vow to God approved by God involved men having long hair, then obviously men having long hair is not per se something that is violative of some law. So no, you're you're allowed to have long hair, just don't do

42:52 it in an effeminate way. Question nine. Do you have a preferred Lutheran liturgy? I am honestly not one of the what one might call a liturgy nerd. I'm not one of those. So So there are certainly men who get very, very into it, but honestly, I think as long as it is traditional and doesn't have objectionable material, which is generally speaking most of the Lutheran ones at this point, the actual Lutheran ones. Use whichever one, right? I know there are people and I've looking and my book is here on the floor where I can't reach it, but the LSB is fine. You could use TLH instead, write The Lutheran hymnal versus versus the Lutheran service book. I'm not super invested in one versus the other.

43:47 I think if people just use a liturgy, that's a huge improvement over what most churches are doing. And, you know, in in the future, sure, can we discuss which one is best and readings and all those things? And sure, that's work for for other men in the future when some of our larger issues have been solved. But by all means to date, just use the one that your church has. And it's probably going to be TLH if you got a huge carton of used ones or it's going to be LSB if you ordered new ones. They're both fine. And yes, I know people get weird about which divine service setting. Whichever one. They're fine. If you have a favorite, great. That's I mean it's better to have feelings, sentiments about the liturgy

44:35 than to not want liturgy at all. But as long as you're following that liturgy, I think that you're doing something better than what most Christians are currently doing. It's on the right the right tract the right track and I just don't have really a dog in the fight. Question ten. A friend of mine told me that Lutheran theology leaves little room for asceticism, and that works are just as important as faith. Quoting Matthew eleven twelve to me, how should I respond? So if he's telling you that works are just as important as faith, the well the answer there, the Lutheran answer there, is extremely easy, right? You're saved by works, but they're Christ's works, not yours. Because you can't be saved by your own works, because your own

45:28 works are finite. And the debt of sin is infinite, and so no matter what you do with regard to works, it will never be sufficient to save you. That's your friend is mixing up justification and sanctification. In justification, we're talking about monogism: God is the only actor, it is only Christ's sacrifice that saves you. And then once you are renewed, which is say once you're justified, same thing, then in sanctification, you cooperate with the Holy Spirit. Then it is indeed sacrificed synergism, and then your good works are part of your sanctification, and a living faith produces good works. That doesn't make works equal to faith. Faith is still the thing that is absolutely necessary. Works must flow from a living faith, but the faith is indeed

46:18 more important. However, when it comes to asceticism, right, let's see, Matthew eleven, verse twelve. From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and the violent take it by force. So I'm not one hundred percent certain which argument your friend is trying to make, so I would say maybe ask him to clarify that and then I will reply to whichever exact argument it is that he's trying to make. But is there room for asceticism in Lutheranism? The answer I think is yes, but within reason, right? This is something that this is going to be more over in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox territory. Where they're so big on work salvation that they think that going

47:07 out into the desert and retreating from the world is in some way going to make you holier. And the reality is it's going to make you worse. Because how do you serve God? God doesn't need your works. God doesn't need your money. God doesn't need your sheep, your goats, whatever it is. God has never needed anything from a human being. God will never need anything from a human being. And so the way you serve God is by serving those who do have needs, by serving your neighbor. And what can you not do when you retreat out into the desert and seal yourself away from your neighbor in society. Well you can't serve your neighbor. So no, I Lutherans do not believe in monasticism or anything like that. Certainly.

47:51 We very strongly condemn that system because it's a wicked system. It tries to substitute works for Christ's work, and it also leads to all sorts of problems of which we are all aware. The they were so well known and in even that day so heinous that in the book of Concord, Melanchthon declines to describe the problems because it would have been considered improper even to name the things that were happening in the monasteries at the time. And they haven't gotten better. So it it's just a recipe for disaster, right? Don't monasticism is not a good thing. Does that mean that asceticism is always a bad thing? It depends on what you mean by it, because recognize all the places that Scripture praises food, including bread and wine, including alcohol.

48:42 Yes, alcohol is praised in Scripture as a gift from God. If you reject all of these things, right, then what are you doing? You're rejecting the good things of God. And actually, you could go right to later on in that same chapter because it says, For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say he has a demon. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say look at him, a glutton and a drunkard, right? Well that's describing Christ what he did. Well what did he do? He ate with his friends, he enjoyed food, and he drank wine. So if you go so far with the asceticism that you are denying all of the good things that God created as part of creation for you to enjoy, then maybe you haven't necessarily gone all

49:28 the way into sin, but you've certainly gone into foolishness, which is at least bordering on sin. So is it important to control the body? Of course. You have a place where it says I discipline my body and keep it under control. That's an important part of what it means to be a Christian. So fasting is part of what it means to be a Christian. Do you fast until it harms your health? No, because that would be unwise. Do you reject all food? No, of course not. Do you s think that you're justified because you eat only fish? And I'm not making that one up. There's a group within the Roman Catholic Church that does that. No, you don't do that, because then you are taking away from Christ, his glory, and his works, and you're saying, I'm going to

50:11 be saved by my own works. And guess what happens when you do that? That's called apostasy. So, if your friend has some specific argument with regard to asceticism, then by all means I would be interested in responding to that. But I think the general rule is just that sure Lutherans don't reject it, just don't take it overboard. And that is sort of a general rule when it comes to Lutheran theology. Lutheran theology a lot of times is navigating that sh the straight and narrow. And that's why we're so fond of using the metaphor of falling off a horse, right? Don't fall off the left or the right. You don't benefit anything by pointing at the guy who fell off the left side while falling off the right side yourself, or vice

51:00 versa. Let's see here I will go few more questions. I have uh appointment I have to get to and have a little bit of driving, but someone asked me what my opinion is on Poland's ongoing crisis. I don't think I will number this one because I don't really have an answer because I have have not been paying that much attention to whatever Poland's ongoing crisis is other than being Poland. So I don't have a a firm opinion on whatever is being referenced there.

52:03 Question Well that didn't work. What happened here? Oh my as I tried to click the question my board refreshed and I tapped a different thing. There we go. Question My board number is off now because it counted that last one, but this is question 11. I will just have to remember that. I will have to fix that after the stream. Do you think it is possible this is question tw question eleven, do you think it is possible to have a pan Nicene Christian nation instead of a pan Protestant or a single denomination being enforced by a future Christian government? I've sort of answered this one previously, and I think that probably what we are going to have to do to avoid conflict, and I think it's the best way to do it, just so we

52:50 don't shed our brothers' blood, right? That's we should always try to avoid that. Federalism in the sense of I won't use the Latin because there's no reason, but the faith of the ruler is the faith of the land. So the ruler of a region chooses the religion of the region, which is to say he chooses the denomination or the tradition. And I'm not saying every region has to have a king because maybe they want to have some slightly modified version. I think it should be something in the aristocracy monarchy family. I don't believe in democracy, certainly representative so-called government. But I don't think that it would be wrong to have what is effectively an empire with things that are devolved to the local

53:41 level. So this particular region, whether it we call it a state or whatever else, is Presbyterian. This one's Anglican, this one's Lutheran, this one allows several. I think that's probably the best way forward just because we have so many different opinions, and getting everyone to agree is going to be impossible. So work with what we have instead of trying to aim for the perfect and letting the perfect become the enemy of the good. Or at least the good enough. But yes, I think that the bare minimum is that you have to confess the creeds, because otherwise you have departed from the faith. Right? That's what we say in the creeds. That's what we all what we believe. If you confess the creeds, you believe that to redeem reject the

54:25 creeds is to depart from the faith. And so that is certainly the minimum. And that's all three creeds. Because obviously the Athanasian with regard to Trinitarian theology is important because Unitarians are not Christians. Neither are Mormons, so all three creeds, the Apostle, the Nicene, and the Athanasian. Some of these questions are going to have to wait for next week because they are longer questions. I know that my backlog is growing. I I go through these and triage them after the show. I will get to them. I have them stored. I just may not get to them this week. I really want to address this one about the Septuagint in Genesis, but it is a longer one. It is going to take 20 minutes and I know it, so.

55:41 I'll go ahead and answer this one because I sort of already answered it, but question twelve here. Have you considered using the LLM as a judge pattern to reduce seepage of rabbinic influence in the Septuagint Confident Faith Translation, which I don't have a name for it yet, but I guess that's sort of a fine one to call it now. I have been using that, yes. That is similar to what I described. I've been using really it is a Essentially what I described earlier. I've been using a limited corpus and then the personality settings, adversarial, and very explicit instructions never to use anything derived from so-called Hebrew or rabbinic sources sources. And like we outlined in the episode on translating scripture, that's absolutely

56:30 necessary for a proper translation of scripture. Question thirteen What should the relationship between the Reformed and the Lutherans ideally be in your view? I think that ideally we are Christian brothers who disagree on some key parts of the faith when it comes to exegesis. And I do believe that the Reformed are Christian, at least many of them. I won't say all of them, because I think that they're Lutherans, so-called, who aren't Christian as well. So don't think that I'm picking on the Reformed in that. But obviously yes, we do staunchly disagree on some things, and I think that we have to be able to worship in our own way, because it would be to violate our own conscience to do otherwise. So So

57:27 again, I think that essential federalism approach is going to probably be what we have to do in the US context. Again, I think that it will be up to different territories. This is something that can be devolved. And so maybe there's a territory that permits several different churches, or there's one that says if you're here you're Lutheran. I would prefer to be somewhere that is Lutheran. Because I believe that is correct and I think that God blesses people who pursue the faith correctly and faithfully and earnestly. And I think that the way that you have to do that is not violating your conscience by being unequally yoked, in this case not with unbelievers, but with those who do not believe the same

58:11 things you do with regard to the faith. Because the differences between the Reformed and the Lutherans Well, again, I don't believe that they destroy the faith of the reformed. I don't believe that the differences are trivial, because we disagree on the nature of election, which is how one is saved. We disagree on the nature of Christ's presence in the supper, which is a core part of the faith. It's one of you can number the sacraments various ways, but one of the two main sacraments, right We disagree to some degree on baptism, not as much on that one as the Lord's Supper, but we disagree on core parts of the faith. And those disagreements are not going to go away anytime soon. We have been debating each other, arguing, yelling at each other for

58:59 500 years, right? So I think we should probably continue debating these issues, continue refining our arguments. I think that's fine, but we shouldn't be fighting with each other considering considering each other enemies. We're Christian brothers, we just have different views, and yes, that will probably mean some degree of separation. We had that historically to some degree, right? There were Largely Lutheran areas in Germany, and then there were largely reformed areas in certain countries in some parts of Germany as well. So there's historical precedent for doing things that way. But the overarching answer I would say is that conflict, particularly conflict that spills over into violence between Christian brothers, should be avoided unless

59:49 it is absolutely unavoidable, and I don't think that it is ever absolutely unavoidable. I think that there are always ways that do not require that step. Question fourteen. Do Christians have any duty to participate in voting? I live in Texas. My fiancé and I have chosen to abstain from voting due to dis dissatisfaction with the Republicans. Both of our families disagree with this decision and say we ought to still vote Republican as the lesser lesser of two evils, my father compared it to choosing not to tithe because you disagree with how your church spends. I would say first my issue would be that I don't one hundred percent agree with your father's contention with regard to tithing. Because I think that you are required to tithe.

1:00:49 I do believe that. I think that you are required to give ten percent, but I don't think you're required to give 10% to your church. If your church all of a sudden decides it's going to send 80% of its budget to Africa to build wells or you know, whatever, whatever nonsense it is this time. I think it's perfectly acceptable to take one hundred percent of your tithe and give it to a different Christian ministry that is actually doing good like it should, instead of preferring the foreigner and the alien and doing that sort of thing. So do you have do you have to tithe? I think the answer is yes. Do you have to tithe to your church? I think the answer is no. And so that sort of modifies his argument there, right?

1:01:32 Because do you have a duty to vote? I think that the answer is yes, there's a general duty to vote, but I don't think it's an absolute duty to vote. Because insofar as we have the power to vote, that means that we have been devolved some small say in how the country is run. And so given that we have been granted this power to have a say, we do have a duty to exercise it with wisdom. But I don't think that always means that you must vote, because sometimes wisdom says to abstain. And in the case of Texas, I'm not sure that right now really your vote is going to do anything, honestly. It's not quite like what I had living in LA, right? I lived in LA County. I may as well have written in Mickey Mouse, right?

1:02:23 Right, the only person was ever going to win in LA County was the Democrat or someone worse. So I did vote in California, and certainly I would vote for the governor because sometimes the governor would actually be a Republican and he wasn't always terrible. Arnold, for whatever else you can say about him, wasn't the worst person in the world when it came to certain issues. But I do think there is a degree of wisdom. And incidentally, when it comes to you voting and your fiancé, the woman is supposed to vote however her head tells her to vote. So once you're married, your wife is supposed to obey you with regard to voting as well. But I do think that generally you vote, but you vote in the elections where your vote actually is going to do something.

1:03:17 Are you required to vote for the lesser evil simply because it is supposedly the lesser evil? I don't know that I would say there's a categorical requirement to do that. And I think part of the reason I would say that is that it's not always possible to make the call what the lesser evil is, right? And the Republicans aren't always the lesser evil. Think what's going on in Ohio right now. Voting for Vivek is not the lesser evil. And so voting for the Republican is not the lesser evil. Abstaining is the lesser evil in that case. I would not vote if I were in that state right now. I'm in Tennessee, so the Republican is going to win regardless, particularly here in East Tennessee. But though I do think that it it is a matter of

1:04:04 wisdom. And I don't think that as a Christian you are conscience bound always to vote, and I certainly don't believe you're conscience bound to vote for the entirety of the ticket. By all means go and vote for local stuff though. Local stuff, your vote counts for much more, you have a much greater chance of affecting something, so don't just totally abstain. Vote for the things where your vote has a chance of actually doing some good. Which that's a general rule I tell guys all the time. The local stuff, you have a much higher percentage chance of actually influencing the outcome. A lot of those local races sometimes are decided by five, six, seven votes. So maybe it depends what part of Texas you're in, right?

1:04:41 If you're in Dallas, it's won't be decided by five votes, but by all means vote for that stuff. You are not conscience bound to vote for every single thing on the ticket. I have a lot of questions pending and I am not going to get to all of them. Okay, I'll let's see. Question fifteen fifteen. How do you deal with a being terrified about failing in one's duty to God slash not honoring one's vocation or caring for family, etc. And B God's clear prohibition against anxiety. I know God promises to provide, but also God works in time through means, so if I am those means, then it is on me to provide and that overwhelms me.

1:05:44 I think the way to look at that is at the end of the very same passage you referenced, right? What does Christ say at the end of that passage? Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. So get up each day and put in sufficient effort and the rest is in God's hands. There's only so much you can do in a a given day, right? I have an absolutely endless list of to do items. I will d I will be dead before I finish all of them. It doesn't really worry me, because I get up, I do a sufficient amount for the day, which doesn't mean work yourself to death, right? There's still things that God wants you to enjoy. I've got a teapot over here, take time for breaks and things like that. And recognize that ultimately all of it's in God's hands, right?

1:06:33 Unless God bless the house, those who built it labor in vain. Unless God watches over the city, those who watch over it watched over it in vain. It is in vain that you wake up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, right? It's very clear that regardless of what happens, it is all in God's hands. Does that mean that we do nothing? Of course not. You recognize that, you rightly recognize that there are things for us to do, and you should do them, and you should be diligent in your tasks, and you should learn and grow and try and achieve things in your life. That doesn't mean that you should be anxious about it. Anxiety does nothing for you, right? Who by being anxious can add one hour to the span of

1:07:17 his life? No one. You have no control over these things ultimately. And that isn't it's not nihilism or anything like that. It's just recognizing that everything is in God's hands. And so as Christians, we can be secure because we know that God will God will bless our efforts, and God will intend all things for the good, and the outcome will be for the good of those who trust in him. And so we trust in God. And we trust in God because he is the one who chose us. We didn't choose him. Now if we chose him, that's that's not great news because if we had to choose God, then it's incumbent on us, right? Well, was I good enough? Did I try hard enough? Did I choose strongly enough? Did I all these things, all these worries.

1:08:03 That's not what Scripture says. Scripture says that we love God because He first loved us. That's the whole point of election. This is incidentally tying back to the Reform versus the Lutherans. The Lutheran conception, and I will say it is the one in Scripture, I'll just be blunt on that, is that election is gospel. Election's great news because God chose you, God loves you. Your name was written in the book of life before the foundations of the earth were laid. So So, yes, there's stuff to be done here in time. There's a lot of work to be done here in time. Like I said, my to-do list is insane at this point. But it doesn't worry me and it shouldn't worry you. Just wake up, put in an honest day's work, and leave the

1:08:44 rest to God. That's really all there is to life. People want to make life so incredibly complicated when in reality, life is pretty simple. Wake up, eat, enjoy your time, have some tea, have a beer, whatever it happens to be, put in your honest day's work, read scripture, pray, go to sleep. Pretty simple. So So yes, I recognize that anxiety is a very real thing, and I recognize that the current world in which we live is a bit of a dumpster fire to be sort of to have an understatement of things there. But just because our world is currently a mess doesn't mean that God isn't still on his throne, doesn't mean that he isn't still one hundred percent in control, or that his plan has gone off the rails.

1:09:36 He's still in charge, he still cares for us, and he is still watching over us. So when you have anxiety, focus on God, pray the Lord's Prayer, and read the passage of the scripture that comfort you, whatever passages those happen to be. For many men it's the Psalms, for some men it's going to be Ecclesiastes or Job. You may not be the kind of man for whom Ecclesiastes and Job are comforting. If not, that's fine, read other passages. But many men have found comfort in those as well, recognizing that God is always ultimately in control and despite how bleak human life may look at times, everything turns out for the good of those who are called according to his purposes.

1:10:46 I think I will answer this one and make it the last one. I'm going to do sort of Do sort of a a cursory answer here instead of the full deep dive, because the deep dive honestly is about four hours. Question 16. What do you think about the claims that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are all consistent with each other, but John deviates from them in huge ways and is also much newer so less reliable. This is something that has been recognized by Christians, theologians, and others from the very beginning. That's what we call the first three the synoptic gospels, because they are a different thing. The Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are giving a narrative of Christ's time on earth, of his ministry and surrounding facts.

1:11:33 John is doing something different. John is in essence a an early version of what we would probably call a theology textbook. It is approaching teaching the faith in a different way from how it is approached by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And there's nothing wrong with that. God has just given us the truth in multiple forms so that we can understand more of it. It's kind of like repetition is one of the ways we learn, right? Another way that we learn is coming at an issue from multiple angles. Maybe the first approach doesn't really get it to stick in your mind. Maybe the second doesn't, but maybe the third does. And so God has given us different narratives. They are all consonant with one another.

1:12:20 They don't conflict. But he has given us different narratives from different authors that emphasize things in different ways. And so we gain something from reading each one of the Gospels, including John. But yes, John is John is different, and you can recognize that from the very beginning of the book, right? In the beginning was the word. That's a very different way to start from the other gospels, but that's because he's approaching it a different way. And I think read it like it's a theology textbook, and you'll probably get more out of it, instead of reading it as just being sort of a a pure or a simple narrative, which is often, but not exclusively what the other gospels are. I think that will be it for this week unless I scroll

1:13:10 and find one that I can answer quickly here I think I can probably answer this one quickly. So let's just do one more question. Question 17. Can I make a video game with Christian influence? How do I do this without blasphemy. And so the answer is that yes, I think you can do Christian influence. And the question then would be how are you splitting it, right? Are you taking the approach of explicitly Christian or are you taking the approach of Tolkien? Or of even C. F. Slewis, who is a little more explicit, but not entirely. So I think you can extract out the lessons of Christianity and the worldview and build that into a game or a fiction novel or anything like that, and still get through many of those lessons

1:14:10 from Christianity in a useful way without being explicitly Christian. Sometimes I think that's more effective. I think the Tolkien or the C. S. Lewis approach is more effective than I I can't think as any of them right now, but some of the other authors who are very kind of weirdly explicitly Christian in their fiction universe, I don't think it's always as effective to try to take literal Christianity and inject it into a fictional world. I think that extrapolating out the lessons and the worldview and then using that is probably going to be the more effective and the safer route. Does that mean you can't be explicitly Christian? Does it mean you can't say that someone in your novel worships

1:14:52 Jesus Christ? No, I don't think that that's the case. I think that you could do that even in a video game, right? But I think you're going to find that it is easier and more effective to take that sort of abstracted approach instead. But I think that I think that is going to be it for this week. I think I will try to go a little longer next week. This week I just have to get going. I have somewhere I have to be in a little bit here. But at any rate, thank you to all of you who submitted questions. It's always good to be able to take this time. I'm glad that I was able to this week. I try not to miss two weeks in a row, but certainly I will as best I can never miss three weeks in a row, unless I'm you know, unable.

1:15:35 If I'm in prison, then I have an excuse, right? But that is again up to God whether or not that sort of thing happens. But at any rate it is Friday. It's a little bit earlier this time because again I have an appointment so I had to schedule this a little earlier this week. So by all means go out and enjoy your weekend. It is of course Reformation Day today and tomorrow is the beginning of Al Hallowtide, well today rather is the beginning of all Halloween, otherwise known as Halloween, which is indeed a Christian holiday, so don't feel bad about celebrating that, touched on that in the last stream actually. So if you didn't hear that question, by all means go and listen to that. But that is it for me this week.

1:16:17 Go to church on Sunday. Like I always say, get out and enjoy the natural world a little bit this weekend. It is beautiful outside right now. The leaves are all changing where I am, and maybe they are where you maybe they are where you are too. Go to church on Sunday, and until I see you next week, God bless. Yeah, to have a lot

1:18:24 Yeah, but it's a post no one.