Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey, YouTube theologians. Welcome to Q and A podcast. I'm Pastor Wolf Mueller, St. Paul and Jesus Death Lutheran Churches in Austin, Texas. That's Pastor Andrew Packer, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Collinsville, Illinois. Pastor Packer, I heard a rumor about you, that breakfast is the only meal you eat every day.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Only breakfast?
[00:00:17] Speaker A: Only breakfast.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: I skip breakfast. I don't even have second breakfast.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: That had to do with the other rumor that I heard about you earlier today, and that is that you refuse to eat sweet pastries, only savory pastries, kolaches with the sausage, but not the kolaches with the fruit that you. That you refer to.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: It's all depend on mood.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Is that true?
[00:00:39] Speaker B: I mean, you know.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: All right, got some questions. Oh, so if you send in your questions, Wolfmueller co contact, that's where they go. We're running low at 560 of them or something nutty. Anyway, take your shot. That's great.
You got something for us today. Let's get some of these things answered.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Dealing with different denominations. First one on friendships and with others.
I've been struggling lately with having friendships, relationships with people in different denominations. I have a close friend who is considering converting to Roman Catholicism. She's a newer Christian and is super excited about it, but it's hard for me to get on board with everything she's looking into.
I love Lutheran theology so much, but it's also not my natural gift to debate, defend it well on the spot. I feel so strongly about the truth and comfort found in Lutheran church that ultimately I would love to see everyone be Lutheran. But what do we do with friends who strongly feel the Lord calling them to a certain denomination?
I always feel like it's my duty to defend my Lutheran beliefs, to change minds, even though I know it's the Holy Spirit who does that. How can I support those friends in their faith without feeling this burden of having to convince them of their doctrinal error?
[00:01:52] Speaker A: Such a good question. Such a sweet question from the listener because. So you lost friends when you became Lutheran, Right?
I lost friends. Carrie and I, we were looking at our wedding pictures and had the people standing up next to us. And I don't know, 80% of them, they were dear friends. And then when we became Lutheran, gone. But this dear questioner, her attitude is 100 times better than my attitude was at the beginning of being Lutheran. You know how they talk about the cage stage, Calvinists, like, you can't you get six months in Calvinism? You can't talk to anybody. You got to kind of Cool down, there's a cage. Stage Lutheranism, it's not as bad as Calvinism because we're right and they're wrong, but never mind.
So. But there's a stage where that zeal for the truth sort of overcomes your love for the person.
So, okay, so that's the danger.
So I want to suggest two things, and then, Pastor Packer, you should add something helpful. So the first is that it's really good to.
When we have these theological conversations with our friends, to recognize what the goal is.
The goal is not that your friend would become Lutheran for you. Her goal is not that you should become Catholic.
The goal is that you should both grow closer to Christ and deeper into His Word so that these conversations become a really precious opportunity to study the Scriptures and to hone in on the doctrine. It's still the things that I can argue the clearest. Now, I've been a pastor for what, 117 years or whatever.
The clearest things I can argue are those things that I argued. The arguments that I had with my friends, working my way out of evangelicalism into the Lutheran Church, into the Lutheran doctrine. So the doctrine of the free will, infant baptism, infant faith, the rapture, and all that dispensational stuff, those early theological arguments where I was really just digging into the scriptures and looking at what the Lord was saying were so precious in that way.
So if the goal can be, hey, we just want to rejoice in the teaching of the Scriptures together, then that can be helpful.
The second thing is that we can then be thankful for these arguments because they dig us into the Scripture, and they also help us think about how to argue them in a gentle way, like, how can I express this biblical teaching in a way that can be heard?
So many people will kind of lean away from these arguments, and then you don't spend any time meditating on how can I understand the Scripture so. So profoundly, so deeply that I can articulate it in a simple way?
And that only comes really through practice. Like, hey, what if I explain it to you this way? Or, what if we look at it this way and you got to try those things? And then it's also an occasion for courage.
So when we disagree with people and when there's stakes on the conversation, then it does give us these rare opportunities to be courageous and to speak the truth in love. But to know that, hey, there might be consequences for that, for believing this, and. But I'm willing to endure the consequences.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: I. I don't know. I found as I've I don't know how many years it's been now. Let's see. I guess it's almost been 20 years. I've been a Lutheran thereabouts. I guess now at this point, I find more and more, I just realized that I'm not going to convince everyone. She mentions trying to convince people. Like, you're not going to convince everybody, but you can.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: I haven't given up on that, by the way.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: You're still. The glass is still half full for you. I'm more of a pessimist or realists, as I like to say.
I just realized I'm not gonna convince everyone. And I've come to terms with that. Like, I'm okay with that. Like, there's a lot of really solid, good Christians in other denominations. And I think sometimes some Lutherans forget that, like, that they can be like a solid good Christian who is trying their best to understand the word of the Lord and that we may have some real disagreements with them and be like, hey, you're wrong on this.
But that doesn't mean they're, like, not a Christian or, like, less of a Christian than us or whatever.
So I think in some ways I think that helps with the conversations too. If I don't feel like the weight of I've got to convince them otherwise they're not really a Christian. Because I think sometimes, like you said that Cage stage, you kind of feel like if you're not this and you don't understand anything, I think, as I've over the years, I've seen that it takes the pressure off of that. You can just have real conversations and disagree but still remain friends.
I was just at a conference in Alabama for the Theopoulos Institute, where I'm with Pastor Odom. And we were two of, I think, the only Lutherans there. But we were able to have a lot of great conversations with people from a variety of denominations that were there. And, you know, it was good. It was a good time, even though we didn't agree with them on everything and they knew no one was pretending we didn't disagree on stuff. But we're able to have good conversations, good time, and still be a blessing to one another, even in spite of those disagreements. So it doesn't have to be like, the end of the relationship or have to be bad. The temptation, I think, is to act like the people do over on X, the way the Christians on X act with every issue and everything and like, slinging heresy at everybody and telling everyone they're a heretic and bashing Everyone constantly, like, you don't have to do that. Like, you can, like, be a normal human being and be kind to them and be loving and still have good conversations and still, like you said, pursue the truth.
Just realize you may not convince them that what you believe is the truth and be okay with that.
I wouldn't let that burden you. Like, it sounds like it burdens them. Like they really want to convince them. I get that.
I would love that. I also just know it's not always, not always what's going to happen.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Thinking about this first Peter 3:15 Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Always be ready to give a defense to everyone asks you the reason for the hope that's in you. That's amazing. The idea that what we have to defend is our hope with meekness and with fear.
So, and I think ESV says what with gentleness and with respect.
Meekness and fear might actually be the better translation here. But to think about this so that we are not coming from a place of pride, but humility.
This is so difficult because in our world today, everybody thinks that different theologies are just different opinions. And if you have a strong opinion, that's arrogance. We should have very, very humble, weak opinions, but very, very strong conviction in the word of God. And then this fear, this is both a fear of God, but I also think this is a respect, that respect is helpful, the respect for the person that we're talking to.
And what Peter is suggesting is if I don't have respect for the person as a creation of God and as a fellow, that Jesus is their brother by incarnation and their Savior by redemption, and that they're going to be raised on the last day. In other words, if I don't respect the person that I'm arguing against, I'm not going to get anywhere as well. So that's a good check that meekness and fear, these are not optional. You know, it's not like I can give a defense and if I want, I can do it meekly and with fear. This is the instructions from the Lord.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: So I think one thing I've seen, I posted something like this in my church's Facebook group recently. I don't know if we discussed it here or not. I can't remember. I don't think we did to the fact that what happens is we, we convince ourselves everything is a quote unquote gospel issue, like their salvation's at stake with every issue.
And we use that as a excuse to justify treating them poorly when we discuss things with them. Right. Like, it becomes our excuse for we can do whatever we want, say whatever we want, say it however we want, as long as the truth is at stake or the gospel is at stake, or whatever it is we convince ourselves we're doing.
And then instead of, like, doing what Peter tells us to do there, then we do have pride and arrogance. We just run people over and just don't. Don't treat them with any respect.
There's no meekness or fear at all in that because we've convinced ourselves that we're, you know, I don't know, saving civilization, saving the church, saving this person. Even if they're like an actual Christian, right? That we're trying to convince that they're. They're wrong on stuff. Like, we treat them like they're an unbeliever, you know, and maybe worse than an unbeliever. Like, actually, you know, it's pretty terrible. So I think we have to really be on guard against that. It's. It's a. It's a danger. Especially I think, with the way online interactions between Christians takes place nowadays, too. It's. I think it's probably easier. And personal friendships, relationships, way easier. The online stuff has gotten, like, a little insane with that. So.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: Yep, it's great.
Great.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: All right.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: Hopefully that's. What a dear. What a sweet question. I hope that's.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: This is related, actually, to that. This is praying with other denominations.
I hope this finds you well. I'm contacting you because I'm concerned whether I can pray with Roman Catholics or other denominations. I've seen some Lutheran authors argue against it, but I've also seen a shift in this view over time. I just want to make sure I'm doing the right thing.
So can you pray with other Christians?
[00:11:54] Speaker A: It's a great question. So there's a few of our friends, Lutherans, who would say no, that prayer is an act of worship.
And to pray with other denominations would be syncretism, that joining together of two doctrines in one worship. So the Wisconsin Synod and els, I have a lot of respect for those guys because, you know, if you go to a Roman Catholic something or other, you're like, well, I thought we were going to pray to God, but we're praying to these dead people.
Wait a minute.
So.
And, you know, sometimes you go with your evangelical friends and you're like, okay, well, you know, we worship Father, Son and Holy Spirit, so we can pray together. And all of a sudden they're like, praying that the Lord is going to, like, work a miracle and by rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem or whatever, or praying for the Holy Spirit to come down so that we can raise the dead. I'm like, what do you.
So that because the false doctrine shows up in prayer, you kind of get trapped, right? Like if it's. So if we sit down with our friends and family who we know, and like we're sitting around a meal and we're praying for the meal, or we're praying for someone that we have this mutual concern for, that the Lord would bless them, or, you know, we're in the hospital and we're praying together for someone to get better. I don't think there's any problem with that. But it's a risky business because how you believe shows up in how you pray.
And all the false doctrine from the other churches ends up showing up in how they pray too. You know, you go to an. You got your orthodox friend and all of a sudden you're getting like a 45 minute something or other to marry. Like, whoa, you know, let's slow down on the necromancy over here. It's like, you know, all the kind of prayer to the saints and everything else, like, this is kind of out of control.
So I think my answer is it's okay to pray with fellow Christians. I don't think that that is especially in private and especially with family, etc.
I don't think that those kind of private devotional prayers should be understood as kind of joint worship and syncretistic. Although, again, I'm sympathetic to the view, but I don't think it is. But there's a risk there. And so we want to be careful about who we're praying with and what's going on because we don't want to find ourselves in some ways agreeing with what's going, you know, with what's going on when the false doctrine shows up. That's my.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: What would you do if, let's say they're praying with their Roman Catholic friends and they start praying to one of the saints?
What, what should.
I don't know if this is a guy or girl or what should she do? I found her name.
What should she do if that happens? So she starts praying and they.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: Maybe you should, you could say like a little private prayer to Jesus and say, hey, could you apologize to, you know, St. Sebastian for my friends here?
I mean, I do, I do think, you know, we have this tendency even so if with those we love who have died and you just like, you want to talk to them and that that sort of instinct for that prayer to the saints, every person feels in the midst of mourning. I do think that they are in fellowship with Christ and we are in fellowship with Christ. And I do think the pious way to deal with that is to sort of send the messages through Jesus and let him kind of to take care of it.
But we want to avoid that altogether. So if there's a way, like, it depends on the circumstances. But I.
I remember one time I was at a. It was in Denver, the mayor had a clergy lunch, and there was a Jewish rabbi up there to give the benediction, which means some sermon and prayer for them. And in that case, like, if it's a different religion, if it's someone who does not confess, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, any of the cults or Judaism, Islam, or any of the other kind of distinct confessions, we don't participate at all. So I was at a table with all Southern Baptists, but here the rabbi gets up to do a blessing, and I just stayed seated and took a posture that if anybody was watching, they were like, oh, he's not participating. Eyes open, head up, looking around like, I'm not praying.
And. And all these guys were kind of bowed their head very piously. And then the rabbi started into some sort of nonsense. And one at a time on the table, I could see them go like, whoops, we're out. They, like, jumped out of the prayer by, like, jumping out of the posture of prayer.
And I just. Every time it happened, I was like, see, I warned you guys. Oh, man. So if you can, like. But I don't know, sometimes you just get stuck in these awkward conversations in awkward situations that it's like there's. There's no.
There's no help in it. You're just kind of. You're along for the ride and. And praying to the Lord that you'll have an opportunity to. To make the good confession in a peaceful way down the road.
I don't know. You have thoughts on that?
[00:17:40] Speaker B: I think in general, like, I don't, like you said, in private or whatever, or smaller groups like that, when it's not like this, some public event or something.
And I don't think I've ever had the experience, like, in. In that kind of setting, like, privately or. Or whatever, like a small group of people that wasn't some kind of official event. I don't think I've ever had the experience of someone pray anything crazy. You know what I mean? Like, I have been at a ministerial thing one time, and this was In Pagosa, where I can't remember exactly what happened, but the. The prayer by one of the people there made me so uncomfortable.
Like, it was the last one I attended. Like, it was that bad.
I remember exactly what it said. I just remember thinking, I. I don't know if I can be here. It was. It was pretty terrible.
So.
But that was at, like, one of those ministerial association things. So that was. That was it for that. But privately with, like, friends who aren't, you know, whatever, or, like, some of these other things, like, I. I've never had had anything crazy or weird like. Like that happen. So if it does, I don't even know what I would do.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: I would do it.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: I mean, I think you might have to wait till I finish praying and be like, can we talk about this for a second?
[00:19:02] Speaker A: Yeah, you could do it. We learned point of order. That's blasphemy.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: I was at some joint prayer service after the shooting that happened in Aurora so many years ago, and I didn't go to participate, but it was. All the clergy was up there. You know, you got the Catholic priests, the charismatic preachers. It was amazing. And each one was like, you know, you had all the. This is a DEI problem, and this is a gang problem, and this is a.
And. But I was there. I was undercover. I wasn't wearing my collar. I was just in civilian clothes. But the more the thing went on, the more uncomfortable I got, and I ended up halfway through it, standing in the middle of a bush.
I was like, is that the Simpsons thing meme where Homer, like, disappears into a bush like that and he hides? That's what I literally did at this thing. And at the end, I'm like. I'm standing in the middle of these bushes, so hoping that nobody sees me here.
Oh, man, what a mess.
[00:20:04] Speaker B: All right, very different. We have a very different question from the previous ones for number three.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Christians that don't go to church.
My question is, are people who say they're a Christian but don't go to church, don't say the word of God, don't pray, praise, or give thanks to God. Actually, Christians with this question, I think about how Jesus says, not everyone who says to me, lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, and also Jesus will separate the goats from the sheep. I think it may be presumptuous of us to think we know what others believe or the true intent of their hearts. Only God can see that always. We should pray for them and then return to church and also invite them back to church.
Would appreciate your further insights into this question.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. We have the command from the Lord directly to remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
Paul builds out on that when he says, don't neglect the meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encourage one another and even more as you see the day approaching. So it belongs to the Christian life to gather together to hear the Word and to receive his gifts. In fact, Jesus says when he gives the supper, he says, do this often. And so our doing this often is not only receiving the gifts of the Gospel, but it's also in obedience to his commands. So this is not the Christian life is not an optional feature for the Christian, and worship with Christians is also not an optional feature for Christians.
Now.
So here's the picture.
We were talking about false doctrine and the can you believe false doctrine and have saving faith?
I think the answer is yes, but it's not good. It's like cancer, right? False doctrine is like a cancer that eats away at that saving faith. Every heresy strikes at Christ and eventually that false doctrine is going to get after that saving faith and it can destroy it. That's a real possibility.
The same thing happens with false living. In other words, if we are living in sin, those sinful habits are eating away at our saving faith. It's possible to be a Christian and have these sins that are destroying us. It's possible, but not for long.
Those sort of what the Calvinists call ruling sins, and that's probably a. A good term from Paul.
Let not sin rule in your body.
Those ruling sins are eating away at saving faith and eventually it gets to it. The same thing is true if we exclude ourselves from the means of grace, that is from the Scriptures and from the Lord's Supper. It's like, can you live and not eat? Well, yes, for a while, but eventually if you just are not eating and drinking anything, your life is gone, you die. And the same thing for our faith.
If you're not feeding that faith with the Lord's Word and with the sacramental life of the church, then it's going to eventually die. So is it possible for someone to be a Christian and not go to church? It's possible, but. But it's not good and it can't last forever.
So to come to church to hear the Word, to receive his gifts, this is really important.
Now one more caveat though, because I remember when I was a baby, baby pastor, I mean like newborn pastor, I was like two weeks old, teaching Sunday school, and someone there in Colorado, they asked, can you worship God in the mountains?
And I said, well, if you're in a plane crash and you're stuck in the mountains on a Sunday, absolutely God is with you. But if you want to skip church and go skiing, no, it's different.
So if you're not going to church because you can't, because you're in prison, because you're homebound, because whatever, then God be praised. He's with you.
Don't be afraid.
Read the Word, listen to godly preaching, pray to the Lord, you know, worship on your own and pray that the Lord would gather you around his gifts according to his will.
But if you're just skipping church because you got, you know, you want to watch golf on Sunday morning or whatever stupid other things happen on Sunday, I don't even know what happens in the world on Sunday morning except for church.
What else could be anyway, then. No, that you. You got to get to church, man.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: That's. I mean, that's related to in the one year, this past Sunday, right? Jesus parable about the manager misusing God, thus the. The master's gifts, right? Like he cheated him out of them, and then he cheated him out even more as he rewrote the bills and stuff. And Jesus says that we have to make good use of unrighteous mammon, but also right, that we have to make good use of the righteous gifts. So I made the point about part of that means making use of word and sacrament, right? Like God's given it to you, and you're to make use of it. You're to come and receive it.
I gave the example that if, you know, if our churches started offering $500 to attend and a thousand dollars bonus if you took communion too, like, we'd be packed.
And yet what we give out is a far more infinite value than 1500 bucks, right? And so part of it's reshaping how you think about what's going on in church and what you're receiving and what you're getting. I mean, was it Luther says, like, if you don't go at least four times a year, we should question whether you're. If you don't receive the Holy Supper four times a year, we should question if you're a Christian or not.
I mean, that's. For some people, that's four times as many times as they go in a year, right?
If they're only going, like, on Christmas or if they're only going Easter or whatever.
So it's at least a question worth asking. Like, the person needs to really consider, like, why do I call myself a Christian? I was also thinking about it recently because we. I don't. Does your church have online services? Like, do you show them on YouTube or whatever?
[00:26:18] Speaker A: We put the sermons.
[00:26:21] Speaker B: So they've been doing that here since COVID And so we have those on there. And I have a love hate relationship with it because part of me is like, there are people who genuinely right. Take advantage of it for the right reasons, but there's a lot of people that use it as an excuse, like, well, I can watch online so I don't have to go. But I was thinking about the other day reading somebody's reflection on why they don't have stream their services.
It's kind of like, if I invited you to Thanksgiving dinner and you're like, well, I'm not gonna come, but I'll watch it, right? Like, what would be the point of watching someone eat Thanksgiving dinner? Like, we would.
Would be like, that's ridiculous. You're not even. You're not. You're not there at all, right?
[00:27:05] Speaker A: You could imagine the pious use, like, hey, if you're deployed in Afghanistan, but I'm gonna put me on FaceTime and I'll sit at the table with you, you know, and make jokes and stuff like that. You can imagine a use like that. But it's. It's like, nah, I got, you know, I'm too busy playing Minecraft or whatever, you know, like, come on, get to church.
And if you don't go to. If you are one of these people, like, hey, I'm a Christian, but I don't go to church.
And you realize that you don't go. You have all these excuses. They're stupid excuses. It basically comes down to the fact that you don't want to go to church.
Pray that the Lord would change your desires. Now. Don't wait till he does to go to church. I mean, you have the command, so you got to do it even if you don't want to do it. That's why if the Lord just commanded us to do the things we wanted to do, he wouldn't need to command it. So always his commands are scraping against our sinful desires. But to start to pray that the Lord would give you a desire to go to church and to know that strangely, in spiritual things, desire and satisfaction belong together. They're not the opposite. So that the more you go to church, the more you want to go to church, the more you hear the Word, the more you want to hear the Word, the more you come to the Supper, the more you want to come to the supper so that the devil wants to separate us from the gifts.
And that third commandment, breaking gives the devil avenues to the heart. I mean, it's when you're apart from the word and when you're apart from the preaching of the word and the gathering of the Lord's people that you're opening up doors for spiritual attack and those doors are shut in, in by worship. So. So you're making yourself particularly vulnerable for false goofy ideas, for dangerous doctrines, for bad practices.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: So one more thing I was thinking of with that I've actually used with some, some parents one time, people that, that want to watch online say it's the same thing as going. Like why can't I just watch it online? It's the same thing as going.
I asked a parent one time, I said because it was for confirmation requirements. And I said, your child can do that if that's how they participate in their sports as well this year.
Right. That's absurd. Of course you can't participate in your sport if you're just watching it online. Well, yeah, that's. Yeah, exactly.
Thank you.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: Did I ever tell you my argument for online communion? How I was for online communion, but I said that the elements had to be on the pastor side of the screen. So I'd consecrate and then I'll just put it through and you just put your mouth up to the screen and I'll just push it through the camera. And someone said, well Pastor, that doesn't work.
Well, you said it, not me.
You're like, really?
[00:29:57] Speaker B: That's an interesting point.
[00:30:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I thought it sounds fine to me. Oh boy. Oh, last point on this. If you don't have a church to go to, if you go to Wolfmuller Co, there's an about button. Help me find a church and just put your email and your zip code in there. And we got a team that helps people find a church. So if you're like, well, I'd go to a church but I don't know where to go. Well, that's the thing to do. So we can help you find one
[00:30:25] Speaker B: close by and sometimes not as close by as I've run into recently with trying to help some people.
Sometimes there's not a lot of Lutheran churches near them, but we'll still help you find one even if it's a little bit of a drive.
Yeah, this one's on last name in marriage.
This is from a 21 year old college student that says they love the show though. We aren't planning to be married anytime soon. We've had some good conversations about it from a biblical perspective. I've been interested in your opinion on my girlfriend wanting to keep her own last name after marriage.
Specifically, is this in nature contrasting to be in one flesh? Regardless, I pray that I would serve and love my wife as Christ does the church.
Thank you. One thing before you go into this. I don't know if you saw this. This was just like last week.
Lyman Stone, you know, does some of these surveys and different stuff. I believe it was him.
He just recently had a thing that the divorce rate among people when the wife does not take the last, last name of the husband is like, disproportionately high to the one that does take the last name.
It's a really, really. Yeah, you can look, it's on his sub stack. Uh, so how many do you think
[00:31:34] Speaker A: that there's like, so many wives are like, man, I'd divorce this guy, but it's, it'd be so much paperwork.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: I, I, I think part of it could be an attitude towards what he's getting at here with the question. Right? Like, well, we're, we're one, but we're not really one.
So I want to, I want to keep my, keep my name. Now, I don't think that's always necessarily the, the impetus behind that, but does seem like that perhaps is part of it, but go ahead, take it away.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I think the general attitude. So, okay, our base thinking about this is that this is a good thing, not only according to natural law, but also according to the Bible's way of thinking about marriage. When the two become one, they're joined together and there's a double leaving. I mean, in the scriptures it talks about especially the husband leaving his father and his mother and being joined to his wife, and the two become one. There's also this leaving of the daughter, the wife who leaves father and mother and is united to her husband. The two become one, and that one is one in family. And everything that belongs to one belongs to the other. So the exchange of rings, for example, if you go back a little bit, it wasn't the wife who really gave the ring to the husband, it was the husband who gave the diamond to the wife. This is, hey, everything that belongs to me belongs to you, including my name, which is an indication of everything else. In other words, in some ways, again, you don't have to go back too far in human history that your name was your credit card, your name was your credit score. Your name was your capacity to make contracts. And that when now my bride has my name, she has all of that. Everything that I have built up in culture and society, that now also belongs to her, so she can participate in all of those things. If I'm a fool or a wicked man, she also now has a share in my own sinfulness because she shares that name.
So this idea of two becoming one and that being expressed by the bride taking the name of the husband is really good.
Some people want to do this hyphenated stuff. So I want to talk about that first.
And we have friends and family, and they've kind of joined their two names together.
The problem with that is it does not have an eye toward the future.
Like, okay, maybe so, like, if.
Just think about this. Like, if my parents took a hyphenated name and Carrie's parents took a hyphenated name, then I would be Wolfmuller McCutcheon, and Carrie would be Jackson Reinke, and then our kids would be Wolfmuller McCutcheon, Jackson Reinke, and then their kids would have eight names. And, you know, it's just. So the idea of the hyphenated name, it only makes sense if you're not thinking about marriage vertically, only horizontally, you're not thinking about it over time.
And the fact that marriage is this act of hope in the face of death, that humanity will survive through having children and raising them and so forth, so that we're fighting against the. We're fighting against the chaos that the world wants to descend into because of sin by getting married and having children. And so we want to have the one name.
Now, on the idea of just a wife keeping her name, I think that we don't have a command from God on this. So we don't want to make a law where the Lord hasn't.
So we want to say the base would be the wife to take the name. Unless there are, you could imagine, reasons why it would be helpful for that not to happen.
Maybe normally, what the reason is is that the.
The wife, through work that she's done, has a name that's already somehow publicly connected to her, to her work. Like, say she's written a book or she's written.
[00:35:50] Speaker B: Here's a great example. And maybe I won't get death threats, because this is gonna be in a positive spin this time. Last time I got death threats, I talked about her. But Taylor Swift took Travis Kelsey's last name. But for work purposes, she'll keep Swift, obviously, because that's her brand or Whatever. Right. But she did take his last name. I found that rather fascinating, you know, but there's an example. I've seen that a number of times where the. The person took the last name, like, officially, but for, like, work purposes or whatever. They. They use their other name because that's what they're known by. And I think that's. I don't see it. I don't. Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:36:26] Speaker A: You know, there's pieces of music that belong to them. Their name is somehow already public, and so they want to. They want to keep that connection to the. To the name that's there. So you could imagine those circumstances. But that's. I didn't know that, Taylor.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: I learned that that's cool on a talk on art at this conference. It was a random point made, but. But I was like, oh, that's fascinating. I didn't know that.
[00:36:52] Speaker A: I still want to know what kind of sermon Adam Sandler preached at their wedding.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: He probably sang it.
[00:36:57] Speaker A: Could you imagine?
[00:36:58] Speaker B: My guess, probably some kind of spoof song.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: So I think our base assumption is, yes, this is good and godly for the wife to take the husband's name and the children to take the husband's name. That also has to do. I mean, this kind of basic biological idea is that when a baby's born, you know exactly who the mother is, because mom and baby are there at the same time. There's a little bit of distance between dad and baby. And so every time that when the baby's born, dad says, you're mine, you got my name. And that's an important. I mean, again, you don't have to go back that far in history when there's no DNA tests and all this other stuff. So dad says, this baby belongs to me, and that family name becomes. That becomes that defining thing for the family and the kids and the mom and dad.
[00:37:55] Speaker B: And the joke that's gone around recently about. For. In response to feminists wanting to keep their last name because that's. That's their name. That it's their father's and grandfather's name is also still true. Like, it says, where did that name come from? Like, you know what I mean? Like, so it's still. It's a weird thing to, like, not want to do. I just. I guess I just don't understand that mindset of I want to marry you, and I wanted to have my life with you, but no way am I taking your last name. Like, they're just odd. Unless you just really hated the way their last name sounded.
[00:38:29] Speaker A: Right.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: You just thought Wolfmuller was just too hard to spell or something. I don't know.
[00:38:35] Speaker A: Wolfsmuller.
So cool.
[00:38:38] Speaker B: It is cool. Or something.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: It's a huge advantage having a cool name like Wolfmuller, because all the girls are like, you know, in high school, they're like, ooh, my last name could be Wolfmuller.
[00:38:48] Speaker B: All I get asked is Carrie Took.
Are you a Green Bay Packer fan? That's all I ever get asked. And the answer is no.
[00:38:56] Speaker A: I bet you I heard a rumor about that.
Carrie took her maiden name, and she has it as her middle name now, so it's still hanging around, I think, half the time.
And that is a good thing, you know, because the brides want to also honor the father and mother, and so you. But you don't lose your father and your mother, you know, when you. When you change your name.
[00:39:21] Speaker B: All right.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: I think the sweetest thing to see, by the way, is when you have these couples and you'll catch the engaged to be the bride to be, like, practicing signing her new name, you know? Oh, man, that's sweet.
[00:39:37] Speaker B: All right, so are you ready for the. Is this our last one? I think it's the last one.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: Okay, if you say so.
[00:39:43] Speaker B: Pretty sure. Okay.
[00:39:46] Speaker A: I could do this all day.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: Answering our own questions first, thank you for your theology Q A. It's my go to podcast and has been incredibly helpful for so many of my theology questions, however big, however here, however it feels like a cheat code.
Someday I may not have a podcast that I can just submit my questions to. Can you outline a method and. Or reliable theological resources that your YouTube theologians can use to start trying to answer their own questions before submitting them to the podcasts. Here's to being a theologians for life. No, no.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: You have to depend on us.
You need us.
If something happens to us, you're. You're doomed. There's. Me and Pastor Packer are the only people authorized to answer the logical questions on the Internet.
I'm sorry.
[00:40:33] Speaker B: Just the way it is.
[00:40:34] Speaker A: I.
I don't know. Is that. Do you agree with me on that?
[00:40:41] Speaker B: I mean, I have to say yes, right?
I don't want to get fired.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: Click and like and subscribe.
In fact, if we haven't answered a question, you're not authorized to have an answer.
[00:40:53] Speaker B: There is no answer.
[00:40:57] Speaker A: Okay, maybe not. So remember what happened. Remember what Paul says. Luke says about the Bereans in the Book of Acts? So Paul goes to Thessalonica, then he goes to Berea, then he goes down to Athens. And it says the Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonicans because they received the Word with joy and they tested it to see if it was true.
So we want to have that attitude towards all doctrine and all teaching. And so we want to receive, but we want to test. And that testing is a requirement. John says, test the spirits to see whether they're of God.
So that every Christian is called to be a theologian.
That's why we start out the thing here saying, hey, YouTube theologians, because we're not. There is no professional theologian, and we have to watch out for that, for the people who want to make theology like an expert class. And you have to depend on the professional theologians who have gone to seminary and learned the languages and all this. And unless you've done all those things, then you can't know what God says to you.
That is a damnable lie. The Lord's Word is clear and sufficient, and you have the Word, and that's enough. Now, it doesn't mean it's easy. Like, you just pray a mystic prayer and let the Bible fall open and look at the first verse. I mean, you got to study, you got to work at it. But every single Christian is a theologian, and that theological work needs to be done probably from a couple of different angles. Well, I hope the helpfulness of this podcast is that it helps people to start meditating on the scriptures and the theological questions that we have, so that your mind is just in that mode more and more, and the more that you're meditating on the scriptures, thinking about the scriptures, taking the scriptures and applying them to the problems that you face in your own life or the difficulties or the joys or whatever, then the easier the whole process becomes.
But there's going to be lots of questions that come up, and we do want to be able to go after them on our own as Christians. Now, there's also other resources, so I recommend to people that have a notebook as they're reading the Bible, write it down. And then when they get to five or ten questions, call me up and let's go have a cup of coffee.
These are members of the church, and we'll go some of those. So you have your pastor. He's your chief theological resource.
I mean, you have your Bible, you have your pastor, you have your Christian friends. Hey, have you guys thought about this?
Any place to go to look this up? This would be really great. And then we also want to start building our theological library.
So there's a couple of key texts that I Think we want to have available.
Outlines of Doctrinal Theology by Edward Kohler is really great. It's kind of next to the catechism. Your catechism is going to be your chief one. And a lot of times it's like question and answer. And there it is. So you got your catechism with your question and answer. You got your outlines of dogmatic theology.
When it comes to the Catholic and orthodox questions, you've got your chemnit stuff. And a lot of these you can download for free on the website. I'm trying to put that theological library and make it available for everybody there as well, so that you have your resources that you can go to also.
So we do want to be doing the theological work on our own also.
[00:44:24] Speaker B: I think in addition to that, you mentioned your pastor. Like, attending Bible studies that are offered is a great way. I mean, one of the things I try to do. I'm sure you try to do this as well. One of the things I'm trying to do in Bible study is also teach them how to read the Bible, right? So that as they approach the text, when they read on their own, they know what to look for, what kind of questions to ask of the text, like, see how it all fits together. Things like that, which then will help you, as you learn to read the Bible better and understand it better, will help you answer a lot of the questions you have about things because you'll. You'll know where to go. You'll know. So being familiar with that, I'm curious what you think about this. I have a member who's developing.
I'll just call it an app.
He's already. He's got it on his own computer already, so he can ask it theological questions. And right now what it draws from is the ESV Bible, the Book of Concord, and the sermons and Bible studies from our church.
Now he wants to expand the Lutheran library, right? But he's just playing around with it right now. So if he asks any question, it'll give an answer based on those resources and it will footnote everything and give you, like, the full text of where it drew it from, like down below.
So it's.
Speaking of cheat codes. I mean, it's like, it's really impressive. He sent me, he showed me some of what he's been doing with it, and it's super impressive.
[00:45:45] Speaker A: And.
[00:45:45] Speaker B: And I was like, wow. And so I think his hope is that eventually Lutherans could use it could be something that I think he'd like to get it out There, so that Lutherans could just have to pay a fee for what it costs to run the AI of it. You know, like an app on your phone that you just have a subscription to that costs for that. And it could. Would only give you Lutheran answers from Lutheran sources.
[00:46:07] Speaker A: I think that. I think that's good. I. I think we're going to have to be careful how we use these things because again, like, sort of the assumption of the question is, is it good that when I have a question, I just offload it to you guys rather than doing the work? And the answer is that sometimes you just need an answer, but sometimes you need to do the work to find the answer. The nice thing about, like an app like this or whatever is you can say, hey, I've got a question, just as you say, I've got a question about the doctrine of election. I'm trying to understand how God is active in the work of election.
Give me a Bible study that shows me the relevant Bible passages and confessional passages so I can study that on my own.
In other words, don't just give me the answer, but build me a path to the answer.
The other day I did something like this.
I asked the robot, give me the top 15 passages in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch that deal with the problem of docetism. And so it gave me, it outlined the passages, but then I have them, so now I can go and read them. You know, I can. So that we're just going to have to.
Just because we. Just because you can be lazy doesn't mean you should be lazy. You know, just because it's available doesn't mean you should do that. So we're going to have to let the robot also give us the sources so that we can do the work, so that we're still practiced in that.
So in that way, that's going to be really helpful. And a lot of times I'll do this when I'm meeting with people, say, hey, I have this question.
And I could tell them the answer, but it's going to be better if they see it themselves.
So I'll say, I want you to read these five passages and these two pages of the Large Catechism. And then let's get together next week and I want to know what you found there.
And so that you know, you can, with help, you can find those things yourself. So that's really good. In fact, maybe we should answer one question every week not by giving the answer, but giving the way to find the answer, to give people the homework Assignments to go do it themselves. I wonder if we can remember to do that.
[00:48:31] Speaker B: Watch those.
Wait, he's giving us homework.
[00:48:36] Speaker A: We could test and see.
[00:48:37] Speaker B: I'm out.
I'm out.
We're done for the week.
[00:48:43] Speaker A: It's a great question, though. It's great. Hey, well, thanks, Pastor Packer. Thanks for everyone for sending your questions. Thanks for being part of the fun here. Your only source for theological knowledge in the world, the Q and A podcast with your authoritative mini popes.
Oh, brother. Well, no, we are. Pastor Packer and I are both thankful for your attention, that you give it to us in these podcasts. It means a lot to both of us. Hopefully we are faithful stewards of that. Keep those questions coming. Wolfemla. Co contact Pastor Pat. Oh, you should talk about this. You gotta. You're gonna go over to. To Trump's Gaza Hotel. I heard here.
[00:49:30] Speaker B: Not quite. Yeah.
[00:49:31] Speaker A: You got an Israel trip. That's in the.
[00:49:32] Speaker B: In the words of June 2027, I'm leading a trip to Egypt, Israel and Jordan.
So if you want to join us, maybe we can send out the. The. In your Wednesday whatnot. The. The link to the. The Purposeful Journeys website where you can find information, but people should join us. It's gonna be fun. The trip looks amazing. Honestly, I'm a little worried.
[00:49:53] Speaker A: That's great.
[00:49:54] Speaker B: You know, everyone keeps asking me, are you gonna be able to go? I don't know, but I'm hoping by then we have this figured out and I've went. The last time I went to Israel was 1998. I went for a youth leadership conference I was picked to go to as a senior in high school, and they almost canceled our trip because of Saddam Hussein, you know, and that was 1998, so it's not like anything's different than it's ever been. But we went, we had an amazing time, and I'm looking forward to this trip. It's going to be. It's going to be really fantastic. So
[00:50:22] Speaker A: we'll put the description. We'll have Casper put the link in the description to the extended video, too. So that'll be great. So if you want to do that, it's. Pastor Packer, Carrie and I are doing a trip to Austria and Switzerland next summer. So you got two choices.
Israel.
That's great.
Thanks for being part of the fun, though. And we'll see you next time. God's peace be with you.
